On 9/11, I had a professor whose reaction was, "eh, it was only a matter of time." Perhaps the idea has occurred to anyone who's played Microsoft flight simulator.
I doubt Bin Laden or your Professor took the idea from a computer game.
There was a (failed) precedent. And I'm not just talking of the bomb inside the garage of the WTC. In the War of independence of Algeria against France, a dirty War which Algeria eventually won its independence, and a War of independence which had been logistically supported by the Bin Laden family themselves, a commercial passenger airplane was taken over in one of the airports in Paris.
The hostage-takers were demanding some fuel and a clear path to take off. I don't know if the french authorities were going to acquiesce, but somehow they were able to listen inside the airplane, and they heard that the hostage-takers were planning to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower. So after hearing that, hostages be damned -- the French authorities just stormed the airplane.
When the only example you cite is a well known one from sixty years ago... all that does is make you look like a loon.
Actually, the Iran example from sixty years ago is a very good one, because it can't be called a conspiracy theory anymore (since it's been declassified after the mandatory 50 years waiting period), and yet it almost exactly parallels the reasons for the failed coups against President Hugo Chavez on April 11th 2001 (in Venezuela), under the young President George W Bush. In Iran, it was the nationalization of the oil fields that spurred the US/UK sponsored coups over there.
In the case of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez had won the Presidency against an incumbent with 70% of the votes. On April 8th or 9th, President Hugo Chavez nationalizes the oil fields. He has the oil dock workers call a general strike (or some other bullshit excuse) and temporarily halts the export of oil. At the same exact time, Saddam Hussein (also still a member of OPEC) has a "temper tantrum" (as Forbes magazine called it at the time) and stops the export of oil (which was still exported under the oil-for-food program for pennies on the dollar). Two or three days later. That's right, the timing is very suspicious. There is an attempted coups against President Hugo Chavez. The military threatens to blow up the palace if the President doesn't go with them in an helicopter. And a man, who's only qualification, is that he's head of the Chamber of Commerce (WTF?) plus his entourage, takes over the Palace and makes himself the new "President" on Venezuelan television.
At the same time, President George W Bush (the young one) comes on TV, while everybody in the US is still trying to figure out what happened in Venezuela. He says something quite cryptic like "He deserved it.", "The United States fully recognizes the new Venezuelan government.", and not much else.
There is a nice documentary called "The revolution shall not be televised" from a foreign documentary film-maker who was in the country and even in the Palace at the time. Of course, the documentary takes Hugo Chavez's side and romanticizes a little bit too much the way Hugo Chavez took back power. In fact, it wasn't the people that took back the palace, although they certainly came when called. Hugo Chavez had been warned about the coups in advance (some say that he intentionally provoked the US in attacking earlier than they had been prepared for, just like Castro did with the Bay of Pigs) and he had stationed an extra contingent of loyal military personnel under the palace who waited for the new President and the co-conspirators to arrive and show themselves on TV before retaking the palace and demanding that they return the President back to them.
And if you don't want to take some liberal loony newspaper as a reference, which say that two American CIA operatives were found and captured in the Venezuelan military base (along with their own very detailed video log of how they were doing the coups), at least look up the archive in Forbes magazine. Forbes takes the side of the US interests of course, and it only covers some of the claims I'm making -- not all of them, plus it even tries to downplay the importance of Venezuela as an oil producing country, but I believe Forbes was one of the very few mainstream news outlets that really knew and wrote about what was going on in terms of context at the time. They had to. Someone had to explain to investors why the hell the price of oil on the world market had skyrocketed so much on April 8th.
At a major corporation I used to worked for, the PR director used to purchase all the WetFeet reports and FuckedCompanies.com alerts (in addition to the more traditional news clipping service related to our company). If anonymous people within your company are going to be publishing internal gossip/information about your company, and if your job is Public Relations, you might as well try to do your due diligence and try to be the first one to see what they're saying about you. I suspect that in the case of this Facebook information, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the corporate drones was ordered to download the data set in order to compare it to a list of existing employees (or at least, to a list of senior executives). It's the job of PR to not only protect the image of the company, but the image of its more well-known employees as well.
As to Intel, I'm not surprised they're on that list. Intel has been known to go through the trash of its own employees as a counter-intelligence precaution. Early mornings, they'll pick up the trash of their own employees and switch their trash can with an identical one so as not to attract the suspicion of the targets they have under surveillance. Same goes with the Church of Scientology, nobody should really be surprised that they're on there either.
