At the point a judge sentences someone, the criminal has already done a bunch of bad things knowing full well they're going to get a long punishment. Very few of them will want to take it out on the judge, unless they believe the case was handled unfairly. It's much more likely the they'll want to get back at the police who - even if the criminal WAS a criminal and did most of the things they were accused of - possibly threatened the criminals family (girlfriend/wife usually) if they didn't confess to their and/or other people's crimes.

They're ditching Samsung - not Google - apps for Microsoft ones. So it's just a different sort of crapware. It'll get uninstalled before too long, or not used. It does nothing to bridge the gap between Android and Windows Mobile or whatever its called (I don't even care any more). Nothing to see here.

> but you can buy a perfectly capable Android tablet for half the price of an iPad right now if you
> don't mind a clunkier UI.

I've got the (now retired) Nexus 10, running lollipop. Before that, kitkat. What's clunky about either of them. I find it much easier to use than an iPad.

LOL! You're 100% right, except in the eyes of the shareholders, and consumers. They're (almost) literally printing money:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/busi...

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US technology giant Apple has reported the biggest quarterly profit ever made by a public company.

Apple reported a net profit of $18bn (£11.8bn) in its fiscal first quarter, which tops the $15.9bn made by ExxonMobil in the second quarter of 2012, according to Standard and Poor's.
------------

You're saying that they were making more money before 1999, and that's when they started going downhill? Perhaps you're just talking about your own opinion?

People don't want Microsoft stuff at home. It's a toxic brand. It's Office..it's white and upper case..it's "please reboot now"...it's "your hard drive light never stops flashing"...internet explorer needs an update....pay to update your virus checker....we've removed the start button...enter your password...change your password....your password is incorrect.

Fuck that.

Pick up tablet. Press power button. Use device. Install software from a single place. Receive updates immediately from the same place.

You're confused. "I don't know....I can't see...Just pay a bit more...Couple more iterations...jam tomorrow.". You're going about it all wrong. Couple more iterations and Apple/Android will be that much further ahead. Microsoft needs to produce something cheaper and better than Apple, not hack together a half tablet, half laptop, heavy, poor battery life thing and hope people buy it. Look at the surface. Look at the iPad or Android tablet (Nexus 10, Samsung tab pro 8.4).

"But for people who actually want to get work done, or create something, it's a useless device." Apple's just made more money in a quarter than any other company in history. People must love useless devices. Microsoft has entered that arena now, in a manner of speaking, with the surface, but they've sort of missed the point, which is why it's selling so very badly.

> spent a lot on R

I actually typed something like "R and D and" with the ampersand, but clearly that's asking too much.

Uh.. Microsoft essentially had a couple of products they thought (the monopoly on which) would last forever. Google (and the other large modern internet companies) are much more aware of the current state of what's going on (because they're responsible for it). Microsoft just panics and throws money at stuff no-one wants. Crappy phone OS, nokia, Zune, silly compromise-heavy tabtops (see what I did there?) etc. They produced an awful OS, held a straight face when everyone else said "meh, no thanks" which cost them a lot. If they've learnt anything it's at the expense of a lot of missed profit. Google have always spent a lot on R doesn't come across as panicking to stay relevant like Microsoft. Now Microsoft is giving away their new OS, open sourcing their dev tools, suffering increasingly against Google Docs (and other free office apps). If I had stock in Microsoft I'd be concerned that they don't have a plan. I don't see Google as being in the same boat as they have a more much stable history in profiting from innovation, even if not every project they attempted turned out 100% positive.

This is - or at least was - a tech site. I'm not alone in wanting a reasonably recent phone with a reasonably recent version of Android, and which is amongst the highest performing models, so that I have a sensible development target. A 5 year old Android phone would be a joke. You can're replace phone/tablet batteries (without taking it somewhere, paying, hoping they don't break it) on all models. Some companies ensure that older devices run newer versions of the software - if they run them at all - much more slowly than the old OS ran. I'd agree with you if you're spoken about TVs or cars or whatever, but phones are things which aren't that expensive in the grand scheme of things (ie something people often use for hours a day, every day for years). My Nexus 10 tablet cost the same amount as if I'd gone to the movies, by myself, just over once a month.

> this will do more to harm the industry than it will do to help it.

Will this statement still be true once they achieve parity, or just while we get there?

The point of this sort of rule is so you don't exclude people who are talented enough for the job, right? The idea that you just pick the right person for the job regardless of race, sex etc clearly isn't working,as you can see by the current figures.

> No, that's no typical at all. More typical would be to start charging for a previously free service.
> Cutting off access to a service which attracts people to your business is hardly a good way to
> "monetize the audience [you] have gained". It's more of a good way to lose business.

No, it's typical, in that that's what typically happens. Twitter didn't start charging, for instance; they just make it a pain for developers and users so you end up forced onto the inferior official client.

It happens enough that it deserves its own term.

Dude, they're in Cork.

Do it once, the police keep a recording of the call. When they arrest anyone, take a voice recording of them and run it against all the recordings you have.

No, because NSA didn't have all the photos. Perhaps some which match those in official documents, in a good light, at some angles, but even they're not going to be able to compete with the billions of photos of people on facebook. Also, their "match or no match" is not as useful as "this person is known to these people"; there's a whole network of people they can hit up/monitor to find where someone is.

Why not write an android app to support their widgets..uh, tiles...uh scopes, that way, more than 17 people can try it. Having said that, the answer is probably because they don't want people saying "why would i have a phone that can just do that when i can get an android app which does everything else as well, and on a non-pokey phone".

What is it with ubuntu and its silly little interfaces? Still scratching that `gotta look different from the rest` itch, right? They've not figured out that nobody cares what the bit that loads the apps looks like, it's the apps that count, huh?

I think that was a kind of "we're religious, we don't really understand it" thing.

And now, because of that, there's this:

http://www.theguardian.com/sci...