It's posts like that this that make me really smile. Science -- the faithful and playful (but expensive) dog often blamed for farting during dinner even when it was one of the diners -- is responsible for directly raising someone's... and hopefully a lot more people's, over time... quality of life.
I know what's going to happen, though. Some religious person/group will end up trying to take credit. People will say, "God cured him of his HIV"... well, no, the Delta CCR5 mutation cured him. Modern science cured him. To say that "Well, God guides the hand of the doctors..." is a nothing statement that only makes sense if you assume God exists, but if you're going to assume anything why not just counter-assume that Santa Claus cured him.
(weary voice) Go on world, prove me wrong. I'd just love it if you could prove me wrong this time...
Google already owns everything about me and knows all there is to know, so why not?
I'm kinda serious here -- unless you basically boycott the Internet and hide whenever the Streetview car comes, there's no way you've never contributed to Google's vast knowledge base. It's just a fact of modern life that Google knows as much about you as you're willing to give, which for most people including me is basically everything.
And the sky hasn't fallen. Google is tech company run by tech people; they're not selling your personal info to the Chinese, or cracking into the Pentagon, and in fact they have a vested interest in making sure that people feel safe and secure when using their products. If massive scandals started appearing where Google was doing vastly improper things with people's data, people would stop using their services. So far that hasn't happened.
If you don't trust Google, you pretty much can't trust Facebook (duh), Microsoft (puppet of the MAN), the Linux Kernel Team (Honeypot #1!), Slashdot (moar like Slashvertisingdot right?), any other search engine, email (non-encrypted asynchronous communication stored in plain text at both ends? No thanks!), any chat program (the NSA listens in!).
Yes, it will. It's currently about 40k words in and when it's done (this year hopefully!) it'll be available on Kindle, Nook. B&N, a few other places. And as non-DRM'd PDF if people want it, and possibly even 100% plain text version if people really want to go that far.
Extra taxes on the very wealthy is all very well, but it's kinda like fixing the dripping tap in the bathroom while your swimming pool disgorges hundreds of liters an hour out into the backyard, flooding everything, killing all the plants, ruining the carpet in the rear of the house and drawing the ire of your neighbors who suffer for it too.
And then claiming on top of it all fixing the tap is class warfare.
Honestly, I think the biggest difference between the two universes was that Star Trek, DS9 excluded and not in a bad way, was generally about hope. That's really the central, core tenant of the show.
In the future, all these worries and burdens and injustices we have now will be behind us. For example, it said (in the 60's) that if you're a woman, there's a place for you on the bridge, just like everyone else. If you're black, eventually nobody will care. If you're blind, you can still be chief engineer of a Starship.
I think this is why Trek appeals so much to the GLBT crowd. The idea -- the hope -- that in the future, life will be governed by tolerance and reason. That there's a place for everyone and replicated food means nobody goes hungry.
Star Wars represents, I think, a more grim picture of the future (again, not in a bad way). There's injustice and authoritarianism everywhere. People will kill you for old debts, for being a member of an almost extinct religion, or for opposing the state. There are wars spanning across solar systems. There is money, corruption, politics, and weapons of mass destruction.
For people who prefer this world, I can imagine why it's appealing. It's adventurous, engaging and realistic; as we can see in the modern day Republican party people don't abandon their preconceptions and hatreds just because technology marches on. In Trek there's no money, but honestly people want to make a buck; the basic idea of currency has been with us for so long we rightly can't imagine a world without it.
So what do I prefer?
I love them both, because I agree with William. They are different, and they give a totally separate picture of the future.
I'm currently writing a sci-fi book myself (shameless self promotion herethe prologue and whole first act is CC-BY-NC-SA so feel free to read it, remix it, share it around if you want) and these are the issues I think about. For example, one of the long-running issues I've had with Trek is... If everything's so egalitarian and racism is a thing of the past, then where are all the Chinese people (1\4 of the world's population)? Instead of the 'token asian', shouldn't each ship have a token white guy?
