Since when was 44% a majority? (Unless the vote has changed significantly since you posted...)
And they didn't anyway - rather, 44% say they were unaffected by his death. The "forgettable" was just biased blurb added by the poll author, and can't be assumed to be representative of people's views.
I'd say that if 50% of the entire population are affected by your death, that's pretty damn good going.
That indeed sounds mad - there might be an argument in that case for changing the tax laws so that they catch everyone who uses petrol, but all the while the law is as it is, you can't blame them for trying to minimise the amount they pay through legal means. They're playing fairly by the rules, and it's the state's fault if the rules don't cover what they want.
You are indeed quite right:( Three years in an ASCII prison for me it is. (And indeed for everyone in the UK who's read the thread, as you're now all guilty of possessing extremely violent disgusting ASCII pr0n.)
This is about fighting it under Human Rights law. If someone in the US tries to overturn a ruling based on the US Constitution, you don't hear people whining "New Definition of Constitution".
The Human Rights we are discussing here are defined by the European Covention of Human Rights. That's what it means. It's got nothing to do with whatever definition you are thinking of. If you are proposing a different definition, then you are the one who is proposing a "new definition of Human Rights". Just because there exist countries with appalling human rights records is no more relevant than countries that have nothing like the US Constitution. The ECHR is basically our closest equivalent of the US Constitution, and I don't see why people have to whine about it just because it's called something different.
What? I'd say any issue that involves the possibility of going to prison is a worth rights issue. What "proportion" are you on about?
I never understand this "but there are worse things to worry about" special pleading whenever Human Rights are mentioned. The European Convention on Human Rights is basically our closest thing to what the US has in its Constitutions. You don't hear people saying "Get a sense of proportion" when someone talks about right to bear arms, or taking the fifth amendment.
I suspect that lawyers have thought this through, and have a better idea of what European Human Rights law covers, than armchair lawyers on Slashdot...
as it is now as a parent I would press sex offense charges in both cases
I agree - I'm glad that the search itself is not constitutional, but why isn't strip searching an actual 13 year old not considered sexual exploitation?
Meanwhile, it seems legislators are more worried about someone taking a photo of a child's face, photoshopping it. It doesn't affect the child at all, and doesn't include anything other than what would be seen in public (as opposed to a strip search, for god's sake) - but for some reason, it's this that gets treated as exploitation.
It was bad enough when fictional images were treated the same as real children. But it seems now, Fictional images have more rights than actual children.
Just think - if one of those school officials had just drawn a picture of the search, rather than putting her through the invasive ordeal, he'd probably be up on child porn charges.
If we're criminalising images out of fear of people getting off on them, and we're also worried about people aroused by children's faces... then why aren't we criminalising all photos of children's faces?
Of course, perhaps this guy should just become a teacher. Since it seems strip searching actual young girls is okay (unconstitutional, but only AFAICT on the grounds of illegal search, and not that it's child abuse, nor are the school officials liable), but having a faked picture that only features children's faces is sexual "exploitation"...
A common argument, but it's rubbish - there is no doubt in this case that the images are faked.
If you want to argue for a law on realistic images, that's one thing, but that is no argument for non-realistic images. And there should always be a defence if one can show the image isn't real.
And yes, heaven forbid the prosecutors actually have to do their job, find evidence, and prove someone's guilty. Given that the state already has vastly more resources than the individual (especially when all his or her electronic possessions are confiscated "for evidence" (or more like a fishing expedition)), why should things be made harder for the defendant, who's freedom is at stake?
The laws are in place to protect real minors, not fake minors and no one said that the laws had to be easy to enforce but appanently by including fakes, they made it easy for themselves.
There are many people who believe that fake minors need "protecting" too - either because they think that people who possess these images need to be locked up "in case they then commit abuse", or simply because they're "disgusting".
After all, how do you explain the laws against cartoon porn depicting under 18s in the US, Australia, and soon the UK?
Even if that were so, possession laws do not require that a person got off on the images. I don't know if it's any different for what this guy's getting charged with.
And even if he was - since they were pasted onto adult bodies, I'm not sure how we can conclude he's getting off on images of pre-pubescents!
Did he publish? I can't see that in the article - even if he did, I think child porn would be the wrong law to use, because it's a different thing, nowhere near as serious as sexual abuse, and it would also set the precedent for simple possession being illegal.
