Microbes survive everywhere, there is almost certainly a type that can survive on the ocean's surface and metabolize the oil. I have no idea for sure, but it's almost a given, with microbes.
Last estimate I heard was three months to cap the well.
Those aren't just plain jane pipes stuck in the mud, they are loaded to the gills with failsafes. The other fail-safes worked (with regards to capping the well, anyway) but they were all topside on the rig, and so obviously they did no good when the rig burned down. The pipe eventually fell over with no rig to support it, creating the current break in the pipe.
There is actually a fail-safe sitting on the sea floor on this particular pipe just in case this exact situation. It operates a lot like some electronic/mechanical fail-safes where if the electrical connection is lost it triggers an unstoppable mechanical shutdown. The fail-safe in one this pipes require a certain amount of pressure flowing through the pipe, or it will hydraulically crimp the pipe closed. For some reason, it did never triggered, nobody yet knows why (my money is a pressure calculation mistake when setting up the tolerances).
What you can definitely blame BP for right now, without any new information, is not installing a remote trigger for this last-ditch fail-safe. It's my understanding that most drill rigs have a remote trigger, and the fact that this rig doesn't screams cut corners to save time. If they'd had one installed, they could have closed the leak by now, and it would be no big deal to wait another 3 months before it is actually capped.
Since this is BP's third major catastrophe in 5 years, I would not be surprised if they lose their license to operate.
The problem with your analogy is that people were denied use of the building. In Childs' case the network was still running, people could VPN in, all was fine except that administrative changes to network topology could not be performed.
You see that last part there, the part where the network owner is denied use of the network? Yeah, that's what makes the GP's post an analogy, because the two are essentially the same. Depending on how the network was setup, not being able to make any changes to network topology could be debilitating. For example, I worked at an Army guard base, and the switch ports were all closed by default and only opened for each approved computer. Some ports were even locked down by MAC address. You could not plug any computer into any switch and expect it to work. For the ports that were locked by MAC, you couldn't plug a a computer into a known-open port and expect it to work. Not being able to open the ports because your douchebag administrator has decided nobody in the world is authorized to do his job but him can quite literally cripple the network if this goes on for more than a couple weeks.
Even if managing the topology itself was not critical, the passwords are necessary for regular maintenance and security - for example, how are you going to know if someone is trying to hack your network if you can't access any logs? That was a big concern for the city - what if Childs had given the passwords and access information to a third party? Not only would the city be unable to protect itself against an attack, but since they can't access the equipment they may not even know they've been attacked! Someone could be stealing private or classified documents and they would not have a clue. That would be devastating.
The problem is that everyone screwed up and Childs is the only one getting punished.
Childs is the only one being punished because Childs is the only one who broke the law. The managers could certainly have done things better, that's clear. For one thing they could have fired him before he changed the passwords and locked everyone else out, but hindsight is 20/20.
Don't get me wrong, I thought Childs' position was plausible, and I defended him until today. Now that the evidence has come out, it's clear that the only way management could have successfully dealt with him was preemptive firing or suspension, but it is apparent that they underestimated the amount of damage potential his position held until he made it clear what he could do. You can bet your ass they have different policies now, and you know if there is ever a hint of this kind of thing happening with another administrator they are going to lock him out before you can say "Yankee Doodle". More than likely they'll never leave this up to a single person again, which is a good thing IMO.
I'm pretty sure you can be, just not under that same law. There is also a huge difference between being prosecuted and being convicted. You can be prosecuted for anything provided there is enough evidence to suggest you broke the law. A conviction, however, requires a lot more than that.
There are always at least two parts to any charge, and all parts must be true for a conviction: One is that you did it, the other is that you did it on purpose. There can be more, like whether you intended to do harm, or a minimum monetary damage level, but those two are always there (intent to do harm would actually replace the second, because if you intended harm then of course you did it on purpose).
