Much more than half of the information requested is either woefully subjective, completely irrelevant, or none of the school's damn business.
Exactly the kind that makes it impossible to proof any favoritism, discrimination or unfairness after they have picked whom to accept and whom to reject.
After all, with so much hard to compare information, it is really hard to pin down the reason that they accept Johnny to the school was because of his impressive subjective information in the form, or was it because his dad's huge donation to the school in last few years....
Am I just being cynical to think that this is exactly why the school administrators love to ask for those information?
This makes sense because a clip showing police brutality could be part of a longer incident where the suspect resisted arrest and tried to hurt the officer. I understand that in the heat of the moment a person who feels their life is in jeopardy may use force which seems excessive out of context.
This is plain stupidity, another form of anti-intellectual idiocracy(*) so pervasive in the US of A. Police are not drawn by lots from random people off the streets. A cop is a trained law enforcement officer, years of training and actual duty experience should have long ingrained into his instincts the appropriate level of force needed in different situations.
If a cop would lose his "cool" simply because he just had a violent encounter, then he is not qualified to be a cop and should be either dismissed, or at least be removed from front line duty. The only remotely reasonable excuse would be the first few times a new cop goes on duty, even then disciplinary punishment should be given.
(*) - the silly idea that you should not expect a lifelong professional to do something that any normal people cannot do.
Giant corp violate the law against individual, individual already posted picture elsewhere for free, judge awards nominal $1 to individual.
Individual violate the law against giant corp, giant corp already broadcasted music over radio for free, judge awards statutory $750 per song to giant corp.
WTF?!
Seriously, privacy laws should state a minimum statutory damage per violation, for the same reason statutory damages is specified in copyright laws - difficult to quantify damage.
Welcome to America's broken mobile phone market. Customers have little to no choice that the carriers can get away with selling plans with data volume caps that made the service impractical to be actually used.
In Asia, we have the opposite, carriers sell 3G plans priced by data volume, more data = more expensive, but with the option of a FEE cap that limits the max fee you need to pay if you downloaded way over your plan's volume.
IMO, not buying from Amazon is not the clearest message. A clear message is to CANCEL your already placed order and then them WHY in the cancel reason.
I am not particularly in support of WikiLeaks, but what I protest against is how Amazon simply bend over for the US Govt. It means if the US govt wants to get the book order history of me, or more likely, get the massive database of order histories of all Amazon customers, Amazon will also likely just bend over and give them that.
I have nothing to hide, but I value my privacy also, so I won't be buying from Amazon anymore.
Welcome to the broken America mobile market. In places where the market actually has competition, eg, Asia , we can buy phones without contract and then use whichever carrier we like, and switch carrier whenever we like. If you enter into a contact with the carrier, you can do so without telling them what's model is your phone (none of their business anyway), and your can change/jb your phone without affecting the contract.
Good, then maybe it will force their politicians to actually make do a balanced budget rather than keep running a deficit, spending money they do not have, effectively using the country's future income to secure their own positions in elections.
How about YOU go and find some secrets from PRC, Russia, Iran or NK and send them to Wikileaks?
Isn't that what OSS proponents do? As in "write your own patch"?
I mean, really, we are sitting here in our lazy asses, doing nothing. Yet you have the gall to complain about Wikileaks not giving out what you want to see?!
Is this an America thing? Or is it a more general? Why must everything be simple black and white, good guys/bad guys, us/them dichotomy?
Worse, you are asking OTHER people to tell you what the good guys are?
Wikileaks, as their name implies, leak secrets. If you think leaking secrets is good, go ahead and support them. Yes, that means really thinking and making a judgement by yourself, which is hard work. And yes, leaking secrets sometimes have unwanted side effects, but don't every action have the same?
I knew all the jokes about Chinese/Russians/people from oppressive countries not willing/able to give personal opinion, but this good guys/bad guys question really trumps them all.
A somewhat correctable problem with debit cards is that there ARE some people who's credit is so terrible that they can't even get a checking account -- I'm not saying they don't deserve being frozen out of check writing, generally they do, but if you eliminate cash transactions the merely "unbanked" would become destitute.
Just another symptom of the America's broken banking system. In sane countries, you can get a debit card that linked to your savings account.
At the bottom, cash on your pocket grants some privacy... and security.
Your idea of security might change after you have been pickpocketed, or robbed, or just plain dropped your wallet a couple times.
