I've written code on Android. It's based on Java, and includes most of the standard Java SDK library classes. If you've written Java, or even C++, you should be fine. You can add external libraries if you like, but most apps probably won't need to. I really like the Eclipse integration they did, you can even do interactive debugging on the code while it's running on your phone. There is also a nice emulator you can use if you wish to test other versions of the OS and such. Overall, I find it quite easy to get most things done, and the docs are pretty good. At least as good as the Java SDK.
I would think that anyone smart enough to know about reinstalling XP constantly for performance would know about this. I make unattended install disks for my parents so I don't have to mess with it. Just pop the CD in, boot, format the drive and tell XP to start installing. Then walk away. Almost as nice as installing Linux.:)
That and the fact that running the scripts allows drive-by-virus infection are the biggest reasons I block. I'm not going to wait for your lame slow ad server. If you want me to quit blocking, you need to fix the ad servers and ensure they don't do that sort of thing. There's no reason I should have to wait for anything to load before reading the text from the HTML. As I surf a lot on a Netbook these days, I've also gone to NoScript. It's amazing how much crappy JS code there is out there. Blocking JS has made a huge speed difference on my machines and even on my powerful boxes it's getting installed now. With netbooks and smartphones becoming more popular, sites are going to have to start fixing these issues or more users will do the same. I don't have 4 3Ghz CPUs for you to peg at 100% with your crappy JS code. Learn to code or don't use scripts.
At least/. lets me use the old comment system, the new AJAX setup is unusable on a netbook and slow on a Core2Duo.
I really hate how Chrome does the "waiting on" stuff. Put that crap in another thread and let me at least view the parts of the page that HAVE downloaded! Adding NoScript to FF (and disabling the Slashdot AJAX stuff, god that sucks CPU!) has made FF quite pleasant to use on my Netbook.
If you think bookmark sync in Chrome is nice, you should try Weave. That and NoScript are the biggest reasons I run FF still. Get a decent SSD while you're at it. FF loads in about the same time as Chrome on my machine once I put an SSD in there.
And with a little NoScript and AdBlock+, FF is damn fast. It's also doing less work, so comparing the results to Chrome really isn't fair. FF sucks at JavaScript compared to Chrome and Opera, but 90% of JavaScript is worthless ad serving and tracking crap I don't want running anyway. Not to mention cross-site scripting exploits.
So switch it. You can use the old comment system, that's what I'm doing now. Slashdot's new system is so JScript heavy that even Chrome slows down significantly on my Netbook. It's in the preferences. Hell, I installed NoScript on FF and Slashdot helpfully gave me a link to the proper page in the settings.:)
The main index page isn't so bad, it's the comments that killed my system.
No, the fine would be acceptable if it provided you with coverage, but it doesn't. I think this whole thing is a half-ass, BS cop-out by the politicians. They should have either regulated the insurance industry in real ways, or gone single-payer. This way lets them help out their buddies in the insurance companies while being able to blame those same companies when it doesn't work out. It's not going to significantly help those who are not provided a plan through their employers, an absolutely retarded way to do things, or the poor who STILL won't be able to afford insurance and now won't be able to afford the fine either.
There were a ton of good things they could have done here. They chose not to and instead gave the insurance companies a bailout bigger than the banks and automakers got, all while convincing people that it was a good thing. There's so much spin on this thing I'm surprised there isn't a black hole forming over DC right now. All while making "middle class" people like myself (those that make too much to get any government assistance, but not enough to pay for the increased costs this kind of thing brings along with it) pay even more out to the big companies. But since we aren't poor enough to feel sorry for, or rich enough to purchase laws to protect us, we get screwed for attempting to work for a living.
Most current Macs, even a few versions back, are quite quick machines dragging an anchor around in the form of a 5400RPM laptop hard drive. With multi-user access, seek times add up fast. Upgrading my Mac Mini to a mid-level SSD made it feel 10x faster. Now it's the stupid SATA1 interface slowing things down. Not much I can do about that.
Upgrading the machine to a "modern hard drive" would help a lot. Even in laptop form factor, 7200RPM is easy to come by. SSD is ideal, but design places tend to use big files, so an SSD might be too small.
