To be fair it's also one of the prettiest parts of the UK so is actually worth visiting if you ever go to the UK.

Bath which sits right next to Bristol is where a number of Hollywood celebs have situated themselves at least part of the time for exactly this reason. I believe people like Nicholas Cage and Johnny Depp have homes there

Though I like to think that Johnny Depp bought his home there so that he could continue playing Jack Sparrow and not feel out of place even when he wasn't filming for Pirates of the Carribean.

I gave you a list of cases where Apple was found guilty or being investigated and rather than accept that, or go Google for confirmation, you just pretend it's outright not true.

This is really the point, this is why you don't deserve proper answers, you seem to want to continue this discussion but as I said before, if you can't even accept reality then what's the point?

There's really no helping you, you're irrationally defending a firm in spite of the facts and that is why you can be clearly defined as nothing more than a pointless irrelevant fanboy. When you're that far gone your opinion is just meaningless and does not matter.

"That#s circular reasoning. WHY did their first bunch of friends go to facebook?"

Facebook then was very different to Facebook now. Back then it was a startup just trying to get viewers by providing useful tools without doing anything much fancy, now it's a massive scale data mining operation reaching well beyond the boundaries of just the data entered. It is circular reasoning because moving people away from it is a catch 22 situation, but I'm not sure why you view that as a problem, it's just the way it is.

People left ICQ because AOL made the product ever more shit and bloated over time. Facebook came along as a lightweight and new alternative and no one could've foreseen the future of it and the problems that would bring.

"He said that there was even a "pirate village". He said the entire village spoke like what we Americans sound like when we want to pretend to be pirates. One day a member of our church wanted to show off her new automobile. She said, "Elders, come take a look at my new carrrrrrr.""

That'll have been Somerset/Cornwall.

Apparently the accent associated with pirates is the way it is precisely because the actor who played a pirate in one of the earliest/most influential pirate films came from that part of the UK and didn't alter his accent much when playing the role.

Again though given that it's also historically one of the most sea-faring parts of the UK (Bristol for example was the largest slave trading port in the world for a long time acting as the hub for trade of slaves and other commodities between Africa/Asia and the new world), and that the UK is a historically prominent sea-faring nation it's quite possible that there were a number of pirates who indeed actually spoke with such accents.

"True. But fails as a theory as it doesn't explain the observation that people now flock to FB. If it was only about communicating and sharing their photos, they could do it with plain oldfashioned email and ICQ. (MSN, whatsapp, whatever)"

How? Their friends don't use these tools anymore. Facebook has a monopoly on the social graph and the only way to stay in touch with all your friends is to use it. You can't make all your friends leave it for something new, because they'd need all their friends to leave it for something new too, who would need all their friends... and so on.

"M theory is that people want to have those data, too."

I don't disagree that some probably do but I'm not sure what the relevance is because they don't actually have access to that data nor the option to access it. In fact, if Facebook engaged in a transparency drive and made it explicit all the information they've gathered on people and explained how they used it and asked users for consent to use it in this way to keep using the service I don't think there'd be an issue as only users themselves could be blamed at this point. The issue is still that most people aren't aware that Facebook has all this other data, and none of them have even been given the option of giving consent as much of it is even gathered in breach of various national data protection laws. Facebook has for example breached the UK's data protection act numerous times with some of it's practices and people expect large companies not to do this because it's illegal and assume they'd be found out, but if the authorities turn a blind eye for intelligence purposes then people are being grossly misled.

"But all that is not my original point: facebook data mining may or may not ne amoral, but if Zuckerberg should count as an amoral person, it shouldn't be for respecting court or administration orders. That's neither moral nor unmoral, it's plain normal."

I agree with you here but I don't think anyone was necessarily saying he was amoral for respecting court orders, but being amoral for having a reason to be issued court orders in the first place, again, as I say, by hoarding data on people, much of which is against their will or knowledge.

"You have yet to address any single one of my points"

Because they're almost entirely nonsense and you're waffling on with walls of text about something you don't understand. What'd be the point?

I wont just leave it at that statement, I'll at least offer you the decency of explaining what I mean though with an example, a few posts ago you said:

"I take it that you didn't read the findings of fact. Judge Jackson addressed this point. Back when MS was sued could a consumer get an OS other than Windows when buying a x86 PC from an OEM? No. They could buy an Apple which wasn't x86. The court case was always about consumers being harmed when it came to x86 PCs."

