Jolla could be the true third (or fourth) ecosystem by using Open Source to the full extent. Include a slightly curated collection of open source repositories to get their phone full of content. I.e. it should be free to signup and they should just make sure there is a semi-respectable community behind the repo (with access cut if turns to piratism, child porn, etc). The only chance of success they have IMO is to get the best of FOSS software (and content) ported to them. They will never attract developers as an "Android alternative without users".

They should have made a huge startup dialog "Do you want to be tracked" and achieved 90+% block without these complaints. They might still have ignored it but at least it would have been clearly a DNT violation

Imagine the scene:
Our heroine has snuck into the villains office and starts to hack into the computer to find evidence of the crime. After a some furious minutes of password guessing and file browsing, she finds the incriminating file! Then, just as she prints the file, there is an error of print failure. Our hero starts a browser and starts to google for an updated driver. After a few misses, she finds one in the manufacturers Taiwanese website. But after installing the driver, the error still persists. She returns to Google and starts looking for other people with similar issues. After 20 minutes of searching she finds an obscure tip in the forums to disable PCL-emulation in the registry. After changing the setting she reboots the computer and we nervously wait for another 10 minutes for the login to complete and document to reopen.. It works! The document prints! Our heroin snatches the print and slips out of the side door just before the villain re-enters
Now that's entertainment!

...and just like Series60 (=Symbian) and Windows Mobile to a smaller extent. Nokia is really the saddest example as their "lack of platform" was a strategic choice to let product lines "compete & innovate" between themselves leading to incompatible versions of nearly identical OS & HW. Androids problem is really that it's so "bare bones" that OEM's have to implement many things themselves leading to incompatibilities where they don't have to exist. Apple approach (one OS for all iterations) is clearly the best, but only possible in a single vendor environment.

Don't you get it, that's a migration path right there:
1) Migrate existing COBOL code to .NET
2) Start migrating modules one by one to C# or ASP.NET or what ever makes sense (even keeping some in COBOL)
3) Start saving money on maintenance and being more future proof

It's still a hell of a migration project but significantly better than reimplementing from scratch or having that same system running in 10 years.. :/

You can usually make your SO happy by saying something in the lines of "I think we've saved enough percentages for today, honey"

1) Only applies to 2G/GSM, not 3G/UMTS
2) This has been known pretty much from the beginning, and updating has been started years ago. As said in TFA, only news of this is the plan to make it publicly available.

The point is not to be virtual reality, but rather "wiimote v2". I.e. it will allow new types of gameplay for casual gamers that don't enjoy (=can't handle) button mushing with a pad. It's MS's response/evolution to Nintendo's innovation on motion controlled gaming. It's not going to revolutionalize gaming, but it's big enough for Sony to realize they can't be only one without.