Or, as suggested by every other reply, put up a real file server. A few mirrors stripped into a single big drive should give excellent performance.
My library has a number of interesting titles available for free. DRM, yes, but as I'm borrowing it, I really don't mind. $15 for a ebook without DRM I might be able to get on board with....
For decent quality 720p with h264 and AC3 audio, about 1.5GB/hr. For MPEG2, we're closer to about 6GB/hr. Live TV streaming needs not only the high speed, but also low-latency. Doable with a good network, but with the public internet?
Or Linux could implement ZFS the same way Solaris did and have 2 I/O stacks. Insisting on the old layers for a new setup like ZFS is backward when ZFS has clearly proven to be quite capable and has a clean design internally. The old way has good reasons for existing, but the ZFS way does as well. I have a very hard time seeing objections like this as anything other than NIH. I run OpenSolaris at home, and after using ZFS as it was intended, I have no reason to even consider anything else for a large fileserver. And my server is small compared to some I've read about. 12 1.5TB drives in 2 raidz2 arrays.
That said, I run Ubuntu in a VM on the same server for my MythTV needs. Linux still has a lot going for it, but for dealing with large datasets with redundancy and error-checking/correction, ZFS has any other software based solution beat by a long shot. And it's stable, working, with an excellent track record TODAY. Not some time in the distant future like BTRFS.
The licenses are a red-herring, IMO. If NVidia can have a closed source binary blob link to the kernel, I see no reason why an open-source project like ZFS can't do the same thing. License the bridge logic as BSD or CC and it shouldn't be a problem.
I won't comment on hardware RAID as I'm not willing to pay the asking price for the hardware. I'll be happy to compare should someone else wish to send me a RAID card and a set of disks to test.
FWIW, I run Firefox on most of my machines, but on my Netbook (1Ghz Atom) I run Chrome. FF would peg my CPU at 100% just sitting at a/. page, or other heavy Javascript/AJAX type site, even Gmail. Chrome hovers at about 5% doing the same stuff. I love FF, particularly with Weave as I use multiple computers, but they really need to get their crap together for smaller spec machines. That Chrome, Safari, and Opera can do it tells me that FF is the problem.
And yes, I tried removing ALL plugins from FF, even while leaving some installed in Chrome.
As AT&T recently found out in NYC and other big cities, more people means you need MORE towers, not less. It's like trying to serve 1000 people from a single WiFi AP. Sure, your signal can reach them, but the throughput sucks. It also doesn't take into account the fact that in large cities in the US, we have population density that can rival even Asian cities. Yet those areas are not nearly so well served as similar areas in Asia or Europe.
If you're going to use population density you need to use a smaller scale than whole countries. We don't even provide cellular 911 service to the entire land mass of the US. Only major metro areas and interstate highways have good coverage.
I agree with this, however, I think the manufacturers have some liability here as well. It would be dead simple to put a display of the cruise control set speed on the dash. I'm very surprised that even more computerized cars like the Prius with the huge LCD in the dash, don't have this.
I've started purchasing my own CPAP machine and accessories as well. Far cheaper than dealing with the home medical place locally (owned by my insurance company no less), even with insurance coverage picking up part of the bill. For less money, I get a better machine and direct support. And I can run the purchase through my FSA, so it's tax free.:)
FWIW, nebulizers are the same way. I bought a very nice machine online for about half the cost of the local place, and the local place wanted to give me a gigantic POS. I bought a very compact unit that has much nicer features.
Do you really want to pay $200/movie just for the media? That's the biggest reason we are still using optical media. It's CHEAP to make in huge quantities. We're talking a few cents per unit cheap here. Flash memory, even mask ROM, can't match that price point. That's also the biggest reason that the console guys moved from ROM to optical. More space, less production cost. DRM has little to do with it, it's just as easy to crack DRM on optical media as it is on other formats. Just google for the piracy scenes for the various consoles and movies. The media formats don't matter to the pirates.