You were making the implication that this was what they were hauled into court over, and what they were judged upon. This is simply false and either an attempt to mislead or just outright ignorance on your behalf. The case was about whether Microsoft abused their monopoly position to unduly give themselves an advantage in the browser market. To judge that to be the case the judge has to first determine that the key premises behind that argument are correct, first and foremost that Microsoft had a monopoly. The point that you quote is simply evidence to that fact, it's simply stating that Microsoft did indeed have a monopoly because no OEMs were offering anything other than Microsoft's operating system - this isn't a finding of illegality in itself but merely establishment of fact so that the judge can then, given that he has now found the premise that they are a monopoly to be true, advance the case to find out if they also abused that monopoly position.

This is an example of why I stopped giving you the credit of proper answers. You either don't understand or are intentionally being misleading, given that how can I expect you to debate the topic rationally? Anyone who feels the need to mislead is debating with clear bias and isn't interested in honest discussion, anyone who feels the need to debate without understanding what they're talking about is just looking to argue for the sake of arguing. Given that, why would I waste my time on full fledged answers if it's clear you're not interested in a proper discussion but rather are simply interested in defending your pet company regardless of the facts?

You're claiming there's nothing to my suggestions that Apple has behaved in an equally anti-competitive manner to Microsoft, if that's true then why have their been rulings against them for price fixing in the UK? Why are they being hauled through the courts over eBook price fixing? Why did the FTC even begin to consider an antitrust probe over their anti-Adobe 3rd party compiler policies if there was nothing in it? Why is the EU currently looking at launching an antitrust investigation? Why was Apple found guilty of antitrust violations in Italy over warranties?

If you were interested in honest debate you'd recognise that Apple has already breached antitrust laws and been found guilty in some jurisdictions, and that it was still being investigated in much bigger probes that may well advance to much firmer action like that Microsoft faced.

Pretending it's not true just highlights the fact you're not interested in honest discussion on the issue, you're simply pretending they haven't already been found guilty of some antitrust violations, and you're claiming that all the others will come to nothing. That's a pretty tall legal claim for someone who doesn't even understand or can't properly represent Jackson's findings of fact.

Given all this do you now understand why I hadn't previously given you a proper answer? If you want to carry on the discussion you'll have to at least explicitly accept that Apple has already been found guilty of some antitrust breaches and is at real risk of being found guilty of even bigger ones to come still. You can't pretend none of this is real and then wonder why someone doesn't bother giving you a proper answer.

No they don't, people use Facebook to communicate with their friends sharing the data they provide.

Whilst I agree it's utterly naive of them, most users are entirely unaware that masses more data about them is inferred from the very little data they provide. Most are even unaware that even their conversations are being farmed.

Most people probably accept that if they like a product then any announcements for that product will be marketed to them, some understand that Facebook builds up a social graph of who they know based on their friends list and who their friends know, but very few are aware that Facebook is also gathering information about who they know from other sources - such as MSN (and presumably now also Skype) contact lists, tying them to liking products purchased outside of Facebook, and mining information about what other things they like and who they know from private conversations.

I think your final post highlights the problem:

"I won't comment on if this is a smart thing to do, but it's the users that shovel data into facebook - and expect it to be processed there!"

If this were true it'd be less of an issue, most people would be fine with that, but Facebook is gathering and linking them to data that they're not shoverlling into Facebook, and is even gathering and storing data about people who have simply never ever even signed up to Facebook. That's the problem - people don't actually have any control of what data Facebook is actually gathering about them, they think it's just want they explicitly enter into it excluding private messages sent to each other, but the reality is it includes mining all those private messages and external data sources as well.

You are being sarcastic right?

Amoral because he harvests data and builds links from it that weren't explicitly provided and holds them in an easily searchable and mineable manner.

The only reason the warrants can be issued in the first place is because he holds said data in an unsecured well archived manner precisely so it can be handed over to anyone who asks nicely enough.

Were for example data to be stored in a more secure manner and data not farmed (sometimes illegally according to some jurisdictions Facebook does business in) then there'd be little of value for law enforcement to request. There'd also be less for him to make money from of course but that's where the amoral bit comes in - he's more interested in making money than protecting his user's right to privacy in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

In other words, Facebook is almost certainly breaking the law, but the governments that can do something such as the US or UK wont because they find it too convenient when it comes to harvesting data for their own ends.

