Doesn't God have this particular habit of when something subpar to him is placed before him as an offering or as to "his will", that he drop kicks it in the balls?
Hah I wish. Then Bush would have been vaporized by a lightning bolt when he said God told him to go to war in Iraq. Or at least hit in the balls by a meteorite. And pretty soon everyone would just stop dealing with this God person for safety reasons.
Not much question that he can be a mean bastard. Like it or not, Lucifer had a point.
I prefer American Taliban. It's more accurate, in that it captures their (ab)use of religion to justify their actions and rally the weak-minded to their cause.
The democrats are no angels, but the republicans are devils.
I disagree: the Taliban are brutal, genocidal fanatics suffering from religious intoxication who believe that their God wants them to be that way. Our officials are not remotely like that, and fascism (well, corporatism, which is a more apt term) is much more representative of their goals, policies and practices. They're all about money and power, nothing more. The religious overtones exhibited by some of our elected officials is nothing but a cover designed to appeal to certain subset of our population, which will be discarded like a used snake skin when necessary. They're about as religious as a collection of antique brass doorknobs: we all know that and nobody believes any of these assholes whey they talk about "morals" or "God's will" or anything like that. Mainly because when they do, we also know that we're about to get screwed.
You don't need to add that. All you need is a parent filming their daughter running in a sundress taking a tumble. Panties visible in one frame? Sex offender.
It's about that bad. In my State, if you take a leak against a tree or a fence post, and a cop happens to see you... instant registered sex offender.
I just love how everything "for the children" or anything relating to child pornography (which is absolutely despicable) can strip our rights away without notice. It's absolute bullshit.
I'm going to venture a guess that this has much less to do with child pornography, criminal investigations and counter-terrorism than you might think at first glance, although I'm sure that law-enforcement types are salivating at the mere thought of having this capability. What it does concern is copyright infringment and anti-file-sharing efforts: I guarantee that you'll find RIAA/MPAA fingerprints all over this, if you look hard enough (that and the fact that the DoJ has been overrun with ex-RIAA attorneys.) If not, well, it sure is remarkably convenient.
Wireless providers are, if anything, placing increasingly stringent limits on how much data users may transfer using their devices, whereas the 250 Gb cap that is becoming common among the big ISPs (yeah, AT&T, I'm looking at you: you just had to take a page out of Comcast's playbook, didn't you) permits plenty of illegal downloading to go on, and the media companies figure that they'll have a lot better chance in court if they're using ISP provided records rather than the manufactured "evidence" provided by Media Sentry (or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays.)
Fact is, there are a lot of pressure groups that want these requirements, and they want them bad. That they have no legitimate need for them, and that having them may very well violate numerous Constitutional provisions means little in the current political climate.
It's clearly fud but my guess is that they're claiming that having your personal data on your hard drive is less safe than on the cloud and, for the average computer user, they may well be correct.
The problem is that in most cases it's stored on both.
They called Anonymous "very professional, highly sophisticated"
The old adage applies "It takes one to know one." Sony isn't professional or highly sophisticated, and they wouldn't know what that looked like if it hacked their network and stole all their data...
Actually, if the attack truly had been so professional, so sophisticated, Sony would never have known about it.
Unbeknownst to the loyal readers, Slashdot has been acquired by Rupert-Murdoc's News Corp. From now on misleading and false headlines will be the result of deliberate policy instead of laziness and poor editing. A renaming contest will be held. Pick your favorite from the following options
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The criminal act was the breaking what Sony did wasn't a crime.
You can't say that. Sony is a multinational operation and it's entirely possible, even likely, that in many jurisdictions their negligence was, in fact, criminal. If so, they'll be seeing some court time in the coming months.
Insane, I read the amount in the paper this morning and thought it was a typo.
Well. If lawyers in Canada work anything like the way they do here in the U.S., they make bombastic claims and ask for spectacular redress right up front. They know they'll never get that much (but hey, they might) but the hope is to vilify the organization they are suing in the court of public opinion.
"It takes a ridiculous amount of money and sacrificed features to harden a non-trivial setup against truly determined attackers."
Yep and the lawsuits will cost a ridiculous amount of money too. Even if they win a case it will cost a lot of money defending that case. We are talking about a lot of lawsuits!
Yes, but to a typical corporate purchasing type, security costs money now, whereas lawsuits will cost money then and aren't his department anyway.