That's where I'm at as well. I was VERY interested while reading the specs, but without a keyboard, I'm out. I've used touchscreen keyboards, I don't like them for more than basic, short messages. I can almost program on my G1 and shell commands are easy. I'd also like to see more RAM. These things are memory hungry, load it up. For the $500+ sticker price, I expect at least a gig. Note that that is real RAM, not swap or the uSD card. Though apps should be able to be installed to any location. That will come once the ROM devs get hold of it though. Apps2SD is probably the most popular hack.
OK, so to cover all the bases, get the government involved. Compulsory Licensing. We pay $X/year or $Y/movie, etc.. And get a license to use any version of it we acquire in any way we wish, including filesharing. So now torrents and such are legal, so you can get your copy online. No DRM, so there's no tracking and no restrictions. There will be people that cheat the system, but you're going to get that no matter what you do. So make it simple, easy, and cheap to buy licenses and many people will still pay. Include a legit, known clean, high speed, and high quality download as part of the fee, and people will be happy to just download it from you and won't generally bother with things like bit-torrent.
Of course, the downside is that the industry seems to buy whatever laws they want, so this would probably be corrupted somehow.
The problem we have here is that they are under the delusion that some DRM scheme will drive the price back up by stopping the pirates. They just don't get that people will always find a way to do it. They are competing with a zero cost distribution system that has no irritating restrictions on use like un-skippable ads and "warnings" that are stripped by the pirates anyway. So the free version is MORE valuable to the customers.
Your suggestions are great, I would buy into a system like that right now. I would also require the ability to download the content, not just streaming. If the download protocol supports receiving bits in order, it's easy enough to do both. I'd even be OK with a tiered pricing model that provided for new releases being 1.5-2x the cost for the first couple months or so. And I need the content available in HD, 720p minimum, 1080p preferred, with a decent bitrate. With h264, that's about 15G for a movie in 1080p.
So use the hardware, but disable the cellular connection so they can't mess with your stuff. Or modify the OS like the Nook hackers have been doing I suppose. Then just don't buy the DRMed stuff, or buy it for the "license" and download a clean copy. While probably not legal, it's at least ethical as you are paying for the content. For real protection, keep your original, non DRM copies on an offline media with MD5 or better checksums so you can tell if something has been tampered with. Or sign them with your own certificate.
IMO, this "license" crap needs to be sorted out. Either I own the physical copy, which doesn't really make sense with digital copies, or I own a license to use the content and which particular file I use doesn't really matter. Of course, I'm also one of the "extremists" that think that Copyright is a trade and must be ABLE to expire, so DRM should be mutually exclusive with legal Copyright protection. You can have technology protect your stuff, or you can have legal protection for your stuff, not both.
Of course, I also think that Copyright for something created in my lifetime should expire in my lifetime, the horror.
Yes, but modern tech is quite capable of maintaining a clean copy. The old floppies suck, we know that. But a decent RAID with ZFS (or other error correction) and backup mirrors can preserve information indefinitely. Should you manage to find ONE readable copy of old software, you can make millions of copies with only computer time involved. Speed limited only by storage media and network links. Really old data is hard, data created now really isn't if you can get some people to help you store copies. Something like Crashplan makes that really easy. Automated remote backups to an encrypted file on a friend's computer. You could probably set up something similar without encryption using rsync/SSH if you trust the remote user. With today's high-speed internet connections and cheap storage, it's possible to have enough copies that data loss is very unlikely. Now if we could only convince ISPs that decent upload speeds are useful, I hate that Qwest only offers me 768k up with 12M down. Retarded. My damned cell phone can do almost 1M up. I'm on a wireless ISP because of that, even though the 12M down would be nice.
Yes, DRM breaks this. But I think that for archival purposes you have to assume unencrypted data. So break the DRM (DMCA be damned) or download a broken copy and back THAT up.
If you want your data to be REALLY secure, I suppose you could print it with a laser printer on acid-free paper in an easy to decode format, then use a scanner to bring it back in. But your data density is going to suck and you have to store big boxes of paper now.:)
If your call is REALLY an emergency, as in life-threatening, not "get some milk on the way home", your phone WILL work if there are any GSM towers anywhere in range of the device. I don't think you even need a SIM in the phone for 911 calls. If it doesn't, and an AT&T phone does work there, AT&T is in a heap of trouble. Just contact the FCC, they will take care of it.
