Apparently, these nowhere companies hold "apple intellectual property" . So if you somehow get your hands on OSX source code - perhaps you can share it without punishment. But how would you get that without breaking into apple headquarters

Code isn't the only IP, just start using the trade name and logo's on other stuff.

Even better would be to put it on really crappy stuff. The point isn't to make a profit after all, it's to force the company to declare where the company holding the IP is incorporated and force them to justify why US courts should enforce their claim to it.

email is never private..... unless you encrypt it

*stratches head*

So when I'm looking at photos of a loved ones' visit to the Taj Mahal, Google says that they're going to push *lots* of other people's photos of the Taj Mahal at me.

Thats not how I read the summary, it more a case of you upload all your photos and Google will use the ones with recognised landmarks as the special photos for you, use them as album covers etc.

They are working on the basis that you are uploading everything you take a picture of and then want to sort through them to find that 1 special photo and that photos with landmarks probably hold more significance for you because it probably means a trip or holiday.

Personally I think they are making some false assumptions there, number 1 being that I think the stuff which gets online has already been selected by the user to some extent.

You are worried about parasites in an insect but happily eat other mammals whose parasites are far more likely to be evolved to infest us?

Parasites in insects can be dealt with in the same same humans deal with almost parasites in our food, we cooked the meal first.

I think the price for Win 8 was more an acknowledgement from MS that Win 8 was a critical release for them and that they knew it was going to be a tough OS to sell.

there is no winning anymore.

We live as part of a community, tax is a way of paying for the collective costs of that community, who do you think you were winning against before?

The article linked in the summary showed Googles own job titles and descriptions for the London offices as being Sales, and one of their own clients saying all the sales contact he has with Google is based in London... with the exception of the address on the invoice being Dublin.

OK, it's not 100% proof, but it is certainly enough to ask whether Google were truthful last time around.

Why does this guy get to explain himself? In my country, the IRS just sends me a letter...

This isn't the HMRC, this is a special parlimentary committee who are trying to work out how the companies are legally avoiding tax.

The companies questioned (Google, Amazon, Starbucks + 1 other I can't remember off the top of my head - probably MS) were all choosen because they pay very little tax in relation to the turnover the companies are reporting in the UK, and are therefore either very badly run or are engaged in some very effective tax avoidance.

Some of the answers given by the executives were extremely funny, the Amazon executive especially didn't perform well, but Google actually came out of it looking reasonably good, they seemed to be quite honest saying they based most of their operations in Ireland because of it's lower Corporation Tax level and that it wasn't hiding anything while Amazon twisted and turned trying not to say the exact same thing about it's luxembourg HQ.

The Google executive is being brought back because it's now been shown that most of the Google operations are based in London, not Dublin and he was therefore telling porkies.

He's not being brought back in to explain his tax affairs, he's being brought back for lying to a government committee.

silt and rocks in the river fall out, so over time, the efficiency of the dam goes down, since it's not storing as much water and so you don't have as much pressure head to produce power.

The pressure of the water is determined by the height of the water level, not the volume of water behind the dam.

Volume would affect peformance by reducing how long the turbines can be used when the supplying rivers are providing less water than the turbines are using. The bigger the volume the better the buffer and since we are talking about annual rainfall cycles the buffer does need to be huge and silting would be a problem.

The basic logical of the theory holds true, the date at which we hit Peak Oil moves a bit further out.

The only way the theory could be substantially wrong would be if fossil fuel is produced far faster than we current believe.

It would just need your own website (so you trust the operator not to strip metadata) being indexed by Google. It wouldn't need to be all over the web.

Why do you think EA has to buy development companies?

How many libraries of congress would that power?

Depends on whether they have switched to LED lights yet :)

I want to use that application... you know the one... lets you draw stuff, I used it to make those Christmas cards last year... I know it's installed on here somewhere... if only there was a nice hierarchical list of applications where things are laid out logically rather than based on most recent use then I could find it.

The problem with Windows Phone isn't the OS or the hardware

Personally, the problem I have with Windows Phone isn't the OS or the hardware bit.. it's the MS bit.

As consumers, we had to put up with MS business practices for decades because there was no viable alternative, and everytime a reason alternative got going, a file format or API would mysteriously change breaking interoperability. This wasn't done for the customers benefit, it was done to keep MS in the dominate position.

I have no desire to see them... or anyone else... ever given such a dominate position within a market segment ever again, MS has proven themselves untrustworthy and hence neither I, nor anyone whose opinions I can influence on mobile technology (*1) will touch a phone/tablet from MS.

Note 1: Basically my parents and girlfriend, I'm the first to admit my influence does reach far, but if other geeks feel the same way my personal influence doesn't have to.