'What is becoming more and more evident is that Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes,' Hirai wrote.
Besides, does that really sound like Anonymous? Sounds more like something somebody on the Russian Business Network would do. Sony just wants us to believe that they were hit by some group so technically competent that Sony can't be blamed for losing their customers' data. The reality is that a. this isn't the kind of thing for which Anonymous is known and b. if anyone here is technically competent it isn't Sony. And yeah, I agree with both of you: if they weren't in Anonymous' crosshairs before... they are now.
Stick to rootkits, Sony. Running a global gaming network obviously isn't your cup of tea.
That said: For what it's worth, I definitely have "rooted" my Droid: It was one of the first things I did when I got the phone, and doing so (way back then) simply required using adb to replace su, with no other changes.
The first couple of releases of Android shipped that way. It was only a desire to prevent programmers from perceiving Android apps as easily-piratable that root access was removed. That irked me at the time: I was an early-adopter G1 owner, and I was torqued when my root access disappeared... of course that didn't last long. I currently have a G2, and I waited until a reliable root procedure was released before I bought it. I'm running Cyanogenmod 7 now and couldn't be happier.
Having been continually disappointed by Android, both in terms of the platform and the phones it runs on... Well, the fact that I could just hop on the market, grab a tethering app, and not have to have a nerdgasm rooting my goddamned phone has been the only reason I've been unhappily debating snagging another Android device when my contract is up this year.
Playing games with tethering? Great. Now there's no reason I shouldn't just get an iPhone.
Keep your bazaar and its ugliness and foul odors; I'll happily go order pizza from the cathedral.
I can buy an Android device that isn't even tied to any particular service, and without the Google stamp of approval at all.
You appear to describe tablets running AOSP Android as opposed to phones running OHA Android. Popular AOSP tablets are made by Archos and Coby. Out of the box, they come with the anemic AppsLib instead of Android Market; anyone who doesn't want to depend on AppsLib and Amazon has to "pirate" Android Market using something like ArcTools.
Well, there are alternative markets like SlideMe. Not much there at the moment, however it's definitely a place to get legitimate apps without going through carrier-controlled channels. And I think that as Android becomes more and more popular on tablets and other devices that don't have wireless support and aren't in any way beholden to the cellular companies (or Google, for that matter) we're going to find that more and more applications are going to be showing up outside the Google Market, both free and paid. Where there's demand, there will be a supply, and Google doesn't force you to market your work through their channels: and why should they? Chances are you're gonna take that Android-based whatever-it-is and use a bunch of Google online services through your local Wi-Fi connection, and see a bunch of ads. Google wins no matter what. Contrast that to the way Apple treats their developers, to the way Apple pretty much has to treat their developers, in order to maintain control of distribution and their rather substantial take.
This idea that a computing device is intrinsically useless without a centralized repository is ridiculous (although obviously very convenient for companies marketing cellular devices who want a cut of software sales.) Software has been made available for decades without requiring Marketplaces: those are just a convenience (an impressive one, I'll admit.) But look at what's happened with personal computing over the years: there are only so many things, by and large, that people do with their computers. The same is gong to happen to tablets and other pieces of portable gear. Sure, the Apple and Android markets have thousands upon thousands of apps, and the choice is nice. It also makes good ad copy to claim that our Market has the most apps, or the best apps. But I know dozens of people with supersmart phones who have maybe a dozen apps on them, because that's all they need. Give people who have a non-Google-experience device a halfway decent third-party marketplace with some of the top apps in it, and they'll still find their devices very, very useful. Maybe more useful: those smaller Marketplaces won't be so full of fart soundboards and other cruft.
You can't use gps on Android phone without giving google all your location information.
The truth is, apart from the fact that you can download uncertified app on google android, you can't do anything more that what you can do on competing platform.
Google hasn't released latest Andrioid source code, not that it would help user in any way.
You can't update anything on your Android phone without the permission from carrier/manufacturer/google.
This is false. I can buy an Android device that isn't even tied to any particular service, and without the Google stamp of approval at all.
Yes, and neither is it a requirement to send Google your location. It seems that the anti-Android FUD machine is in full swing tonight. Google keeps certain specific applications away from non-Google-experience devices, but the operating system itself is and will continue to be customized for just about every goddamn device out there (including the iPhone, apparently.)
