Since android's apis are java, it would be trivial to decompile and circumvent the code that initiates the online check. Code obfuscation helps but only to slow down the process marginally.

Really, java makes things very easy for hackers - at least with a "real" compiled language a little bit of effort would be necessary!

My wife just switched to Virgin mobile too (I don't have a data plan at all , lol) .
A high, initially off-putting, cost up front, but works out way cheaper in the long run. ($30/month if you set up automatic pay) Shame their choice of phones is pretty poor (though they have iphone now too), and that they're locked to the Sprint network, but i can get over that.

Hopefully a lot of people will switch and the big 4 providers will wake up and get their act together. I too liked the idea of the verizon/at&t shared plans, naively thinking it would save money. But even with 4 lines its *still* $55 a month each (what a bargain!) and that gives you a measely 250mb/month each (if shared equally)

In WP8, the problem has gone from "WTF???" to merely "hugely inconvenient".
Unfortunately for MS, when you have no app developers, and no market share, "hugely inconvenient" is something you probably want to avoid.

Yeah, WP7 was a write-off as far as cross platform apps were concerned for this reason (games in particular). They're still (unsurprisingly) pushing DirectX when everyone else is using OpenGL, but its better than nothing, and won't generally require a whole app rewrite.

This is all very well as a business strategy if they could actually pull it off. Unless you count windows itself, I'm not sure if any of their me-too products have been profitable at all. Even XBox, which many view as successful, is only starting to turn a profit 10 years later, and must surely constitute a huge net loss overall.

This strategy (if it is a strategy at all, and not just a general lack of direction/ideas) *should* avoid "high risk flailing about" but in practice, MS seem to do a lot of flailing anyway.

It boggles my mind that a company with so many resources, and willingness to throw its money about, consistently fails to produce successful new products.

Since it won't include all those bundled minutes and SMS messages, its going to be much cheaper than current "everything" plans right? right??

Why do i have a nagging suspicion that it won't be...

This is clearly a stupid claim for Fox to make,and i don't see them getting this tech banned any time soon.

I worry a little bit about what it will lead to though. TV companies aren't going to give up and go home, and businesses still want to advertise crap to us. I foresee a near future where all these ads will just get moved into "banners" (or similar) and displayed/overlaid *during* the show (this may happen at the source as part of the broadcast, or by the TV - youtube style). At this point we'll probably wish all we had ad-breaks back...

While I agree with the point you're trying to make(that we should question our sources), I get pretty much the same results for your query on bing and google. Any summaries that indicate a favourite, pretty much all favour chrome (this is true on both bing and google, and isn't all that suprising if recent changes in market share are anything to go by)

I don't see any evidence of deliberate bias here.

Interestingly, the most obvious difference is that the top entry on Bing, is a paid ad for IE9.