So if you gave the passwords to someone who you thought was authorized, but was in fact not authorized, then the actual act would be true but the intent would not. There is sometimes negligence to worry about, but it has to be blatant, or gross negligence, and it won't apply to all laws. In other words if the only reason you didn't know the were not authorized was because you were not doing your job properly, you might still get tagged with negligence if the law has such a provision.
So the only way you'd be convicted outright is if you knowingly gave an unauthorized user the passwords. That's also assuming that giving away such passwords falls under a criminal offense. In a lot of cases it probably doesn't. Then you're just looking at finding a new job, maybe a civil suit on top of that.
How does not defining it help the defense more than defining it in a way that vindicates the defense?
The entire case concerned the fact that "who was authorized" was not well defined. That was the reason he gave when he was originally arrested and still refused to give up the passwords.
If it were well defined in a way that vindicated him, there would never have been a trial in the first place. The prosecution would not have had a leg to stand on, and if he tried to bring Childs up on charges any judge would have laughed him out of his office. They might not have even had enough to arrest him, though an arrest doesn't require nearly as much evidence as an arraignment, which doesn't require as much evidence as a trial.
Since the information in the trial has been released, and it seems pretty clear that Childs was indeed attempting to use his position to either harm the city or use potential harm as leverage, the only way he was going to get off was if he could convince the jury that he did not know who was authorized, and therefore could not in good conscience give anybody access. If there were no question of exactly who was authorized and the case went to trial (as in, prosecution succeeded in showing there was enough evidence for a trial to a grand jury), then Childs likely would have had to plead guilty. He might have been able to negotiate a lesser plea, but I doubt it considering the publicity and slam-dunk nature of the case. He definitely would not have won unless there was gross negligence at some point on the part of the police. Even then, I can't think of anything that would have gotten him off.
The fact that who was authorized was unclear was, quite literally, Childs' entire defense. There was literally nothing else, because everything he did would be a crime if he knew the people requesting access were authorized. The Jury decided that the people requesting access were authorized, and further that he knew they were authorized. Thus, the conviction.
I've got to say that I seriously misjudged Childs. I thought he was an ass but trying to do the right thing. Turns out he was an ass trying to screw over the city, and he pushed it too far.
Notably the jurors weren't given a definition of authorized persons. I'd say that's pretty substantial to his own defence as I recall.
That's actually exactly the kind of thing Juries exist for. If there were no question who was authorized, then the Judge knows the law a hell of a lot better than the Jury, and he could decide guilt or innocence fairly (it's a simple thing, actually, when facts are not in question).
However, the Judge is not there for the facts, the Judge is there for the law. Facts are the purview of the Jury. Thus, determining who was authorized was the Jury's job, since authorized persons are not set down in the law (obviously, that would be insane). This case was tough because the city had odd standards and inconsistent policies, but in the end they determined that Terry Childs withheld access from people who he knew were authorized to access the system. The law says knowingly withholding such access is a crime. Jury + Judge = successful adjudication.
That it was very muddied definitely helped the defense, otherwise he would have had no point to argue that he was not intentionally withholding access to authorized individuals, and the prosecution would simply lay out the evidence and he'd be convicted. From the very beginning he either would not have been charged at all or he would have been trying to get a plea deal ASAP, because he'd have no hope of winning if the authorized person to give access to were clear. That was the cornerstone of his whole defense - that he did not know who he should give it to. The Jury basically said he's full of shit (they said it much nicer), and he did know who he should have given access to.
Why did you force a plea bargain? It sounds like they had little if anything, and so were probably going to drop the charges. They cannot hold you without charging you with a crime, so what's the deal?
I guess what I'm saying is I don't see how an open case could have harmed you in any way, if there were no formal charges then there wasn't even anything to drop. You were arrested, but that's not coming off your record with or without your plea deal.
If they were holding you in jail without charging you, well then you've got a great one for the ACLU, and I'd have been in contact with them pronto.
Yet now you're saying that what you posted is not what you meant.