Accordingly, the majority of the crew of the ships in Lacuna are Chinese. Unlike Trek, people didn't give up their nationalities in this future; and nationalities tend to clump together when all mixed up, like oil and water. Old terrestrial grudges show up occasionally too, something that Trek was only able to explore in allegory.
Sci-fi is such a fun and vibrant setting to write in, in particular because of this tradeoff of hope vs realism. The reimagined BSG, for example, took that far to the extreme of realism and was brilliant; Trek took it the other way. Star Wars is somewhere in the middle.
You've obviously never heard about Wikipedia's Poke'mon problem. At one stage, there was more about Poke'mon (as in, a ludicrously large amount more) on Wikipedia than there was about World War II.
Hence the creation of Bulbapedia. The Poke'mon Problem probably still holds though.
I'll add my voice to the chorus of people supporting nuclear power as the only currently viable solution to meet the growing energy needs of the future. It's just madness at this stage to suggest that any other technology can be:
A) As environmentally friendly. B) As cheap. C) As reliable. D) As adaptable (goes anywhere in the world).
Yeah, I know. Amanda Hocking is totally pathetic, with her completely self-made millions and millions of dollars and legions of loyal fans. Not to mention Amazon, who sold more e-books this year than real books must be truly regretting their business focus.
Keep on trucking, Mister Anonymous Coward. Keep on trucking.
See, if I was George Lucas right now, I'd do what I did with my novel; either implicitly or explicitly make the entire Star Wars universe creative commons, non-commercial, share alike.
In my upcoming e-book Lacuna: Demons of the Void I made the first three chapters and the prologue available (here!) under that licence. What that means is that if I get rich and batshit loco and claim that only I, in my infinite genius, can truly understand this special snowflake of a world I've created and begin a vicious crackdown on my fans... well, my fans can tell me to fuck off.
Hell, they could even write a story where my own characters tell me to fuck off.
I enjoy story with my games. Games like Serious Sam never appealed to me, and I got bored of the multiplayer content of Call of Duty pretty quick; I was really only in it for the stories. Yes, I played the "No Russian" mission and yes it affected me, but isn't that what we play games *for*? To explore things we couldn't explore in real life?
I don't like the idea that there's no consequences for my actions. The games I've really enjoyed playing: Fallout, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate II, KOTR, KOTR2, etc etc etc. Games where what you do matters. Games that allow you to force-push civilians off cliffs, but where there consequences for that which you probably won't like.
People argue about the moral issues behind putting killable civilians into video games. I counter that there's a moral issue with *removing* them. To display this false, clean image of war where everyone with their name in red is a bad guy and everyone with their name in green is a likeable hero really doesn't do it for me.
Things start to get ludicrous in games like Fable 2, where a major plot point is your character being almost killed by gunshot as a child, but then as an adult the game won't let you harm children yourself. What the...? Surely the game designers missed a huge potential story arc here; if you kill a child, later, you could (say) have that child's ghost come back to haunt you in a dream. The ghost could point out the hypocrisy of what you've done, and remind you that you're now part of the cycle of violence -- child abusers were often, themselves, abused. This to me is far more interesting and thought provoking than "children are immortal, except when it's you, then it's fair game".
When I have kids, I want them to learn that there are consequences for their actions. No, I won't give them Modern Warfare 2 before they're ready, but I will search out video games such as Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2 and KOTR 2 where the actions and choices they make affect them in the future, in ways they may find hard to see at the time.
That, I think, is a much better lesson for them than "KILL EVERYONE AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT."
It'll be enforced almost never, except against people who earn a personal grudge from someone in authority. Turn down that creepy ex-politician for a date? Get a knock on the door from the state sponsored copyright cops. Film a cop beating up a homeless guy and post the video on YouTube? Your NAS gets seized by her majesty's finest.
It's like criminalizing swearing. Since everyone except extreme outliers is guilty of the crime at some point or another, it's not possible to enforce it properly so the law becomes just something else to throw at people who piss off people with power.
I'll admit, it does seem remote, especially if you're dealing with time periods of 50,000 years or so. What do you think the likelihood of this event occurring is? A million in one chance, per year? One in a billion per century?
