One man's sociopath is another family's support. They support this person's madness because they want to live well.

I agree with you, BUT I know a few people like this. They are really nice face to face. CHarming, fun, witty, but when you start to hear what their views on competition and other people are... watch out. They'll screw anybody over anything, waste anyone's time to their benefit. They are a parasite, and while they seem nice they are a horrible blemish on what it means to be a society.

Problem is, in our twitter and meetings-once-a-year-to-keep-the-client-happy business climate, that charm is all they need to cover up what a couple extra hours of face time would lay bare very quickly.

A billion dollar write down means BB anticipates selling the devices for a billion dollars less

I read that as "hopes". There's nothing to guarantee people will actually buy them.

At which point, they may well get stuck with these phones.

A billion in hardware losses for them is a billion in hardware GAINS for the consumer!

What are you talking about?

That billion dollars is in unsold hardware. Nobody wants. Nobody is buying it. It is sitting around gathering dust and occupying space.

There were no 'gains' for the consumer. There's just boxes and boxes of phones nobody purchased.

Besides, you totally missed the point. With the BB platform, you can both encrypt all communication

I think the point you're missing is that if everybody is looking at RIM like it is about to tank or get sold, nobody wants to be the guy in the meeting saying "Hey, we should go with Blackberry".

You describe the historical reasons why people went with Blackberry/BES solutions. But in the current context, people don't necessarily believe they are a long-term viable option.

When you're hiring investment bankers to help you figure out how to split, sell, fold, spindle, or mutilate it tends to undermine customer confidence. I'm betting a lot of organizations wouldn't look at setting up a new BES right now.

And they suck hard in very large parts of the US. Digital Only distributions would make it so those parts of the US wouldn't consider buying the consoles.

And for a lot of people, the bandwidth is capped, with extra fees if you go over it.

Assuming a modern video game puts a big dent in the disks now, I can only imagine that digital-only distribution would make the cost of the game more expensive overall.

I wouldn't go to a digital download model. It's a video game console. I want to put in a disk an play games ... I don't want it connected to the internet all the time. But, it seems increasingly, video game companies are insisting on an always-on internet connection.

... it was written in Ada, so nobody knows what to do with it anyway.

While what you mention is somewhat true, what you fail to mention is the opposite: The eras before we created a social net were horrifying by today's standards. One bad crop season, or loss of a job, or getting on the wrong person's bad side could easily leave you a starving wretch (can still happen, but less common).

Also, it's not government that's running a lot of this, it's corporations. I'm sure the corn lobby is loosening up as their dollars are less effective than the military and IP racket these days, and Biggie B (as his friends call him) in teh Big Apple has to do something to make him look good after all this police nonsense and Occupy.

Look, I don't disagree with you that government, in some ways, is getting its mitts on some things it shouldn't. However, maybe looking at what risks government should cover and what they shouldn't ought to merit consideration, not just making a statement implying that you're somehow superior because you happened to be in the right circumstances to make "good" life choices (I assume, though I may be wrong). Check out stuff on the sociology of deviance, I suspect you'll find the subject infuriating to what sounds like your fairly uncompassionate world view (this does not include too big to fail. we can all agree that was pure crime)

BTW..... why don't we worry about the incredible amount of money spent blowing up brown people and spying on and jailing our own citizens before we start moralizing and saying we shouldn't help our Fellow Man because of "blah-di-blah" and then quoting a stupid fucking TV show that too many people worship anyway.

You might check Pastoral if you don't already get your cheese from them. Their selection is a delight, imo.

How can someone love P.R. *that* much?