Let me clarify for you, because I understood him perfectly.
Criminal != belongs in jail
Convicted = criminal.
Terry Childs = convicted = criminal
Terry Childs = belongs in jail.
Terry Childs = criminal & belongs in jail
The two are not mutually inclusive, in other words. They are also not mutually exclusive, and in fact there is a strong correlation between the two (most criminals belong in jail).
Not all people in prison belong to be in prison, and not all people who belong in jail are criminals, but all people in prison are criminals. They had their day in court, and the State successfully proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they committed the crime they were charged with. That does not mean it is impossible for them to be innocent, but it does mean they are guilty unless proven otherwise.
It's not a small thing to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it's a very high threshold. People being convicted of crimes they did not commit is very, very rare. We built into the system ways to deal with such cases, but the fact is the system almost always gets it right. Just in case though, it errs heavily on the side of the defendant. It is so stacked in the defendant's favor that the prosecution needs an air-tight case to succeed. There are a hundred ways halt a criminal trial in favor of the defense, and only one way to convict him.
For almost all crimes, you cannot commit them without intending to. Ignorance of the law is never an excuse, but lack of intent most certainly is.
Note the first piece of the crime they had to find Childs on - was that he knowingly disrupted service - i.e. he knew it and did it anyway, because that was his intent. That was also the easiest one to decide. After that, it's deciding whether or not what he did fit the definition of the law, that was hard because that part was fairly vague.
Yes, but we (generally speaking) often hold ourselves up as paragons of intelligence and rationality.
I've known for a long time that most of us aren't nearly as smart as we think we are, and some of us (not me) are a hell of a lot smarter than the rest of us know.
Perhaps if Apple quit fucking with Adobe they might have an incentive to update the plugin, eh?
You can't go sue someone at every turn and then get upset when they quit bothering with your platform. Adobe updates Flash for PC and Linux, they're just saying "screw Apple" now.
...alternatives and better options are right around the corner...
Which isn't even here yet, and will take years to supplant flash.
There are very good reasons to impliment Flash on the iPhone now. And you know what? If it were Cocoa that dominated instead of Flash you can bet your ass there wouldn't be any wondering about when the iPhone will be getting Cocoa.
He's a greedy control freak, and that's all there is to it.
It's not surprising, given how much Apple has been dicking with Adobe. Apple is getting to the point where they just don't seem to be worth dealing with. The fact that Adobe made a Linux version and not an OSX version should make it abundantly clear that it is Apple they do not want to do business with.
There isn't really a good reason to stick with Apple for art now anyway. The machines used to be technically better for that sort of thing, but now they are just more expensive, not any better. Given the resource hog that CS products have always been, they'd more than likely be looking at upgrading anyway. Going to a PC or Linux would save them a ton of money. It's a win-win.
Please, everybody knows you don't buy Adobe CS, you steal it. Duh. In that case, they can buy the new hardware for about as much as the software would have cost, and it will be faster than a Mac, to boot.
Apple's version of Flash, similar to Microsoft's Silverlight.
Jobs is just a two-faced ass who doesn't want to compete. His whole "open" argument is BS, because Flash is open, and it's a lot more open than his version of it.
I've got a feeling people are going to get sick of it - Android already has just shy of half of the iPhone's market share, and it's growing faster than any other smartphone OS.
Frankly, this is exactly the same thing Apple did to themselves with the PC. Google is like Microsoft and Android is like Dos. The difference here is Google is giving Android away, while Microsoft only licensed Dos. The effect is probably going to be even more dramatic because of that fact. There are already almost 40 Android smartphones, and a half dozen tablets.
I see the writing on the wall, we'll see if Apple can avoid their fate this time around or if they will fall into the niche once again.
Those are exactly the same as the various Internet Explorer based browsers out there - Maxathon, Greenbrowser, Avant, etc. They are all basically IE with a prettier face put on them.
