My message was flagged as potential spam and needing moderator approval, hence the delay and inconsistency

Did you by any chance download this copy of Windows from a torrent? Pirated copies sometimes come with "extras"

Which company is that? A humble Googler would like to know

I suspect they placed this rule to restrict the publishing of "hello world" test apps, a DDoS on the store if you will. Our apps are as niche as it can get, and we've had no problems whatsoever.

The company I work for has several apps in the App Store and Google Play that are only useful to the several hundred customers that have bought its hardware devices - the company's actual product. We essentially use the app stores as an easy and familiar deployment mechanism for mobile apps. No app is really "universally applicable", not even the phone, SMS and clock apps that come with your smartphone - you could just as well use Skype/Viber/Messenger for calls and messages and have a wrist watch for the time.

This is why you should care: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2990203/security/aclu-orwellian-citizen-score-chinas-credit-score-system-is-a-warning-for-americans.html[^] It may not be the case in the West (yet), but there is an ever-present danger that it will. And then it will be too late to question it

For Academic Purposes (F.A.P.)

Yes, that's from Dilbert

True that!

It is VERY usable. Here's an app I wrote entirely with AIDE and the Hacker's keyboard, while sitting on the toilet (no kidding): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orlinrgeorgiev.converter[^] In fact, I'm doing most of my side/hobby projects in it. I'm also doing some serious C++ Android NDK stuff with it - 3D, OpenGL, shaders, etc., no problem about it. I also recommend getting SGit for a git client (sadly, all the SVN clients suck, including the premium versions), File Expert for a file manager and aGrep for in-file word searching. You'll be pouring code in no time.

iOS developers often use Windows machines with virtual Mac OS X guests

But it somehow tops all language popularity rankings? Yeah, those probably have a typo...

Just a wild guess: the executable is several megabytes, with several dozen more for DLLs of auxiliary libraries. Most of the other things are audio, video, meshes and, most importantly *textures*. Those things really get huge and there is no meaningful way to reduce them in size if you don't want blocky graphics. Trust me, I'm a (game) engineer. As for VS, there is only one reason for it to be this big - code bloat of useless features that are very rarely used, but require multiple external libraries to be included

s2bert, this is remarkably well said!

"We" when it actually means "you", like in "We have to do this and that" and "We need to be proactive about this". Also all the buzzwords in this: http://www.geekherocomic.com/2008/08/25/bob-the-manager/[^]

Now imagine a totalitarian regime comes to power in your country. A regime just like the Chinese or Iranian. Oh, how would they love to know what every single person that might be against them is up to! Imagine all this knowledge in their hands - who is participating in protests, who might be politically active, who is telling political jokes. It doesn't event matter if you are politically active to care about this. I read an old German lymeric from the WW2 era that went something like this: When the Nazis came for the communists, I didn't speak up, I wasn't a communist. When the Nazis came for the social democrats, I didn't speak up, I wasn't a social democrat. When the Nazis came for the jews, I didn't speak up, I wasn't a jew. When the Nazis came for me, there was noone left to speak up. You might think this can never happen in your country, but look at what is happening in the US right now, with all this terrorist witch-hunting! Knowledge is power! Knowing everything about everyone is the -ultimate- power! Noone should be allowed to possess this kind of power! And this is why I care A LOT about who is tracking my activities on the web. UPDATE: you might also be wondering what a totalitarian regime has to do with Google/Facebook. Simple: those companies are expected to conform to law. The regime could simply force them to hand in all of their accumulated knowledge about their users.

Bill Gates? He basically retired quite a while ago, don't you read the news? As for the quality of Microsoft code, Apple's Xcode has just crashed on me for like the 30th time today, 200th for this week. And the guys behind me are having an awful time porting the game to Android. Sorry, but I'd surely like for Windows and its off-shoots to stay around for as long as possible.

The only problem is that usually every last loser on the team wants to be an "architect" and boss others around. Power corrupts, even tiny bits of it, like the honor of being "first among equals"

95%, AFAIK

Linux is worth something only to people whose time is worth nothing.