Reading the article though, the mentality of people in positions of authority is worrying:
"when you have the face of a small child affixed to a nude body of a mature woman, it's going to be the state's position that this is for sexual gratification and that this is simulated sexual activity,"
Slashdotters rejoice! Can't get laid? Well just "affix" a picture of a woman next to you, and you can take part in "simulated" sexual activity. (Will he go to a simulated prison? Thought not.)
"It's definitely on the increase," said Justin Fitzsimmons, a former prosecutor and senior attorney with the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse, part of the National District Attorneys' Association. "People are trying to come up with creative ways to continue to sexually exploit children using digital evidence."
Generally, what is seen is the "Photoshop effect," in which people use the face of a child on an adult body or vice versa in an effort to get around the law, he said.
Yes, just think of all these poor photographs being abused!
I love the way they talk of it like it's a loophole. It's as much of a loophole, as me paying for items in a shop is a "creative" way round being done for shoplifting...
I'm reminded of the UK's Brass Eye - the thing is there's an amusing part where they actually overlay a child's face onto a adult's body! It's done rather unrealistically, with the photos of different proportions, but it's not like these bad photoshop jobs that people are being done for sound realistic either. Whilst I've never heard the legality of Brass Eye being questioned, I honestly wonder that if an individual was found with the same images in their private possession, they'd be done for child porn.
Still, the UK is already moving on - now we're criminalising adult porn (even if consensual and simulated).
You misunderstand - sure, on both you might have to consider multiple paths to support older hardware. But extensions can leave you with the same feature being exposed differently on different hardware (e.g., I remember two sided stencil buffer being done different by ATI and NVIDIA when it was first introduced).
Also, DirectX does do a better job of handling for itself the different code paths where possible. For example, you simply have "vertex buffers". On OpenGL, you have "vertex buffer objects" and "vertex arrays", and you have to work out which is supported, not to mention taking into account things such as the "range" extension.
Or would you prefer the DirectX model where each release comes with a completely new API?
When DirectX was rapidly changing and full of a lot of rubbish, this was annoying. But now, I see it's advantages - OpenGL has a lot of legacy hanging around. Sure, you don't have to use it - but I as a developer have no idea which I am supposed to use, or how to hit the "fast path". Worse, different chipsets may do better on different paths. DirectX makes it much easier to write the most optimal route, because there's generally only one way you can do it.
(As of a year ago, I used only OpenGL - but really, DirectX is really quite good these days.)
OpenGL has certainly not fallen into disuse, in fact it is the standard 3D API for the PS3, Apple OSX and I believe the Nintendo Wii (correction?). And add to that list any non MS operating system. Direct 3D is Microsoft only so you are limited to the Xbox or Windows.
I think it's fair to say it's fallen behind. I say this as someone who used (and still uses) OpenGL for years. OpenGL is still being developed, but features seem to be coming available on DirectX first, and driver support is more likely to be poorer for OpenGL in my experience.
I thought consoles used their own custom APIs?
I hardly think that games developers are worried about "limiting" themselves to all Windows PCs, and the XBox - just think, they could be writing for Macs!
Also consider the fact that OpenGL is not only geared toward hardware acceleration but can also be rendered in software if desired. Direct 3D is hardware only.
There are software implementations, but I forget if it's available in drivers by default? Are there any platforms that actually use software OpenGL?
I am fully aware of the fact that yes hardware rendering is the way to go but with today's multicore and specialized CPU's and GPU's we might find ourselves using software rendering systems running on gp-gpu or super multicore systems.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "software" system running on a GPU - that's what we have today. GPUs are already using multiprocessing (far more so than CPUs). For years, 3D programmers have been writing software to run on the GPU ("shaders"). The only thing missing from the old traditional software renderers is writing the code to do things like the rasterization, but why reinvent the wheel doing the boring stuff? Even if rendering moves back to the CPU, it'll be easier to use libraries to do this work.
Fixed function pipeline "hardware" went out of fashion years ago (in fact DirectX 10 has dropped support for it AIUI). Usually when people talk about "hardware" vs "software" renderering these days, they mean using the GPU versus CPU. I'm not sure how you are distinguishing between them, if you are talking about running "software" on the GPU?
And OpenGL has the advantage of being open source so drivers can be open source or developed to take advantage of certain features. Optimizations can easily be made to the driver and open source 3D drivers can be easily written.