Personally, I feel LESS secure when carry any significant amount of cash (ie large enough that would very much care if lost).
I pay for anything over ~20USD by credit card or electronic payment. If all the money I carry was stolen, I won't lose any sleep over it. So if some is to rob me, I would immediate hand over all my cash.
So I feel very secure in the fact that barring some huge worldwide disaster, I can be 99.99% certain that all my money is safe in the bank.
Yes, just like the whole computer and internet thingie. You better stick to sending letters by courier instead of sending email, and avoid electric trains, avoid electric heating. Because all those things, you know, go down when the power is out.
Please don't use the broken banking system in the US as your reference.
I have no problem doing instant electronic bank transfer of 20 bucks into my friend's bank account at no extra cost to either of us. In fact, we often settle the our lunch bills this way.
Only in America's broken system would you run the risk of losing money by just giving people your account number.
Yes, it made it possible for the govt to find out these records. But you have to fear being taxed only because of America's broken income tax system. Other people in sane countries don't have that problem at all.
You are wrong in your thinking that what TSA is doing is really about security.
Think: security theatre.
What TSA is doing is making a big show that they are doing something, and to make sure everybody knows they are doing something, they got to do the things that is most "in your face" so you will never miss it. Being annoying is just part of it.
Adding more screening makes the line longer, so you will notice they are doing *something* for security.
Installing BIG scanners make you notice they are doing something, AND it gives pork money also. Double good! Making porn in the process is just a side benefit for their employees - hands up, anyone still believe they are not keeping the pictures?
Groping passengers make you *even more aware* that they are doing something, they are showing you, aimed right at your private parts, that they are *soooo* concerned about security, that their hands will boldly go where nobody else has dared before (without being arrested).
So, after doing all these, if you STILL don't feel more secure, they will be shoving their fingers into your mouth and up your a** next (and not necessarily in that order), and won't stop until you feel secure. Be prepared for random body cavity search. Just be glad you were not a teenage girl when that happens, as it will be much more traumatic for them.
They've never claimed to treat their own services impartially in their search results. They shouldn't be expected to.
Just like Microsoft should be expected to give unequal treatment to 3rd party apps vs MS apps on windows, eh? So you fully support MS apps using secret APIs to get preferential treatment on Windows?
Fallout 3 was also known for quite a lot of bugs, so much so that I have several friends that just stopped playing out of frustration as well. I had fond enough memories of the game that I decided to buy the DLCs and found myself getting annoyed at the same bugs and frustrating crashes all over again.
Wow, thanks for reminding me that. I played FO3 quite some time ago and have forgotten the frustration of the crashes. I am almost going to buy the FO3 DLC to play as lately I am getting bored with the games I have.
I am going to put it off again and instead look for other games to buy.
I struggled through the grinding in the PS3 version of Eternal Sonata because I was so deeply in love with the game's concept, plot and style, but I would have enjoyed it far more without the grinding (and I did come close to dropping it several times). Even Valkyria Chronicles, which I would rate as arguably the best game of the last 5 years, frustrated me because of the need to do multiple replays of the skirmish engagements for experience points.
Are we playing the same game here? Cuz I played through both Eternal Sonata and Valkyria Chronicles, and the don't feel any need to grind, except a little for the final boss in Eternal Sonata.
The final boss in Eternal Sonata is so much more powerful than the monsters right before it, that I think I ground an hour or two to level up a bit. That's after wasted an hour trying to beat the final battle without grinding. BUT, having an encore to play the whole thing again, that's grinding to me and I never bothered.
In Valkyria Chronicles, I don't feel any need to grind the skirmishes at all, unless maybe you want to level everyone up to max? I completed the game without maxing up every class, so I don't see any need there.
I'm typing this on a tram from a netbook tethered to my Android phone. How good is your tethering app?
I am typing this directly on my iPhone, why do I need to carry another computer with me? Without carrying a PC, why should I care how good/bad is my tethering app?
I don't see any flash ads at all, why do I need another ad-block app? I have no intention of writing programs on my phone, why should I care why programming tools are there? I have an external battery to carry, and I have iPhone charger in my car, why would I want to mess with my phone's clock speed? You sounded just like the Linux fans of old who keep telling windows users how great it is that he can compile the kernel while doing other things! Yeah, but why do we need to keep recompiling the kernel?