Having an easy to download data set to compare to an existing data set is an attractive proposition for someone in management who doesn't know about the possibility of creating his own downloadable data set from the YahooSQL/YSQL tool or google labs free custom search engine tool.
MetroPCS is the perfect company to start with, it doesn't have national coverage and it's located in only a few of the highly dense metropolitan areas (and surrounding vacation spots). 4G will probably much easier to roll out if they don't try to roll it out all at once nationwide.
And no, MetroPCS is not just for low-income people that can't get credit. MetroPCS is one of the very few companies that doesn't try to rip off its customers (whether be it overages, roaming, or international calls). I highly recommend them if they're in your area. If anything, MetroPCS is in it for the long-haul, think of them like Southwest. Southwest does attract some of the most budget-conscious customers, and also Southwest is by no means perfect, but it still is one of the better airlines out there (that's assuming they cover your area and where you actually need to go).
What does it take to have her _not_ trust someone?
Apparently, she didn't trust her own boyfriend. The Indian guy was telling her that her own boyfriend was the one who must have posted those pictures online. So apparently, that's all it takes for her, a random Indian guy from India telling her that her boyfriend is a creep.
Don't start spreading rumors like that. Parents only want women inside the full Disney body suits, as opposed to having men in there. They'd rather have only women potentially touching their kids inappropriately.
I am claiming that an *effective* vetting process will *REDUCE* the number of malicious apps...
While you're at it, don't discount the price developers have to pay to publish on the iPhone vs. Android. On the iPhone, it's $99 per YEAR. On Android, it's $25 period (and you're free to develop using a Mac, Windows, or Linux). Also, the lower learning curve for Android vs. iPhone developers will probably mean more malicious apps and a faster turnaround time for creating more malicious apps on Android.
So if we want to reduce the number of malicious apps even more drastically, may be we should just mandate that all app stores/markets increase their prices to $5,000 per year for developers. And may be, we should also think about creating a programming language that very few programmers can read or actually program in, such a language could be called 'Objective Assembly'.
Organ donation should be reciprocal. We should have a database of willing organ donors (in the event of their death). And the priority of someone on a waiting list for an organ should go up only if that person was recorded as a willing donor in the first place (x years earlier and continuously until now).
Because then, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. The overwhelming majority of parents would make their own kids donors, because they would most likely want the same opportunity given to their kids should their kids ever need an organ themselve.
And if the parents happen to be too religious, that's fine too. If there is problem with their kids donating organs, there will certainly be a problem for their kids accepting organs as well. And if the parents really want to change their minds at the last minute once an accident does happen, their kid will still be listed on the waiting list (it's just that their kid/baby will be at the very bottom of that list should this happen).
Since you're making the assumption that "his department is paying the IT department", I guess that means you also want to factor the pro-rated cost of having IT Staff (both the normal crew and the 24/7 crew) as well, not just the cost of the data center, the air conditioning, the hardware, the software licensing, etc.
Those HOV lane permits for greener cars are going to expire anyway, and none will be renewed. That's at least in California anyway. Take it for what it was, a temporary incentive to promote early adoption in something that seemed kind of risky at the time.
If you're going to be a parasite, at least try to be a successful parasite and try not to kill off the host. For every bicycle that gets stolen/vandalized in a public place, the word-of-mouth will ensure that there are at least a dozen bikes that will not get used at that location, or used period, because the owners would rather not have the same thing happen to their bikes.
The lock can only be cut by a diamond saw used by professional thieves...
Are you sure? It looks like your U-lock can simply be popped open with a car jack (probably a Volvo car jack, a truck car jack, or some other brand). The red part might be designed to expand, but I doubt it would hold even if that were the case. You may want to supplement your article with this information (no attribution necessary). In the University town I lived in, this was common knowledge and I doubt that this method of breaking U-locks was restricted to professional thieves.
This is why painting your bike with fluorescent crap, having it registered with your city/police department, and actively using a second lock (of a different type, which is easy to use -- just like your "chip control" lock), is so important. Every layer of protection, however small, helps a little.
Note that you can also purchase bones to fill in the remaining gaps in your U-lock where a would-be thief could stick his car jack in. And I don't know if it's customary in the Netherlands, but in some cities in the US, the police recommends to etch the registration number you got from them into the frame (instead of just using their stickers which can easily be defaced and/or painted over).