I've used a GSM phone that said "no service" to call 911, it found service for that call.
And T-Mobile has very good service in my area. It sucks that they don't where you live, but that's not the case for everyone. I've even traveled with my T-Mobile phone and it got good coverage in other cities. It doesn't work well in the sticks, but I don't expect it to either. I can generally make voice calls and use SMS, but data will often not work. However, the coverage map they post on their website is honest about that, so at least I knew what I was getting, and Verizon and AT&T rarely have better coverage in the sticks anyway.
I'd go a step further and say the problem is that the low level driver interfaces are generally what's closed in these things. You CAN'T write a replacement OS because you can't get the information to talk to the hardware. Sure, the Linux kernel Android runs on is FOSS. But the drivers that make it possible to talk to the hardware aren't. It's the NVidia/TiVo model. And I have yet to see a real product, outside of the OpenMoko project (which appears to be dead), that doesn't suffer from the same problem. Including the much-discussed N900. Personally, I'd be happy to pay the asking price for the N900 for a phone that added 2 things. A decent amount of RAM (no, 256M isn't "decent" and swap/flash don't count) 1G minimum, I'd prefer 2G. And open driver interfaces. Either full open source for the drivers or a full set of documentation for every bit of hardware in that device. That includes the Wifi, cell radio, bluetooth, everything. If they want to write a proprietary GUI or apps, that's fine with me. It's the base OS that I believe should be open. Not just because it would be nice, but because then I can support the device into the future should I choose to. Even if the OEM decides it's not worth it.
Look at what's happening now with the next version of Android. The various devs are having a hard time getting it running on older phones like the G1. Not because it doesn't have enough resources, but because they don't have drivers for the radio, camera, etc. and the OEM hasn't seen fit to release any. I'm sure they would rather have us all throw out our older phones and buy new ones from them. And they probably want their driver devs working on the new stuff. That wouldn't bother me if I could at least port the drivers to a new kernel or other stack, but when we can't do it, and they won't do it, that just leaves users stuck.
Slashdot Mirror
I've written code on Android. It's based on Java, and includes most of the standard Java SDK library classes. If you've written Java, or even C++, you should be fine. You can add external libraries if you like, but most apps probably won't need to. I really like the Eclipse integration they did, you can even do interactive debugging on the code while it's running on your phone. There is also a nice emulator you can use if you wish to test other versions of the OS and such. Overall, I find it quite easy to get most things done, and the docs are pretty good. At least as good as the Java SDK.
Google Keyword: "slipstream"
I would think that anyone smart enough to know about reinstalling XP constantly for performance would know about this. I make unattended install disks for my parents so I don't have to mess with it. Just pop the CD in, boot, format the drive and tell XP to start installing. Then walk away. Almost as nice as installing Linux. :)
That and the fact that running the scripts allows drive-by-virus infection are the biggest reasons I block. I'm not going to wait for your lame slow ad server. If you want me to quit blocking, you need to fix the ad servers and ensure they don't do that sort of thing. There's no reason I should have to wait for anything to load before reading the text from the HTML. As I surf a lot on a Netbook these days, I've also gone to NoScript. It's amazing how much crappy JS code there is out there. Blocking JS has made a huge speed difference on my machines and even on my powerful boxes it's getting installed now. With netbooks and smartphones becoming more popular, sites are going to have to start fixing these issues or more users will do the same. I don't have 4 3Ghz CPUs for you to peg at 100% with your crappy JS code. Learn to code or don't use scripts.
At least /. lets me use the old comment system, the new AJAX setup is unusable on a netbook and slow on a Core2Duo.
Macrovision is trivial to bypass. Just get a "Video Stabilizer" and you're good to go. EBay will likely have them.
I really hate how Chrome does the "waiting on" stuff. Put that crap in another thread and let me at least view the parts of the page that HAVE downloaded! Adding NoScript to FF (and disabling the Slashdot AJAX stuff, god that sucks CPU!) has made FF quite pleasant to use on my Netbook.
If you think bookmark sync in Chrome is nice, you should try Weave. That and NoScript are the biggest reasons I run FF still. Get a decent SSD while you're at it. FF loads in about the same time as Chrome on my machine once I put an SSD in there.
