Google doesn't have nearly as much clout with baseband manufacturers as you might think. For most people, the choice isn't between an Android phone and no phone, it's between an Android phone and a different phone, both which will have a baseband. So to the baseband manufacturer, whether their product is running under Android or something else makes very little difference.

I guess is a manufacturer thought having an exclusive lock on Android phones was more profitable than what they are doing now they could go to Google and offer a deal, but since Google has very little control over the handset manufacturers it probably wouldn't have very much clout.

And yes, I am a fan, I am literally in the fan club, had an 8 foot map of Middle Earth as a child and I wore a Frodo Lives! button.

Could it also be that you are 20 years older than you were when you first read them? What enthralls us in middle school isn't necessarily what will entertain us when we get older. People, unlike books, change as they get older, and sometimes don't even notice themselves doing so...

Eh, the same thing can be said about gold as well. There was a lot more gold in the ground 1000 years ago than there is today and every day it gets harder and harder to find more gold.

*Ok, unlike bitcoin gold does have some industrial applications(monster cables notwithstanding), but most people use gold much like they use bitcoin. Maybe if they could make bitcoin bling....

This is actually changing quite rapidly as society changes and in a lot of areas of the (rich) world young women are starting to pull in more than men. While the culture in eastern Europe is certainly different, there was an eye-opening study published recently about young couples in the USA. For the first time since the study began more women than men are "marrying down"(here marrying down means marrying someone with a lower educational attainment than they have). This is largely out of necessity, but necessity often times breeds cultural shifts.

Not to mention there are always more poor people being born, and I doubt all the poor women are getting pregnant by rich men....

silly "chimp giving birth to a human" fallacious argument that creationists spew.

I don't know how silly that proposition is, I mean have you ever watched daytime tv?

And at the same time crashing their economies. You do realize that Xi Jinping can't exactly just go to the Berlin Sparkasse put his bank of China ATM card in the slot and withdraw a trillion euros at the current rate right? They would have to find buyers for the dollars they are selling, and if their intention is to crash the value of the dollar then they aren't exactly going to find a lot of willing buyers, are they? Not to mention the export based economy would come to a halt, seriously imperiling the CCP, as their management of the economy is the only thing that's really keeping them in power right now.... So I somehow doubt the CCP is really eager to risk their status helping out Putin.

You seem to assume that open borders are a two-way street. Guess what, it's a hell of a lot easier for a Chinese or Indian person to get a US working visa than it is the other way around(note I didn't say impossible, but both countries are extremely protectionist of their native workforces)

They would have to prove it was terrorism, which if the pilot is good they may not be able to do 100%, for an unsuccessful attempt at insurance fraud via crashing a plane see Fedex Flight 705

Mathematics for the most part is a "universal" good, mathematics research benefits large swaths of society and is in fact necessary for a modern economy. Movies on the other hand are not a "universal" good, I don't watch very many movies and thus don't want to subsidise someone who does. I also would prefer the people have a direct say in what gets made and doesn't get made through their money rather than a government office deciding what they want to see.

This racist bullshit is modded "insightful"? WTF are you talking about "style over substance"? Guess what you racist piece of shit, the iPhone does as much as Android does, and in my opinion, it does it better. I personally find Android to be incredibly buggy and have a really frustrating interface. But guess what, that's just my opinion. I hate you dipshits that think "since I don't like something it must be worthless, because I am the absolute judge of everything. If you have different preferences than I do you must be wrong".

You can't make a device that satisfies everyone because guess what, people want different things. I know someone with such a minuscule brain like you has trouble grasping that fact so you revert to racist bullshit, but it's true. Guess what, there are multiple types of keyboards. Does that mean that any keyboard you don't like is "style over substance"? What about cars? But I guess since my opinions aren't racist garbage they are worthless in your view. Fuckwad.

All the unhappy coders seem to be able to crank out is:
while (1): print 'What's the point, we are all going to die anyway';

Set your background to a really attractive but clothed female to make them think that's the owner of the phone. Then put an app on your phone(displayed in a prominent place) that says "my hot nude pics" that when launched, wipes your phone. Done!

Keep in mind that the Air France 447 flight was intact when it hit the ocean(in fact aside from the blocked pitot tubes the airplane was almost certainly completely functional). The events that led to the crash unfolded over several minutes, giving plenty of time for ACARS data to be transmitted. A sudden breakup of the plane would preclude any ACARS data indicating distress from being sent from the plane.

My guess is you have no clue about how US taxation works. Here is a hint, if you are a US citizen and live abroad only the first $90k of your income is tax-exempt, and then only if you spend more than 330 days outside the country in any given 365 day period. So yeah, at least in terms of income that simply doesn't work.

Because dipshit cars are registered in people's names when they register the car. Why the fuck was this dumbassery marked insightful?