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Is this a joke? Current Iraq, sans IS territory is basically a de facto vassal state of Iran. It's very difficult to imagine a change where Iraq would be any more pro-Iranian than it is today in such a short period of time. Vice news had a really good video on their reporter who went embedded with Iraqi Shiite militias. Unlike government which has to at least maintain plausible deniability, militiamen themselves are fairly open about who their support and materiel comes from and who they see as their own.

While it's true that current Middle East situation is not "as bad as it could get", that's only because "as bad as it could get" is a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran or one sided nuclear strikes into Iran by Israel. And the current situation is not that far away from it now that Iran became a true regional hegemon after Iraq became it's vassal state and feels quite empowered by it. If anything, IS actually serves as a dam containing Iran's influence's westward expansion in the region.

That's quite incorrect, because there will be no US for Europe to help in your scenario, nor Russia to help against. Both would be irradiated no-go land.

This is something many US residents tend to forget because they didn't have a war against an aggressor capable of fighting on their land for centuries. To them, war is something that happens far away with no real impact on their lives. A war with Russia on the other hand would be a war against a foe capable of unleashing the real consequences of the war against the people of US.

And mind you, US is doing a lot against Assad. The real problem is that people in White House right now are not quite as "american cliche" in their utter ignorance of situation on the ground and understand that any help against Assad equals improving Iran's position in the region, one way or another. Just like Iraq intervention ended up being nothing more than surrendering Iraq, the former anti-Iran bastion straight to Iranian hands. As a result most of anti-Assad action taken is typically in the form that avoids straight up supporting Iran's position in the region, which severely limits potency of any measures taken. It's mainly undercover support of semi-independent Sunni militias and support for the only anti-Iranian force in the region - ethnic Kurds. And then there's of course the political pressure on allies of Allawites.

If privacy is your end goal, buying an iphone over android is proverbial shoving head in the sand I'm afraid. While apple certainly isn't quite as bad at violating your privacy as google, it's does it in incredible amounts regardless.

To paraphrase, your choice is between anal rape with a baseball bat or with a crowbar. One may be thinner than other, and one may have less sharp edges than other, but both will hurt so much that difference is largely inconsequential.

In fact, ALL major current smartphone OSs and their applications do. It's an inherent part of their business model. In fact one of the major attractors of non-major operating systems in mobile world is privacy (I include privacy-minded android forks in this particular group).

You are misinterpreting the numbers in a fairly hilarious way. According to the tables you link, their actual market share is around 10%, which matches IDC's numbers.

And as I noted above, their profit margins are exceedingly high simply because they found their extremely successful niche which enables them to pull far higher profit margins, as they target audience simply doesn't demand as much for their money as those of others. If anything, we have seen based on 5C debacle that apple's target audience demands an overly expensive product and attempts to expand into more cost efficient products doesn't produce results anywhere near their success in the top end market.

That is the apple's niche, and their main limiter - to those outside that specific target audience, apple's appeal is massively stunted by their appearance of extremely expensive product with extreme profit margins, meaning less product for the money spent by the customer. But as long as wealthy people are willing to overspend on apple's products for whatever reason they choose to do so and retain the means to do so, apple will do very well.

http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm... They're sitting on their 10-15%. The way apple fan crowd does it is by applying "no true scotsman" fallacy to numbers to exclude as many smartphones as possible. This results in lower total smartphone shipments, meaning apple's fairly small share starts to appear much larger.

That's what Nokia did back in their symbian 3 phones before Elop/Microsoft killed them. HDMI out on the phone and phone can have keyboard and/or mouse plugged in via USB or BT, functioning as a portable desktop machine or set top box for a TV.

Problem is that this sort of usage, even when hardware and software for it is actually in place is quite uncomfortable because UI has to be optimized for one of the human interfaces, making it extremely awful for others. Reference: windows 8's failure.

Obligatory Big Bang Clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kzjqBacF1k

It still is. It markets to a very specific niche and has little to no traction outside it. The reason why they are so fabulously financially successful is that their niche represents some of the most economically successful demographics of our time.

When you cater to the specific very successful niche that happens to be growing steadily and you manage to lock them into your products as apple does, you tend to become wildly successful.

Except it doesn't because phones run on ARM rather than x86 and windows phone is still on ARM. That means no backward compatibility with x86 software. Not to even mention the whole "wrong human interface devices" problem.

I'll wait for the Hybrid version, I like the gasoline option, you know, just in case...
although it would need to have a great frames per gallon ratio!

Gotta say, that is the first time I heard someone suggesting that using windows over linux is comparable to smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.

Coming up next: Using windows over linux is like punching a kitten. Because hyperbole.

Reason for this is very simple - the cost to the end customer would be astronomical as they would have to pay:
1. UPS fees which would be high due to remote location.
2. Your fees for obvious reasons.
3. UPS's and your profit margins.

This would result in living in the rural areas to be even harder than it is right now, emptying it out further.

Not really. I'm from a socialist country, and on of the key aspects to our prosperity and competitiveness is enabling private entities to get to compete for and win profitable infrastructure contracts.

This is because private contractors bring significant amount of expertise and capability that government would have to build from ground up without them, as well as force costs down through competition. Problems only arise when said private contractors become big and powerful enough to corrupt those making decisions behind these projects to favour them in various ways.

It's another one of those "capitalism works really well as long as it is properly managed and doesn't get big enough to corrupt powerful entities" moments.

Google et al likely figured out that instead of public lobbying, they have to do private lobbying. I.e. less publicity, more favours exchanging hands with important figures in government bureaucracy.

One sentence: Now you actually have a chance to have a decent internet service without massively overpaying for it in US.

It's going to be interesting to see how quickly municipal internet in US can actually challenge incumbent monopolies and force them to compete on quality and price.