And with a little NoScript and AdBlock+, FF is damn fast. It's also doing less work, so comparing the results to Chrome really isn't fair. FF sucks at JavaScript compared to Chrome and Opera, but 90% of JavaScript is worthless ad serving and tracking crap I don't want running anyway. Not to mention cross-site scripting exploits.
So switch it. You can use the old comment system, that's what I'm doing now. Slashdot's new system is so JScript heavy that even Chrome slows down significantly on my Netbook. It's in the preferences. Hell, I installed NoScript on FF and Slashdot helpfully gave me a link to the proper page in the settings. :)
The main index page isn't so bad, it's the comments that killed my system.
No, the fine would be acceptable if it provided you with coverage, but it doesn't. I think this whole thing is a half-ass, BS cop-out by the politicians. They should have either regulated the insurance industry in real ways, or gone single-payer. This way lets them help out their buddies in the insurance companies while being able to blame those same companies when it doesn't work out. It's not going to significantly help those who are not provided a plan through their employers, an absolutely retarded way to do things, or the poor who STILL won't be able to afford insurance and now won't be able to afford the fine either.
There were a ton of good things they could have done here. They chose not to and instead gave the insurance companies a bailout bigger than the banks and automakers got, all while convincing people that it was a good thing. There's so much spin on this thing I'm surprised there isn't a black hole forming over DC right now. All while making "middle class" people like myself (those that make too much to get any government assistance, but not enough to pay for the increased costs this kind of thing brings along with it) pay even more out to the big companies. But since we aren't poor enough to feel sorry for, or rich enough to purchase laws to protect us, we get screwed for attempting to work for a living.
Most current Macs, even a few versions back, are quite quick machines dragging an anchor around in the form of a 5400RPM laptop hard drive. With multi-user access, seek times add up fast. Upgrading my Mac Mini to a mid-level SSD made it feel 10x faster. Now it's the stupid SATA1 interface slowing things down. Not much I can do about that.
Upgrading the machine to a "modern hard drive" would help a lot. Even in laptop form factor, 7200RPM is easy to come by. SSD is ideal, but design places tend to use big files, so an SSD might be too small.
Or, as suggested by every other reply, put up a real file server. A few mirrors stripped into a single big drive should give excellent performance.
My library has a number of interesting titles available for free. DRM, yes, but as I'm borrowing it, I really don't mind. $15 for a ebook without DRM I might be able to get on board with....
For decent quality 720p with h264 and AC3 audio, about 1.5GB/hr. For MPEG2, we're closer to about 6GB/hr. Live TV streaming needs not only the high speed, but also low-latency. Doable with a good network, but with the public internet?
Or Linux could implement ZFS the same way Solaris did and have 2 I/O stacks. Insisting on the old layers for a new setup like ZFS is backward when ZFS has clearly proven to be quite capable and has a clean design internally. The old way has good reasons for existing, but the ZFS way does as well. I have a very hard time seeing objections like this as anything other than NIH. I run OpenSolaris at home, and after using ZFS as it was intended, I have no reason to even consider anything else for a large fileserver. And my server is small compared to some I've read about. 12 1.5TB drives in 2 raidz2 arrays.
That said, I run Ubuntu in a VM on the same server for my MythTV needs. Linux still has a lot going for it, but for dealing with large datasets with redundancy and error-checking/correction, ZFS has any other software based solution beat by a long shot. And it's stable, working, with an excellent track record TODAY. Not some time in the distant future like BTRFS.
The licenses are a red-herring, IMO. If NVidia can have a closed source binary blob link to the kernel, I see no reason why an open-source project like ZFS can't do the same thing. License the bridge logic as BSD or CC and it shouldn't be a problem.
I won't comment on hardware RAID as I'm not willing to pay the asking price for the hardware. I'll be happy to compare should someone else wish to send me a RAID card and a set of disks to test.
FWIW, I run Firefox on most of my machines, but on my Netbook (1Ghz Atom) I run Chrome. FF would peg my CPU at 100% just sitting at a /. page, or other heavy Javascript/AJAX type site, even Gmail. Chrome hovers at about 5% doing the same stuff. I love FF, particularly with Weave as I use multiple computers, but they really need to get their crap together for smaller spec machines. That Chrome, Safari, and Opera can do it tells me that FF is the problem.