Let's go even further, way, way out there. What if it was one in 10^24 per 13 billion years?
Just so we're clear on the numbers we're using, that's 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance per 13,000,000,000 years.
This is really, really, really, really, really unlikely. However, statistically speaking, this means that there are... dum dum dum...! 9 planets in the entire universe where this has occurred so far. Earth is one of them.:)
This, of course, assumes the lifespan of the universe to be 13 billion years (convenient) and the number of stars in the observable universe to be 10^24. Which, based on our current scientific estimates, is about right. It could be off by, say, five or six planets either way -- although we're only dealing with the observable universe, so there could be many many many many many more.
The scientific world is an amazing, wonderful, powerful, inspirational thing that is just so incredible in its majesty and beauty that it seems so very belittling to claim that there's a divine hand behind this truly unique and awesome thing called existence.
Bonus question: If the universe created God, what created God? If X, why can't X apply to "the universe at whole"? If NOT X, then why can't the universe be held to the same standard? "It always was, and always will be..."
I'll admit, it does seem remote, especially if you're dealing with time periods of 50,000 years or so. What do you think the likelihood of this event occurring is? A million in one chance, per year? One in a billion per century?
Let's go even further, way, way out there. What if it was one in 10^24 per 13 billion years?
Just so we're clear on the numbers we're using, that's 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance per 13,000,000,000 years.
This is really, really, really, really, really unlikely. However, statistically speaking, this means that there are... dum dum dum...! 9 planets in the entire universe where this has occurred so far. Earth is one of them.:)
This, of course, assumes the lifespan of the universe to be 13 billion years and the number of stars in the observable universe to be 10^24. Which, based on our current scientific estimates, is about right give or take (see sources). It could be off by, say, five or six planets either way -- although we're only dealing with the *observable* universe, so there could be many many many many many more.
The scientific world is an amazing, wonderful, powerful, inspirational thing that is just so incredible in its majesty and beauty that it seems so very belittling to claim that there's a divine hand behind this truly unique and awesome thing called existence.
Bonus question: If the universe created God, what created God? If X, why can't X apply to "the universe at whole"? If NOT X, then why can't the universe be held to the same standard? "It always was, and always will be..."
The nutcase Young Earth Creationalists over at Conservapedia will be happy! Too bad we couldn't prove it was 6,000 years old, but don't worry, science is always eventually wrong so eventually someone will prove it's as young as we say!
... why people just accept that in order to do anything cool with an Android phone you have to jailbreak it first.
Among my friends there's about a 25/75 split between Android users and iPhone users (disclaimer: I've got an iPhone). Honestly, I don't really get the fanboy fuelled 'hate-dom' that seems to flare up whenever we get into a debate about the respective merits of our devices, especially because we're arguing about the superior brand of telephone. Really...?
I do find it strange, though, that despite Android phones having superior cameras, consumer-friendly features including the ability to replace your battery, better and faster processors, more ram and physical keyboards (in all ways, physically, superior to iPhones), whenever a debate comes... it's inevitable that one of the main arguments (usually the first one) that's bought out by the Android users is "It's open and it's free as in freedom", usually said with this smug grin, as though the iPhone is not. They're right, of course, but...
But then I ask something like, "Can I replace the 'telephone' app freely then?" and they nod eagerly and say, "Yep, you totally can, you just jailbreak it like this and-"...
I can accept that Android has a great deal many superior features to the iPhone, but I eventually went with iPhone because it had the best user interface, painless upgrade process, everything about it 'just works' (unless it doesn't, such as 3GS wifi-access-point-mode), and the app-store is by far the best. Some people say, "If you're not willing to tinker with your devices you're not a real geek", at which point I tell them that it's just a telephone and I expect it, and its apps, to just work, all the time. It should not need to be tinkered with.
I just don't understand why when the inevitable fanboy war comes, that the very first feature that seems to be produced is "It's open if you jailbreak!". I mean, isn't that the very definition of jailbreaking? Making something closed open? (and yes, iPhones can do it to...)
Good question. Very insightful. But how far do you go?
