But maybe less costly

Perhaps so, but do consider this : if you have say a hundred friends (a fair percentage of whom will be using android ) who have you in their contacts, ( not them in yours which ofcourse is under your control) , it would be trivial for Google to know your contact number with a high level of certainty

Yes and hence the ridiculous provisions in the TPP (as if a secret international treaty wasnt creepy enough)

For example,

"The TPP requires that signatories hold civilly liable any person who “circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work,”[115] or otherwise makes available devices or products or service that are intended to circumvent[116] or have only limited commercial purpose other than to circumvent[117] or are primarily designed to circumvent.[118] There is no requirement that the infringing party be aware of their infringement in order to be held civilly liable (no knowledge requirement). The TPP requires that signatories provide for criminal penalties for persons who engage in these activities and are found “to have engaged willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.”[119]

From wikipedia: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

It's signed but not yet ratified. It's only 16 countries or so not the whole world.

Yet.

This is obviously counter to the prevailing thought flow here, and I'm more than willing to admin that companies can exploit both H1B Visas AND the employees hired under it, but I've never seen /.ers discuss much about how it would affect overall competitiveness of American companies if they could not hire cheap labour from developing countries and bring them in. Some points I see, qualitatively are: 1) Companies in developing world will have a huge cost advantage in IT, and the more significant IT costs are to an industry/company the more significant this advantage/disadvantage will become. 2) Knowledge is generally free of country barriers, and I think most people here would want it that way, which means it is foreseeable that IT products & companies can develop in developing countries at a much lower cost and export it cheaper compared to the same product made say in developed countries. H1B to some extend mitigates this risk in developed countries, and also pulls out the better talent from the developing countries inhibiting , also to some extend, actual product/mature IT product companies growth in these companies. I'm talking about something like having an MS or GGL in US with H1B talent being more competitive to a potential Indian MS or GGL - you dont really hear about (yet) an Indian company with a fully developed OS or IT Product as much as its industry size suggests. I'm sure there are counter points that would likely mitigate against these risks, but I think these points could have a real , if not absolute impact to the industry as well, and in that sense, H1B might be doing good for the developed countries ( since we're talking about H1B, I suppose I should just come out and say the US..)

The link represented as a UN FAO article is by syngenta. Pesticide manufacturer. just saying..l

If there is a sentence the Canadian government is telling its citizens it would be " FUCK YOU !! "

For one, a it enables a fairly simple and quick Remote wipe: delete the encryption key and remote wipe is done in a second.

Woah.. lets not go on to full Singapore bashing mode .. the country (city-state) has achieved some incredible things.. not least of which is continued economic prosperity amidst the carnarge, as well as an incredibly safe, stable and clean living habitat for the populace. Ofcourse there are gripes, freedom of speech does not stand up to the western definition of it..but atleast they are pretty honest about it. The city and its government has punched far above its weight. I think it would only be fair to analyse the state of affairs in that context.

One fifth of the US IT spending may buy a lot more in China.... both in labour and in material...

"Contract manufacturers can generally produce computers more cheaply because their entire operations are narrowly focused on finding efficiencies in manufacturing, as opposed to large firms like Dell, which must also balance marketing and other considerations." - So Are Marketing and Other (Design, Reliability, QC? ) considerations no longer important?