here's what websites / apps, whatever will do: WHATEVER MAKES THEM THE MOST MONEY. they've learned that almost no one will pay then $X a month to access, but almost everyone is happy with having a few ads in the sidebar and accessing for "free".

like it or not, that's what consumers want.

wanting to get paid for a service you provide is not evil. i assume you provide a service for your day job that you already admitted you get paid for? so you are you evil? no, it's just that you decided the work you do is worth getting paid for. well, great, bully for you then huh?

please.

yep, and you have to remember your logins for all those stores, go through a lengthy registration process re-entering your CC info, addresses, and so on.

that's not how it works. it didn't wear off, your spouse's vision has just continued to naturally degenerate to the point that it was when she had the surgery. if she didn't have the surgery it would have been much worse now.

so your whole argument is that it was okay for apple to commit a crime to thwart amazon from becoming more successful? if amazon ended up breaking laws, so be it, and let them stand accountable at that point.

apple isn't some angel coming down from on high to protect the poor little ebook authors. they were simply trying to thwart a competitor from becoming dominant in the field. they wanted a (larger) piece of the pie, and they broke the law trying to get it.

i don't think you understand what irony means.

big companies never fire employees unless it's something really, really terrible.

i talked to a manager about this once. to fire someone, he needed to go through 3 cycles of evaluating, documenting their deficiencies, and laying out a plan for improvement with the employee. he said it just wasn't worth his time. thinking back on this, that seems like a cop-out. they should have subtracted that employee's wages from his, because that's what he was losing the company by letting them stay on.

because that's absolutely terrible for morale. employees don't like coming in to work every day wondering if they are going to be asked to clear out their desk. it's much better to have a week of chaos and bad feelings then get back to business.

no, it means they don't need two accounting depts, two HR depts, two public relations depts, and so on. it also means they don't need to continue (or at least start phasing out) development of non-MSFT mobile operating systems.

they sure as hell do. employees are a massive liability not only in wages but in healthcare, vacation balances, matching 401k, and other benefits.

in big companies, there is always some percent of people that are just hanging on taking up space. clearing them out is actually good for everyone. nothing is more demoralizing than watching someone collect a paycheck for doing nothing while you work your ass off. for the laid off employee it usually ends up being a pretty good deal too considering severance.

considering it's a multi-hundred-billion dollar industry, "billions" does qualify as modest.

man, you really don't understand climate change.

"if you can compile C to machine code, i don't get the point of C."

understand now?

but it's not easier to bring a tablet and a laptop than to just bring a laptop, right? and since a laptop does everything a tablet does (faster and on a bigger screen), why in earth would anyone ever need a tablet?

i'm in BT range of my phone 99% of the day, and i think that's pretty typical.

yes. both of them.

the tablet allows them to ... not open their laptop? that's it. subset of the functionality of their laptop, and it doesn't do [the functionality] well since it has a smaller screen and a slower processor. there's nothing compelling about them.

birds *are* dinosaurs.