Your list is no different, except it's WebKit (Safari's engine) instead of IE. Not much more than skins, really. It's hard to call them truly different browsers when they all share the same core.
All I see is Apple stagnating in the market, while Android gains. (Android supports flash fully next release, btw)
Besides, since when has more choice ever been a bad thing? Apple is FAR more proprietary and restrictive than Adobe, and Jobs is downright wrong that Flash is not open. You can download the specification off their website and start porting flash to the iPhone right now if you want (though you'll never get your app into the App Store). Adobe isn't exactly known for their open source efforts, but they do a hell of a lot more of it than Apple does.
Everything Jobs said was an excuse, a justification to mask why he really does not want to support Flash. The truth is he doesn't like the lack of control over flash - he wants more. With Safari, Apple and Apple alone gets to say how HTML5 content is rendered on the iPhone. They can break things they don't like, or simply make them less useful. It's all about control, and he doesn't have it with Flash, so he wants flash to go away.
To see Apple's commitment to "free" and "open", just look at Google Voice. They rejected Google's app for no apparent reason. Not only that, but all third party Google Voice apps, which had been previously approved, were removed from the store citing vague "duplication of features". Exactly what features of the iPhone tie in to Google Voice? Google didn't even bother to try with Navigation, Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile will get it, but not the iPhone - it isn't worth the risk.
Seriously, if you actually think Apple has an altruistic motive for openness in any application (standards, web, A/V, whatever), you are fooling yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a dumb question, of course it will, as soon as it runs out of oil. Duh.
Microbes survive everywhere, there is almost certainly a type that can survive on the ocean's surface and metabolize the oil. I have no idea for sure, but it's almost a given, with microbes.
Last estimate I heard was three months to cap the well.
Those aren't just plain jane pipes stuck in the mud, they are loaded to the gills with failsafes. The other fail-safes worked (with regards to capping the well, anyway) but they were all topside on the rig, and so obviously they did no good when the rig burned down. The pipe eventually fell over with no rig to support it, creating the current break in the pipe.
There is actually a fail-safe sitting on the sea floor on this particular pipe just in case this exact situation. It operates a lot like some electronic/mechanical fail-safes where if the electrical connection is lost it triggers an unstoppable mechanical shutdown. The fail-safe in one this pipes require a certain amount of pressure flowing through the pipe, or it will hydraulically crimp the pipe closed. For some reason, it did never triggered, nobody yet knows why (my money is a pressure calculation mistake when setting up the tolerances).
What you can definitely blame BP for right now, without any new information, is not installing a remote trigger for this last-ditch fail-safe. It's my understanding that most drill rigs have a remote trigger, and the fact that this rig doesn't screams cut corners to save time. If they'd had one installed, they could have closed the leak by now, and it would be no big deal to wait another 3 months before it is actually capped.
Since this is BP's third major catastrophe in 5 years, I would not be surprised if they lose their license to operate.
The problem with your analogy is that people were denied use of the building. In Childs' case the network was still running, people could VPN in, all was fine except that administrative changes to network topology could not be performed.
You see that last part there, the part where the network owner is denied use of the network? Yeah, that's what makes the GP's post an analogy, because the two are essentially the same. Depending on how the network was setup, not being able to make any changes to network topology could be debilitating. For example, I worked at an Army guard base, and the switch ports were all closed by default and only opened for each approved computer. Some ports were even locked down by MAC address. You could not plug any computer into any switch and expect it to work. For the ports that were locked by MAC, you couldn't plug a a computer into a known-open port and expect it to work. Not being able to open the ports because your douchebag administrator has decided nobody in the world is authorized to do his job but him can quite literally cripple the network if this goes on for more than a couple weeks.
Even if managing the topology itself was not critical, the passwords are necessary for regular maintenance and security - for example, how are you going to know if someone is trying to hack your network if you can't access any logs? That was a big concern for the city - what if Childs had given the passwords and access information to a third party? Not only would the city be unable to protect itself against an attack, but since they can't access the equipment they may not even know they've been attacked! Someone could be stealing private or classified documents and they would not have a clue. That would be devastating.
