If manufacturers can get a 3/4 ton pickup or similar to get 26 mpg, I'd be impressed.
Did you really mean 3 or 4 tons rather than three quarters of a ton?
No. "3/4-ton pickup" used to signify a pickup that could haul 1500 lbs without too much strain. Same goes for half-ton and full-ton... 1000lbs and 2000lbs, respectively. I say "used to", though, because trucks can typically haul much more than that, though they still use those same phrases as an easy way to compare the capacity of different trucks.
There is one VERY important factor you are not taking into consideration even though it was stated in the comment you replied to--the fact that the average consumer isn't going to know what the hell Linux is or the fact that the programs they use will not work with it.
The average consumer isn't going to pay attention to the fact that Linux is not Windows and Windows programs will not work with Linux, and then it doesn't matter WHO the customer service calls go to, there's still going to be a lot of pissed-off people who will cost both Dell and Canonical time and money to resolve a problem that shouldn't be present in the first place. There's also the fact that if Dell and Canonical make a pact like that, the discount to get Ubuntu instead of Windows will be even LESS of a factor.
Linux isn't an OS for the average consumer, as friendly and Windows-like as Ubuntu tries to appear, it's still not Windows, and that's what people want is Windows.
B is debatable - at least 90% of drivers are auto detected and auto installed in Ubuntu.
Fixed that for you. True Linux users don't use Ubuntu. Please hand-in your geek card.
Regarding A, you couldn't be more wrong. Have you installed Ubuntu lately on a clean (blank) machine? It's easier and quicker to install than windows. Seriously. Specially when you take into account what I said about drivers above, and how much complication that adds to the windows installation process.
I've been reformatting and reinstalling Windows every couple months for the last year. Not because I have to, by the way... just because I've been going from version to version. I went to XP x64 and found out it sucked, so I accidentally went to Vista x86 and liked it but had to install Vista x64, then I got Win7 build 6959, then the public beta, then build 7057, then the RC which I'm running now. I've installed Ubuntu before, and I have no idea where you got the impression that Ubuntu is easier to install than Windows. It's easy to install, sure, but certainly not easier than Windows.
you would see that the "bleeding heart liberals" are mostly US Military types.
I actually said "some bleeding heart bullshit". There are bleeding-hearts on both sides of the spectrum, and I don't care which political party they're in. They need to stop worrying about video games and go fight this war that we're in.
I didn't read the article, but I will assume it's some bleeding-heart bullshit about how insensitive it is to make games about current military endeavors where people are losing their lives and whatever else. I say, as long as the game is well-produced, politically unbiased (it's hard to be 100% this case because there has to be a winner), and, above all else, fun, I couldn't care less which war the game was about. Frankly, I wish there were MORE games about the Iraq war. It gives me something that I can play that relates to current events. It shows that the devs that made it have some balls and aren't afraid of hurting the feelings of a very small select group of people. It also gives me an alternative to the ten WWII games that come out every year which are becoming extremely stale.
You're not a cop. Congratulations! You've just kidnapped a fellow citizen, while armed. That's like life in prison.
You don't need to be a police officer to arrest someone. You just need proper training and a license (a friend of mine runs an asset protection service for grocery stores and whatnot around the area).
You people obviously don't get it. The guy was standing in line at customer service... obviously not a time where he's too busy to talk to someone for a second. He took pictures of an open ATM, which, personally, I wouldn't have cared if I were one of the Loomis guys, but they obviously did care. One of the Loomis guys approached him and this dipshit refused to talk. All he had to do was say "I thought it was interesting, so I took a picture" but instead he made bullshit comments. I can't believe you're defending his dumb ass.
You didn't quote the whole sentence. I said "Wouldn't it seem a little suspicious if you were in the Loomis guys' shoes... seeing a man take a picture of the open ATM and then refusing to talk to you afterwards?"
You can't deny the fact that if this guy hadn't been such a cockass to the Loomis folks, none of this would have occurred. He instigated the issue by refusing to talk to them and making smarmy comments. I would've cuffed his stupid ass too.
He has no reasonable obligation to talk to an ATM repair man.
He didn't have an obligation to talk to them, but he could have avoided this entire situation by doing so. Wouldn't it seem a little suspicious if you were in the Loomis guys' shoes... seeing a man take a picture of the open ATM and then refusing to talk to you afterwards? Honestly, this sounds like a case where Mr. Becker intentionally created a scenario in which he knew police would overreact so that he could make a post about it and say "look what these bastards did to me just for taking a picture." Sorry, but he is the one that instigated it, and if he wasn't such a douche to the Loomis guys and just explained to him that he thought it was interesting and there was nothing illicit going on, none of this would have happened.