And yes, I tried removing ALL plugins from FF, even while leaving some installed in Chrome.
As AT&T recently found out in NYC and other big cities, more people means you need MORE towers, not less. It's like trying to serve 1000 people from a single WiFi AP. Sure, your signal can reach them, but the throughput sucks. It also doesn't take into account the fact that in large cities in the US, we have population density that can rival even Asian cities. Yet those areas are not nearly so well served as similar areas in Asia or Europe.
If you're going to use population density you need to use a smaller scale than whole countries. We don't even provide cellular 911 service to the entire land mass of the US. Only major metro areas and interstate highways have good coverage.
I agree with this, however, I think the manufacturers have some liability here as well. It would be dead simple to put a display of the cruise control set speed on the dash. I'm very surprised that even more computerized cars like the Prius with the huge LCD in the dash, don't have this.
I've started purchasing my own CPAP machine and accessories as well. Far cheaper than dealing with the home medical place locally (owned by my insurance company no less), even with insurance coverage picking up part of the bill. For less money, I get a better machine and direct support. And I can run the purchase through my FSA, so it's tax free. :)
FWIW, nebulizers are the same way. I bought a very nice machine online for about half the cost of the local place, and the local place wanted to give me a gigantic POS. I bought a very compact unit that has much nicer features.
Do you really want to pay $200/movie just for the media? That's the biggest reason we are still using optical media. It's CHEAP to make in huge quantities. We're talking a few cents per unit cheap here. Flash memory, even mask ROM, can't match that price point. That's also the biggest reason that the console guys moved from ROM to optical. More space, less production cost. DRM has little to do with it, it's just as easy to crack DRM on optical media as it is on other formats. Just google for the piracy scenes for the various consoles and movies. The media formats don't matter to the pirates.
That's where I'm at as well. I was VERY interested while reading the specs, but without a keyboard, I'm out. I've used touchscreen keyboards, I don't like them for more than basic, short messages. I can almost program on my G1 and shell commands are easy. I'd also like to see more RAM. These things are memory hungry, load it up. For the $500+ sticker price, I expect at least a gig. Note that that is real RAM, not swap or the uSD card. Though apps should be able to be installed to any location. That will come once the ROM devs get hold of it though. Apps2SD is probably the most popular hack.
OK, so to cover all the bases, get the government involved. Compulsory Licensing. We pay $X/year or $Y/movie, etc.. And get a license to use any version of it we acquire in any way we wish, including filesharing. So now torrents and such are legal, so you can get your copy online. No DRM, so there's no tracking and no restrictions. There will be people that cheat the system, but you're going to get that no matter what you do. So make it simple, easy, and cheap to buy licenses and many people will still pay. Include a legit, known clean, high speed, and high quality download as part of the fee, and people will be happy to just download it from you and won't generally bother with things like bit-torrent.
Of course, the downside is that the industry seems to buy whatever laws they want, so this would probably be corrupted somehow.
The problem we have here is that they are under the delusion that some DRM scheme will drive the price back up by stopping the pirates. They just don't get that people will always find a way to do it. They are competing with a zero cost distribution system that has no irritating restrictions on use like un-skippable ads and "warnings" that are stripped by the pirates anyway. So the free version is MORE valuable to the customers.
Your suggestions are great, I would buy into a system like that right now. I would also require the ability to download the content, not just streaming. If the download protocol supports receiving bits in order, it's easy enough to do both. I'd even be OK with a tiered pricing model that provided for new releases being 1.5-2x the cost for the first couple months or so. And I need the content available in HD, 720p minimum, 1080p preferred, with a decent bitrate. With h264, that's about 15G for a movie in 1080p.
So use the hardware, but disable the cellular connection so they can't mess with your stuff. Or modify the OS like the Nook hackers have been doing I suppose. Then just don't buy the DRMed stuff, or buy it for the "license" and download a clean copy. While probably not legal, it's at least ethical as you are paying for the content. For real protection, keep your original, non DRM copies on an offline media with MD5 or better checksums so you can tell if something has been tampered with. Or sign them with your own certificate.