How would you know that if they released the code that this code is what's really running on your phone? How do you know there isn't a backdoor inserted post compilation?
How do you know that Linux isn't just a shell around an obscenely stenographed copy of Windows? Do you inspect every single line of code that goes into your machine personally? How do you know the code's not kept in a tiny hardware ROM on all modern chipsets and injected into Linux during boot? Do to read them all, personally? Well you should!
The sheeple must know! It's a plot by the Skull and Bones society, the Illuminati and the masons, IE9 has links to stuff they put in our water and Windows mobile uses fillings in your teeth as an antenna so the greys can track you from space. Soylent Windows 7 is people! Oh God in heaven it's PEOPLE!...
More seriously, yes, it is possible they wouldn't use that actual code in their phones... but Occom suggests they probably do, while Hanlon agrees but clarifies if they aren't it's probably a slightly different version due to that idiot new developer in section 8 that ran the wrong script.
Eventually, at some point, you just have to either accept what someone's saying or accept there's no trust there and move on. Keep in mind it's practically impossible to avoid cell-tower based snooping and tracking, making this whole point useless because the NSA etc don't need your phone to cooperate for them to get what they want.
You can substitute "pay a tax" instead of "pay a fine" if you wish.:) I support legalization and taxation of soft drugs, it was just an (admittedly a little clumsy) analogy.
Yeah, that was one of the ones I was thinking of but I was specifically looking for examples of copyright infringement. You are completely correct though...
Slashdot Mirror
AHEM. It's not a BASEMENT, it's a DUNGEON.
Science has good taste in men, unfortunately... believe me. I've been barking up that tree for ages. ...
I'll be in my bunk.
It's posts like that this that make me really smile. Science -- the faithful and playful (but expensive) dog often blamed for farting during dinner even when it was one of the diners -- is responsible for directly raising someone's... and hopefully a lot more people's, over time... quality of life.
I know what's going to happen, though. Some religious person/group will end up trying to take credit. People will say, "God cured him of his HIV"... well, no, the Delta CCR5 mutation cured him. Modern science cured him. To say that "Well, God guides the hand of the doctors..." is a nothing statement that only makes sense if you assume God exists, but if you're going to assume anything why not just counter-assume that Santa Claus cured him.
(weary voice) Go on world, prove me wrong. I'd just love it if you could prove me wrong this time...
Google already owns everything about me and knows all there is to know, so why not?
I'm kinda serious here -- unless you basically boycott the Internet and hide whenever the Streetview car comes, there's no way you've never contributed to Google's vast knowledge base. It's just a fact of modern life that Google knows as much about you as you're willing to give, which for most people including me is basically everything.
And the sky hasn't fallen. Google is tech company run by tech people; they're not selling your personal info to the Chinese, or cracking into the Pentagon, and in fact they have a vested interest in making sure that people feel safe and secure when using their products. If massive scandals started appearing where Google was doing vastly improper things with people's data, people would stop using their services. So far that hasn't happened.
If you don't trust Google, you pretty much can't trust Facebook (duh), Microsoft (puppet of the MAN), the Linux Kernel Team (Honeypot #1!), Slashdot (moar like Slashvertisingdot right?), any other search engine, email (non-encrypted asynchronous communication stored in plain text at both ends? No thanks!), any chat program (the NSA listens in!).
You pretty much can't be on the Internet.
Yes, it will. It's currently about 40k words in and when it's done (this year hopefully!) it'll be available on Kindle, Nook. B&N, a few other places. And as non-DRM'd PDF if people want it, and possibly even 100% plain text version if people really want to go that far.
I agree with that. While I think Firefly was beautiful, the distinct lack of Chinese people really kinda broke the illusion for me.
Note that Kaylee was originally written as Chinese but Jewel came along and blew them away so much they gave the role to her.
How come GM can make $50 billion of dollars in profit and pay zero tax? AND receive bailout money? (source = http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/03/gm-tax-break-could-be-wor_n_778300.html)
Extra taxes on the very wealthy is all very well, but it's kinda like fixing the dripping tap in the bathroom while your swimming pool disgorges hundreds of liters an hour out into the backyard, flooding everything, killing all the plants, ruining the carpet in the rear of the house and drawing the ire of your neighbors who suffer for it too.
