London streets wind around and the city generally grew as needed until you got the monstrosity that exists now. Lots of quaint nooks and crannies, but a real mess when it comes to traffic. Luckily, most things are right in your neighborhood, so while it is difficult to get around, it is easy to get what you need.
Chicago, as you can see from the map, is a well designed, block-by-block, almost perfectly N-S/E-W layout. This is what a planned city looks like. On the whole, they are well laid out, but without good planning can lead to necessary things like grocery stores and the like far away from where you would normally live. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
In what sense was the Divinity Linux that your PhD friend was using different from the standard Debian Linux distribution? Did he get into the source of the OS and change the code to suit his needs? Or was it more a matter of using a set of tools that runs on the operating system to develop what he needed? I am genuinely curious, because it would be the first time I had heard of anyone significantly changing the base OS source code on their own for reasons not related to budding curiousity.
But the question remains, how much actual source code alteration is going on by people outside of the dedicated development teams (meaning the users of the software, not the source code contributors)?
For the most part, programs are still black boxes for users. Some allow scripting, which exposes an interface to clients. Some only pipe to STDOUT. Getting these black boxes to work together ought not be so difficult as to warrant delving into the source code. Things should work right out of the box. Apple is one example of a company that tries to live by that motto. Build it right and you'll discover that you have already taken care of all the square holes and the triangular holes and even the spiral holes.
The point I am making here, lest I forget it, is that Open Source (not simply having the source code) is valuable for many other reasons than simply having "control" over changing the source. It means having the ability to choose a vendor or develop it yourself. It means having an ecosystem full of companies that can provide service when something fails. It is almost irrelevant that you have the code to change. Kind of like the "grocery bag hook" in the trunk of my car. Sure, it's nice to have in the event that I ever need to use it, but for the most part it's just there as an unused feature. I get much more usage out of the actual car than I do from that little feature.
And if the ability to build your own tools is the deciding factor, how are you limited by any closed-source package? It isn't like good compilers and editors aren't available. Isn't a compiler essentially the ultimate tool of control?
Why would you choose one product that was incomplete but allowed customization over another that completely fills your need? I don't understand the thinking here. Having a tool that does its job well is far better, in my view, than a tool that is clumsy and difficult to use but allows me to customize it to my heart's content.
And this is why I think your initial point about OSS being furthered by companies not in the OSS business is wrong. Linux is where it is now because dedicated companies worked on improving its interface. KDE is better because the Kompany is working hard to make it better. Gnome is better, well, we'll just have to leave that potato alone.
The point is that good tools do their job well and do not require a lot of fiddling to coax into performing well. Customization should be a built in aspect, if necessary, and not just an available route via changing the source code. "Control" is one of those vague ideas that the OSS proponents like to toss out as if it had any meaning to anyone besides die-hard ideologues, and it is frequently used to explain away large problems that do not exist in similar CSS products. If you want to say that OSS gives you 'control' to decide who your vendor is going to be or 'control' over your costs, that is one thing (and quite correct, in my opinion). However, if you want to say that 'control' over features via source code availability is a benefit, I think you are overly stating a very peripheral benefit that is not ever taken advantage of by the vast majority of OSS licensees.
Yes, actually that is one of the better OSS business strategies.
In fact, unlike what Bruce Perens says below, it is precisely the companies with a stake in the software (as providers of service for the software) that are making significant improvements to the software. Whether this is through bugfixes or additional features, the software is improved and because of the GPL, returned to the community.
When you perform several service contracts, you will usually see a trend in the development. Maybe a certain feature needs to be improved, maybe something else is slowing the system down, maybe writing a tool to automate some aspect of the development will help things along. All these things, if management is paying any attention, can be put into a development "warchest" and used to improve development times which in turn attracts more customers. Sometimes those tools are good enough to be sold as separate products. I've seen that happen quite a bit in my time.