OpenGL is not open source (though there exist some open source implementations), you probably mean it's an open API.
You might think so, but that's not what's happened. OpenGL 3 seems to demonstrate the inefficiency of "run by committee" - there's no evidence of features coming on OpenGL first, rather we have to wait ages for them to be approved by the committee. As I say above, my experience is that OpenGL drivers are more likely to be inefficient.
E.g., if someone wants to take advantage of OpenGL's open nature and write OpenGL drivers for my Intel graphics card that runs as well as Direct3D, please do so. But I don't see it happening.
Yes, but even if that were a plausible rational explanation of what happened, that's not what Christians believe - this doesn't prove their claim that Jesus was the son of God, and was resurrected.
Your point is on the same side as those of us who point out that there is nothing divine about the Bible, or the events documented in it - whether the events described were made up hoaxes, or had rational explanations, or whatever, doesn't change the point.
But if you read the bible as a METAPHORICAL book you may have some room to INTERPRET things like these. It's just plain stupid to read the bible and think that the tree sons of Noah actually were tree guys. May it be tree groups of people?
No, it actually was tree sons. The willow tree, the oak tree, and the bonsai, from which all of today's trees are descended.
You may claim it was a metaphorical Noah in his metaphorical boat made of metaphorial chopped up trees guys. But I choose to believe otherwise.
There was only one boat, and there clearly wasn't room for a whole group of trees (which we would call a "forest").
Same here - whether there is any correlation between the results and handedness, is one of the most obvious questions to ask, but the media (and perhaps the study) seems to ignore this issue.
"Talk to my right ear" might be bad advice, if you know the person you are talking to is left handed.
And whilst it's possible there's a correlation between left handed and "left eared", it's still not clear that explains phone usage - if I pick up a phone with my right hand to my right ear, it feels wrong, but that's nothing to do with my ear, it's because I'm using my right hand.
Claiming that the UK doesn't use SI is flat out wrong - the fact that some people also use imperial in some cases doesn't support your argument.
There are obvious reasons why road signs are still in miles - the massive cost of converting them, the confusion caused during the transition, not to mention the risk of accidents, which will result in deaths. The speedometer follows on from that.
I've not heard of any public outrage, unless you count Daily Mail outrage.
But there are many other areas where the UK has long switched to metric. Sure, plenty of people still use imperial, and Daily Mail readers will whine about not being able to by in pounds as part of their known anti-EU agenda, but you can't change what individuals use, that only changes gradually as people grow old and die.
If NASA switched to using Metric, that wouldn't be negated by the fact that other people in the US would still use imperial.
Clearly this isn't something that magically changes over night. Lots of people still think in miles for roads, feet/inches for people's heights, and stones/pounds for people's weight; but then use litres, celcius, metres for other measurements.
The only true statement is that people in the UK use a combination of imperial and metric. Thus your claim that they don't use SI is wrong.
Which makes all the other platforms that offer it for free all the more better.
By your logic, a Commodore 64 at $595 is still a great deal today. After all, if we only look at what you gain for the price, it's pretty cool - if it was a good deal in the 80s, it still must be now, right?
Of course, that's ludicrous - and the reason we no longer consider it a good deal is not because it no longer offers (if anything, a C64 offers more today, due to expansions and updates people have made for it), but precisely because the competition is so much better value, offering more for less.
More importantly, it also strikes me that in the Palm world, or the Windows Mobile world, you can not actually achieve a) through c) at ANY price, never mind $99.
Of course you can. You can also release without requiring permission from Apple or whoever.
I agree - if the Iphone really was the modern C64, that would be depressing for the reasons you give. Thankfully freedom remains, with wide availability of PCs, laptops and netbooks. Netbooks in particular I am glad to have appeared - they're very portable, but still full blown computers, with the same freedom, rather than locked down devices like the Iphone.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when was 44% a majority? (Unless the vote has changed significantly since you posted...)
And they didn't anyway - rather, 44% say they were unaffected by his death. The "forgettable" was just biased blurb added by the poll author, and can't be assumed to be representative of people's views.
I'd say that if 50% of the entire population are affected by your death, that's pretty damn good going.
That indeed sounds mad - there might be an argument in that case for changing the tax laws so that they catch everyone who uses petrol, but all the while the law is as it is, you can't blame them for trying to minimise the amount they pay through legal means. They're playing fairly by the rules, and it's the state's fault if the rules don't cover what they want.