You tell me. What is your time really worth? You'd rather wait till Black Friday or Christmas Eve to dispute a slew of even bigger charges by the same outfit? And you wouldn't mind nice police men breaking down your door at 5am looking for child porn that those $10 supposedly bought?
and, you rarely get gifted developers with such an interest. working with someone else's vision is not fun. building your own vision is. why would a gifted developer use their nights and weekends to carry on someone else's vision?
That same argument goes the other way too. Why would a core developer continue working his butt off for a company that is not in alignment with his own personal vision/philosophy? The pay-check is one reason (assuming it clears). The non-compete is another (although, in California most non-competes are invalid). The options package is a third (although, that one too can become worthless in the blink of an eye).
Take the main developer of Ethereal for instance. He let his project become acquired. He didn't get along with management. He left the company, taking his code because it was open source, leaving the name and everything else because he didn't own those parts. Now, his project is called WireShark. And who did the customers/users follow? They followed him. They followed the main developer. Ethereal, as far I'm aware, is no more.
I work in a relatively small government organization - about 1200 people, only about 350 of which are office workers - and I can't imagine us even remotely considering this. Anything that involves storing ANY of our data on a server that doesn't reside in one of our 3 data centers is automatically nixed by IT.
Yes, every government organization has at least one Terry Childs who's been there for 20 years and who will do whatever is necessary to protect his little fiefdom. I feel kind of bad for you.
I assume you guys also do your own payroll, manage your own 401a/pension plans, store your own paper archives, repair your own photocopy machines, do your own warranty work on failed hard drives, maintain your own waste disposal landfill, do your own shredded paper disposal, and grow your own fruits and vegetables on premises as well.
I guess for the same reasons people get these Android phones that can't officially get updated anymore either...
Actually, there are far many more reasons to root an iPhone than to root an Android.
For what it's worth, jailbreaking an iPhone is as easy as downloading an application and running it. Rooting one's device is far more laborous, or at least I think it would be for a typical user.
I assume you meant "isn't"
Not so simple. Yes, you can "get it back" by downloading LauncherPro et al, but it's still running underneath regardless. Actually removing it usually requires a custom ROM, which is blocked from official update paths too.
I haven't tried LauncherPro. From your description it sounds like it overlays a smaller window on top of the UI. I was speaking more of apps like Home++ for instance. Those replace completely the default home UI of your handset manufacturer. And by definition since it's an Activity replacing another Activity, nothing but background services could run underneath the replacement.
You're the one who says the Android stock UI can't be gotten back to, and yet, getting it back is as easy as clicking 'install' on a free app from the Marketplace.
And yet to you, hunting down the instructions, rooting your iPhone, foregoing any future OTA updates for your model, now to **you** that's the easier path of the two?? Really???? Are you freaking kidding me?!??? Why would anyone want an iPhone that can't be officially updated anymore?
is EXACTLY as Apple intended it. It doesn't have Facebook or anything like that pre-installed; the user get the Apple bits right from the beginning, and everything added after that is entirely up to him or her. Not so when you buy Android...and the sad part is that the stock UI is actually quite good!
You are just misinformed. With Android, you can change the total look and feel of your phone without even rooting it (even coming back to the stock UI if you like). In the Android Market, just search for "home", search for "dialer", or search for "keyboard", and install the ones you prefer -- that's it. Just try doing that with the iPhone!!
Granted, apps like 'Sprint TV' and 'Sprint NASCAR' will still be on your phone, but they won't be visible to you unless you go into the applications tab. And even the applications tab, you don't have to use that if you don't want to, personally I use 'Apps Organizer' as my primary view for locating apps, it's really been a godsend for tagging and organizing all the apps I keep on downloading.
US is also the only country in the world that is constantly in war with other countries, bullies them and has a history of supporting enemies of its enemies.
This is not to disparage your main point, because I do agree with it, but in at least the case of the UK, France, Italy, and Russia. All of those four countries are still involved in proxy wars in Africa and else where still to this very day. And I'm only mentioning those four, because those are the only four that I know of, I'm sure that there are many more countries that are doing the very same thing as well (it's just that this is not an area I am paying particular attention to).
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On 9/11, I had a professor whose reaction was, "eh, it was only a matter of time." Perhaps the idea has occurred to anyone who's played Microsoft flight simulator.
I doubt Bin Laden or your Professor took the idea from a computer game.
