I agree Nokia has always had great hardware but they're getting rid of the people behind that which is kind of my point - they don't seem to be keeping anything of any actual value, so they might as well have spent the money bribing Samsung or whoever to make them a premium phone instead.

For what it's worth I was always a fan of Nokia, I had an N95 and couldn't understand the fuss about the first gen iPhone because it couldn't even do a 10th of the userful things my Nokia phone could (like GPS, installable apps, custom ringtones). Coincidentally, I just cleared out the last few bits and pieces of mine that have been lingering in my parents attic since I moved out about a decade ago this weekend and found my pristine condition Nokia 6310. I intend to dig out an old charger and see if it still works some time this week :)

I actually still like Nokia hardware now - I think it looks more interesting and fills better form factors still than the competition, I just don't like the software and haven't for a long time. The problem is as I say, Microsoft doesn't seem to be keeping the people behind it in company (the engineering team that is being unwound in Finland) and the net result will be a Microsoft owned Nokia that has neither worthwhile software, nor worthwhile hardware, nor any patents in the smartphone market that anyone gives a shit about.

Whilst on this subject, it's probably also worth also noting that this is why the Winter Olympics were held in Sochi - a primarily summer beach destination.

Because just about everywhere else in Russia where you would normally hold winter Olympics is an utter shit hole compared to the primary holiday destination of Russia's oligarchs.

It's telling that in a country as large and as full of cold places as Russia that the only city they could find that was even remotely acceptable for the world to see was Sochi.

How does blowing billions on a company you're just going to dismantle do that other than by killing off competition? Wouldn't it have been better to spend billions simply subsidising Windows Phones to make them ridiculously cheap for the power you get relative to Android/iOS to actually get some market penetration that's worthwhile?

Sure, but 2 years is still better than less than 18 months. I'd be grateful and less pissed off if it at least made it to two years.

So was this done entirely to just destroy competition? I just can't see what else is being retained here.

Yep, they've already announced most the staff are going, all of it's factories sound like they're going to be replaced with Microsoft's own, and it's Finnish engineering premise is being "unwound" aka shutdown too it seems.

What is left other than IP? It seems like Microsoft just took a competitor out of the market and took all their IP - a competitor because they were still doing better than Windows Phone before Microsoft took them over even if they were falling in the face of Android and iPhone.

Your arguments aren't backed up by real actual statistics.

Russia has atrocious crime rates, abysmal life expectancy, major problems with alcoholism, rampant corruption that means investment on public infrastructure rarely comes close to improving it to the extent it should due to the amount milked away, ranks poorly on civil liberties and freedoms, need I go on?

To make the point and actually provide some numbers, people make a big thing of murder rates in America, but in Russia you're almost twice as likely again to be murdered. You're over 9 times more likely to be murdered in Russia than the UK, France, or Germany and five times more likely than even the poorest European nations like Romania. The average wealth per person in Russia is lower than Iran, Tunisia, Brazil, and Mexico. It's well below the global average, and certainly below that of every single EU member nation. Russia's average life expectancy is 4 years below the poorest and lowest EU nation (Romania) and only 1.5 years higher than Iraq with it's decade of war and killings. Whilst Europe has been legalising gay marriage and so forth Russia has been outlawing talking about homosexuality and not ensuring his police investigate brutal beatings and murder of people for being gay, or of an ethnic minority.

This isn't propaganda, this is statistical fact.

It sounds like you've been won over by the facade of corrupt spending and wealth in touristy areas (the only bits of Russia anyone would want to live in) and are completely oblivious to the other 99.99% of the country.

People don't love Putin because he's improved the country, they love him because like all dictators he's a master of propaganda and populism, or did you think all those photoshoots and the massive military parades each year and the nationalist rhetoric over Crimea were all just for his own personal scrapbook? They love him because he gives them hope that they're still a global superpower that could if it wanted rule the world. The problems we're seeing with Russia now are occurring because Putin has started believing his own bullshit - this is ultimately what's referred to by the age old saying "absolute power corrupts absolutely" - when you're installed as an untouchable deity of politics, eventually you start believing it.

Then maybe someone just needs to let him know that we're all very much aware of how small his penis is and all this will be over with?

Maybe that's what Obama should tell him on his next phone conversation with him.

Please point to the fascists riddling the current Ukrainian government.

Oh what's that? You were just repeating Putin's party line and didn't realise the Ukrainian far-right only got 2% at recent elections compared to say, France's NF getting 25% in recent elections?

By all objective measures, support for fascism in Ukraine is lower than in most countries across the globe. Fascism is just the thing Putin points to try and justify his actions which would be funny if it weren't for the fact that he's the one whose been building a society that treats ethnic minorities and homosexuals in a way only a truly fascist nation could over the last 10 years.

The harrier nozzles can't be put into a forward position, they're shielded from the front.

The harrier itself was a 60s aircraft, though like the Skyhawk saw upgrades throughout it's lifetime. Aircraft like the Super Etendard, and Dagger were 70s aircraft.

Right, I love Android, but the Nexus 7 seems to be the exception. I bought a Nexus 7 and a Samsung Galaxy Nexus at the exact same time, the Nexus 7 does indeed still receive updates, but my Samsung Galaxy Nexus? They stopped supporting that after less than 18 months from it's UK launch, that's the worse service I've seen of any Android provider I've had. Even my HTC Magic got updates for longer than that.