You are indeed quite right :( Three years in an ASCII prison for me it is. (And indeed for everyone in the UK who's read the thread, as you're now all guilty of possessing extremely violent disgusting ASCII pr0n.)
I know, it's turned into a place full of straw men.
Nice straw man. Who claimed it was?
This is about fighting it under Human Rights law. If someone in the US tries to overturn a ruling based on the US Constitution, you don't hear people whining "New Definition of Constitution".
The Human Rights we are discussing here are defined by the European Covention of Human Rights. That's what it means. It's got nothing to do with whatever definition you are thinking of. If you are proposing a different definition, then you are the one who is proposing a "new definition of Human Rights". Just because there exist countries with appalling human rights records is no more relevant than countries that have nothing like the US Constitution. The ECHR is basically our closest equivalent of the US Constitution, and I don't see why people have to whine about it just because it's called something different.
What? I'd say any issue that involves the possibility of going to prison is a worth rights issue. What "proportion" are you on about?
I never understand this "but there are worse things to worry about" special pleading whenever Human Rights are mentioned. The European Convention on Human Rights is basically our closest thing to what the US has in its Constitutions. You don't hear people saying "Get a sense of proportion" when someone talks about right to bear arms, or taking the fifth amendment.
I suspect that lawyers have thought this through, and have a better idea of what European Human Rights law covers, than armchair lawyers on Slashdot...
as it is now as a parent I would press sex offense charges in both cases
I agree - I'm glad that the search itself is not constitutional, but why isn't strip searching an actual 13 year old not considered sexual exploitation?
Meanwhile, it seems legislators are more worried about someone taking a photo of a child's face, photoshopping it. It doesn't affect the child at all, and doesn't include anything other than what would be seen in public (as opposed to a strip search, for god's sake) - but for some reason, it's this that gets treated as exploitation.
It was bad enough when fictional images were treated the same as real children. But it seems now, Fictional images have more rights than actual children.
Just think - if one of those school officials had just drawn a picture of the search, rather than putting her through the invasive ordeal, he'd probably be up on child porn charges.
If we're criminalising images out of fear of people getting off on them, and we're also worried about people aroused by children's faces ... then why aren't we criminalising all photos of children's faces?
Of course, perhaps this guy should just become a teacher. Since it seems strip searching actual young girls is okay (unconstitutional, but only AFAICT on the grounds of illegal search, and not that it's child abuse, nor are the school officials liable), but having a faked picture that only features children's faces is sexual "exploitation"...
A common argument, but it's rubbish - there is no doubt in this case that the images are faked.
If you want to argue for a law on realistic images, that's one thing, but that is no argument for non-realistic images. And there should always be a defence if one can show the image isn't real.
And yes, heaven forbid the prosecutors actually have to do their job, find evidence, and prove someone's guilty. Given that the state already has vastly more resources than the individual (especially when all his or her electronic possessions are confiscated "for evidence" (or more like a fishing expedition)), why should things be made harder for the defendant, who's freedom is at stake?
The laws are in place to protect real minors, not fake minors and no one said that the laws had to be easy to enforce but appanently by including fakes, they made it easy for themselves.
There are many people who believe that fake minors need "protecting" too - either because they think that people who possess these images need to be locked up "in case they then commit abuse", or simply because they're "disgusting".
After all, how do you explain the laws against cartoon porn depicting under 18s in the US, Australia, and soon the UK?
Even if that were so, possession laws do not require that a person got off on the images. I don't know if it's any different for what this guy's getting charged with.
And even if he was - since they were pasted onto adult bodies, I'm not sure how we can conclude he's getting off on images of pre-pubescents!
A game of hang man...
/|\
-----
|/ |
| 0
|
| |
| / \
/ \
===========
Or virtual snuff porn? You decide.
[Note to UK police officers reading this - Mr Hangman is at least 18 years of age.]
Did he publish? I can't see that in the article - even if he did, I think child porn would be the wrong law to use, because it's a different thing, nowhere near as serious as sexual abuse, and it would also set the precedent for simple possession being illegal.
Reading the article though, the mentality of people in positions of authority is worrying:
"when you have the face of a small child affixed to a nude body of a mature woman, it's going to be the state's position that this is for sexual gratification and that this is simulated sexual activity,"
Slashdotters rejoice! Can't get laid? Well just "affix" a picture of a woman next to you, and you can take part in "simulated" sexual activity. (Will he go to a simulated prison? Thought not.)