This is the problem with you Android fans, you guys keep insisting that iPhone users are missing out this feature and that function, when in fact, this are what iPhone users have already looked and determined that we do not want or do not need them!
Is it so hard to understand that not everyone uses their phone like you do? Nor will we ever want to?
How about you guys learn to respect the choice other people made and stop evangelize your platform whenever iPhones are mentioned?
Due care is taken for these organs and they're being used to save lives, which is arguably better than just throwing them away....... The dark side of the whole thing is that a corpse is worth roughly GBP 200k-300k in spare parts, so ethics are out of the window...... As usual, money is the driving factor here...... If there are enough organ donors, the law of supply and demand will take care of the rest and make sure this practice is no longer profitable, so it will cease to exist.
Wow, the kind of apologist attitude here is amazing, as if the whole thing is just some people *doing good* while making some money along the way, and the real bad guys are those selfish people unwilling to donate organs in the first place, cuz they are throwing away perfectly good organs!
Look, if you replace "UK" with "China" in the summary, you will be see TONS of ridicules and flames about how bad China is, how greedy and immoral Chinese generally are, the general unhealthiness of the organs harvested, etc, etc. ALL Chinese are to blame and entire China is brushed in the same stroke.
BUT, since this the our beloved 1st world country involved, it became just a few misguided souls making mistakes due to external influences, and they are helping to save lives, too!
Let's be honest here. I thought these kind of things only happen in China and other 3rd world countries! Shouldn't you be OUTRAGED that a 1st world country like UK let these things happen and nobody is criminally prosecuted for it?!
It is not my logic that fails. It is merely that my values is different from yours, and you have already assumed your values is the correct one so anyone not subscribing to the same values has faulty logic.
For the value of a hypothetical possibility that I might like and heavily use an app that will eventually banned by Jobs, the trade off is to give up the Apple app store for the Google one that I cannot make any payment from where I live. Not to mention that there are fewer apps to start with. I am not interested in spending the effort to find out which app in the wild is clean, so don't bother about non-app store apps.
I choose the risk of my hypothetical fav app banned by Jobs over inability to actually buy apps I want! No contest there. You obviously chose otherwise, doesn't mean either logic is faulty, it just mean we value things differently.
Claiming there are unknown security flaws in both platforms is just a cop-out. Every platform hs security holes, so let's just forget about security and patches! This completely ignore the fact that if there is anything major out in the wild, Apple has a vested interest in patching iOS and getting fixes out to iPhone owners with a single click on iTunes. While Google can only patch their code and hope/wish/cajole the phone vendors to sync into their own Android version and send it out to you, hopefully in less than a year, if ever. Meanwhile, you either live with a major known security hole, or you spend the effort to try to hack the latest patch into your phone. Have fun doing that.
This is no different from console-gaming vs PC-gaming. Some PC gamers look down on console gamers, citing the "superiority" of upgradable video cards, more indie games, possibility of game mods, etc. Console gamers thinks it is silly to deal with driver issues, antivirus setups, hackers/aimbots on multiplayer games.
Until smart phone manufacturers realize that they are making general purpose computing devices we will see this.
I say just the opposite. Until the Android crowd realize that a lot of people do not want a general purpose computing devices on their phone, they will be talking past all iPhone users.
I work with computers for a living, I know very well the high cost of ownership for owning a general purpose computing devices. I do not want that for my phone. I deliberately stayed away from "smartphones" until Apple got smart enough and produce one that obviously is not intended to be a PC on a phone.
All your reasons for calling Android "superior" is exactly the reasons that I found it inferior. I want a limited device that only do what I want and no more. The "no more" part is important to me, as it keeps the cost of ownership low. This seems to a point that the Android crowds never understand.
Maybe you find it intellectually simulating to find which security hole is patched in which Android version, and fun to track down exactly which Android version can be hacked to be installed on your phone (since your phone supplier probably won't give you a fix until a year later).
For me, I just want iTunes to periodically check if my phone has the latest patch and tell me about any updates, so I can install it by clicking "Yes".
Slashdot Mirror
Much more than half of the information requested is either woefully subjective, completely irrelevant, or none of the school's damn business.
Exactly the kind that makes it impossible to proof any favoritism, discrimination or unfairness after they have picked whom to accept and whom to reject.