Also, I'd like to add that the tagline on Shane's blog is "Designer. Typophile. Rails/Rubyist. Still Vegan. Still Straightedge. And, Baby, I'm An Anarchist."
Now, doesn't that seem like exactly the kind of person who would intentionally instigate a scenario such as this... especially if he's the writer of this relatively popular blog?
He has no reasonable obligation to talk to an ATM repair man.
He didn't have an obligation to talk to them, but he could have avoided this entire situation by doing so. Wouldn't it seem a little suspicious if you were in the Loomis guys' shoes... seeing a man take a picture of the open ATM and then refusing to talk to you afterwards? Honestly, this sounds like a case where Mr. Becker intentionally created a scenario in which he knew police would overreact so that he could make a post about it and say "look what these bastards did to me just for taking a picture." Sorry, but he is the one that instigated it, and if he wasn't such a douche to the Loomis guys and just explained to him that he thought it was interesting and there was nothing illicit going on, none of this would have happened.
W|A is not trying to compete with Google. They are in their own business. And yes, technically they are a "search engine" if you want to use the literal definition, but I said "it is not a search engine in the conventional sense" which is completely true.
There's no such thing as a verified scientific fact? So you're saying that the notion of birds having feathers is neither verified, scientific, nor factual? Are you dense?
And once again, no they are not trying to compete with Google. Google is not a source for answers, they are a source for sources of information of all sorts. W|A is a direct source for scientific data. While the overall purpose of W|A and Google could be compared in some ways, saying the difference between Google and Yahoo! is comparable to the difference between W|A and Google is just foolish.
Thats a bit strong, wouldnt it be better directed at the circumstances that make it necessary for people to flee one country into another, and that make it illegal to do so?
It's not exactly as if someone is going to say "gee, life sure does suck in poverty, and we could actually have a decent life if we fled to the US, but hey--that would violate their immigration laws, so i guess we'll just starve!"
Yep. It's a bit strong, and I don't care. If they're not willing to go through the proper channels to live in the US, I want them gone. Taxes pay for roads that they drive on, buses they ride on, and sometimes even welfare checks that they somehow manage to receive, and if they're here illegally, they're not paying any of said taxes, and are therefore living here for free. Yes, I hate people who are here illegally and are making zero effort to become legal.
People, W|A is not a search engine in the conventional sense. It is more of a knowledgebase. It is a computational engine. Rather than finding websites that tell you about what you're trying to learn about, W|A gives you the information you're looking for on their site, pulled from a large 20-someodd-year-old database of verified scientific facts that began with Wolfram Mathematica. If the info you're looking for isn't directly present in the database, W|A will compute it for you if it has the necessary data dependencies. W|A is not the same as Google and is not trying to compete with Google, so to those of please stop trying to pass off side-by-side comparisons between W|A and Google as journalism. That's not to say, though, that Google won't try to buy them out or even start up their own academic knowledgebase to compete with Wolfram... and yes, that would be Google entering Wolfram's domain, not the other way around. [/rant]
Anyways, I think W|A looks awesome and I will surely poke around when it launches on May 18 (I think... correct me if I'm wrong please).
How much of the problem is people walking over the border, compared to people overstaying their visas?
There aren't a whole lot of problems with people overstaying their visas... at least here in California. Those who are here on visa can be tracked down fairly easily... known locations, pictures, etc. And they do find those people most of the time when a visa expires and there's no application in the system to get an extension or anything. The majority of aliens (I don't care if that word is "politically incorrect"... they're aliens to the USA) in California have no papers whatsoever. There are raids in the Canal district in Marin County where they arrest often tens, sometimes hundreds of people that are here 100% illegally (I've watched an ICE raid happen... this is not bullshit).
The fact of the matter is that, even though our system is very slow and horribly outdated, it is our system, paid for by our taxes, and if you want to come to the United States, you have to follow the proper guidelines and use the proper process. I am not a racist person. I make racist jokes all the time, but I don't hate Hispanics (or any other race, but face it, the illegal immigration problem is primarily Mexico) by any stretch of the imagination. I do hate people who are here illegally, though, and I have zero sympathy for them when they get deported and separated from their family.