And then claiming on top of it all fixing the tap is class warfare.
Honestly, I think the biggest difference between the two universes was that Star Trek, DS9 excluded and not in a bad way, was generally about hope. That's really the central, core tenant of the show.
In the future, all these worries and burdens and injustices we have now will be behind us. For example, it said (in the 60's) that if you're a woman, there's a place for you on the bridge, just like everyone else. If you're black, eventually nobody will care. If you're blind, you can still be chief engineer of a Starship.
I think this is why Trek appeals so much to the GLBT crowd. The idea -- the hope -- that in the future, life will be governed by tolerance and reason. That there's a place for everyone and replicated food means nobody goes hungry.
Star Wars represents, I think, a more grim picture of the future (again, not in a bad way). There's injustice and authoritarianism everywhere. People will kill you for old debts, for being a member of an almost extinct religion, or for opposing the state. There are wars spanning across solar systems. There is money, corruption, politics, and weapons of mass destruction.
For people who prefer this world, I can imagine why it's appealing. It's adventurous, engaging and realistic; as we can see in the modern day Republican party people don't abandon their preconceptions and hatreds just because technology marches on. In Trek there's no money, but honestly people want to make a buck; the basic idea of currency has been with us for so long we rightly can't imagine a world without it.
So what do I prefer?
I love them both, because I agree with William. They are different, and they give a totally separate picture of the future.
I'm currently writing a sci-fi book myself (shameless self promotion herethe prologue and whole first act is CC-BY-NC-SA so feel free to read it, remix it, share it around if you want) and these are the issues I think about. For example, one of the long-running issues I've had with Trek is... If everything's so egalitarian and racism is a thing of the past, then where are all the Chinese people (1\4 of the world's population)? Instead of the 'token asian', shouldn't each ship have a token white guy?
Accordingly, the majority of the crew of the ships in Lacuna are Chinese. Unlike Trek, people didn't give up their nationalities in this future; and nationalities tend to clump together when all mixed up, like oil and water. Old terrestrial grudges show up occasionally too, something that Trek was only able to explore in allegory.
Sci-fi is such a fun and vibrant setting to write in, in particular because of this tradeoff of hope vs realism. The reimagined BSG, for example, took that far to the extreme of realism and was brilliant; Trek took it the other way. Star Wars is somewhere in the middle.
You've obviously never heard about Wikipedia's Poke'mon problem. At one stage, there was more about Poke'mon (as in, a ludicrously large amount more) on Wikipedia than there was about World War II.
Hence the creation of Bulbapedia. The Poke'mon Problem probably still holds though.
That didn't work so well for Eli Wallas, did it?
I'll add my voice to the chorus of people supporting nuclear power as the only currently viable solution to meet the growing energy needs of the future. It's just madness at this stage to suggest that any other technology can be:
A) As environmentally friendly.
B) As cheap.
C) As reliable.
D) As adaptable (goes anywhere in the world).
Yeah, I know. Amanda Hocking is totally pathetic, with her completely self-made millions and millions of dollars and legions of loyal fans. Not to mention Amazon, who sold more e-books this year than real books must be truly regretting their business focus.
Keep on trucking, Mister Anonymous Coward. Keep on trucking.
See, if I was George Lucas right now, I'd do what I did with my novel; either implicitly or explicitly make the entire Star Wars universe creative commons, non-commercial, share alike.
In my upcoming e-book Lacuna: Demons of the Void I made the first three chapters and the prologue available (here!) under that licence. What that means is that if I get rich and batshit loco and claim that only I, in my infinite genius, can truly understand this special snowflake of a world I've created and begin a vicious crackdown on my fans... well, my fans can tell me to fuck off.
Hell, they could even write a story where my own characters tell me to fuck off.
That'd be funny. I'd read that.
Pretty much what it says on the tin.