There was a (failed) precedent. And I'm not just talking of the bomb inside the garage of the WTC. In the War of independence of Algeria against France, a dirty War which Algeria eventually won its independence, and a War of independence which had been logistically supported by the Bin Laden family themselves, a commercial passenger airplane was taken over in one of the airports in Paris.
The hostage-takers were demanding some fuel and a clear path to take off. I don't know if the french authorities were going to acquiesce, but somehow they were able to listen inside the airplane, and they heard that the hostage-takers were planning to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower. So after hearing that, hostages be damned -- the French authorities just stormed the airplane.
When the only example you cite is a well known one from sixty years ago... all that does is make you look like a loon.
Actually, the Iran example from sixty years ago is a very good one, because it can't be called a conspiracy theory anymore (since it's been declassified after the mandatory 50 years waiting period), and yet it almost exactly parallels the reasons for the failed coups against President Hugo Chavez on April 11th 2001 (in Venezuela), under the young President George W Bush. In Iran, it was the nationalization of the oil fields that spurred the US/UK sponsored coups over there.
In the case of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez had won the Presidency against an incumbent with 70% of the votes. On April 8th or 9th, President Hugo Chavez nationalizes the oil fields. He has the oil dock workers call a general strike (or some other bullshit excuse) and temporarily halts the export of oil. At the same exact time, Saddam Hussein (also still a member of OPEC) has a "temper tantrum" (as Forbes magazine called it at the time) and stops the export of oil (which was still exported under the oil-for-food program for pennies on the dollar). Two or three days later. That's right, the timing is very suspicious. There is an attempted coups against President Hugo Chavez. The military threatens to blow up the palace if the President doesn't go with them in an helicopter. And a man, who's only qualification, is that he's head of the Chamber of Commerce (WTF?) plus his entourage, takes over the Palace and makes himself the new "President" on Venezuelan television.
At the same time, President George W Bush (the young one) comes on TV, while everybody in the US is still trying to figure out what happened in Venezuela. He says something quite cryptic like "He deserved it.", "The United States fully recognizes the new Venezuelan government.", and not much else.
There is a nice documentary called "The revolution shall not be televised" from a foreign documentary film-maker who was in the country and even in the Palace at the time. Of course, the documentary takes Hugo Chavez's side and romanticizes a little bit too much the way Hugo Chavez took back power. In fact, it wasn't the people that took back the palace, although they certainly came when called. Hugo Chavez had been warned about the coups in advance (some say that he intentionally provoked the US in attacking earlier than they had been prepared for, just like Castro did with the Bay of Pigs) and he had stationed an extra contingent of loyal military personnel under the palace who waited for the new President and the co-conspirators to arrive and show themselves on TV before retaking the palace and demanding that they return the President back to them.
And if you don't want to take some liberal loony newspaper as a reference, which say that two American CIA operatives were found and captured in the Venezuelan military base (along with their own very detailed video log of how they were doing the coups), at least look up the archive in Forbes magazine. Forbes takes the side of the US interests of course, and it only covers some of the claims I'm making -- not all of them, plus it even tries to downplay the importance of Venezuela as an oil producing country, but I believe Forbes was one of the very few mainstream news outlets that really knew and wrote about what was going on in terms of context at the time. They had to. Someone had to explain to investors why the hell the price of oil on the world market had skyrocketed so much on April 8th.
At a major corporation I used to worked for, the PR director used to purchase all the WetFeet reports and FuckedCompanies.com alerts (in addition to the more traditional news clipping service related to our company). If anonymous people within your company are going to be publishing internal gossip/information about your company, and if your job is Public Relations, you might as well try to do your due diligence and try to be the first one to see what they're saying about you. I suspect that in the case of this Facebook information, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the corporate drones was ordered to download the data set in order to compare it to a list of existing employees (or at least, to a list of senior executives). It's the job of PR to not only protect the image of the company, but the image of its more well-known employees as well.
As to Intel, I'm not surprised they're on that list. Intel has been known to go through the trash of its own employees as a counter-intelligence precaution. Early mornings, they'll pick up the trash of their own employees and switch their trash can with an identical one so as not to attract the suspicion of the targets they have under surveillance. Same goes with the Church of Scientology, nobody should really be surprised that they're on there either.
Having an easy to download data set to compare to an existing data set is an attractive proposition for someone in management who doesn't know about the possibility of creating his own downloadable data set from the YahooSQL/YSQL tool or google labs free custom search engine tool.