"It's definitely on the increase," said Justin Fitzsimmons, a former prosecutor and senior attorney with the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse, part of the National District Attorneys' Association. "People are trying to come up with creative ways to continue to sexually exploit children using digital evidence."
Generally, what is seen is the "Photoshop effect," in which people use the face of a child on an adult body or vice versa in an effort to get around the law, he said.
Yes, just think of all these poor photographs being abused!
I love the way they talk of it like it's a loophole. It's as much of a loophole, as me paying for items in a shop is a "creative" way round being done for shoplifting...
I'm reminded of the UK's Brass Eye - the thing is there's an amusing part where they actually overlay a child's face onto a adult's body! It's done rather unrealistically, with the photos of different proportions, but it's not like these bad photoshop jobs that people are being done for sound realistic either. Whilst I've never heard the legality of Brass Eye being questioned, I honestly wonder that if an individual was found with the same images in their private possession, they'd be done for child porn.
Still, the UK is already moving on - now we're criminalising adult porn (even if consensual and simulated).
You misunderstand - sure, on both you might have to consider multiple paths to support older hardware. But extensions can leave you with the same feature being exposed differently on different hardware (e.g., I remember two sided stencil buffer being done different by ATI and NVIDIA when it was first introduced).
Also, DirectX does do a better job of handling for itself the different code paths where possible. For example, you simply have "vertex buffers". On OpenGL, you have "vertex buffer objects" and "vertex arrays", and you have to work out which is supported, not to mention taking into account things such as the "range" extension.
Or would you prefer the DirectX model where each release comes with a completely new API?
When DirectX was rapidly changing and full of a lot of rubbish, this was annoying. But now, I see it's advantages - OpenGL has a lot of legacy hanging around. Sure, you don't have to use it - but I as a developer have no idea which I am supposed to use, or how to hit the "fast path". Worse, different chipsets may do better on different paths. DirectX makes it much easier to write the most optimal route, because there's generally only one way you can do it.
(As of a year ago, I used only OpenGL - but really, DirectX is really quite good these days.)
OpenGL has certainly not fallen into disuse, in fact it is the standard 3D API for the PS3, Apple OSX and I believe the Nintendo Wii (correction?). And add to that list any non MS operating system. Direct 3D is Microsoft only so you are limited to the Xbox or Windows.
I think it's fair to say it's fallen behind. I say this as someone who used (and still uses) OpenGL for years. OpenGL is still being developed, but features seem to be coming available on DirectX first, and driver support is more likely to be poorer for OpenGL in my experience.
I thought consoles used their own custom APIs?
I hardly think that games developers are worried about "limiting" themselves to all Windows PCs, and the XBox - just think, they could be writing for Macs!
Also consider the fact that OpenGL is not only geared toward hardware acceleration but can also be rendered in software if desired. Direct 3D is hardware only.
There are software implementations, but I forget if it's available in drivers by default? Are there any platforms that actually use software OpenGL?
I am fully aware of the fact that yes hardware rendering is the way to go but with today's multicore and specialized CPU's and GPU's we might find ourselves using software rendering systems running on gp-gpu or super multicore systems.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "software" system running on a GPU - that's what we have today. GPUs are already using multiprocessing (far more so than CPUs). For years, 3D programmers have been writing software to run on the GPU ("shaders"). The only thing missing from the old traditional software renderers is writing the code to do things like the rasterization, but why reinvent the wheel doing the boring stuff? Even if rendering moves back to the CPU, it'll be easier to use libraries to do this work.
Fixed function pipeline "hardware" went out of fashion years ago (in fact DirectX 10 has dropped support for it AIUI). Usually when people talk about "hardware" vs "software" renderering these days, they mean using the GPU versus CPU. I'm not sure how you are distinguishing between them, if you are talking about running "software" on the GPU?
And OpenGL has the advantage of being open source so drivers can be open source or developed to take advantage of certain features. Optimizations can easily be made to the driver and open source 3D drivers can be easily written.
OpenGL is not open source (though there exist some open source implementations), you probably mean it's an open API.
You might think so, but that's not what's happened. OpenGL 3 seems to demonstrate the inefficiency of "run by committee" - there's no evidence of features coming on OpenGL first, rather we have to wait ages for them to be approved by the committee. As I say above, my experience is that OpenGL drivers are more likely to be inefficient.