Google will eventually release Honeycomb source: they want it to spread but I think they want to put some more polish on it first. The early releases of Android really were premature and they probably should have held back for a while. I think they're learning from that. And he's wrong that Android being open source doesn't help the user in any way. Hell, take Cyanogenmod, for example: that project has taken Android well beyond what Google has done, and since all of Cyanogen's improvements are readily available at Github, and because his team has done a lot of good work, some of it tends to end up back in the main source tree at Google. So yes, the end user does directly benefit from the open-source nature of Android.
The truth is, apart from the fact that you can download uncertified app on google android, you can't do anything more that what you can do on competing platform.
Um... isn't the ability to run code not approved by the carriers or Google exactly what we are talking about here?
Android only uses Linux based kernel. How does it make it open. You can't update anything on your Android phone without the permission from carrier/manufacturer/google. Google hasn't released latest Andrioid source code, not that it would help user in any way. You can't use gps on Android phone without giving google all your location information. The truth is, apart from the fact that you can download uncertified app on google android, you can't do anything more that what you can do on competing platform. I don't think this makes it any more open than other offerings.
Do you actually know what you are talking about? No? I didn't think so. I'll let others rip you a new one for this comment.
We have epic greed here, is our major retardation. It's not enough to make money, you have to get filthy rich off of every poor slob you can. They will be down to charging us by the bit if we let them, and it looks like we will let them. They have all the guns, lawyers, judges and politicians. The USA is a new kind of political animal, it's pure corporate mercenary-ism. Freedom and liberty are a punch line in a joke here now. Only the truly naive still believe in the old nationalism fairy tales of "home of the free". Don't laugh, our brand of bullshit is coming your way soon too.
Remember what Mussolini said about that very issue.
There are two ways to load applications onto an Android-powered device without using Android Market: A. running an APK file with the "Settings > Applications > Unknown sources" checkbox turned on and B. loading applications over a USB cable with Android Debug Bridge (ADB). Option A requires that the device's firmware not be customized to hide the "Unknown sources" checkbox from the user, but AT&T has made the choice to hide it across all Android-powered phones that it offers. Option B requires a device driver that's apparently specific to each make, model, and revision of device. AT&T requires that one register with AT&T as a developer before it will offer drivers for download.
The third way (albeit the most difficult for most people) is to root the damn thing and install a good third-party ROM.
Does AT&T customize their ADB protocol, though? ADB drivers are pretty easy to come by... I'm registered with Google as an Android developer and the SDK contains the drivers, but you can find them all over the place.
But with the least of four evils (T-Mobile USA) soon to be bought by arguably the greatest of them (AT&T), what do you recommend that smartphone customers who value their freedom do?
Good question. As a T-Mobile customer who is absolutely disgusted with the buyout (ahem, "merger") I don't really know. Sprint has some good data plans, I understand, and they supposedly don't get bent about tethering, but yeah... it's a good question. I have no interest in AT&T or Verizon.
The GP's point was that the apps aren't "banned", they just aren't available from the official store. With an iDevice, you could argue that to be the correct terminology since you can't get apps any other way short of jailbreaking. With Android however, removing the apps doesn't mean that individual users are banned from using them.
Yes, and back in the days when tethering was not provided by Android itself, and my carrier (T-Mobile, as it happens) didn't allow tethering apps in the Market, I downloaded SlideMe and found a Bluetooth tethering app about three seconds later. All I had to do was check the box in Android's setup that allows installation of non-Market apps, and that was that. No rooting, jailbreaking or other unsupported activities required. And that's pretty much still the case.
Of course, once you root you open up lots of other possibilities, chief among them the ability to run third-party ROMs (like my personal favorite, Cyanogenmod). But basic tethering ability has been a part of Android for a long time now. It's the carrier's fault if you can't do it natively, not Android's.
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Doesn't God have this particular habit of when something subpar to him is placed before him as an offering or as to "his will", that he drop kicks it in the balls?
Hah I wish. Then Bush would have been vaporized by a lightning bolt when he said God told him to go to war in Iraq. Or at least hit in the balls by a meteorite. And pretty soon everyone would just stop dealing with this God person for safety reasons.
Not much question that he can be a mean bastard. Like it or not, Lucifer had a point.
