It's kinda cute that you called someone else "brainwashed." (Or did the rest of us miss the mass gun registration, collection and previous-owner-killing event you refer to in "history?")

The NRA started as an advocacy organization, and one of the most successful in modern times. Unfortunately during their campaigns against (mostly Democrat-sponsored) gun control legislation, they lost track of the fact that they were supposed to be against gun control, not against Democrats generally.

They have still not returned to their original mission, so they're basically just partisan shills now.

Well, yes, it did go to great lengths to (very reasonably) diss Flash, but my point is that Apple's judgment should have nothing to do with whether people can install Flash of their own volition. And saying you can use another product if you don't like it, while true, doesn't really make a case in favor of Apple.

Ah, but Java on the desktop was not blocked by Microsoft, Apple and Linux distros. It was blocked by its own demerits. If Steve believed his own arguments he'd have allowed people to install Flash, expecting it to lose popularity of its own accord. Instead, Flash on the phone is failing because software developers cannot distribute their software directly to the user.

Good riddance to Flash. But you know, since we're on this topic, to all the "Steve Jobs was right" fanboys: you do not understand logic. Sorry, but you don't. (Note: the following rant is not directed at parent, who makes a parallel argument to the one Steve Jobs made, and is surely correct.)

I think that letter from Steve, Thoughts on Flash, is a great way to test whether people understand logical arguments and are competent in keeping separate ideas straight in their heads. Those who see the letter as a definitive rebuttal against the use of Flash on the iPhone fail to do these things. I advise them to avoid both commenting, and voting.

To distill the logic of letter, it basically said the following: Flash sucks. You should therefore not be allowed to use it on your own phone.

Obviously it was more detailed than that, and went to great lengths to politely point out the many ways in which Flash sucks. Go ahead and read it - it's a great takedown of that wretched, ubiquitous plugin. Steve says that Flash goes against the idea of open standards on the web, that it's slow and a resource hog, that its development is way behind what market needs, and that it ran poorly on the iPhone when Apple evaluated it. All good points, and because I agree that Flash is a rotten piece of crap that should never have risen to prominence, I enjoyed reading them.

But none of this directly implies that you should not be allowed to install it on your own phone. Steve makes the case that Flash sucks, but at the end of the article a thinking person does not "better understand why [Apple] do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads." There is no logical connection to support that outcome, even if we emerge from the letter hating Flash more than ever. Again, his premises were spot-on, but his logic was broken, so he pulled a conclusion out of his butt and the masses lapped it up. And to those of you who ignore this sleight of hand and argue that Apple must do whatever it can to restore a sense of childlike wonder and superior design to humanity: shut up, you stupid fanboy zombies. Brains like yours are the reason we have the politicians we have.

You're right that the copyright cartels have a lot of influence in both parties, particularly with the Dems, but having bad copyright and patent policies is not morally or ethically equivalent to having bad financial and healthcare policies. The former bad policymaking pollutes our culture and makes computing less fun, and as awful as that is, the latter policies cost lives and fortunes.

Maybe this is true in the long run, but it is the way corporations function. Corporations are designed to generate increased value for their investors, and are required to do so. It's not so much a rampant ideology as it is a deliberate design of the legal system surrounding limited liability companies.

It's called "competition." It's one of the primary reasons we choose to have capitalism rather than communism, but for some reason a lot of people tend to forget this. Specifically, we forget that the opposite of communism is not unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism, since those two things amount to pretty much the same sort of stagnant plutocracies. The opposite of communism is regulated capitalism, since vibrant competition is the whole point of the arrangement. Sadly we keep running farther from it in the US.

For the keyboard, the brand, the IT department support, and the Exchange integration. From a user's perspective Android support is a good thing, and a value add for BlackBerry. The real question is for developers: why produce software for BlackBerry when BB users can run Android apps? I think developers will ditch the native BB software if BBs run Android.

It's funny, I used to work for RIM and I remember chatting with another engineer over beers after Google first announced their plans for Android. We both said, "Maybe we should adopt Andoid and build BBConnect on top of that platform, since it's all available to us." RIM obviously didn't do this, and I'm not sure whether they even considered it, but it looks like they're moving toward the same outcome though the opposite strategy.

Correction: it has a really good keyboard that puts others to shame. It's difficult to overstate this: if you really want to thumb-type fast, there's no other keyboard like it.

Because they think they can skirt any tax. It's why they do business where they do business - why they create separate companies to handle some of their shipping operations so they won't have a tax liability in that state. And they can threaten to close shop and move across state lines if states consider taxing them. Texas is calling their bluff, but they have no choice. Amazon uses the state-maintained roads to ship things to us; they would call the police or fire authorities in an emergency. Clearly they should pay the taxes that support these amenities.

That is exactly what it is. Motorola wants a distributor, and that distributor will be a wireless carrier. And wireless carriers, like cable companies, make a living bundling one or two things you really want with a dozen overpriced things you don't. It's why your cable lineup includes QVC and Verizon can charge you extra to use your phone as a wifi hotspot.

I actually like some of the editorializing. And I'm not even sure it counts as editorializing when it's a topic like this. Sure, if this article were about how much we should pay in taxes (if anything), or what popular computer platform or text editor is best, then I'd solidly agree that it's an open question and the poster should consider staying out of the fray in his summary. But if it's something like this, where the underlying matter is well established science, why not make a snarky comment? If the bozos in this story suggested the world might actually be flat, should Rob back off and say, "And who am I to suggest they may be wrong?" I don't think he should.

More witches!

At least they're not calling it ActiveCloud.NET 7 Series Enterprise Edition.