It's more of a subdomain on a free site. It's not that difficult to get--> http://bitchtara.webs.com/
That's not the case in France at least. I remember my mom had to use a friend's address to make sure I attended the best public school in the city.
MetroPCS is the perfect company to start with, it doesn't have national coverage and it's located in only a few of the highly dense metropolitan areas (and surrounding vacation spots). 4G will probably much easier to roll out if they don't try to roll it out all at once nationwide.
And no, MetroPCS is not just for low-income people that can't get credit. MetroPCS is one of the very few companies that doesn't try to rip off its customers (whether be it overages, roaming, or international calls). I highly recommend them if they're in your area. If anything, MetroPCS is in it for the long-haul, think of them like Southwest. Southwest does attract some of the most budget-conscious customers, and also Southwest is by no means perfect, but it still is one of the better airlines out there (that's assuming they cover your area and where you actually need to go).
What does it take to have her _not_ trust someone?
Apparently, she didn't trust her own boyfriend. The Indian guy was telling her that her own boyfriend was the one who must have posted those pictures online. So apparently, that's all it takes for her, a random Indian guy from India telling her that her boyfriend is a creep.
Don't start spreading rumors like that. Parents only want women inside the full Disney body suits, as opposed to having men in there. They'd rather have only women potentially touching their kids inappropriately.
I am claiming that an *effective* vetting process will *REDUCE* the number of malicious apps...
While you're at it, don't discount the price developers have to pay to publish on the iPhone vs. Android. On the iPhone, it's $99 per YEAR. On Android, it's $25 period (and you're free to develop using a Mac, Windows, or Linux). Also, the lower learning curve for Android vs. iPhone developers will probably mean more malicious apps and a faster turnaround time for creating more malicious apps on Android.
So if we want to reduce the number of malicious apps even more drastically, may be we should just mandate that all app stores/markets increase their prices to $5,000 per year for developers. And may be, we should also think about creating a programming language that very few programmers can read or actually program in, such a language could be called 'Objective Assembly'.
In fact in today technological society there are already more people reading more from screens of some kind, than from paper.
Facts like these could stand a little batter anchorage.
Wikipedia Channel 65534
Organ donation should be reciprocal. We should have a database of willing organ donors (in the event of their death). And the priority of someone on a waiting list for an organ should go up only if that person was recorded as a willing donor in the first place (x years earlier and continuously until now).
Because then, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. The overwhelming majority of parents would make their own kids donors, because they would most likely want the same opportunity given to their kids should their kids ever need an organ themselve.
And if the parents happen to be too religious, that's fine too. If there is problem with their kids donating organs, there will certainly be a problem for their kids accepting organs as well. And if the parents really want to change their minds at the last minute once an accident does happen, their kid will still be listed on the waiting list (it's just that their kid/baby will be at the very bottom of that list should this happen).
Since you're making the assumption that "his department is paying the IT department", I guess that means you also want to factor the pro-rated cost of having IT Staff (both the normal crew and the 24/7 crew) as well, not just the cost of the data center, the air conditioning, the hardware, the software licensing, etc.
Those HOV lane permits for greener cars are going to expire anyway, and none will be renewed. That's at least in California anyway. Take it for what it was, a temporary incentive to promote early adoption in something that seemed kind of risky at the time.
If you're going to be a parasite, at least try to be a successful parasite and try not to kill off the host. For every bicycle that gets stolen/vandalized in a public place, the word-of-mouth will ensure that there are at least a dozen bikes that will not get used at that location, or used period, because the owners would rather not have the same thing happen to their bikes.
The lock can only be cut by a diamond saw used by professional thieves...
Are you sure? It looks like your U-lock can simply be popped open with a car jack (probably a Volvo car jack, a truck car jack, or some other brand). The red part might be designed to expand, but I doubt it would hold even if that were the case. You may want to supplement your article with this information (no attribution necessary). In the University town I lived in, this was common knowledge and I doubt that this method of breaking U-locks was restricted to professional thieves.
This is why painting your bike with fluorescent crap, having it registered with your city/police department, and actively using a second lock (of a different type, which is easy to use -- just like your "chip control" lock), is so important. Every layer of protection, however small, helps a little.
Note that you can also purchase bones to fill in the remaining gaps in your U-lock where a would-be thief could stick his car jack in. And I don't know if it's customary in the Netherlands, but in some cities in the US, the police recommends to etch the registration number you got from them into the frame (instead of just using their stickers which can easily be defaced and/or painted over).