After all, with so much hard to compare information, it is really hard to pin down the reason that they accept Johnny to the school was because of his impressive subjective information in the form, or was it because his dad's huge donation to the school in last few years....
Am I just being cynical to think that this is exactly why the school administrators love to ask for those information?
This makes sense because a clip showing police brutality could be part of a longer incident where the suspect resisted arrest and tried to hurt the officer. I understand that in the heat of the moment a person who feels their life is in jeopardy may use force which seems excessive out of context.
This is plain stupidity, another form of anti-intellectual idiocracy(*) so pervasive in the US of A. Police are not drawn by lots from random people off the streets. A cop is a trained law enforcement officer, years of training and actual duty experience should have long ingrained into his instincts the appropriate level of force needed in different situations.
If a cop would lose his "cool" simply because he just had a violent encounter, then he is not qualified to be a cop and should be either dismissed, or at least be removed from front line duty. The only remotely reasonable excuse would be the first few times a new cop goes on duty, even then disciplinary punishment should be given.
(*) - the silly idea that you should not expect a lifelong professional to do something that any normal people cannot do.
Why would I ever want to buy a Kindle?
If they skimmed money the traditional way (bribes and scams) would we call them a "financegang"?
No, we would call them "identity theft" so the customers will suffer the losses and banks won't be responsible at all.
When you cancel items in an order, Amazon has a text box for you to fill in why you are cancelling.
One can hope that someone will actually read it, too.
Giant corp violate the law against individual, individual already posted picture elsewhere for free, judge awards nominal $1 to individual.
Individual violate the law against giant corp, giant corp already broadcasted music over radio for free, judge awards statutory $750 per song to giant corp.
WTF?!
Seriously, privacy laws should state a minimum statutory damage per violation, for the same reason statutory damages is specified in copyright laws - difficult to quantify damage.
Welcome to America's broken mobile phone market. Customers have little to no choice that the carriers can get away with selling plans with data volume caps that made the service impractical to be actually used.
In Asia, we have the opposite, carriers sell 3G plans priced by data volume, more data = more expensive, but with the option of a FEE cap that limits the max fee you need to pay if you downloaded way over your plan's volume.
IMO, not buying from Amazon is not the clearest message. A clear message is to CANCEL your already placed order and then them WHY in the cancel reason.
I am not particularly in support of WikiLeaks, but what I protest against is how Amazon simply bend over for the US Govt. It means if the US govt wants to get the book order history of me, or more likely, get the massive database of order histories of all Amazon customers, Amazon will also likely just bend over and give them that.
I have nothing to hide, but I value my privacy also, so I won't be buying from Amazon anymore.
Welcome to the broken America mobile market. In places where the market actually has competition, eg, Asia , we can buy phones without contract and then use whichever carrier we like, and switch carrier whenever we like. If you enter into a contact with the carrier, you can do so without telling them what's model is your phone (none of their business anyway), and your can change/jb your phone without affecting the contract.
Who would ever lend Ireland money ever again?
Good, then maybe it will force their politicians to actually make do a balanced budget rather than keep running a deficit, spending money they do not have, effectively using the country's future income to secure their own positions in elections.
Well, one can hope.
How about YOU go and find some secrets from PRC, Russia, Iran or NK and send them to Wikileaks?
Isn't that what OSS proponents do? As in "write your own patch"?
I mean, really, we are sitting here in our lazy asses, doing nothing. Yet you have the gall to complain about Wikileaks not giving out what you want to see?!
Is this an America thing? Or is it a more general? Why must everything be simple black and white, good guys/bad guys, us/them dichotomy?
Worse, you are asking OTHER people to tell you what the good guys are?
Wikileaks, as their name implies, leak secrets. If you think leaking secrets is good, go ahead and support them. Yes, that means really thinking and making a judgement by yourself, which is hard work. And yes, leaking secrets sometimes have unwanted side effects, but don't every action have the same?
I knew all the jokes about Chinese/Russians/people from oppressive countries not willing/able to give personal opinion, but this good guys/bad guys question really trumps them all.
A somewhat correctable problem with debit cards is that there ARE some people who's credit is so terrible that they can't even get a checking account -- I'm not saying they don't deserve being frozen out of check writing, generally they do, but if you eliminate cash transactions the merely "unbanked" would become destitute.
Just another symptom of the America's broken banking system. In sane countries, you can get a debit card that linked to your savings account.
At the bottom, cash on your pocket grants some privacy... and security.
