For starters, internation aid by governments creates terrible, horrific corruption. Secondly, some countries are starving because armed thugs tear up farms for fun, but giving them a couple months of food will cause even more damage to the local farming because you can't price compete against free. Third, taking away the rewards for producing jobs (how people usually get extremely rich) causes those producers to spend their efforts elsewhere. Have so many people forgotten the example of the USSR when you put the government in charge of wealth?

You think it's a great idea to ban social networking by taxing it to death. I personally appreciate companies learning I want something besides pornographic or slutty ads. I think most people like businesses to get to know their customers, but they've been scared by fearmongering media. How appropriate that you posted as an anonymous coward.

Google has cut off companies before. This market is large enough that it could cause a culture shift away from Google.

"Your ISP has blocked Google from providing you Gmail. They are demanding we pay for your use of the internet, something which you already pay for. Here's their contact info:...."

Maybe Google is just paying so they can deliver that message.

If the traffic is going to Small ISP's customers, then Small ISP has already paid Orange for the traffic. Google has a rather large network to be paying such internetworking fees, considering their customer facing network is larger than all but 1 ISP. Fees like this are probably the main reason for their fiber service starting in Kansas City. I wonder how many price gouging services Google can sidestep before governments call them a verticle monopoly, finding some way of saying they have an unfair advantage of being more efficient than the competition.

Google is changing it by coming an ISP. As soon as they offer service in a reasonable share of the market, they can refuse to pay anyone. If the ISP doesn't comply, they can't offer Google to their customers. Orange gets Internet lite. This gives me yet another reason to dislike France.

Google is probably running traffic straight from their networks to Orange, so charging the smaller, connecting network an interconnect fee isn't out of line. However, with two large netowks, they usually just call it even. Google's customer facing network is the 2nd largest in the world, without even counting the new Kansas City service, so it would actually make more sense for Google to charge them.

If I were Google, during negotiations I would have run ads to Orange customers on the main page about Orange wanting to charge Google for bandwidth customers paid for, and point out that additional fees would make it more difficult to run a free service, possibly shutting down access. It would give Google more leverage to just say no to fees, especially if Orange is getting 100,000's of complaints. Option 2 is to charge the customers for each youtube video and explain why. If running Internet search is lucrative, then why is no one else making money on it? Microsoft is losing $1 billion or so per year, and Yahoo nearly went bankrupt.

My Android phone functions as a remote for VLC on my computer, which has network access to my entire DVD collection. It also functions as a remote for my parent's Blu-ray player and future Google Fiber television service. In addition to being a remote it can stream media to or from VLC and watch programs on the television service (2nd screen). It's nice that it can integrate with software on Linux, Windows and Apple. Try that with your iPod touch.

Why would I want to pay for a Mac Mini, and how can I control iTunes when it won't even run on my computer? It sounds like iDevices don't play well with others. There is an iTunes remote for Android if I wanted one though.

Archos makes small Android tablets similar to an iPod touch.

Profits (revenue-expenses) for a corporate division usually factors in all expenses for that revenue, so someone counting both profits and expenses for a division would be double counting the costs.

Never underestimate the power of technology in volume. People thought the x86 would never compete in high-end computing because RISC was better. As Intel's sales grew, so did their R&D. Eventually Intel was selling so many of the cheap chips they just steamrolled the competition.

Apple sells their phones and tables for a hefty profit margin, but there are market pressures for hardware at cost. It happened with consoles, and nobody tries to sell console clones anymore (e.g. Sears Tele-Games). Even PC gaming has taken a hit in market share. With hardware like Kindle Fire and Nexus, the shift is likely to be starting in phones and tablets, so the market for selling smartphone and tablet hardware at a profit could be shrinking. Regardless of what you think of iOS and Android the Nexus line is bad news for Apple's cushy profit margins (even with availability problems), especially when Google gets involved in providing network access (e.g. possible Google & Dish deal, municipal Wi-Fi, fiber Internet service, etc.). Apple's $800 phone looks competitive now with the $100-$200 + contract, but with cheap phones and access plans, the contract could be costing $50/month over competition. $1400 vs $300 over 2 years for similar hardware is a big difference, not to mention the extra freedom you get with the cheaper device. I could already get by with Wi-Fi only connection on my phone, and the biggest problem would be switching to just my Google Voice number. $300 for 2 years of semi-mobile phone service doesn't sound too bad, when I add up how much time I spend at places with Wi-Fi.

If Apple releases an iOS car audio device, they will be late to the market. Android got there, and provided an open platform that car makers would love (pack in car features). A surprising number of people I know, even music lovers, like talk radio in their car, which makes fancy setups a harder sell and explainds all the chatter during the morning drive time. Over a decade ago, there were premium car audio computers that would function as a hard drive based mp3 player, and stream content from the LAN while parked in the garage, using wifi, yet there hasn't been much traction for newer tech besides DVD players to shut up the kids, adding an MP3 chip or adding an external audio connection. With a simple connector for a smart phone (wired or wireless) provides the features. I don't think there is a market for Apple in car audio. Peole mock Apple fans for buying every iShiny, but buying an $1000 car device to do the same thing as the $800 phone 2 feet away is more than stupid. Just add airplay, hdmi and mhl support to something cheap.

If I want to buy a song for my Android device, I can use Google music and stream it to any device with my Android app or their html5 web player. I can also check a box to selectively download music for offline play, but I have Sprint's truely unlimited data. My music consumes no space. I've been streaming music files for over a decade, and Apple sounds like a pain to manage music with this copying stuff. Having to copy music to play it is so early-mid 90's.

You hardly type anything when programming in scratch. I think it's just numbers, variable names, and maybe some strings. All the program logic is done with drag and drop code blocks, and there might even be keyboardless ways to input some of the other stuff.

The problem with programming most people will face is the level of detail and accuracy required for a computer. The human mind has a remarkable ability to understand someone when you use the wrong word, and most on the job training I've gotten was from someone who couldn't have reduced the task to an exact list of step by step instructions without pictures or demonstrations. They rightfully expect people to fill in the gaps and know what they meant. Computers don't have that feature.

I do think small scale programming would be useful and doable for a lot of professionals. Excel spreadsheets (or equivalent) would generally be a good place to start for most. You can chain together functions and logic, and possibly even some looping (at least copy and paste the operation). Something like awk or bash might be useful for someone getting a little more advanced. However complex or open-ended algorithms quickly lose most everyone. Even writing a binary tree and putting a simple algorithm in it baffled my 2nd year CS classmates at a difficult college.