The idea of shared spectrum, i like it. Basically like Public access tv, but in microwaves and without the creepy guys singing mary had a little lamb.
Oh you don't know the half of it. I work for the Public Access station in my city and we have crazy mexican dance shows with accordion-playing large-moustached men hopping around a room. It's fucking crazy.
Doubtful, is it not still RC1? then you have to add in several months for RC2, RC3, and gold by going how their prior OS's were released.
Actually, it has been stated that there will not be any further RCs. It seems to me that the public pre-releases are more for media hype and maybe software developers to fix their own programs than development of the actual OS. The beta helped fix bugs, but the RC is pretty much the done deal.
The expert can run an md5 hash list containing the signatures of all the copyrighted music that the RIAA has collected over the years and compare the results against the contents of the hard drive. You can name a file anything you want and its content based md5 will stay the same.
One problem with your theory would be that the vast majority of P2P-distributed pirated music would be the fact that the music was originally ripped by some guy off a CD. The compression algorithms do not produce files that are exactly the same bit-for-bit. If you take a music file in FLAC, convert it to 192k MP3 and name it test1.mp3, and then compress the same FLAC file to 192k MP3 again and name that one test2.mp3, test1.mp3 and test2.mp3 will have different md5 signatures. But, to use a false example to simplify it further, even if the algorithms were perfect, there's still transcoding that would have to be taken into account for. The RIAA would need a different md5 hash for all the different codecs, formats, and bitrates of those codecs and formats, AS WELL AS different md5 hashes for different transcodes of those different formats. That kind of thing simply isn't feasible.
If H1N1 is able to infect humans... and it's able to infect swine... and it's transferable from swine to humans... why wouldn't it be transferable from human to swine? How is this news?
I would pay. But only if they don't expect me to pay the outrageous prices the MAFIAA has expected me to pay for online content in the last 4 years. If you think I'm gonna pay $1.99 to watch a 30 minute video, you're dreaming. I would, on the other hand, pay $1.99 for an NBC 3-pack or something... and then I get to watch them as many times as I want for a month (preferably permanently, but I can't ask TOO much of the mafiaa jews). And if you think I'm going to pay as much to watch a movie as I would to rent a DVD, we also have a problem. I'd pay $2.99 for a month-long movie rental... but no more.
I only visit the site to update software, software they provide me free of charge, I'm not going to complain.
It's not about whether or not the product is free and whether or not he deserves a little coin for his hard work.... the fact of the matter is that he is providing updates that modify extensions that are not his without the consent of the user. That is called malware, and to avoid just that is part of the reason why I installed NoScript in the first place.
If you would read my entire, although admittedly long-winded, post, you will notice that I say "Because Apple doesn't have the money to develop two separate phone models with different technologies blah blah blah? Yeah, right."
You have some breathing room. It will take Verizon at least a year to figure out how to disable all of the iPhone's features so their customers have to buy them back one at a time.
You do have a good point, but I would like to point out that it really only counts on the Java phones. I just bought a Samsung Omnia a couple weeks ago (loving it btw, except shitty battery life... just plug it in every night and you're fine), which runs Windows Mobile, and I'm able to do everything on it that I was able to do with my Dell PDA. I don't need to install any software to get it to connect to my computer, and I have direct access to all the files on the device. I can drag any.cab over there and install it to my heart's content. They even gave me 8GB of internal storage to put my music and pictures on, and I can play it with whatever player I want to install. Also, even though Pandora is only supported on two specific phone models, you can still get it on any phone with some Googling.
So I don't know if Verizon chose not to lock the device down, or if it's just because Windows Mobile is closed source and they really can't lock the device down. Whatever the reason, it's not locked down to any extent. All the components are usable by any program free of charge.
What really gets me though is verizon can never have the iphone. Ever. It would have to be made exclusively for verizon customers.
Why? Because Apple doesn't have the money to develop two separate phone models with different technologies, or, better yet, put both technologies in the same phone and basically enable everyone to have service in just about every square mile of land in every developed country? Yeah, right. The fact of the matter is is that Verizon is proven to have a moderately faster broadband network, and a definitely more stable network in general. Having the iPhone on Verizon might make me want to buy one.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you really mean 3 or 4 tons rather than three quarters of a ton?
No. "3/4-ton pickup" used to signify a pickup that could haul 1500 lbs without too much strain. Same goes for half-ton and full-ton... 1000lbs and 2000lbs, respectively. I say "used to", though, because trucks can typically haul much more than that, though they still use those same phrases as an easy way to compare the capacity of different trucks.
