Google could have saved some of their money by bidding e billion dollars instead of pi billion, with e - a.k.a. "Euler's number" - given as 2.71828...

But wait, they saved all of their money anyway, by just bidding not enough...

Disregarding the auction's outcome, Google made a very nice and subtle statement against the lowly "just natural or rational numbers considered here" approach as practised by nearly all accountants and corporate finance guys. ;-)

Well said. Agreed to and supported here.

See The Guardian (Great Britain):

"Apple to pay Nokia big settlement plus royalties in patent dispute
Tuesday 14 June 2011 18.20 BST

The Finnish phone-maker Nokia could receive a one-off payment of more than €800m (£700m) from Apple and receive further royalties of €8 per iPhone sold in future, after winning a settlement in a long-running patents dispute.

Although terms of the settlement were not disclosed, previous patent licensing deals in the phone industry have been worth up to 5% of the price of the device involved. At €8, or $11.50 (£7), they would represent about 4.5% of the estimated average $264 cost price of an iPhone, which Apple sells to retailers and phone networks for an average of $660. Apple has sold 108m iPhones since their launch."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/14/apple-nokia-patent-case

On Apple's web pages, the 10.7 ("Lion") version seems no longer to be referred to as "Mac OS X".

Instead, it's called just "OS X" or "OS X Lion" in nearly all occurences.

This might be insignificant, but then again... remember when "Apple Computer, Inc." relabeled itself into just "Apple, Inc."?

and won't recommend others to do so.

Regarding the Mac platform, Apple is making huge steps toward a "walled garden" concept.

After 25 years as a user of Macs and Mac OS, I don't care anymore. As soon as one of my existing Macs will become "de-supported" by Apple, it will get a decent Linux distribution installed.

come with Android 1.6 pre-installed, they are not exactly the leaders of the pack currently.
Encouraging development and use of alternative OSS/FOSS firmware (Linux distributions) on SE phones would be a very nice move, though.

A serious commitment by SE to this might be, to some degree, a compensation for the dwindling efforts at Nokia (Maemo, MeeGo, and successors to the N900, pity).
So I'm looking forward to some very interesting - even impressive - results here, some day.

I like that.

Id like it even better if it could changed a bit:

"My invisible friend is good.
If yours is different he/she has to be evil." ... with the optional addition of:
[murmuring] "Just where did I put these matches?"

As to portable media players supporting FLAC:

Sandisk (Sansa Fuze, Fuze+, Clip, Clip+)
iRiver (B30, E100, E150, E200, Lplayer, P7, Spinn, S100)
Archos (Vision 3, 24, 28, 32)
Samsung (Yepp M1, YP-Q1, YP-Q2, YP-Q3, YP-R0, YP-R1)
Philips (GoGear Muse)
Sweex (MP470, MP480)
Transcend (MP860, Tsonic 870)

and last but not least,
Cowon/iAudio (all of them)

Prices:
The most affordable player capable of FLAC (and Ogg Vorbis), the Sweex MP480 Vidi 8GB, from GBP 22 (ca USD 35) in the U.K.

Thanks, Gunjan and all your colleagues on the MeeGo project, for your excellent work.

Good luck, and take care.

Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) said:
"And, Angelo, make sure it's an offer they can't refuse."

That's current "ISO style", regrettably.

ISO has severely compromised itself by following no standards at all, when certifying certain proposals as a "standard".

I understand Google wanted to stay clear of such an extra-corrupt "standards body" that works under close control by one of Google's main competitors.

The headline should read "... in US installed base" - i.e., in the total number of smartphones currently in use. The shifting percentages for Android vs. iPhone vs. RIM smartphones in that installed base is what the techspot.com article is talking about.

In terms of market share (i.e., the respective percentages for Android vs. iPhone vs. RIM in the total number of sold units per period, like month etc.), Android already passed iPhone in the U.S. several months ago.

... they should try really hard to get rid of Hillary Clinton, well ahead of the presidential elections.

This won't be an easy task, though.

It's not a sin at all, it's just plain wrong.

"A decade is a period of ten years is a decade"

(Apologies to Gertrude Stein)

Agreed.

But apart from not being a C programmer, the poor monk had an additional disadvantage to cope with.

Like all his western contemporaries, Dionysius Exiguus did not have the notion of 0 (zero) as a number at all.

Dionysius didn't know anything about the arabic number system (originating from India) which already had a zero back then. Instead, he was using the roman number system that comes without this feature.

So, in the tradition of Dionysius, the first year of the "A.D." branch of history, is still called year 1 - as a mere convention.

Thus, the first decade (meaning "a period of ten years", not nine) ended Dec 31, 10 A.D.
Thus, the first century [...] ended Dec 31, 100 A.D.
Thus, the second millennium [...] ended Dec 31, 2000.

Conclusion: Today (Dec 31, 2010) is the last day of the first decade of the 21st century. ;-)