IMO, this "license" crap needs to be sorted out. Either I own the physical copy, which doesn't really make sense with digital copies, or I own a license to use the content and which particular file I use doesn't really matter. Of course, I'm also one of the "extremists" that think that Copyright is a trade and must be ABLE to expire, so DRM should be mutually exclusive with legal Copyright protection. You can have technology protect your stuff, or you can have legal protection for your stuff, not both.
Of course, I also think that Copyright for something created in my lifetime should expire in my lifetime, the horror.
Yes, but modern tech is quite capable of maintaining a clean copy. The old floppies suck, we know that. But a decent RAID with ZFS (or other error correction) and backup mirrors can preserve information indefinitely. Should you manage to find ONE readable copy of old software, you can make millions of copies with only computer time involved. Speed limited only by storage media and network links. Really old data is hard, data created now really isn't if you can get some people to help you store copies. Something like Crashplan makes that really easy. Automated remote backups to an encrypted file on a friend's computer. You could probably set up something similar without encryption using rsync/SSH if you trust the remote user. With today's high-speed internet connections and cheap storage, it's possible to have enough copies that data loss is very unlikely. Now if we could only convince ISPs that decent upload speeds are useful, I hate that Qwest only offers me 768k up with 12M down. Retarded. My damned cell phone can do almost 1M up. I'm on a wireless ISP because of that, even though the 12M down would be nice.
Yes, DRM breaks this. But I think that for archival purposes you have to assume unencrypted data. So break the DRM (DMCA be damned) or download a broken copy and back THAT up.
If you want your data to be REALLY secure, I suppose you could print it with a laser printer on acid-free paper in an easy to decode format, then use a scanner to bring it back in. But your data density is going to suck and you have to store big boxes of paper now. :)
If your call is REALLY an emergency, as in life-threatening, not "get some milk on the way home", your phone WILL work if there are any GSM towers anywhere in range of the device. I don't think you even need a SIM in the phone for 911 calls. If it doesn't, and an AT&T phone does work there, AT&T is in a heap of trouble. Just contact the FCC, they will take care of it.
I've used a GSM phone that said "no service" to call 911, it found service for that call.
And T-Mobile has very good service in my area. It sucks that they don't where you live, but that's not the case for everyone. I've even traveled with my T-Mobile phone and it got good coverage in other cities. It doesn't work well in the sticks, but I don't expect it to either. I can generally make voice calls and use SMS, but data will often not work. However, the coverage map they post on their website is honest about that, so at least I knew what I was getting, and Verizon and AT&T rarely have better coverage in the sticks anyway.
Doesn't Firefox need more than 4GB these days?? :D
I'd go a step further and say the problem is that the low level driver interfaces are generally what's closed in these things. You CAN'T write a replacement OS because you can't get the information to talk to the hardware. Sure, the Linux kernel Android runs on is FOSS. But the drivers that make it possible to talk to the hardware aren't. It's the NVidia/TiVo model. And I have yet to see a real product, outside of the OpenMoko project (which appears to be dead), that doesn't suffer from the same problem. Including the much-discussed N900. Personally, I'd be happy to pay the asking price for the N900 for a phone that added 2 things. A decent amount of RAM (no, 256M isn't "decent" and swap/flash don't count) 1G minimum, I'd prefer 2G. And open driver interfaces. Either full open source for the drivers or a full set of documentation for every bit of hardware in that device. That includes the Wifi, cell radio, bluetooth, everything. If they want to write a proprietary GUI or apps, that's fine with me. It's the base OS that I believe should be open. Not just because it would be nice, but because then I can support the device into the future should I choose to. Even if the OEM decides it's not worth it.
Look at what's happening now with the next version of Android. The various devs are having a hard time getting it running on older phones like the G1. Not because it doesn't have enough resources, but because they don't have drivers for the radio, camera, etc. and the OEM hasn't seen fit to release any. I'm sure they would rather have us all throw out our older phones and buy new ones from them. And they probably want their driver devs working on the new stuff. That wouldn't bother me if I could at least port the drivers to a new kernel or other stack, but when we can't do it, and they won't do it, that just leaves users stuck.