Your idea of security might change after you have been pickpocketed, or robbed, or just plain dropped your wallet a couple times.
Personally, I feel LESS secure when carry any significant amount of cash (ie large enough that would very much care if lost).
I pay for anything over ~20USD by credit card or electronic payment. If all the money I carry was stolen, I won't lose any sleep over it. So if some is to rob me, I would immediate hand over all my cash.
So I feel very secure in the fact that barring some huge worldwide disaster, I can be 99.99% certain that all my money is safe in the bank.
Yes, just like the whole computer and internet thingie. You better stick to sending letters by courier instead of sending email, and avoid electric trains, avoid electric heating. Because all those things, you know, go down when the power is out.
Please don't use the broken banking system in the US as your reference.
I have no problem doing instant electronic bank transfer of 20 bucks into my friend's bank account at no extra cost to either of us. In fact, we often settle the our lunch bills this way.
Only in America's broken system would you run the risk of losing money by just giving people your account number.
Yes, it made it possible for the govt to find out these records. But you have to fear being taxed only because of America's broken income tax system. Other people in sane countries don't have that problem at all.
This reminds me of how despite all the high tech satellite surveillance of Iraq, the wrong conclusions came out of the US intelligence agencies.
The "wrong" conclusion?? They gave the conclusion that their boss wanted, and that was the right enough conclusion for them.
You are wrong in your thinking that what TSA is doing is really about security.
Think: security theatre.
What TSA is doing is making a big show that they are doing something, and to make sure everybody knows they are doing something, they got to do the things that is most "in your face" so you will never miss it. Being annoying is just part of it.
Adding more screening makes the line longer, so you will notice they are doing *something* for security.
Installing BIG scanners make you notice they are doing something, AND it gives pork money also. Double good! Making porn in the process is just a side benefit for their employees - hands up, anyone still believe they are not keeping the pictures?
Groping passengers make you *even more aware* that they are doing something, they are showing you, aimed right at your private parts, that they are *soooo* concerned about security, that their hands will boldly go where nobody else has dared before (without being arrested).
So, after doing all these, if you STILL don't feel more secure, they will be shoving their fingers into your mouth and up your a** next (and not necessarily in that order), and won't stop until you feel secure. Be prepared for random body cavity search. Just be glad you were not a teenage girl when that happens, as it will be much more traumatic for them.
They've never claimed to treat their own services impartially in their search results. They shouldn't be expected to.
Just like Microsoft should be expected to give unequal treatment to 3rd party apps vs MS apps on windows, eh? So you fully support MS apps using secret APIs to get preferential treatment on Windows?
Fallout 3 was also known for quite a lot of bugs, so much so that I have several friends that just stopped playing out of frustration as well. I had fond enough memories of the game that I decided to buy the DLCs and found myself getting annoyed at the same bugs and frustrating crashes all over again.
Wow, thanks for reminding me that. I played FO3 quite some time ago and have forgotten the frustration of the crashes. I am almost going to buy the FO3 DLC to play as lately I am getting bored with the games I have.
I am going to put it off again and instead look for other games to buy.
I struggled through the grinding in the PS3 version of Eternal Sonata because I was so deeply in love with the game's concept, plot and style, but I would have enjoyed it far more without the grinding (and I did come close to dropping it several times). Even Valkyria Chronicles, which I would rate as arguably the best game of the last 5 years, frustrated me because of the need to do multiple replays of the skirmish engagements for experience points.
Are we playing the same game here? Cuz I played through both Eternal Sonata and Valkyria Chronicles, and the don't feel any need to grind, except a little for the final boss in Eternal Sonata.
The final boss in Eternal Sonata is so much more powerful than the monsters right before it, that I think I ground an hour or two to level up a bit. That's after wasted an hour trying to beat the final battle without grinding. BUT, having an encore to play the whole thing again, that's grinding to me and I never bothered.
In Valkyria Chronicles, I don't feel any need to grind the skirmishes at all, unless maybe you want to level everyone up to max? I completed the game without maxing up every class, so I don't see any need there.
I'm typing this on a tram from a netbook tethered to my Android phone. How good is your tethering app?
I am typing this directly on my iPhone, why do I need to carry another computer with me? Without carrying a PC, why should I care how good/bad is my tethering app?