Ah, but if you produce the software yourself and keep it closed AND provide service to your customers, you now realize both benefits whereas the OSS strategy fairly limits you to just the service aspect of the business.
Again, I'm not saying it's better. There are risks involved such as your customer base suddenly deciding to dump your product which then causes you to lose both the product and service revenues. That would be a pretty big hit. Much bigger than a service company which would theoretically be much more flexible and able to adapt to changing market conditions and actually help customers migrate from one product to another.
If you want to say that Open Source software can lead to a viable business strategy, then I don't think anyone can really argue with that. There are companies that sell bottled water and others that sell magical stones, so there's got to be some way to make money stuff that is given away for free.
But is it a better strategy than actually selling proprietary software? Perhaps, but then again, it depends on how you define "better strategy". The whole point of keeping software closed is to keep control over the product. By doing so, it is possible to make money through lucrative licensing schemes. And the best part is that you only have to write the software once in order to license it multiple times.
With Open Source software, the product is generally available for free from any number of vendors, so such a situation limits the licensing fees that can be generated. Also, because of the nature of Open Source software, customers may choose any number of other service companies to do customization work. This is not the case with Closed Source, as the company that owns the product maintains strict control over who has the ability to do customization work on it.
On top of all this, how lucrative is "Service" anyway? In general, a product-driven strategy has a better margin than a service-driven strategy. A product only has to be written once, so the costs are all up front. In a service company, each project requires a certain number of employees, and as projects increase, so does the required headcount. There is always a growing cost of payroll associated with growth in a service company, so much so that as the number of engineers increase, the profit margin falls significantly because of increased costs such as HR and "non-essential" staffing overhead.
This is not to say that there isn't money to be made here. In fact, there is a lot of money to be made by keeping projects to a minimum and keeping headcount low. However, a company with any aspirations to become large and self-sustaining must rely on a strong product base and not solely on service.
But it doesn't mean that Closed Source is better. Just different. In many ways (such as from the point of view of the customer), Open Source represents a much better solution than Closed Source offerings. However, from a business standpoint, it's hard to imagine why anyone would see OSS as a better alternative to CSS.
We can all breathe a bit easier
on
Chinese Eco-Cities
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
As China is one of the biggest polluters and is not bound by the Kyoto environmental treaty, having them take this step on their own initiative to create cleaner cities is certainly a welcome sight.
The cities are being developed by a British group, and I'm not sure how well that bodes for the final designs. Britain has some of the most "natural urban growth" cities in the Western world. It will be interesting to see how well they will be able to come up with something that is both ecologically friendly and unique and attractive.
First, if there were no internet and someone were to "invent" it today, it would be very similar to the Internet that was created years ago. It wouldn't have much content aside from a few indexes and maybe some scientific or technical content.
If the internet were created today, none of us would be online. We'd still be doing all the tedious tasks like making phone calls to clients and friends, and using hardbound encyclopedias and journals to find information. Newspapers would be making a ton of money selling ad space and subscriptions. Television would probably have a lot more content related to the writers' and producers' interests rather than based on viewer feedback.
In short, if the Internet were invented today, it would not have reached us mere mortals yet. And there is no reason to think that an Internet created in 2005 would be significantly different or more advanced than the Internet created in 1974.
The Internet itself has changed the rules of intellectual property. Without it, the media conglomerates would not be in the tizzy that they currently are in. It is precisely because of the ease of broadcast that the Internet gives us that we have media content creators trying to find ways to use the law to restrict users. In very real terms, the Internet that we are talking about here is the one created 1999 by Shawn Fanning. Until the arrival of Napster, Internet piracy was a drop in the bucket. Now it is one of the most often used features of the Internet, and it is because of that initial software that media companies sat up and took notice of all the copyrighted bits being transmitted right under their noses.
The claim is that it will cost 450 dollars per student to implement this scheme.
So what? If the government subsidizes this expenditure, are they willing to put it in? If not, then why the emphasis on cost?
