Myself and my wife switched to the N900 in 2010 - we both ended up hating it, I switched back to my iPhone 3G within 3 months, while my wife stuck it out until she could renew the contract, by which time the keyboards on both our phones were dead (she had to switch to my phone after 9 months due to the fact her keyboard had lost all coating on the keys and several keys had stopped working).

The screen was terrible, the OS was bad, the keyboard was horrific.

Why do people love the N900 so much?

Actually you are wrong - the cross platform .Net Core is a new implementation entirely separate from Mono (the demo they showed running in a Docker Linux container involved no Mono code at all, it was all MS inhouse stuff), although MS are working with Ximaran to expand their development tools and support the Mono platform.

I'm confused - what does Microsoft see as being able to "extend" or "extinguish" by open sourcing their own products? Sure, that may be a goal if they get involved in third party products, but its pretty hard to extend and extinguish other products by being actively involved in the development of their own.

At the moment my .Net stack is looking more and more open each day, but that doesn't harm PHP, Python, Java etc because it doesn't affect them in the slightest. All it means is I'm less likely to use them because my current stack looks better and better.

If you mean they wish to extend and extinguish the entire open source movement, well thats just ridiculous - you can't force people off Python, Perl, PHP, Java etc, you can't force communities to switch wholesale to your platform, they will always go on until the platform is irrelevant, but to achieve irrelevancy in a competing product yours has to be better.

Why must it play catch up? MS Office in later versions opens ODF files just fine.

Odd, since I rang up EE the day after getting my pay monthly contract (I switched from O2) and had them enable roaming without any issue - wasn't on hold for all that long either, a couple of minutes max.

The only limit they had was that they wouldn't unlock the phone until I had been with them for three months, to reduce fraud (where someone takes out a phone in a stolen identity, has the phone unlocked, and then ships it to Africa before the first bill hits the victim).

How about we don't just assume its an "either/or" situation, where you either don't let people do stuff or you let people go nuts?

Here in the UK you are by default not allowed to effect major external changes to a property, including changing its use. But we don't have zoning laws, instead we have a system called "planning permission" - you write all of your proposal down and submit it to the local planning authority (which is part of the local council). Your plans are then advertised in the local news and around the neighbourhood you are submitting plans for, and feed back is invited. The planning body then makes a determination as to whether you can proceed with your plans as-is, proceed with them in an amended fashion, or cannot proceed with them at all.

It works very well, and prevents high-traffic shops being erected in the middle of quiet neighbourhoods for example, unless the local populace is supportive of the plans.

You are assuming they are all acronyms - BT is not, it used to be an acronym for British Telecom but that changed ages ago as the company was colloquially known as "BT" and thus chose to change its name to BT. EE also isn't an acronym, but again it used to be for "Everything Everywhere" but again the company renamed itself.

The "UK" is, but 4G arguably isn't, its the common name of a technology.

Problem is, what it was intended to do means sod all when it comes to determining what it actually does - the court won't hold you to the spirit, it will hold you to the letter.

Which is why the fine print exists in those other agreements. But it doesn't exist here beyond the wording of the GPL itself. So asking the creators of the GPL in this instance will get you nowhere because their opinion on the matter lacks any weight, its what the actual wording says which determines what you are beholden to. They dont get to have a second bite of the pie by saying "well, what we actually meant was..." - they had that chance when they wrote it originally.

No, the creators will tell you what it was intended to do, the court will tell you what it actually does. Potentially huge difference there.

You mean some selfish posters are ruining certain articles for others, who don't particularly mind if Bennett Haselton posts or not...?

If you don't like him posting, SKIP OVER HIS FUCKING POSTS. No one is requiring you to click on that link to read his post, SO DONT FUCKING DO IT.

Coming in here and posting drivel because you dislike him and his is nothing more than you thinking you own this fucking place and your opinions matter more than everyone elses - its as bad as the bullshit "bring back classic" posts which did the same - yeah, ruin it for everyone because you don't personally like it.

How about you go fuck yourself?

Im not missing anything of the sort, the post I was replying to was commenting that *Google* would be the one who had to verify that all the paper work was in place, when that is patently not true - they accept a declaration of compliance from the poster, and then they accept a declaration of infringement from a third party. Google doesn't verify anything at all, they let the two parties deal with it between themselves while hosting the video in a manner that conforms with the law (eg the DMCA allows for a counter claim from the poster to be made which allows Google to legitimately reinstate the video and not suffer any legal issues by doing so).

Google wouldn't verify anything in that scenario, they just receive legally binding declarations from both parties and then it moves upstairs in the legal process.

Why would Google have to do anything? If the producer wants it to be listed, they have to have all their ducks in a line - Google just has to remove it each time its shown that those ducks are not in line and put it back up each time the producer says they are.

Google doesn't have to check to see if those ducks are valid or not, they go by the assertion of the person putting it up.

Does that mean we can describe the Muslim invasions as a backlash against the prior Roman occupations?

Wow, that's quite a rewrite of history you have there...

So the fact that Peter James Knight was a fanatical Christian who strongly believed in the Bible and his faith, and was described during his trial as "obsessive, fanatical about certain matters [...] including your faith" means his action wasn't at all motivated by his faith...?