I enjoy story with my games. Games like Serious Sam never appealed to me, and I got bored of the multiplayer content of Call of Duty pretty quick; I was really only in it for the stories. Yes, I played the "No Russian" mission and yes it affected me, but isn't that what we play games *for*? To explore things we couldn't explore in real life?
I don't like the idea that there's no consequences for my actions. The games I've really enjoyed playing: Fallout, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate II, KOTR, KOTR2, etc etc etc. Games where what you do matters. Games that allow you to force-push civilians off cliffs, but where there consequences for that which you probably won't like.
People argue about the moral issues behind putting killable civilians into video games. I counter that there's a moral issue with *removing* them. To display this false, clean image of war where everyone with their name in red is a bad guy and everyone with their name in green is a likeable hero really doesn't do it for me.
Things start to get ludicrous in games like Fable 2, where a major plot point is your character being almost killed by gunshot as a child, but then as an adult the game won't let you harm children yourself. What the...? Surely the game designers missed a huge potential story arc here; if you kill a child, later, you could (say) have that child's ghost come back to haunt you in a dream. The ghost could point out the hypocrisy of what you've done, and remind you that you're now part of the cycle of violence -- child abusers were often, themselves, abused. This to me is far more interesting and thought provoking than "children are immortal, except when it's you, then it's fair game".
When I have kids, I want them to learn that there are consequences for their actions. No, I won't give them Modern Warfare 2 before they're ready, but I will search out video games such as Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2 and KOTR 2 where the actions and choices they make affect them in the future, in ways they may find hard to see at the time.
That, I think, is a much better lesson for them than "KILL EVERYONE AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT."
It'll be enforced almost never, except against people who earn a personal grudge from someone in authority. Turn down that creepy ex-politician for a date? Get a knock on the door from the state sponsored copyright cops. Film a cop beating up a homeless guy and post the video on YouTube? Your NAS gets seized by her majesty's finest.
It's like criminalizing swearing. Since everyone except extreme outliers is guilty of the crime at some point or another, it's not possible to enforce it properly so the law becomes just something else to throw at people who piss off people with power.
Done and done.
I'll admit, it does seem remote, especially if you're dealing with time periods of 50,000 years or so. What do you think the likelihood of this event occurring is? A million in one chance, per year? One in a billion per century?
Let's go even further, way, way out there. What if it was one in 10^24 per 13 billion years?
Just so we're clear on the numbers we're using, that's 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance per 13,000,000,000 years.
This is really, really, really, really, really unlikely. However, statistically speaking, this means that there are... dum dum dum...! 9 planets in the entire universe where this has occurred so far. Earth is one of them. :)
This, of course, assumes the lifespan of the universe to be 13 billion years (convenient) and the number of stars in the observable universe to be 10^24. Which, based on our current scientific estimates, is about right. It could be off by, say, five or six planets either way -- although we're only dealing with the observable universe, so there could be many many many many many more.
The scientific world is an amazing, wonderful, powerful, inspirational thing that is just so incredible in its majesty and beauty that it seems so very belittling to claim that there's a divine hand behind this truly unique and awesome thing called existence.
Bonus question: If the universe created God, what created God? If X, why can't X apply to "the universe at whole"? If NOT X, then why can't the universe be held to the same standard? "It always was, and always will be..."
Further reading:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Improbable_things_happen
http://www.symphonyofscience.com/
Sources:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
I'll admit, it does seem remote, especially if you're dealing with time periods of 50,000 years or so. What do you think the likelihood of this event occurring is? A million in one chance, per year? One in a billion per century?
Let's go even further, way, way out there. What if it was one in 10^24 per 13 billion years?
Just so we're clear on the numbers we're using, that's 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance per 13,000,000,000 years.
This is really, really, really, really, really unlikely. However, statistically speaking, this means that there are... dum dum dum...! 9 planets in the entire universe where this has occurred so far. Earth is one of them. :)
This, of course, assumes the lifespan of the universe to be 13 billion years and the number of stars in the observable universe to be 10^24. Which, based on our current scientific estimates, is about right give or take (see sources). It could be off by, say, five or six planets either way -- although we're only dealing with the *observable* universe, so there could be many many many many many more.