The problem is that everyone screwed up and Childs is the only one getting punished.
Childs is the only one being punished because Childs is the only one who broke the law. The managers could certainly have done things better, that's clear. For one thing they could have fired him before he changed the passwords and locked everyone else out, but hindsight is 20/20.
Don't get me wrong, I thought Childs' position was plausible, and I defended him until today. Now that the evidence has come out, it's clear that the only way management could have successfully dealt with him was preemptive firing or suspension, but it is apparent that they underestimated the amount of damage potential his position held until he made it clear what he could do. You can bet your ass they have different policies now, and you know if there is ever a hint of this kind of thing happening with another administrator they are going to lock him out before you can say "Yankee Doodle". More than likely they'll never leave this up to a single person again, which is a good thing IMO.
I'm pretty sure you can be, just not under that same law. There is also a huge difference between being prosecuted and being convicted. You can be prosecuted for anything provided there is enough evidence to suggest you broke the law. A conviction, however, requires a lot more than that.
There are always at least two parts to any charge, and all parts must be true for a conviction: One is that you did it, the other is that you did it on purpose. There can be more, like whether you intended to do harm, or a minimum monetary damage level, but those two are always there (intent to do harm would actually replace the second, because if you intended harm then of course you did it on purpose).
So if you gave the passwords to someone who you thought was authorized, but was in fact not authorized, then the actual act would be true but the intent would not. There is sometimes negligence to worry about, but it has to be blatant, or gross negligence, and it won't apply to all laws. In other words if the only reason you didn't know the were not authorized was because you were not doing your job properly, you might still get tagged with negligence if the law has such a provision.
So the only way you'd be convicted outright is if you knowingly gave an unauthorized user the passwords. That's also assuming that giving away such passwords falls under a criminal offense. In a lot of cases it probably doesn't. Then you're just looking at finding a new job, maybe a civil suit on top of that.
How does not defining it help the defense more than defining it in a way that vindicates the defense?
The entire case concerned the fact that "who was authorized" was not well defined. That was the reason he gave when he was originally arrested and still refused to give up the passwords.
If it were well defined in a way that vindicated him, there would never have been a trial in the first place. The prosecution would not have had a leg to stand on, and if he tried to bring Childs up on charges any judge would have laughed him out of his office. They might not have even had enough to arrest him, though an arrest doesn't require nearly as much evidence as an arraignment, which doesn't require as much evidence as a trial.
Since the information in the trial has been released, and it seems pretty clear that Childs was indeed attempting to use his position to either harm the city or use potential harm as leverage, the only way he was going to get off was if he could convince the jury that he did not know who was authorized, and therefore could not in good conscience give anybody access. If there were no question of exactly who was authorized and the case went to trial (as in, prosecution succeeded in showing there was enough evidence for a trial to a grand jury), then Childs likely would have had to plead guilty. He might have been able to negotiate a lesser plea, but I doubt it considering the publicity and slam-dunk nature of the case. He definitely would not have won unless there was gross negligence at some point on the part of the police. Even then, I can't think of anything that would have gotten him off.
The fact that who was authorized was unclear was, quite literally, Childs' entire defense. There was literally nothing else, because everything he did would be a crime if he knew the people requesting access were authorized. The Jury decided that the people requesting access were authorized, and further that he knew they were authorized. Thus, the conviction.
I've got to say that I seriously misjudged Childs. I thought he was an ass but trying to do the right thing. Turns out he was an ass trying to screw over the city, and he pushed it too far.
Notably the jurors weren't given a definition of authorized persons. I'd say that's pretty substantial to his own defence as I recall.
That's actually exactly the kind of thing Juries exist for. If there were no question who was authorized, then the Judge knows the law a hell of a lot better than the Jury, and he could decide guilt or innocence fairly (it's a simple thing, actually, when facts are not in question).