I don't see any flash ads at all, why do I need another ad-block app? I have no intention of writing programs on my phone, why should I care why programming tools are there? I have an external battery to carry, and I have iPhone charger in my car, why would I want to mess with my phone's clock speed? You sounded just like the Linux fans of old who keep telling windows users how great it is that he can compile the kernel while doing other things! Yeah, but why do we need to keep recompiling the kernel?
This is the problem with you Android fans, you guys keep insisting that iPhone users are missing out this feature and that function, when in fact, this are what iPhone users have already looked and determined that we do not want or do not need them!
Is it so hard to understand that not everyone uses their phone like you do? Nor will we ever want to?
How about you guys learn to respect the choice other people made and stop evangelize your platform whenever iPhones are mentioned?
Due care is taken for these organs and they're being used to save lives, which is arguably better than just throwing them away. ... ... The dark side of the whole thing is that a corpse is worth roughly GBP 200k-300k in spare parts, so ethics are out of the window ... ... As usual, money is the driving factor here ... ... If there are enough organ donors, the law of supply and demand will take care of the rest and make sure this practice is no longer profitable, so it will cease to exist.
Wow, the kind of apologist attitude here is amazing, as if the whole thing is just some people *doing good* while making some money along the way, and the real bad guys are those selfish people unwilling to donate organs in the first place, cuz they are throwing away perfectly good organs!
Look, if you replace "UK" with "China" in the summary, you will be see TONS of ridicules and flames about how bad China is, how greedy and immoral Chinese generally are, the general unhealthiness of the organs harvested, etc, etc. ALL Chinese are to blame and entire China is brushed in the same stroke.
BUT, since this the our beloved 1st world country involved, it became just a few misguided souls making mistakes due to external influences, and they are helping to save lives, too!
Let's be honest here. I thought these kind of things only happen in China and other 3rd world countries! Shouldn't you be OUTRAGED that a 1st world country like UK let these things happen and nobody is criminally prosecuted for it?!
It is not my logic that fails. It is merely that my values is different from yours, and you have already assumed your values is the correct one so anyone not subscribing to the same values has faulty logic.
For the value of a hypothetical possibility that I might like and heavily use an app that will eventually banned by Jobs, the trade off is to give up the Apple app store for the Google one that I cannot make any payment from where I live. Not to mention that there are fewer apps to start with. I am not interested in spending the effort to find out which app in the wild is clean, so don't bother about non-app store apps.
I choose the risk of my hypothetical fav app banned by Jobs over inability to actually buy apps I want! No contest there. You obviously chose otherwise, doesn't mean either logic is faulty, it just mean we value things differently.
Claiming there are unknown security flaws in both platforms is just a cop-out. Every platform hs security holes, so let's just forget about security and patches! This completely ignore the fact that if there is anything major out in the wild, Apple has a vested interest in patching iOS and getting fixes out to iPhone owners with a single click on iTunes. While Google can only patch their code and hope/wish/cajole the phone vendors to sync into their own Android version and send it out to you, hopefully in less than a year, if ever. Meanwhile, you either live with a major known security hole, or you spend the effort to try to hack the latest patch into your phone. Have fun doing that.
This is no different from console-gaming vs PC-gaming. Some PC gamers look down on console gamers, citing the "superiority" of upgradable video cards, more indie games, possibility of game mods, etc. Console gamers thinks it is silly to deal with driver issues, antivirus setups, hackers/aimbots on multiplayer games.
Until smart phone manufacturers realize that they are making general purpose computing devices we will see this.
I say just the opposite. Until the Android crowd realize that a lot of people do not want a general purpose computing devices on their phone, they will be talking past all iPhone users.
I work with computers for a living, I know very well the high cost of ownership for owning a general purpose computing devices. I do not want that for my phone. I deliberately stayed away from "smartphones" until Apple got smart enough and produce one that obviously is not intended to be a PC on a phone.
All your reasons for calling Android "superior" is exactly the reasons that I found it inferior. I want a limited device that only do what I want and no more. The "no more" part is important to me, as it keeps the cost of ownership low. This seems to a point that the Android crowds never understand.
Maybe you find it intellectually simulating to find which security hole is patched in which Android version, and fun to track down exactly which Android version can be hacked to be installed on your phone (since your phone supplier probably won't give you a fix until a year later).
For me, I just want iTunes to periodically check if my phone has the latest patch and tell me about any updates, so I can install it by clicking "Yes".