There is one VERY important factor you are not taking into consideration even though it was stated in the comment you replied to--the fact that the average consumer isn't going to know what the hell Linux is or the fact that the programs they use will not work with it.
The average consumer isn't going to pay attention to the fact that Linux is not Windows and Windows programs will not work with Linux, and then it doesn't matter WHO the customer service calls go to, there's still going to be a lot of pissed-off people who will cost both Dell and Canonical time and money to resolve a problem that shouldn't be present in the first place. There's also the fact that if Dell and Canonical make a pact like that, the discount to get Ubuntu instead of Windows will be even LESS of a factor.
Linux isn't an OS for the average consumer, as friendly and Windows-like as Ubuntu tries to appear, it's still not Windows, and that's what people want is Windows.
B is debatable - at least 90% of drivers are auto detected and auto installed in Ubuntu.
Fixed that for you. True Linux users don't use Ubuntu. Please hand-in your geek card.
Regarding A, you couldn't be more wrong. Have you installed Ubuntu lately on a clean (blank) machine? It's easier and quicker to install than windows. Seriously. Specially when you take into account what I said about drivers above, and how much complication that adds to the windows installation process.
I've been reformatting and reinstalling Windows every couple months for the last year. Not because I have to, by the way... just because I've been going from version to version. I went to XP x64 and found out it sucked, so I accidentally went to Vista x86 and liked it but had to install Vista x64, then I got Win7 build 6959, then the public beta, then build 7057, then the RC which I'm running now. I've installed Ubuntu before, and I have no idea where you got the impression that Ubuntu is easier to install than Windows. It's easy to install, sure, but certainly not easier than Windows.
you would see that the "bleeding heart liberals" are mostly US Military types.
I actually said "some bleeding heart bullshit". There are bleeding-hearts on both sides of the spectrum, and I don't care which political party they're in. They need to stop worrying about video games and go fight this war that we're in.
I didn't read the article, but I will assume it's some bleeding-heart bullshit about how insensitive it is to make games about current military endeavors where people are losing their lives and whatever else. I say, as long as the game is well-produced, politically unbiased (it's hard to be 100% this case because there has to be a winner), and, above all else, fun, I couldn't care less which war the game was about. Frankly, I wish there were MORE games about the Iraq war. It gives me something that I can play that relates to current events. It shows that the devs that made it have some balls and aren't afraid of hurting the feelings of a very small select group of people. It also gives me an alternative to the ten WWII games that come out every year which are becoming extremely stale.
I would've cuffed his stupid ass too
You're not a cop. Congratulations! You've just kidnapped a fellow citizen, while armed. That's like life in prison.
You don't need to be a police officer to arrest someone. You just need proper training and a license (a friend of mine runs an asset protection service for grocery stores and whatnot around the area).
You people obviously don't get it. The guy was standing in line at customer service... obviously not a time where he's too busy to talk to someone for a second. He took pictures of an open ATM, which, personally, I wouldn't have cared if I were one of the Loomis guys, but they obviously did care. One of the Loomis guys approached him and this dipshit refused to talk. All he had to do was say "I thought it was interesting, so I took a picture" but instead he made bullshit comments. I can't believe you're defending his dumb ass.
You didn't quote the whole sentence. I said "Wouldn't it seem a little suspicious if you were in the Loomis guys' shoes... seeing a man take a picture of the open ATM and then refusing to talk to you afterwards?"
You can't deny the fact that if this guy hadn't been such a cockass to the Loomis folks, none of this would have occurred. He instigated the issue by refusing to talk to them and making smarmy comments. I would've cuffed his stupid ass too.
He has no reasonable obligation to talk to an ATM repair man.
He didn't have an obligation to talk to them, but he could have avoided this entire situation by doing so. Wouldn't it seem a little suspicious if you were in the Loomis guys' shoes... seeing a man take a picture of the open ATM and then refusing to talk to you afterwards? Honestly, this sounds like a case where Mr. Becker intentionally created a scenario in which he knew police would overreact so that he could make a post about it and say "look what these bastards did to me just for taking a picture." Sorry, but he is the one that instigated it, and if he wasn't such a douche to the Loomis guys and just explained to him that he thought it was interesting and there was nothing illicit going on, none of this would have happened.
Also, I'd like to add that the tagline on Shane's blog is "Designer. Typophile. Rails/Rubyist. Still Vegan. Still Straightedge. And, Baby, I'm An Anarchist."
