How popular is CM really? I mean, apart from your anecdotal data that your small group of acquaintances all use it, what's the actual market share of CM?

CM appeals to a niche market of people that like to tinker with their phone and maintain absolute control of everything from start to finish. It is very good that CM exists, I used to run it too. However, a smartphone is no longer aimed at the most technologically inclined or the tinkerer. Most people don't need or even want full control of everything, they want something that works well with minimal maintenance, and that's what people get with an iPhone. That is why an integrated Google app suite is necessary for Android to succeed in the non technically inclined general population.

You're full of BS, we all know those strategies work very efficiently. Remember how the Pirate Bay was shut down years ago and never, ever came back...

The legal owner of the copyright is most likely the person who took the picture, either the celebrity herself in the case of a selfie, or her boyfriend for non-selfies.

Basically, they're trying to build a full address book of everybody in the leaks.

While I can't argue with you about the other ones, this one here is utter bullshit. If you stumble into the Emergency Room with an emergency, you will be treated accordingly. What people complain about is having to wait 17 hours in the ER because they sprained an ankle.

On one occasion, I ended up in the ER with a life-threatening acute heart condition. I was brought in an ambulance, and the doctor was actually waiting for me rather than me waiting for him... that's like negative wait time. On a second occasion (not so long after the first episode), I also had heart troubles but I managed to get to the ER on my own, and the nurse that does the triage sent me right into a room where a doctor arrived within 2 minutes. That is what the emergency room is about. Emergencies.

The fact that people end up in the ER for very trivial stuff is a symptom of a system that is utterly broken in many other ways (lack of family doctors, long waiting lists for specialists, and so on), but the ER itself is the one thing in the whole system that works exactly as intended, but it receives too much undeserved flak because that's what the population actually see, while they do not understand the failings of the bigger system above it.

Two trips to the ER which saved my life, a heart surgery that stabilized my condition, allows me a high quality of life and lets me contribute to society, all that without paying a dime. That is what the vaunted Canadian healthcare system is all about. By getting me back on my feet as a productive member of society, I have already paid back way more in income tax and other fiscal contributions than what the whole ordeal could have cost, so it is a net gain for society.

No, it does not. The second amendment ensures "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", because "A well regulated militia [is] necessary to the security of a free state." (Emphasis mine)

It says so, right there, in the amendment itself. Regulated. The right to keep and bear arms was never meant to be a free-for-all. It is for the purpose of forming a militia in a time when a state cannot raise an army. It was never about self-defense.

You've been robbed at gunpoint twice, yet you are still here to tell about it

Had you had a gun of your own, what would you have done? Pulled it while the other guy pointed his gun on you? How mentally stable were those people? The odds of him shooting you would have been much higher if you attempted to pull a gun on him. You really want to take such a chance with your own life, just so you can have revenge and kill the robber yourself?

If that statement was anywhere close to being even remotely true, jurisdictions with highly restrictive gun-control laws would exhibit a much higher crime rate than the US. Up here in Canada, Most people are not allowed to carry a weapon on a daily basis. That is a well known fact, so every robber knows that everybody is a prime target unable to defend themselves. Why am I not being robbed on a daily basis if the big bad government is making me so vulnerable with those gun control laws?

Yet, what is the actual backlash of all this? How many of us slashdotters will change our consuption habits because of this? And we're but a very small minority. Even on Facebook, the outrage will last all of 5 minutes

Companies do this because the risk is zero. If it works, they win. If it doesn't people will talk about it once, then everything is back to normal. There are no downsides to trying.

Exactly. Let's not forget the second amendment calls for the need of a well regulated militia. It says so right there, in clear words, in the original text, that the right to bear arms has to come with regulation. It's those who want to buy all sorts of weapons without any regulation that are butchering the constitution.

A single licence seems to go for $500. A $500 piece of software will never be mainstream.

Didn't Windows at some point actually have a clicking sound come out of the speakers when you clicked to select something? Such a sound would still play with a touchpad. Now that was a real annoyance.

Yes, let's go buy new iPhones which will read your fingerprints and associate them with your name...

I'll just leave this here : http://xkcd.com/864/

You need to actually read the reviews for those 5-star ratings. They're clearly ironic 5-stars :

You're comparing apples and oranges. The Apple app store and the Google Play store will never have a vaild comparison for revenue generated, because some decisions are not up to neither Apple nor Google. An earlier post mentionned how Rovio and EA were overrepresented in the top sellers, and they are probably responsible for most of the revenue generated in the Apple app store. Heck, just Angry Birds, including all its remakes, probably makes a significant share of that revenue.

Rovio is itself responsible for a huge part of the difference between the revenues on Apple app store and Google Play. Why? Angry Birds, priced at $0.99 on the Apple app store, is free on Google Play. The exact same game, being downloaded millions upon millions of times on both platforms, generate infinitely more revenue on the Apple app store for the simple reason that they're giving away the game for free on Google Play.

They probably have good reasons to do that. They might have considered that people on Android are cheapstakes and wouldn't pay a dollar for a game and they prefer to be ad-based. Or maybe they figured they'd make more from in-game ads on Android than with an ad-free purchase, while on iOS the game is different. Either way, we can't compare $$$ from the Apple app store and Google Play, because they are not the same, and often times, the same company will sell the same game very differently on both stores.

We already do have a $0.50 piece. It's been minted since 1870 and still is, but for some reason, people hoard them instead of spending them.