I prefer American Taliban. It's more accurate, in that it captures their (ab)use of religion to justify their actions and rally the weak-minded to their cause.
The democrats are no angels, but the republicans are devils.
I disagree: the Taliban are brutal, genocidal fanatics suffering from religious intoxication who believe that their God wants them to be that way. Our officials are not remotely like that, and fascism (well, corporatism, which is a more apt term) is much more representative of their goals, policies and practices. They're all about money and power, nothing more. The religious overtones exhibited by some of our elected officials is nothing but a cover designed to appeal to certain subset of our population, which will be discarded like a used snake skin when necessary. They're about as religious as a collection of antique brass doorknobs: we all know that and nobody believes any of these assholes whey they talk about "morals" or "God's will" or anything like that. Mainly because when they do, we also know that we're about to get screwed.
You don't need to add that. All you need is a parent filming their daughter running in a sundress taking a tumble. Panties visible in one frame? Sex offender.
It's about that bad. In my State, if you take a leak against a tree or a fence post, and a cop happens to see you ... instant registered sex offender.
Incredible, really.
I just love how everything "for the children" or anything relating to child pornography (which is absolutely despicable) can strip our rights away without notice. It's absolute bullshit.
I'm going to venture a guess that this has much less to do with child pornography, criminal investigations and counter-terrorism than you might think at first glance, although I'm sure that law-enforcement types are salivating at the mere thought of having this capability. What it does concern is copyright infringment and anti-file-sharing efforts: I guarantee that you'll find RIAA/MPAA fingerprints all over this, if you look hard enough (that and the fact that the DoJ has been overrun with ex-RIAA attorneys.) If not, well, it sure is remarkably convenient.
Wireless providers are, if anything, placing increasingly stringent limits on how much data users may transfer using their devices, whereas the 250 Gb cap that is becoming common among the big ISPs (yeah, AT&T, I'm looking at you: you just had to take a page out of Comcast's playbook, didn't you) permits plenty of illegal downloading to go on, and the media companies figure that they'll have a lot better chance in court if they're using ISP provided records rather than the manufactured "evidence" provided by Media Sentry (or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays.)
Fact is, there are a lot of pressure groups that want these requirements, and they want them bad. That they have no legitimate need for them, and that having them may very well violate numerous Constitutional provisions means little in the current political climate.
It's clearly fud but my guess is that they're claiming that having your personal data on your hard drive is less safe than on the cloud and, for the average computer user, they may well be correct.
The problem is that in most cases it's stored on both.
You think bing is not doing the same fucking thing?
Are you stupid or do you work for them?
I think he was just trying to be funny, and you read too much into it.
They called Anonymous "very professional, highly sophisticated"
The old adage applies "It takes one to know one." Sony isn't professional or highly sophisticated, and they wouldn't know what that looked like if it hacked their network and stole all their data...
Actually, if the attack truly had been so professional, so sophisticated, Sony would never have known about it.
Unbeknownst to the loyal readers, Slashdot has been acquired by Rupert-Murdoc's News Corp. From now on misleading and false headlines will be the result of deliberate policy instead of laziness and poor editing. A renaming contest will be held. Pick your favorite from the following options Foxdot Slashfox Flashdox Slashdot Fair and Balanced News for Nerds
Murdot
The criminal act was the breaking what Sony did wasn't a crime.
You can't say that. Sony is a multinational operation and it's entirely possible, even likely, that in many jurisdictions their negligence was, in fact, criminal. If so, they'll be seeing some court time in the coming months.
There is! For ONE BILLION DOLLARS http://www.thestar.com/news/article/984932--playstation-users-plan-class-action-suit-for-hacking?bn=1
Insane, I read the amount in the paper this morning and thought it was a typo.
Well. If lawyers in Canada work anything like the way they do here in the U.S., they make bombastic claims and ask for spectacular redress right up front. They know they'll never get that much (but hey, they might) but the hope is to vilify the organization they are suing in the court of public opinion.
No, that was us. Your radio wanted to be free.
The music wanted to be free. The radio was happy where it was.
If you say you are part of Anonymous, you're not.
Or maybe you are. But you're Anonymous, so who really knows for sure?
"It takes a ridiculous amount of money and sacrificed features to harden a non-trivial setup against truly determined attackers."
Yep and the lawsuits will cost a ridiculous amount of money too. Even if they win a case it will cost a lot of money defending that case. We are talking about a lot of lawsuits!