Fact is, even Google can't be trusted to offer updates for a reasonable amount of time - it's not like they were even refusing a major version jump from Android 4 to Android 5, they simply refused to update Galaxy Nexus users from 4.3 to 4.4 after less than 18 months which is utterly pathetic.

It pains me to give Apple fanboys ammunition, because much of what they spout is just plain old FUD, but this is really one area where Google deserves all the flack it gets. The Android update problem has been one of the top complaints since day 1, and 4 - 5 years into it's life Google, rather than deal with the problem, decided to be part of it, so it's really Google's own stupid fault if Android gets flack on this front - the blame can't simply be shifted to other device manufacturers since the day Google decided to be part of the problem itself.

Every new aircraft gets slated to hell though, people were saying the harrier jump jet was useless for similar reasons. The idea of a VTOL aircraft useful in both air to air and air to ground was an impossible ineffective pipe dream according to many.

Yet it's still in use by the US now and has seen more combat than most other jets having been engaged in everything from the Falklands, to Iraq (both times) to Afghanistan.

You only really know how great an aircraft is when it's tried and tested in combat, everything up until that point is hearsay. Many predicted the UK would get slaughtered trying to take the Falklands back because sending a carrier with the laughing stock in some circles which was the Harrier onboard meant they'd get destroyed from the air, yet when it came to the Harrier ended up proving it's worth in defence of the fleet taking on some at the time perfectly capable Argentinian aircraft like French supplied Mirages and Super Etendards, US supplied Skyhawks, and Israeli supplied Daggers. The naysayers were proven wrong, and the harrier was proven an aircraft that was extremely effective and is still so right up until this very day where it's still active in Afghanistan.

The harrier isn't alone in this story, many other aircraft have been through the exact same thing of being slagged off as worthless only to turn out extremely effective. I think even some of the UK's iconic and most successful World War II aircraft even had their vocal doubters early on.

Don't say "ask another lawyer" when you're clearly not a lawyer. I don't know what you're on about mentioning the UK is based on common law not constitutional law, yes, well done, so what, what was the insertion of that random factoid about exactly? Do you feel that if you add in random quotations about different law in different jurisdictions that that somehow adds weight to your argument on this particular case? It really doesn't, it looks like a really really poor attempt at misdirection.

Criminal copyright infringement isn't about receiving a benefit, it's about seeking to profit, directly or indirectly. You keep trying to avoid the word profit and switch to things like "benefit" but like it or not, UK copyright law revolves around profiting, which is subtly different to benefiting.

But enough of your nonsense, enough of your "go ask another lawyer", he's what the IPO, the UK's intellectual property office, the organisation that oversees IP has to say about it:

"Deliberate infringement of copyright on a commercial scale may be a criminal offence. Please see further information on What is IP crime? and the additional remedies which may be available."

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy/c-o...

Personal sharing no matter to how many people isn't by definition commercial in nature and so cannot be of commercial scale, and that's before you even question how you might prove someone using BitTorrent is deliberately distributing something, most users don't even know it uploads too, they think they're just downloading anyway so proving deliberate infringement in itself would make it an impossible criminal prosecution.

If you want to continue to argue otherwise rather than pretending to be a lawyer, which you're clearly not, please provide me one single case where someone has been hit with a successful criminal prosecution for personal sharing.

No? couldn't find one? gee, I wonder why that might be? I'll give you a hint: it's because you're still completely wrong, as much as you refuse to admit it. The police do not even pursue personal file sharing precisely because it is not criminal.

Of course if you're still adamant that you want to keep digging I guess I could do as you say and ask a lawyer too (but again, not "another" lawyer, because again, you're clearly not one despite your implication), and they might say something like:

"It is also possible for a person to face criminal prosecution for copyright infringement, but the copyright statutes in the UK in effect limit the offence to the large-scale distribution of pirated material for financial gain."

http://www.findlaw.co.uk/law/c...

So are you going to stop digging now or is this enough information for you to now be able to accept that you had no idea what you were on about?

Not really, some are backed by explicit laws targeting that specific issue, but also backed by strict enforcement. For example, race discrimination is strongly enforced. Employers actively try and prevent it because they know there is a strong cost to it.

The same isn't true of discrimination against men and what they wear in the workplace, there isn't any active engagement against it and there isn't even a strong societal backing against it and so it goes under the radar, because employers know that no one is going to haul them into court for it and that it's not something they're going to suffer reputational damage on because everyone is doing it.

Or to put it another way, as I pointed out the laws on discrimination have zero impact on this particular issue - their existence is largely irrelevant to the problem, compared to issues such as racism or sexism in favour of women where they have a much greater impact and are much more actively enforced.

And become a pariah amongst the directors?

Without explicit legislation to make it clear to employers I don't really see how a more general law on discrimination, that is never actually used to protect males in the UK is going to do anything to change societal attitudes. Certainly I've seen companies change their behaviour in general and allow casual dress all around, but I've never seen a company do it on the basis of discrimination law, nor am I necessarily even sure they would win the case. Is it discrimination? sure, but how many successful discrimination cases have there been about males being discriminated against over females? Fathers for justice would've been out of business years ago if the general discrimination laws actually protected males in this manner in practice, they really don't, nor do they seem intended to given the lack of will to make sure that they do.