However, the Judge is not there for the facts, the Judge is there for the law. Facts are the purview of the Jury. Thus, determining who was authorized was the Jury's job, since authorized persons are not set down in the law (obviously, that would be insane). This case was tough because the city had odd standards and inconsistent policies, but in the end they determined that Terry Childs withheld access from people who he knew were authorized to access the system. The law says knowingly withholding such access is a crime. Jury + Judge = successful adjudication.
That it was very muddied definitely helped the defense, otherwise he would have had no point to argue that he was not intentionally withholding access to authorized individuals, and the prosecution would simply lay out the evidence and he'd be convicted. From the very beginning he either would not have been charged at all or he would have been trying to get a plea deal ASAP, because he'd have no hope of winning if the authorized person to give access to were clear. That was the cornerstone of his whole defense - that he did not know who he should give it to. The Jury basically said he's full of shit (they said it much nicer), and he did know who he should have given access to.
Why did you force a plea bargain? It sounds like they had little if anything, and so were probably going to drop the charges. They cannot hold you without charging you with a crime, so what's the deal?
I guess what I'm saying is I don't see how an open case could have harmed you in any way, if there were no formal charges then there wasn't even anything to drop. You were arrested, but that's not coming off your record with or without your plea deal.
If they were holding you in jail without charging you, well then you've got a great one for the ACLU, and I'd have been in contact with them pronto.
Yet now you're saying that what you posted is not what you meant.
Let me clarify for you, because I understood him perfectly.
Criminal != belongs in jail
Convicted = criminal.
Terry Childs = convicted = criminal
Terry Childs = belongs in jail.
Terry Childs = criminal & belongs in jail
The two are not mutually inclusive, in other words. They are also not mutually exclusive, and in fact there is a strong correlation between the two (most criminals belong in jail).
Not all people in prison belong to be in prison, and not all people who belong in jail are criminals, but all people in prison are criminals. They had their day in court, and the State successfully proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they committed the crime they were charged with. That does not mean it is impossible for them to be innocent, but it does mean they are guilty unless proven otherwise.
It's not a small thing to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it's a very high threshold. People being convicted of crimes they did not commit is very, very rare. We built into the system ways to deal with such cases, but the fact is the system almost always gets it right. Just in case though, it errs heavily on the side of the defendant. It is so stacked in the defendant's favor that the prosecution needs an air-tight case to succeed. There are a hundred ways halt a criminal trial in favor of the defense, and only one way to convict him.
For almost all crimes, you cannot commit them without intending to. Ignorance of the law is never an excuse, but lack of intent most certainly is.
Note the first piece of the crime they had to find Childs on - was that he knowingly disrupted service - i.e. he knew it and did it anyway, because that was his intent. That was also the easiest one to decide. After that, it's deciding whether or not what he did fit the definition of the law, that was hard because that part was fairly vague.
Besides, the juror in the article has his CCIE. When asking for "a juror of his peers", a network engineer can't do better!
Yes, but we (generally speaking) often hold ourselves up as paragons of intelligence and rationality.
I've known for a long time that most of us aren't nearly as smart as we think we are, and some of us (not me) are a hell of a lot smarter than the rest of us know.
I'm a new poster, so sorry I don't know how to quote.
Standard html or xml style tags, that is, angle brackets. [angle left]quote[angle right]--quoted text--[angle left backslash]quote[angle right].
You can bold, italicize, and link with html tags.
In that case we'd better toss HTML4 too eh?
Javascript is continuing to move forward, it's just as modern as any of the other web technologies. CSS has been around almost as long, you know.
Perhaps if Apple quit fucking with Adobe they might have an incentive to update the plugin, eh?
You can't go sue someone at every turn and then get upset when they quit bothering with your platform. Adobe updates Flash for PC and Linux, they're just saying "screw Apple" now.