Yes, but to a typical corporate purchasing type, security costs money now, whereas lawsuits will cost money then and aren't his department anyway.
Actually, I figured it could go either way. The best jokes can. :)
The best humor has a kernel of truth in it.
'What is becoming more and more evident is that Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes,' Hirai wrote.
Besides, does that really sound like Anonymous? Sounds more like something somebody on the Russian Business Network would do. Sony just wants us to believe that they were hit by some group so technically competent that Sony can't be blamed for losing their customers' data. The reality is that a. this isn't the kind of thing for which Anonymous is known and b. if anyone here is technically competent it isn't Sony. And yeah, I agree with both of you: if they weren't in Anonymous' crosshairs before ... they are now.
Stick to rootkits, Sony. Running a global gaming network obviously isn't your cup of tea.
I'd bet that someone from England would get pissy if they were grouped into a sterotype based on someone from Italy
Yes. Or someone from Poland being grouped into a stereotype based upon someone from Germany.
That said: For what it's worth, I definitely have "rooted" my Droid: It was one of the first things I did when I got the phone, and doing so (way back then) simply required using adb to replace su, with no other changes.
The first couple of releases of Android shipped that way. It was only a desire to prevent programmers from perceiving Android apps as easily-piratable that root access was removed. That irked me at the time: I was an early-adopter G1 owner, and I was torqued when my root access disappeared ... of course that didn't last long. I currently have a G2, and I waited until a reliable root procedure was released before I bought it. I'm running Cyanogenmod 7 now and couldn't be happier.
Having been continually disappointed by Android, both in terms of the platform and the phones it runs on... Well, the fact that I could just hop on the market, grab a tethering app, and not have to have a nerdgasm rooting my goddamned phone has been the only reason I've been unhappily debating snagging another Android device when my contract is up this year.
Playing games with tethering? Great. Now there's no reason I shouldn't just get an iPhone.
Keep your bazaar and its ugliness and foul odors; I'll happily go order pizza from the cathedral.
All I can say is ... you're doing something wrong.
But that's okay.
I can buy an Android device that isn't even tied to any particular service, and without the Google stamp of approval at all.
You appear to describe tablets running AOSP Android as opposed to phones running OHA Android. Popular AOSP tablets are made by Archos and Coby. Out of the box, they come with the anemic AppsLib instead of Android Market; anyone who doesn't want to depend on AppsLib and Amazon has to "pirate" Android Market using something like ArcTools.
Well, there are alternative markets like SlideMe. Not much there at the moment, however it's definitely a place to get legitimate apps without going through carrier-controlled channels. And I think that as Android becomes more and more popular on tablets and other devices that don't have wireless support and aren't in any way beholden to the cellular companies (or Google, for that matter) we're going to find that more and more applications are going to be showing up outside the Google Market, both free and paid. Where there's demand, there will be a supply, and Google doesn't force you to market your work through their channels: and why should they? Chances are you're gonna take that Android-based whatever-it-is and use a bunch of Google online services through your local Wi-Fi connection, and see a bunch of ads. Google wins no matter what. Contrast that to the way Apple treats their developers, to the way Apple pretty much has to treat their developers, in order to maintain control of distribution and their rather substantial take.
This idea that a computing device is intrinsically useless without a centralized repository is ridiculous (although obviously very convenient for companies marketing cellular devices who want a cut of software sales.) Software has been made available for decades without requiring Marketplaces: those are just a convenience (an impressive one, I'll admit.) But look at what's happened with personal computing over the years: there are only so many things, by and large, that people do with their computers. The same is gong to happen to tablets and other pieces of portable gear. Sure, the Apple and Android markets have thousands upon thousands of apps, and the choice is nice. It also makes good ad copy to claim that our Market has the most apps, or the best apps. But I know dozens of people with supersmart phones who have maybe a dozen apps on them, because that's all they need. Give people who have a non-Google-experience device a halfway decent third-party marketplace with some of the top apps in it, and they'll still find their devices very, very useful. Maybe more useful: those smaller Marketplaces won't be so full of fart soundboards and other cruft.
You can't use gps on Android phone without giving google all your location information.
The truth is, apart from the fact that you can download uncertified app on google android, you can't do anything more that what you can do on competing platform.