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/02/life-and-death-of-microsoft-kin-the-inside-story/
You only need 500 kazillion more leechers, and you'll be almost as big as Google/Yahoo.
You tell me. What is your time really worth? You'd rather wait till Black Friday or Christmas Eve to dispute a slew of even bigger charges by the same outfit? And you wouldn't mind nice police men breaking down your door at 5am looking for child porn that those $10 supposedly bought?
and, you rarely get gifted developers with such an interest. working with someone else's vision is not fun. building your own vision is. why would a gifted developer use their nights and weekends to carry on someone else's vision?
That same argument goes the other way too. Why would a core developer continue working his butt off for a company that is not in alignment with his own personal vision/philosophy? The pay-check is one reason (assuming it clears). The non-compete is another (although, in California most non-competes are invalid). The options package is a third (although, that one too can become worthless in the blink of an eye).
Take the main developer of Ethereal for instance. He let his project become acquired. He didn't get along with management. He left the company, taking his code because it was open source, leaving the name and everything else because he didn't own those parts. Now, his project is called WireShark. And who did the customers/users follow? They followed him. They followed the main developer. Ethereal, as far I'm aware, is no more.
I work in a relatively small government organization - about 1200 people, only about 350 of which are office workers - and I can't imagine us even remotely considering this. Anything that involves storing ANY of our data on a server that doesn't reside in one of our 3 data centers is automatically nixed by IT.
Yes, every government organization has at least one Terry Childs who's been there for 20 years and who will do whatever is necessary to protect his little fiefdom. I feel kind of bad for you.
I assume you guys also do your own payroll, manage your own 401a/pension plans, store your own paper archives, repair your own photocopy machines, do your own warranty work on failed hard drives, maintain your own waste disposal landfill, do your own shredded paper disposal, and grow your own fruits and vegetables on premises as well.
I guess for the same reasons people get these Android phones that can't officially get updated anymore either...
Actually, there are far many more reasons to root an iPhone than to root an Android.
For what it's worth, jailbreaking an iPhone is as easy as downloading an application and running it. Rooting one's device is far more laborous, or at least I think it would be for a typical user.
I assume you meant "isn't"
Not so simple. Yes, you can "get it back" by downloading LauncherPro et al, but it's still running underneath regardless. Actually removing it usually requires a custom ROM, which is blocked from official update paths too.
I haven't tried LauncherPro. From your description it sounds like it overlays a smaller window on top of the UI. I was speaking more of apps like Home++ for instance. Those replace completely the default home UI of your handset manufacturer. And by definition since it's an Activity replacing another Activity, nothing but background services could run underneath the replacement.
You're the one who says the Android stock UI can't be gotten back to, and yet, getting it back is as easy as clicking 'install' on a free app from the Marketplace.
And yet to you, hunting down the instructions, rooting your iPhone, foregoing any future OTA updates for your model, now to **you** that's the easier path of the two?? Really???? Are you freaking kidding me?!??? Why would anyone want an iPhone that can't be officially updated anymore?
is EXACTLY as Apple intended it. It doesn't have Facebook or anything like that pre-installed; the user get the Apple bits right from the beginning, and everything added after that is entirely up to him or her. Not so when you buy Android...and the sad part is that the stock UI is actually quite good!
You are just misinformed. With Android, you can change the total look and feel of your phone without even rooting it (even coming back to the stock UI if you like). In the Android Market, just search for "home", search for "dialer", or search for "keyboard", and install the ones you prefer -- that's it. Just try doing that with the iPhone!!
Granted, apps like 'Sprint TV' and 'Sprint NASCAR' will still be on your phone, but they won't be visible to you unless you go into the applications tab. And even the applications tab, you don't have to use that if you don't want to, personally I use 'Apps Organizer' as my primary view for locating apps, it's really been a godsend for tagging and organizing all the apps I keep on downloading.
US is also the only country in the world that is constantly in war with other countries, bullies them and has a history of supporting enemies of its enemies.
This is not to disparage your main point, because I do agree with it, but in at least the case of the UK, France, Italy, and Russia. All of those four countries are still involved in proxy wars in Africa and else where still to this very day. And I'm only mentioning those four, because those are the only four that I know of, I'm sure that there are many more countries that are doing the very same thing as well (it's just that this is not an area I am paying particular attention to).
Is this common in your own industry? FTFC Joel Payne says:
It will be soon!!! I'm stealing this story for myself.