Either they are defending the rights of the students or they would be in full compliance with the government *if only* they could scrape together the cash to do so. They can't be both.
Why wouldn't they be happy?
on
Pixar For Sale?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Company acquisitions are typically godsends for many talented employees. It gives them a chance, whether through direct layoffs or just the ability to use the move as an excuse, to find new employment elsewhere. Many go on to found their own companies and become successful beyond what they could ever hope as a simple employee.
It's probably not so bright a future for those employees who have no talent or vision, but since this is Pixar we are talking about, I don't think that's going to be the case in the vast majority of cases.
Rambus has taken a lot of heat for allegedly inserting their IP-protected technology into the JEDEC process and has suffered under that yoke for years. Now it comes out that the companies wailing the hardest were actually out to destroy the "pure IP" company.
I think that in this case there really isn't any good guy because all the parties involved are apparently bad guys.
Usually, when you use the word "unusual", it implies a sort of unexpectedness of the event. If there was an unusual swing of Mars towards Earth, I don't think it would be minor news.
There is a lot to be said for sticking with your current vendor and infrastructure. First, the cost of switching is a huge factor when making a platform switch. If it were a piece of cake, then sure, go with the vendor that gives you the most bang for your buck, but real life is hardly like that.
Going with what you know is always a better solution than going with an unknown. The key, of course, is planning. Whatever you do, the goal of all your short term actions should guide you towards your long term goals.
The problem is not a lack of information. The primary reason we can't have a fully transparent, infinitely linked "web" is that our puny human brains are incapable of absorbing and filtering that much information.
Consider the difference between Wikipedia and Everything2. Wikipedia is written by people who are interested in the topic at hand, and as such they link to relevant pages that are of interest to them. On the other hand, Everything2 seems to automatically link each "interesting" word to a seemingly random internal E2 page. The result is a useful and interesting encyclopedia in the former case and a jumbled, irrelevant mass of random information in the latter. Although this is just one case, it is very simple to extrapolate this result with any sort of grander version of E2 (e.g. Semantic Web).
What we need is a better way of presenting information and an easier method of linking sites of interest to the data we generate. What we don't need is some way to make everything a link.
In order to make any project successful, it is necessary to be able to both plan ahead to take care of contingencies before they appear and also be able to be flexible enough to work around unforeseen problems. This latest effort, though definitely a good step away from the shuttle program, does not allay the fears of a lack of the second point above. They think they can plan ahead for each contingency, but the NASA bureacracy is too heavy and too heavily dependent on Congressional support.
Congressional support, in turn, is heavily dependent on the contractors who stand to make a mint off of a new space program. So instead of good science being the leading light, it is special interests who hold the purse strings to NASA's budget.
The problem is that space is not a priority, so NASA will not get what it needs to succeed. Rather, it will continue to get pushed around by its suppliers because Congress wouldn't have it any other way.
If you are a web "programmer", it's definitely nice to have well-built tools that let you think even less about what you are doing and come up with something useful.
What kind of pleasure can be had from doing this kind of hacking? After a while, doesn't it just become old hat?
Or is there a Matrix-esque cabal of midnight hackers out there dressed in trenchcoats and sunglasses who are busy at work undermining the government? I find that hard to believe.
I find it easy to believe that there are foreign governments very interested in this type of thing, but it is difficult to imagine ordinary citizens having both the desire and the wherewithal to perform serious attacks and avoid prosecution.
Or maybe I am just having the wool pulled over my eyes.
There was an episode of Nova or something similar on PBS that described how foreign companies or NPOs invested a lot of money in bringing technology and training to Ethiopia (I think) in an effort to bring them up to Western levels of progress. Ethiopia was going through a famine at that time and desperately needed external support. So the idea was to bring in farming equipment like tractors and irrigation machines. They also tried to teach the locals how to use the new tools. Improvements in infrastructure were attempted as well, if I remember correctly.