The scientific world is an amazing, wonderful, powerful, inspirational thing that is just so incredible in its majesty and beauty that it seems so very belittling to claim that there's a divine hand behind this truly unique and awesome thing called existence.
Bonus question: If the universe created God, what created God? If X, why can't X apply to "the universe at whole"? If NOT X, then why can't the universe be held to the same standard? "It always was, and always will be..."
Further reading:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Improbable_things_happen
http://www.symphonyofscience.com/
Sources:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
/g brb bombing
The nutcase Young Earth Creationalists over at Conservapedia will be happy! Too bad we couldn't prove it was 6,000 years old, but don't worry, science is always eventually wrong so eventually someone will prove it's as young as we say!
... why people just accept that in order to do anything cool with an Android phone you have to jailbreak it first.
Among my friends there's about a 25/75 split between Android users and iPhone users (disclaimer: I've got an iPhone). Honestly, I don't really get the fanboy fuelled 'hate-dom' that seems to flare up whenever we get into a debate about the respective merits of our devices, especially because we're arguing about the superior brand of telephone. Really...?
I do find it strange, though, that despite Android phones having superior cameras, consumer-friendly features including the ability to replace your battery, better and faster processors, more ram and physical keyboards (in all ways, physically, superior to iPhones), whenever a debate comes... it's inevitable that one of the main arguments (usually the first one) that's bought out by the Android users is "It's open and it's free as in freedom", usually said with this smug grin, as though the iPhone is not. They're right, of course, but...
But then I ask something like, "Can I replace the 'telephone' app freely then?" and they nod eagerly and say, "Yep, you totally can, you just jailbreak it like this and-" ...
I can accept that Android has a great deal many superior features to the iPhone, but I eventually went with iPhone because it had the best user interface, painless upgrade process, everything about it 'just works' (unless it doesn't, such as 3GS wifi-access-point-mode), and the app-store is by far the best. Some people say, "If you're not willing to tinker with your devices you're not a real geek", at which point I tell them that it's just a telephone and I expect it, and its apps, to just work, all the time. It should not need to be tinkered with.
I just don't understand why when the inevitable fanboy war comes, that the very first feature that seems to be produced is "It's open if you jailbreak!". I mean, isn't that the very definition of jailbreaking? Making something closed open? (and yes, iPhones can do it to...)
My second question is...
Awesome! Is there an iPhone port of this?
Good question. Very insightful. But how far do you go?
How would you know that if they released the code that this code is what's really running on your phone? How do you know there isn't a backdoor inserted post compilation?
How do you know that Linux isn't just a shell around an obscenely stenographed copy of Windows? Do you inspect every single line of code that goes into your machine personally? How do you know the code's not kept in a tiny hardware ROM on all modern chipsets and injected into Linux during boot? Do to read them all, personally? Well you should!
The sheeple must know! It's a plot by the Skull and Bones society, the Illuminati and the masons, IE9 has links to stuff they put in our water and Windows mobile uses fillings in your teeth as an antenna so the greys can track you from space. Soylent Windows 7 is people! Oh God in heaven it's PEOPLE! ...
More seriously, yes, it is possible they wouldn't use that actual code in their phones... but Occom suggests they probably do, while Hanlon agrees but clarifies if they aren't it's probably a slightly different version due to that idiot new developer in section 8 that ran the wrong script.
Eventually, at some point, you just have to either accept what someone's saying or accept there's no trust there and move on. Keep in mind it's practically impossible to avoid cell-tower based snooping and tracking, making this whole point useless because the NSA etc don't need your phone to cooperate for them to get what they want.
You can substitute "pay a tax" instead of "pay a fine" if you wish. :) I support legalization and taxation of soft drugs, it was just an (admittedly a little clumsy) analogy.
I'll be the first to admit it was a somewhat clumsy analogy, but I just couldn't find a car analogy that would fit.
Incidentally, I support legalization and taxation of soft drugs, so I agree with what you said.
Yeah, that was one of the ones I was thinking of but I was specifically looking for examples of copyright infringement. You are completely correct though...