Quick question, have you seen any non-entertainment application that requires 3D flatscreens? Now have you seen non-entertainment applications that require VR?
I have seen a bunch that requires VR, from PTSD treatment to controlling drones remotely. VR is here to stay, it might be niche for a while but I believe it will eventually make your TV obsolete.

The real problem is that Google has no EOL procedures and because the OS is "free" they can get away with it. If the older versions still received security updates everything would be just fine. From my (limited) experience the android SDK makes it very clear which version of Android you are building for and that allows devs to choose what they want to support easily without much hassle.

Say what you want about microsoft but they support their OSs for years after the initial release.

They don't refuse you, they just don't take the time to port it to your phone. In fact I believe all android phones can be unlocked and you are free to install cyanogen on your phone (at the risk of losing warranty), while Apple has been trying to make you a criminal for doing it.

Stop giving dolls to girls and cars to boys, it starts on the crib.

Valve corporate culture simply makes this impossible, they don't hire the gruntwork required for this kind of task, it is the reason that Steam support is so terrible. However I do agree with your ideas, if they did all that then 75% cut is fair.

What most enlighten companies do is simply "you must be here at least from 2pm to 5pm", and everybody just schedule meetings and face-to-face at those hours. People telecommuting will often see demands like that in the job description.

> 'late to market' and motivated from 'a competitive standpoint.'"

Also known as the microsoft strategy.

Oh, I went to a private school and have a high paying job, don't worry about me...

Honestly I like them, not because I think they are pretty and more because they are easier to implement and copy, as a dev it makes my life easier. Personally I like gradients and dark colors better, but I care so little about these things that I don't even change the wallpaper on my computers.

> Does it harm you for them to spend their money this way? Sure there are other things they could do that would likely be more beneficial for mankind as a whole, but there are worse things, too.

Just like fake fortune tellers then?

This is just plain wrong, I am Brazilian and my mother is a teacher in São Paulo state public schools and the situation is horrible, what you see overseas are the high school grads that went to private schools in Brazil, the average citizen can not afford to go to school overseas even if they qualify (and they don't because they do not speak any foreign language) because some costs are not covered (visas for example).

What you are seeing is just the upper middle class latin americans leaving their crappy country for something better, they are the ones that can afford decent education. The situation for the ones that stay is really, really bad. Most public high school students would fail a basic reading test, in fact so many people fail the (very easy) drivers license written exam that it is common to hear histories about bribes to pass them. Americans complain about creationism taught in high schools, we complain about people not being able to do basic math.

The desktop/server space is also not completely immune to these kind of things. I once found a bug in one JVM that did not happen in another, took us a couple of days to track it down (and we were lucky it was a know bug, otherwise we would still be looking for it).

Valve would rather have open source drivers but they would be content with closed source drivers that work well (if not on par with the windows drivers)

Tell that to my bank.

Because it was running Windows XP?