All of it failed. The Africans were simply uninterested in doing for themselves what external nations were willing to do for them. As long as the Red Cross kept the bags of oats coming, it wasn't worth it to the "farmers" to go out of their way to produce the food locally. The impact of the technology was nil. The mindset of the Africans had been so rooted in help for free that they simply let the machinery rust.
You can see this type of "money for nothing" mindset even in wired countries like Nigeria where the national pastime seems to be sending scam emails.
Gates is not incorrect in saying that Africa doesn't need free software. What Africa needs is the ability to interact with the rest of the world as equals, and software, free or not, must make this possible. This means becoming a trustworthy trading partner. It may mean becoming consumers of for-pay software. It may mean producing their own software.
What it ought not mean is that Africa gets a free handout.
My guess is that only the phonebook and recently called/received lists would be blocked. This is to safeguard the information on the device, not to make it impossible to make calls.
Although I'm sure that you'd be able to set that too. However, as others have noted in this thread, emergency calls can still be made from PIN-locked phones and phones without any service provider. It's a software setting, so it's probably up to the user how much or little access he wants to grant unauthorized users.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, that's the deal breaker.
Hardly "Ultimate".
It's probably the wrong word for what I meant to describe.
It is how a city grows in a natural way rather than in a planned way. Compare the following two cities:
London: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=london&hl=en
Chicago: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=chicago&hl=en
London streets wind around and the city generally grew as needed until you got the monstrosity that exists now. Lots of quaint nooks and crannies, but a real mess when it comes to traffic. Luckily, most things are right in your neighborhood, so while it is difficult to get around, it is easy to get what you need.
Chicago, as you can see from the map, is a well designed, block-by-block, almost perfectly N-S/E-W layout. This is what a planned city looks like. On the whole, they are well laid out, but without good planning can lead to necessary things like grocery stores and the like far away from where you would normally live. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
I'm sure someone knows the right term for this.
In what sense was the Divinity Linux that your PhD friend was using different from the standard Debian Linux distribution? Did he get into the source of the OS and change the code to suit his needs? Or was it more a matter of using a set of tools that runs on the operating system to develop what he needed? I am genuinely curious, because it would be the first time I had heard of anyone significantly changing the base OS source code on their own for reasons not related to budding curiousity.
But the question remains, how much actual source code alteration is going on by people outside of the dedicated development teams (meaning the users of the software, not the source code contributors)?
For the most part, programs are still black boxes for users. Some allow scripting, which exposes an interface to clients. Some only pipe to STDOUT. Getting these black boxes to work together ought not be so difficult as to warrant delving into the source code. Things should work right out of the box. Apple is one example of a company that tries to live by that motto. Build it right and you'll discover that you have already taken care of all the square holes and the triangular holes and even the spiral holes.
The point I am making here, lest I forget it, is that Open Source (not simply having the source code) is valuable for many other reasons than simply having "control" over changing the source. It means having the ability to choose a vendor or develop it yourself. It means having an ecosystem full of companies that can provide service when something fails. It is almost irrelevant that you have the code to change. Kind of like the "grocery bag hook" in the trunk of my car. Sure, it's nice to have in the event that I ever need to use it, but for the most part it's just there as an unused feature. I get much more usage out of the actual car than I do from that little feature.
Is "control" a euphemism for "incomplete"?
And if the ability to build your own tools is the deciding factor, how are you limited by any closed-source package? It isn't like good compilers and editors aren't available. Isn't a compiler essentially the ultimate tool of control?
Why would you choose one product that was incomplete but allowed customization over another that completely fills your need? I don't understand the thinking here. Having a tool that does its job well is far better, in my view, than a tool that is clumsy and difficult to use but allows me to customize it to my heart's content.
And this is why I think your initial point about OSS being furthered by companies not in the OSS business is wrong. Linux is where it is now because dedicated companies worked on improving its interface. KDE is better because the Kompany is working hard to make it better. Gnome is better, well, we'll just have to leave that potato alone.