Now, doesn't that seem like exactly the kind of person who would intentionally instigate a scenario such as this... especially if he's the writer of this relatively popular blog?
He has no reasonable obligation to talk to an ATM repair man.
He didn't have an obligation to talk to them, but he could have avoided this entire situation by doing so. Wouldn't it seem a little suspicious if you were in the Loomis guys' shoes... seeing a man take a picture of the open ATM and then refusing to talk to you afterwards? Honestly, this sounds like a case where Mr. Becker intentionally created a scenario in which he knew police would overreact so that he could make a post about it and say "look what these bastards did to me just for taking a picture." Sorry, but he is the one that instigated it, and if he wasn't such a douche to the Loomis guys and just explained to him that he thought it was interesting and there was nothing illicit going on, none of this would have happened.
W|A is not trying to compete with Google. They are in their own business. And yes, technically they are a "search engine" if you want to use the literal definition, but I said "it is not a search engine in the conventional sense" which is completely true.
There's no such thing as a verified scientific fact? So you're saying that the notion of birds having feathers is neither verified, scientific, nor factual? Are you dense?
And once again, no they are not trying to compete with Google. Google is not a source for answers, they are a source for sources of information of all sorts. W|A is a direct source for scientific data. While the overall purpose of W|A and Google could be compared in some ways, saying the difference between Google and Yahoo! is comparable to the difference between W|A and Google is just foolish.
I do hate people who are here illegally
Thats a bit strong, wouldnt it be better directed at the circumstances that make it necessary for people to flee one country into another, and that make it illegal to do so? It's not exactly as if someone is going to say "gee, life sure does suck in poverty, and we could actually have a decent life if we fled to the US, but hey--that would violate their immigration laws, so i guess we'll just starve!"
Yep. It's a bit strong, and I don't care. If they're not willing to go through the proper channels to live in the US, I want them gone. Taxes pay for roads that they drive on, buses they ride on, and sometimes even welfare checks that they somehow manage to receive, and if they're here illegally, they're not paying any of said taxes, and are therefore living here for free. Yes, I hate people who are here illegally and are making zero effort to become legal.
Do you just apply the new license or do you need to reinstall?
Well, judging that this is a release candidate, and you will need to buy the final release, you have to reinstall.
For those of you who aren't gonna RTFA, I would like to reiterate something that is stated in TFA, because it seems, from reading comments on previous articles about Wolfram|Alpha, that people think this is a search engine and is trying to compete with the likes of Google and whatnot. I also get this from a couple articles from various tech sites that I've read who search for... things... on W|A and compare the results to Google and claim that Google is superior.
People, W|A is not a search engine in the conventional sense. It is more of a knowledgebase. It is a computational engine. Rather than finding websites that tell you about what you're trying to learn about, W|A gives you the information you're looking for on their site, pulled from a large 20-someodd-year-old database of verified scientific facts that began with Wolfram Mathematica. If the info you're looking for isn't directly present in the database, W|A will compute it for you if it has the necessary data dependencies. W|A is not the same as Google and is not trying to compete with Google, so to those of please stop trying to pass off side-by-side comparisons between W|A and Google as journalism. That's not to say, though, that Google won't try to buy them out or even start up their own academic knowledgebase to compete with Wolfram... and yes, that would be Google entering Wolfram's domain, not the other way around. [/rant]
Anyways, I think W|A looks awesome and I will surely poke around when it launches on May 18 (I think... correct me if I'm wrong please).
How much of the problem is people walking over the border, compared to people overstaying their visas?
There aren't a whole lot of problems with people overstaying their visas... at least here in California. Those who are here on visa can be tracked down fairly easily... known locations, pictures, etc. And they do find those people most of the time when a visa expires and there's no application in the system to get an extension or anything. The majority of aliens (I don't care if that word is "politically incorrect"... they're aliens to the USA) in California have no papers whatsoever. There are raids in the Canal district in Marin County where they arrest often tens, sometimes hundreds of people that are here 100% illegally (I've watched an ICE raid happen... this is not bullshit).
The fact of the matter is that, even though our system is very slow and horribly outdated, it is our system, paid for by our taxes, and if you want to come to the United States, you have to follow the proper guidelines and use the proper process. I am not a racist person. I make racist jokes all the time, but I don't hate Hispanics (or any other race, but face it, the illegal immigration problem is primarily Mexico) by any stretch of the imagination. I do hate people who are here illegally, though, and I have zero sympathy for them when they get deported and separated from their family.