But that's exactly my point, which Brits exactly?

Even in Elizabethan England some areas of the country had a hard R, others didn't. The same remains true to this day, if you think the UK has no rhotic accents then you've obviously never heard someone from the South West, Ireland, or Scotland speak.

If you've only ever listened to BBC presenters or the Queen speak then you can be forgiven for thinking there are no English accents in the UK that don't pronounce there Rs but that's not representative of even close to the whole population, and that's exactly my point.

If you want an explanation then I'd offer the fact that places like Bristol harbour, a city which very much has a rhotic accent was one of (if not the) most important harbour for departure to the new world from England (It's at the Western side of the country and was the second biggest harbour after London which is in the South East at the time) and so it's not that American English is born of some generic old English accent (which doesn't exist, there was no singular generic old English accent across the country) but that it was born of the large amount of migrants that departed from the region that is associated with Britain's south western accent that was rhotic in nature and still is to this day.

"As to US English sounding more original, I've seen a lot of debate on this. Some say particular UK accents are closer to Old English and the US is closer to Modern English (16th century), whereas others claim the idea is simply part of American mythology."

The whole argument doesn't make sense, the view is that American English never really evolved much but British English changed a lot, yet the problem with such theories is they don't explain why American English is magically the one that didn't change. What about Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, South African English and so on? They diverged in their own ways.

But there's another more fundamental reason why it's stupid, there is no such thing as "British English" by way of the spoken word and there never has been, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, but even in England itself, Liverpudlian, Bristolian, Geordie, Cockney accents are all as different from each other as most American accents are from Queen's English and it's not just accents but local words and terms too. A bread roll in Bristol is a bun in Yorkshire, but a bun in Bristol is normally something sweeter and glazed.

Ultimately the idea that American English is some pure form of English with the closest historic ties is just stupid, America is a country born of mass immigration and if anyone seriously believes that the earlier English accents were retained in the face of mass immigration from countries like Germany and Ireland then they're having a laugh. It's not like British English immigrants were anything other than a minority of the population in the face of many other immigrants all with different accents and languages ultimately distorting the English that was originally taken across.

This also explains why Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and so forth didn't retain the same supposed classic English accent either, because accents were all ultimately immigration driven - South Africa's English accent being influenced by the dutch for example.

But ultimately the country least effected by immigration forces on accent is still going to be England, yet even there it depends where. London has seen far more immigration over the centuries and seen it's accents change as such as a result than somewhere like Cornwall, or Scotland where classic accents are retained much more closely.

So yes if you compare some American accents from areas of America that retained the heaviest balance of early English immigrants against somewhere like London that's been hammered by immigration from every area of the globe you may indeed find that their accent is closer. But if you compare even those places to somewhere like Scotland or Cornwall then you'll be a lot further off any old English accents than Scotland/Cornwall are off their old British accents.

So long story short, what you're saying is that as long as there are tiny irrelevant little technicalities, in your world Apple is a completely innocent little puppy?

Get a grip. It doesn't take a genius to realise you're just a fanboy.

"Please present some evidence of abuse in the market other than Apple making decisions about their own products."

Flash and eBooks are Apple's own products? Since when?

I had heard of it but hadn't tried doing anything with it. Does Monogame switch to OpenGL for rendering on other platforms? I did quite like the XNA APIs they were quite pleasing to use (especially compared to plain old DirectX and OpenGL!) providing you weren't doing something that encroached upon it's limitations.

Maybe I'll give it a go but I'm tending more towards OpenGL now given that with an OpenGL engine you can target Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, PS3, PS4, Android, iOS. The XBox 360 being the only platform it doesn't target, and the XBox One not supporting it kind of leaves the question as to why bother with Direct3D now.

"Or, everyone is going to conclude that this console is exceedingly anti-consumer, and not worth buying.

But as I say it was the exact same thing with Bluray and with the iPod, and the iPhone. Yet still customers bought them in droves.

I agree with you on everything else you said, but I'm not confident that being anti-consumer necessarily means product failure. There are a number of devices in the past that have won out despite being the most anti-consumer choice, which is rather sad.