The point is that good tools do their job well and do not require a lot of fiddling to coax into performing well. Customization should be a built in aspect, if necessary, and not just an available route via changing the source code. "Control" is one of those vague ideas that the OSS proponents like to toss out as if it had any meaning to anyone besides die-hard ideologues, and it is frequently used to explain away large problems that do not exist in similar CSS products. If you want to say that OSS gives you 'control' to decide who your vendor is going to be or 'control' over your costs, that is one thing (and quite correct, in my opinion). However, if you want to say that 'control' over features via source code availability is a benefit, I think you are overly stating a very peripheral benefit that is not ever taken advantage of by the vast majority of OSS licensees.
Yes, actually that is one of the better OSS business strategies.
In fact, unlike what Bruce Perens says below, it is precisely the companies with a stake in the software (as providers of service for the software) that are making significant improvements to the software. Whether this is through bugfixes or additional features, the software is improved and because of the GPL, returned to the community.
When you perform several service contracts, you will usually see a trend in the development. Maybe a certain feature needs to be improved, maybe something else is slowing the system down, maybe writing a tool to automate some aspect of the development will help things along. All these things, if management is paying any attention, can be put into a development "warchest" and used to improve development times which in turn attracts more customers. Sometimes those tools are good enough to be sold as separate products. I've seen that happen quite a bit in my time.
Ah, but if you produce the software yourself and keep it closed AND provide service to your customers, you now realize both benefits whereas the OSS strategy fairly limits you to just the service aspect of the business.
Again, I'm not saying it's better. There are risks involved such as your customer base suddenly deciding to dump your product which then causes you to lose both the product and service revenues. That would be a pretty big hit. Much bigger than a service company which would theoretically be much more flexible and able to adapt to changing market conditions and actually help customers migrate from one product to another.
Just different.
If you want to say that Open Source software can lead to a viable business strategy, then I don't think anyone can really argue with that. There are companies that sell bottled water and others that sell magical stones, so there's got to be some way to make money stuff that is given away for free.
But is it a better strategy than actually selling proprietary software? Perhaps, but then again, it depends on how you define "better strategy". The whole point of keeping software closed is to keep control over the product. By doing so, it is possible to make money through lucrative licensing schemes. And the best part is that you only have to write the software once in order to license it multiple times.
With Open Source software, the product is generally available for free from any number of vendors, so such a situation limits the licensing fees that can be generated. Also, because of the nature of Open Source software, customers may choose any number of other service companies to do customization work. This is not the case with Closed Source, as the company that owns the product maintains strict control over who has the ability to do customization work on it.
On top of all this, how lucrative is "Service" anyway? In general, a product-driven strategy has a better margin than a service-driven strategy. A product only has to be written once, so the costs are all up front. In a service company, each project requires a certain number of employees, and as projects increase, so does the required headcount. There is always a growing cost of payroll associated with growth in a service company, so much so that as the number of engineers increase, the profit margin falls significantly because of increased costs such as HR and "non-essential" staffing overhead.
This is not to say that there isn't money to be made here. In fact, there is a lot of money to be made by keeping projects to a minimum and keeping headcount low. However, a company with any aspirations to become large and self-sustaining must rely on a strong product base and not solely on service.
But it doesn't mean that Closed Source is better. Just different. In many ways (such as from the point of view of the customer), Open Source represents a much better solution than Closed Source offerings. However, from a business standpoint, it's hard to imagine why anyone would see OSS as a better alternative to CSS.
As China is one of the biggest polluters and is not bound by the Kyoto environmental treaty, having them take this step on their own initiative to create cleaner cities is certainly a welcome sight.
The cities are being developed by a British group, and I'm not sure how well that bodes for the final designs. Britain has some of the most "natural urban growth" cities in the Western world. It will be interesting to see how well they will be able to come up with something that is both ecologically friendly and unique and attractive.