...alternatives and better options are right around the corner...
Which isn't even here yet, and will take years to supplant flash.
There are very good reasons to impliment Flash on the iPhone now. And you know what? If it were Cocoa that dominated instead of Flash you can bet your ass there wouldn't be any wondering about when the iPhone will be getting Cocoa.
He's a greedy control freak, and that's all there is to it.
Mmmmmm... rice pudding.
It's not surprising, given how much Apple has been dicking with Adobe. Apple is getting to the point where they just don't seem to be worth dealing with. The fact that Adobe made a Linux version and not an OSX version should make it abundantly clear that it is Apple they do not want to do business with.
There isn't really a good reason to stick with Apple for art now anyway. The machines used to be technically better for that sort of thing, but now they are just more expensive, not any better. Given the resource hog that CS products have always been, they'd more than likely be looking at upgrading anyway. Going to a PC or Linux would save them a ton of money. It's a win-win.
Please, everybody knows you don't buy Adobe CS, you steal it. Duh. In that case, they can buy the new hardware for about as much as the software would have cost, and it will be faster than a Mac, to boot.
The flash specifications are open.
Anybody can write a viewer for them.
Just thought I'd point that out.
Exactly, he'd much rather people use his proprietary Cocoa to develop flash-like applications.
Nothing hypocritical there at all. Nope, it's all about keeping things "open".
Apple's version of Flash, similar to Microsoft's Silverlight.
Jobs is just a two-faced ass who doesn't want to compete. His whole "open" argument is BS, because Flash is open, and it's a lot more open than his version of it.
I've got a feeling people are going to get sick of it - Android already has just shy of half of the iPhone's market share, and it's growing faster than any other smartphone OS.
Frankly, this is exactly the same thing Apple did to themselves with the PC. Google is like Microsoft and Android is like Dos. The difference here is Google is giving Android away, while Microsoft only licensed Dos. The effect is probably going to be even more dramatic because of that fact. There are already almost 40 Android smartphones, and a half dozen tablets.
I see the writing on the wall, we'll see if Apple can avoid their fate this time around or if they will fall into the niche once again.
Those are exactly the same as the various Internet Explorer based browsers out there - Maxathon, Greenbrowser, Avant, etc. They are all basically IE with a prettier face put on them.
Your list is no different, except it's WebKit (Safari's engine) instead of IE. Not much more than skins, really. It's hard to call them truly different browsers when they all share the same core.
All I see is Apple stagnating in the market, while Android gains. (Android supports flash fully next release, btw)
Besides, since when has more choice ever been a bad thing? Apple is FAR more proprietary and restrictive than Adobe, and Jobs is downright wrong that Flash is not open. You can download the specification off their website and start porting flash to the iPhone right now if you want (though you'll never get your app into the App Store). Adobe isn't exactly known for their open source efforts, but they do a hell of a lot more of it than Apple does.
Everything Jobs said was an excuse, a justification to mask why he really does not want to support Flash. The truth is he doesn't like the lack of control over flash - he wants more. With Safari, Apple and Apple alone gets to say how HTML5 content is rendered on the iPhone. They can break things they don't like, or simply make them less useful. It's all about control, and he doesn't have it with Flash, so he wants flash to go away.
To see Apple's commitment to "free" and "open", just look at Google Voice. They rejected Google's app for no apparent reason. Not only that, but all third party Google Voice apps, which had been previously approved, were removed from the store citing vague "duplication of features". Exactly what features of the iPhone tie in to Google Voice? Google didn't even bother to try with Navigation, Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile will get it, but not the iPhone - it isn't worth the risk.
Seriously, if you actually think Apple has an altruistic motive for openness in any application (standards, web, A/V, whatever), you are fooling yourself.
I missed the part where you get the source code for Flex or its SDK for free
Actually, apparently I did miss the part where the source code for the Flex SDK was released for free. Woops.
It's technically open source now.