By that measurement, smartphones, themselves, would not be regarded as innovative because they all used existing technology.

It's called "Nexus 4" because it is the fourth Nexus phone (after Nexus One, Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus), not because of the size.

Agreed...Apple has absolutely nothing to fear from Microsoft. Microsoft is destroying themselves from the inside. For Apple to buy Nokia, that might cause Microsoft to wake the fuck up and start building their own phones, like Apple does.

If Apple really wants to see Microsoft fail, the best option is to let them continue down the path they are currently on.

IMO, the controller should have been launched first as a standalone console.

Just about any multiplayer strategy game. Each user having a tablet would allow them to interact with the game in secret. For example, a football game would allow each player to draw their own detailed plays.

More like a cycle of life... the oil spill is eaten by the bacteria, and then the bacteria get eaten by something else, which then gets eaten by something else.

I'm wondering what the fishing boats in the Gulf are seeing, if there was a corresponding explosion of growth in populations of shrimp or such.

The United States isn't "many countries". It's the US. How much money someone makes or how much they paid in taxes is none of your business here. Speculate all you like, but unless the IRS starts asking questions, Romney's tax returns are his business and his business alone. If you don't like that, tough, because the majority of Americans like it that way and don't want to give some Internet asshat access to their tax info.

In what US public school is "religion" taught? I don't know about your country (Ireland?, judging from your nick), but in the US, courts have pretty much chased any religious studies whatsoever from public schools. Instead, we spend half our time doing essential courses badly (English, Math, etc), and fill the rest of the time with feel-good nonsense fad courses, that come and go according to fashion.

Here's my prediction: any requirement for a programming education at public schools will come at the expense of the "essentials", and the fluff will remain. Which means that in all likelihood, "programming" will be as bad as many other subjects.

Too bad he's never going to do that, eh? He's going to continue to spew platitudes about space. And nothing else. He's going to be "for it", without spending on it. Obama doesn't give a rat's ass about space, NASA or private sector either. Second, aren't Democrats always bitching about "investment" in the government? So backing NASA spending doesn't prove their patriotism, but, say, spending on light rail would?

Or, are you just another hypocrite on the Internet that bitches about how the other side is evil?

Linux on the desktop hasn't happened for one reason, and one reason only: Linux is fractured. There are several desktops, window managers, package systems, even kernels. This isn't the case with OS X or Windows, where you have a single API and standard to develop for. No commercial developer is going to write software for a chameleon operating system with a half dozen desktop packages.The same thing that caused Linux to take off with hobbyists and adapt so well to the server room is the same thing that will prevent it from ever being a major desktop OS: choice to the extent of almost chaotic proportions. Apple in particular succeeded because they in fact limited choices in some spheres for the sake of consistency and unity. And it worked for them.

Everytime the Unix community... Linux included... has tried to bring things together into a single standard of some kind, the result has either been something that looks like it was put together by committee *cough*CDE*cough* or lots of end users went "Nope, I'm gonna fork it", and produced so many variants that one standard never catches on.

There will never be a "Year of the Linux Desktop" because there will never be a single Linux.

This is silly and absolute Malthusian nonsense. It's not how many kids a country or region has, but how well they support themselves and use their resources and grow their economies. Some parts of Africa are doing quite well, thanks, feeding growing populations as they learn modern agricultural techniques and develop markets for foodstuffs that increase production and efficiency and lower costs. The United States went from a population of around 15 million to over 300 million in just over two hundred years. And even our poor people are fat. More people does not necessarily equal starvation. In free economies, it's actually the opposite case. Instead of handing out condoms, you'd be better off teaching modern agriculture and encouraging development. Economies and wealth (and food production is very much a part of wealth) are not a zero sum game.

Also, isn't casting doubt on DNA based evidence also a double edged sword? You've got groups like the Innocence Project that rely almost entirely on DNA as a means of proving their client's innocence. If you can cast doubt on DNA evidence when trying to convict someone, you can also cast doubt on that evidence when trying to prove someone innocent.

Well, in a way, yes. Because Steve Jobs, after years of experience with the first Mac and at NeXT, decided that maybe Big Brother existed for a good reason, was actually necessary, and that he was doing the world a favor by being a better Big Brother, and that the world would love him for it. And you know what? After billions in sales and millions of devices sold to adoring fans... the vast majority of which had never purchased an Apple product in the pre-comeback era... the world proved him right.