Fuck you.

A Moto G with a BIG ASS BATTERY(tm) is what I am talking about.

Of course, but even then battery life is dismal.

Equal parts incompetent and arrogant. They're like a fledgeling Microsoft, except now everybody else is moving on from yesteryear and won't waste time indulging such foolishness anymore.

It is a massive pain in the ass to charge these modern phones, and if your life is so predictable that you reliably have the privilege of plugging it in every 15-20 hours I feel sad for you.

If a manufacturer proposed an average (dual core - last year's model is fine, 1GB RAM, 800x480 screen) phone that was affordable (no, really, $500 isn't affordable) with a big ass battery I would be like SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

I don't understand all these designers who are pushing devices *waaaay* past the capabilities of the batteries. Smart watches (other than the Pebble, they did it right!) are doing exactly this and it is making their product a complete joke.

Doesn't winelib already include DirectX to OpenGL translation? Isn't that half the point of Wine?

I think your views on the phones are basically invalid. Metro is gorgeous. I don't see any way in which Microsoft is trying to be Apple, and I don't have any issues with the design (btw the OSX interface is shithouse, I think we can agree). Most Android phones these days are taking away the option to allow mounting the SD card over USB for various reasons (although, it is excellent for usability IMO) in favour of MTP - which coincidentally Windows Phone also does.

In the next update apparently Windows Phone will finally be getting some sort of fie manager. Also unlike Android, Windows Phone isn't trying to shove cloud services down your throat constantly but is flexible enough to offer great integration to a few by default and even CalDAV and CardDAV (which is a big winner for me).

About not wanting to buy a MS product - I think it is more specific than that. People don't want to buy MS pocket devices (including music players) not because of bad experiences with them but because they are simply not "cool". I say this because every idiot happily runs out and buys every new Windows release including the terrible Windows 8.

Most of those companies are irrelevant to what we are talking about. What we are talking about is operating systems and specifically Linux distributions. Fedora and Debian are examples of projects which have both for the most part been excellent maintainers and you know, actually fixing bugs and working with upstream. Often (OK, maybe not the new Fedora installer) they are innovating in very positive ways rather than constantly negative ways.

OP has clearly never used a Windows Phone or else it would be clear to OP that the problem with Windows Phone isn't Windows Phone. Windows Phones work great; they shit all over my Android devices in terms of user experience (except in a few niche cases).

The problem with Windows Phone is that it is a Microsoft product - and nobody wants to buy a Microsoft product.

If you want to bring up a history of bad design, bad management and general incompetence look no further than Canonical. Microsoft is bad, don't get me wrong - but Canonical haven't done *anything* right in the past 5 years, where Microsoft occasionally has some wins.

Back when I replied, there were no such comments saying why I was wrong. No need to go set me as a foe because you have your panties in a knot. I was commenting based on the facts that I had, which came from an official source not linked to the article. I am not even asserting my opinion as some sort of infallible religious belief.

Maybe if you weren't so abrasive you'd be a more convincing evangelist for whatever cause you have.

The waste is just sand and a bit of mud (not toxic at all) and they are *not* dumping it on the reef. They are dumping it in a barren stretch of sand that doesn't even have any seagrass or notable life. It is far enough away from the actual reef to not be an issue and they have a maximum amount per year they can dump and a window that they are allowed to do it in (outside of spawning season).

If environmentalists want to be taken seriously they should not cry wolf.

Yes, there was some backlash against 4.0 which by-the-way was meant for *developers* and not end users. But since then there has been no controversy.

We've had a space like this for a few years now and it has been a very successful demonstration of community effort, business and state grants working together. The Edge is attached to the State Library of Queensland and provides maker facilities ("labs"), coworking space, community group meeting spaces and frequently runs workshops for various (frequently open source type) things such as Arduino workshops (run only at cost) and also journalism and (apparently) small business courses.

Probably also worth mentioning that they have one of the most impressive locations in Brisbane and that we also have a local Hackerspace as well.

I don't participate as much as I would like to unfortunately...

OK, true - things have gotten a lot cheaper in the past 5 or so years and I should have made that a bit more clear than I did. However outside of a handful of providers Internet in Australia is still fairly pricey.

This is the norm for us... Though we are finally starting to get somewhat reasonably priced Unlimited* plans now.

* Unlimited plan may be limited