The idea of shared spectrum, i like it. Basically like Public access tv, but in microwaves and without the creepy guys singing mary had a little lamb.
Oh you don't know the half of it. I work for the Public Access station in my city and we have crazy mexican dance shows with accordion-playing large-moustached men hopping around a room. It's fucking crazy.
Doubtful, is it not still RC1? then you have to add in several months for RC2, RC3, and gold by going how their prior OS's were released.
Actually, it has been stated that there will not be any further RCs. It seems to me that the public pre-releases are more for media hype and maybe software developers to fix their own programs than development of the actual OS. The beta helped fix bugs, but the RC is pretty much the done deal.
The expert can run an md5 hash list containing the signatures of all the copyrighted music that the RIAA has collected over the years and compare the results against the contents of the hard drive. You can name a file anything you want and its content based md5 will stay the same.
One problem with your theory would be that the vast majority of P2P-distributed pirated music would be the fact that the music was originally ripped by some guy off a CD. The compression algorithms do not produce files that are exactly the same bit-for-bit. If you take a music file in FLAC, convert it to 192k MP3 and name it test1.mp3, and then compress the same FLAC file to 192k MP3 again and name that one test2.mp3, test1.mp3 and test2.mp3 will have different md5 signatures. But, to use a false example to simplify it further, even if the algorithms were perfect, there's still transcoding that would have to be taken into account for. The RIAA would need a different md5 hash for all the different codecs, formats, and bitrates of those codecs and formats, AS WELL AS different md5 hashes for different transcodes of those different formats. That kind of thing simply isn't feasible.
By not pissing away money on other things.
You mean like roads and fire departments and such?
If H1N1 is able to infect humans... and it's able to infect swine... and it's transferable from swine to humans... why wouldn't it be transferable from human to swine? How is this news?
No
I would pay. But only if they don't expect me to pay the outrageous prices the MAFIAA has expected me to pay for online content in the last 4 years. If you think I'm gonna pay $1.99 to watch a 30 minute video, you're dreaming. I would, on the other hand, pay $1.99 for an NBC 3-pack or something... and then I get to watch them as many times as I want for a month (preferably permanently, but I can't ask TOO much of the mafiaa jews). And if you think I'm going to pay as much to watch a movie as I would to rent a DVD, we also have a problem. I'd pay $2.99 for a month-long movie rental... but no more.
I only visit the site to update software, software they provide me free of charge, I'm not going to complain.
It's not about whether or not the product is free and whether or not he deserves a little coin for his hard work.... the fact of the matter is that he is providing updates that modify extensions that are not his without the consent of the user. That is called malware, and to avoid just that is part of the reason why I installed NoScript in the first place.
If you would read my entire, although admittedly long-winded, post, you will notice that I say "Because Apple doesn't have the money to develop two separate phone models with different technologies blah blah blah? Yeah, right."
You have some breathing room. It will take Verizon at least a year to figure out how to disable all of the iPhone's features so their customers have to buy them back one at a time.
You do have a good point, but I would like to point out that it really only counts on the Java phones. I just bought a Samsung Omnia a couple weeks ago (loving it btw, except shitty battery life... just plug it in every night and you're fine), which runs Windows Mobile, and I'm able to do everything on it that I was able to do with my Dell PDA. I don't need to install any software to get it to connect to my computer, and I have direct access to all the files on the device. I can drag any .cab over there and install it to my heart's content. They even gave me 8GB of internal storage to put my music and pictures on, and I can play it with whatever player I want to install. Also, even though Pandora is only supported on two specific phone models, you can still get it on any phone with some Googling.
So I don't know if Verizon chose not to lock the device down, or if it's just because Windows Mobile is closed source and they really can't lock the device down. Whatever the reason, it's not locked down to any extent. All the components are usable by any program free of charge.
What really gets me though is verizon can never have the iphone. Ever. It would have to be made exclusively for verizon customers.
Why? Because Apple doesn't have the money to develop two separate phone models with different technologies, or, better yet, put both technologies in the same phone and basically enable everyone to have service in just about every square mile of land in every developed country? Yeah, right. The fact of the matter is is that Verizon is proven to have a moderately faster broadband network, and a definitely more stable network in general. Having the iPhone on Verizon might make me want to buy one.
It's much safer to negotiate through an intermediary like a monkey or an elephant.
They do, although there's an official term for them... I think they're called "lawyers" or something.