Very good and all, but who is Major Tarm?

Motorola had Linux based phones selling in PRC back in ... well, too long ago now...about 2004?

Osso, indeed :) I'd forgotten that (before my time there)...I did have a baseball cap, but lost it during a visit to Sachsenhausen :(

Interesting about the 'big' tablet...never saw or heard anything of it.

I don't see any mention of a Nokia tablet. He mentions MeeGo tablets, but, iinm, those aren't Nokia ones - the N9 (and N950) were the only MeeGo branded devices "made available" my Nokia. Everything prior to that was Maemo. The MeeGo running on the tablets was the effort of Intel (though, I suppose there was some Nokia effort included from the attempt to merge Maemo and MeeGo).

Was it some other tablet reference you mean?

there was no 'n770' - it was just '770', but do tell more about the one you're talking about :)

I think that's what I was saying...but they had not one internet tablet, but a few...iirc 770, n800, n810, then the n900 which took a sim card so was a phone.

I noticed he waves his hands about too much - a pet peeve of mine :)

I didn't think so, though it did occur to me to make the comparison, so perhaps there's something there.

...real linux smartphone

Two, in fact (three if you count the n950)...not to mention their predecessors which were Internet *tablets*.

yeah, wot he said

google maps doesn't work in china anyway...it's consistently off by about a kilometer to...iirc...the west. i'm comparing to the gps position, of course.

nokia maps, oddly, are spot on.

it's difficult to tell what is blocked or just some problem...people always jump to conclusions, of course.

however, slashdot wasn't accisble for extended periods in the 2006-2007 period. if it was being blocked, the I find it difficult to beleive it was deliberate...more likely the blocked a whole netblock which happened to include slashdot. i don't recall any sensitive topics, but people spout all sorts of bs here, so perhaps there was a thread I missed.

I worked on the following app on S60 (2nd and 3rd edition) which was based off Symbian - I mostly did porting, build and small feature work, with other clever folk doing the glory work, but anyway :

http://darlamack.blogs.com/darlamack/2007/11/cinema-3d-by-em.html
http://www.mobyware.net/nokia-n97-n97-mini-device-900/system-utilities-tag/dames-anime-girl-download-free-17752.html

I have yet to see anything quite so innovative on other platforms - though, presumably, that is mostly because the platform makers (Apple, Google, Microsoft) don't want lowly developers messing with what happens when the user gets a phone call (though the above works with SMS/MMS and as a screensaver too - *screen* not *battery*).

I'd like to see if there's anything similar for current platforms - I don't get much exposure to them.

Anyway, I like to think that the above app was quite a bit better than garbage, despite its limited scope.

I disagree that the examples are irrelevant.

What if you offer retailer $3.00 for something they're charging $2.99 for? $5.00? $10.00? When does it cease being a 'charitable' tip and suddenly become you valuing the item more than they do?

Anyway, tips are way different in the US than anywhere else (in my experience). For such positions in most(?) countries, they are *not* paid assuming they will receive tips - they get paid for the work they do. It may not be much, but the assumption is *zero* tip, not like in the US where it is something between 10% and 20%.

It *is* irrelevant, to my argument, what the retailer wants, so much as whether I consider it to be more valuable that that or not. I might be so thrilled with the product/service/whatever that I say, "no...I want to pay more". Yes, that happens.

Yes, corporations tend not to do that so much, especially for government or other corporations, but that wasn't my point. Your example was a bad one because it does happen and you suggested it doesn't. You might say my examples are irrelevant, but my point is that *your* example is irrelevant because it's wrong.

Are people claiming that only US-taxes are relevant. I mean, they should pay "fair" taxes somewhere, right? I don't think people are limiting the 1.9% to just US-taxes, but all taxes. I could be wrong, of course...