E.g., if someone wants to take advantage of OpenGL's open nature and write OpenGL drivers for my Intel graphics card that runs as well as Direct3D, please do so. But I don't see it happening.
Yes, but even if that were a plausible rational explanation of what happened, that's not what Christians believe - this doesn't prove their claim that Jesus was the son of God, and was resurrected.
Your point is on the same side as those of us who point out that there is nothing divine about the Bible, or the events documented in it - whether the events described were made up hoaxes, or had rational explanations, or whatever, doesn't change the point.
But if you read the bible as a METAPHORICAL book you may have some room to INTERPRET things like these. It's just plain stupid to read the bible and think that the tree sons of Noah actually were tree guys. May it be tree groups of people?
No, it actually was tree sons. The willow tree, the oak tree, and the bonsai, from which all of today's trees are descended.
You may claim it was a metaphorical Noah in his metaphorical boat made of metaphorial chopped up trees guys. But I choose to believe otherwise.
There was only one boat, and there clearly wasn't room for a whole group of trees (which we would call a "forest").
and it's really more trouble than it's worth to reach across my keyboard and use my mouse with my left hand.
I get round that by being left handed (including for phone), but being right handed for using a mouse.
Even better, it means when I play keyboard-and-mouse FPS games, I am playing ambidextrously :)
Same here - whether there is any correlation between the results and handedness, is one of the most obvious questions to ask, but the media (and perhaps the study) seems to ignore this issue.
"Talk to my right ear" might be bad advice, if you know the person you are talking to is left handed.
And whilst it's possible there's a correlation between left handed and "left eared", it's still not clear that explains phone usage - if I pick up a phone with my right hand to my right ear, it feels wrong, but that's nothing to do with my ear, it's because I'm using my right hand.
Believe it or not, there are other products besides the C64 and the Iphone. Although you wouldn't think it from reading Appledot.
Apple, it Just Works, Out Of The Box!
Claiming that the UK doesn't use SI is flat out wrong - the fact that some people also use imperial in some cases doesn't support your argument.
There are obvious reasons why road signs are still in miles - the massive cost of converting them, the confusion caused during the transition, not to mention the risk of accidents, which will result in deaths. The speedometer follows on from that.
I've not heard of any public outrage, unless you count Daily Mail outrage.
But there are many other areas where the UK has long switched to metric. Sure, plenty of people still use imperial, and Daily Mail readers will whine about not being able to by in pounds as part of their known anti-EU agenda, but you can't change what individuals use, that only changes gradually as people grow old and die.
If NASA switched to using Metric, that wouldn't be negated by the fact that other people in the US would still use imperial.
Clearly this isn't something that magically changes over night. Lots of people still think in miles for roads, feet/inches for people's heights, and stones/pounds for people's weight; but then use litres, celcius, metres for other measurements.
The only true statement is that people in the UK use a combination of imperial and metric. Thus your claim that they don't use SI is wrong.
Frankly, I don't see what's so hard about using HTML in your posts.
It's not hard to use HTML when it's needed. The pointless thing is having to use HTML to just have paragraphs.
Choosing "Plain Old Text" as the posting method is usually the easiest.
Indeed - which is why it seems mad it's not the default...
I have to find 99 Iphone developers? No thanks, I'd rather a platform that Just Works, Out Of The Box.
Which makes all the other platforms that offer it for free all the more better.
By your logic, a Commodore 64 at $595 is still a great deal today. After all, if we only look at what you gain for the price, it's pretty cool - if it was a good deal in the 80s, it still must be now, right?
Of course, that's ludicrous - and the reason we no longer consider it a good deal is not because it no longer offers (if anything, a C64 offers more today, due to expansions and updates people have made for it), but precisely because the competition is so much better value, offering more for less.
More importantly, it also strikes me that in the Palm world, or the Windows Mobile world, you can not actually achieve a) through c) at ANY price, never mind $99.
Of course you can. You can also release without requiring permission from Apple or whoever.
I agree - if the Iphone really was the modern C64, that would be depressing for the reasons you give. Thankfully freedom remains, with wide availability of PCs, laptops and netbooks. Netbooks in particular I am glad to have appeared - they're very portable, but still full blown computers, with the same freedom, rather than locked down devices like the Iphone.