Google hasn't released latest Andrioid source code, not that it would help user in any way.
You can't update anything on your Android phone without the permission from carrier/manufacturer/google.
This is false. I can buy an Android device that isn't even tied to any particular service, and without the Google stamp of approval at all.
Yes, and neither is it a requirement to send Google your location. It seems that the anti-Android FUD machine is in full swing tonight. Google keeps certain specific applications away from non-Google-experience devices, but the operating system itself is and will continue to be customized for just about every goddamn device out there (including the iPhone, apparently.)
Google will eventually release Honeycomb source: they want it to spread but I think they want to put some more polish on it first. The early releases of Android really were premature and they probably should have held back for a while. I think they're learning from that. And he's wrong that Android being open source doesn't help the user in any way. Hell, take Cyanogenmod, for example: that project has taken Android well beyond what Google has done, and since all of Cyanogen's improvements are readily available at Github, and because his team has done a lot of good work, some of it tends to end up back in the main source tree at Google. So yes, the end user does directly benefit from the open-source nature of Android.
The truth is, apart from the fact that you can download uncertified app on google android, you can't do anything more that what you can do on competing platform.
Um ... isn't the ability to run code not approved by the carriers or Google exactly what we are talking about here?
Android only uses Linux based kernel. How does it make it open. You can't update anything on your Android phone without the permission from carrier/manufacturer/google. Google hasn't released latest Andrioid source code, not that it would help user in any way. You can't use gps on Android phone without giving google all your location information. The truth is, apart from the fact that you can download uncertified app on google android, you can't do anything more that what you can do on competing platform. I don't think this makes it any more open than other offerings.
Do you actually know what you are talking about? No? I didn't think so. I'll let others rip you a new one for this comment.
We have epic greed here, is our major retardation. It's not enough to make money, you have to get filthy rich off of every poor slob you can. They will be down to charging us by the bit if we let them, and it looks like we will let them. They have all the guns, lawyers, judges and politicians. The USA is a new kind of political animal, it's pure corporate mercenary-ism. Freedom and liberty are a punch line in a joke here now. Only the truly naive still believe in the old nationalism fairy tales of "home of the free". Don't laugh, our brand of bullshit is coming your way soon too.
Remember what Mussolini said about that very issue.
There are two ways to load applications onto an Android-powered device without using Android Market: A. running an APK file with the "Settings > Applications > Unknown sources" checkbox turned on and B. loading applications over a USB cable with Android Debug Bridge (ADB). Option A requires that the device's firmware not be customized to hide the "Unknown sources" checkbox from the user, but AT&T has made the choice to hide it across all Android-powered phones that it offers. Option B requires a device driver that's apparently specific to each make, model, and revision of device. AT&T requires that one register with AT&T as a developer before it will offer drivers for download.
The third way (albeit the most difficult for most people) is to root the damn thing and install a good third-party ROM.
... I'm registered with Google as an Android developer and the SDK contains the drivers, but you can find them all over the place.
Does AT&T customize their ADB protocol, though? ADB drivers are pretty easy to come by
But with the least of four evils (T-Mobile USA) soon to be bought by arguably the greatest of them (AT&T), what do you recommend that smartphone customers who value their freedom do?
Good question. As a T-Mobile customer who is absolutely disgusted with the buyout (ahem, "merger") I don't really know. Sprint has some good data plans, I understand, and they supposedly don't get bent about tethering, but yeah ... it's a good question. I have no interest in AT&T or Verizon.
The GP's point was that the apps aren't "banned", they just aren't available from the official store. With an iDevice, you could argue that to be the correct terminology since you can't get apps any other way short of jailbreaking. With Android however, removing the apps doesn't mean that individual users are banned from using them.
Yes, and back in the days when tethering was not provided by Android itself, and my carrier (T-Mobile, as it happens) didn't allow tethering apps in the Market, I downloaded SlideMe and found a Bluetooth tethering app about three seconds later. All I had to do was check the box in Android's setup that allows installation of non-Market apps, and that was that. No rooting, jailbreaking or other unsupported activities required. And that's pretty much still the case.
Of course, once you root you open up lots of other possibilities, chief among them the ability to run third-party ROMs (like my personal favorite, Cyanogenmod). But basic tethering ability has been a part of Android for a long time now. It's the carrier's fault if you can't do it natively, not Android's.