Android makes it possible to actually replace the launcher. Windows Mobile didn't do that, and that is where they failed.

I'm calling the shenanigans on this one. There were (are...) plenty of launchers for Windows Mobile. From the well known and better ones:

ilauncher
claunch
spb pocket plus
resco explorer

Bought a while ago a T-Mobile (.co.uk) SIM and got stuck with "you are not allowed to view user-generated content".

WTF!? Whole internet is "user-generated". I mean they were blocking youtube and flickr.

They unlocked it on the spot in the shop once I managed to get there during working hours (of course weekend was a bust as they closed early Saturday and opened Monday 10:00). Of course, you couldn't do it over the phone, they really wanted to check your age.

And Google Play RATINGS. If you used your real name on email and you had a not-so-common name you had good chances to have a review or rating on angry brids to come up in the first restuls when somebody googled you. WTF?

In fact what does it mean "Pseudonyms Now Allowed", precisely? You could change your name anyway for like 3 times and yes, it was supposed to be your own name but of course there was no way to police this for normal accounts. Of course, the drawback was that if you wanted to comment on Play (or youtube) as John Doe you would still show (for people you communicate directly with) as John Doe in Hangouts, Mail, Drive (John Doe shared a document), etc.

Mail you chould change but I think the others not. Anything changed here? Because if not the change is "meh...".

Last time I checked the standard Android encryption will not do the sdcard partition (I mean not the physical card, but the partition on the internal flash, usually the biggest chunk of it, like let's say 11 out of 16GB). YES, some manufacturers like Samsung and Motorola (possibly many more) have their own solution (I bet a really crappy one but never mind that) and it would do mostly everything, including the big sdcard partition and (if needed) even the physical sdcard.

Anyway bottom line is that:

a. depending on the phone you might not be able to encrypt at all /sdcard
b. ANY activity, including storing random (non-private) crap on the phone and then removing it helps. However, this is no maggic bullet.

Funny thing is that they messed up the command(s) to the flash memory and created a super-brick bug that would terminate your phone if the great "wipe" feature was used (for reference google MMC_CAP_ERASE).

Well how are you using the phone otherwise? Do you keep it locked in some booby-trapped safe? Otherwise you can still lose it and it'll be in a much worse shape than it is when you sell it with keys wiped and storage formatted (even if technically not fully wiped even if still encrypted). It might be unlock-able, it might have some SD-card you regularly keep in it (but you wouldn't leave there if you sell the phone). etc.

Yes, most devices we use don't actually wipe the data when you "reset to factory settings". Even desktop OSes don't do it (either by default, either at all, need special tools, etc). I bet this feature is really low on the "to do" list for most manufacturers of not only phones but also wifi routers, TVs, wireless cameras, you name it. We didn't (or maybe barely) manage to educate them not to put trivial backdoors, secure wipe is a long way out.

Sygic has TomTom (Tele Atlas, well in Top5, maybe Top3 players) maps and is currently on sale ($70 for "World" and about half that for North America or Europe or something like that).

If you want desktop/Win 8 there is Here (Nokia) Maps (again, "top data") - free.

There are multiple usable solutions based on Openstreetmaps (which has fantastic coverage in most parts of the world). Anroid has for example Be-on-road for "full navigation" and Mapswithme for simpler (but much faster) "map browsing" - both free.

Everything mentioned above works (also) off-line and basically world-wide.

The problem is that good programs are out there but somehow people don't seem to find them. I'm sure there are some very good ones I've never heard of even if I read regularly about this. Even starting way back, with the first iPhone (that didn't even had GPS at all, and no 3G and "data" was anyway more expensive and rare than now), with Google Maps that didn't have any "real navigation", no re-routing, nothing - even on technical sites Google Maps on iPhone was given as the best navigation solution. While in the meantime you had "full" turn-by-turn navigation from at least 3 big vendors, offline, some with traffic info (for some countries), some running on phones (with real GPS!), etc. But people (and by that I mean even technical bloggers) just didn't know.

Even if you were using one or some of the affected domains still this is the type of service where most customers just won't notice any problem, even if they would be technically counted in the millions from TFA.

Such notification has less operational importance and more PR/image. They might send one eventually, once dust settles.

PLUS ... they might be having issues with the emails as well! They say now for me:

Alert: Email communications to your email address on file recently bounced. Please update your email address on file.

Frankly for a PHONE I don't think it matters AT ALL if is LTE/4G or whatever 3G HSDPA 7/14/42 Mb/s flavor of the day present in even 99 euro phones.
For a laptop yes, that's another story; assuming you can find a provider where you don't eat all your traffic in 20 minutes at your great "full speed" yes, that might be worth thinking about which dongle is faster and what band it supports and so on. And it might not cost more than 15 euros/pounds/dollars anyway if bought locally with a sim card.

Is not like we run out of reliable DDNS services (at least yet); no-ip.com has been around since late 90's (still using my hotmail email with it...). The only nag is if your ip doesn't change for 30 days (or you just don't use the client at all) then you need to do a manual update but otherwise if your IP changes regularly you don't need to log in or do anything (I assume you could program another instance of the client to shortly change your IP to something else and then put it back if you had a dynamic IP that somehow is still fixed for more than 30 days).

What is the "breakaway" ELT? I know about modern PLBs, those are nice but won't reach far from inside the plane.

I did not bother to check that, I only knew about Tyson.
This is certainly promising and might get funny later on if the creationists really make big enough fuss.

Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to follow Sagan's old show and lines of reasoning. This means the worst is yet to come for "special creationists".

I ignored the guide (well I didn't know about it at the time) and got a Kindle Fire. Guess what, you can't even install the free apps without a credit card. And is not like it comes with a lot of apps, it is basically unusable without a credit card!