Lots of action and explosions, but I generally find movies with that have an actual plot to be much more interesting than ones based on "star power".
I'm interested in how the Star Trek cast is able to fix this pile of dung, but I suppose limiting it to pure audio is one good step.
First, if there were no internet and someone were to "invent" it today, it would be very similar to the Internet that was created years ago. It wouldn't have much content aside from a few indexes and maybe some scientific or technical content.
If the internet were created today, none of us would be online. We'd still be doing all the tedious tasks like making phone calls to clients and friends, and using hardbound encyclopedias and journals to find information. Newspapers would be making a ton of money selling ad space and subscriptions. Television would probably have a lot more content related to the writers' and producers' interests rather than based on viewer feedback.
In short, if the Internet were invented today, it would not have reached us mere mortals yet. And there is no reason to think that an Internet created in 2005 would be significantly different or more advanced than the Internet created in 1974.
The Internet itself has changed the rules of intellectual property. Without it, the media conglomerates would not be in the tizzy that they currently are in. It is precisely because of the ease of broadcast that the Internet gives us that we have media content creators trying to find ways to use the law to restrict users. In very real terms, the Internet that we are talking about here is the one created 1999 by Shawn Fanning. Until the arrival of Napster, Internet piracy was a drop in the bucket. Now it is one of the most often used features of the Internet, and it is because of that initial software that media companies sat up and took notice of all the copyrighted bits being transmitted right under their noses.
The claim is that it will cost 450 dollars per student to implement this scheme.
So what? If the government subsidizes this expenditure, are they willing to put it in? If not, then why the emphasis on cost?
Either they are defending the rights of the students or they would be in full compliance with the government *if only* they could scrape together the cash to do so. They can't be both.
Company acquisitions are typically godsends for many talented employees. It gives them a chance, whether through direct layoffs or just the ability to use the move as an excuse, to find new employment elsewhere. Many go on to found their own companies and become successful beyond what they could ever hope as a simple employee.
It's probably not so bright a future for those employees who have no talent or vision, but since this is Pixar we are talking about, I don't think that's going to be the case in the vast majority of cases.
From the article:
/end quote
And we're not so far away from having lightsabers as weapons.
O RLY?
Rambus has taken a lot of heat for allegedly inserting their IP-protected technology into the JEDEC process and has suffered under that yoke for years. Now it comes out that the companies wailing the hardest were actually out to destroy the "pure IP" company.
I think that in this case there really isn't any good guy because all the parties involved are apparently bad guys.
Usually, when you use the word "unusual", it implies a sort of unexpectedness of the event. If there was an unusual swing of Mars towards Earth, I don't think it would be minor news.
There is a lot to be said for sticking with your current vendor and infrastructure. First, the cost of switching is a huge factor when making a platform switch. If it were a piece of cake, then sure, go with the vendor that gives you the most bang for your buck, but real life is hardly like that.
Going with what you know is always a better solution than going with an unknown. The key, of course, is planning. Whatever you do, the goal of all your short term actions should guide you towards your long term goals.
Well, if I were a government, I'd probably choose Redhat Linux because it is red and soft and can fit snugly on my head.
Government #2, same question.
I refer you to this particular link that would have been much worse if the linked data was included inline.
1 5/1823226&tid=126&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/
The problem is not a lack of information. The primary reason we can't have a fully transparent, infinitely linked "web" is that our puny human brains are incapable of absorbing and filtering that much information.
Consider the difference between Wikipedia and Everything2. Wikipedia is written by people who are interested in the topic at hand, and as such they link to relevant pages that are of interest to them. On the other hand, Everything2 seems to automatically link each "interesting" word to a seemingly random internal E2 page. The result is a useful and interesting encyclopedia in the former case and a jumbled, irrelevant mass of random information in the latter. Although this is just one case, it is very simple to extrapolate this result with any sort of grander version of E2 (e.g. Semantic Web).
What we need is a better way of presenting information and an easier method of linking sites of interest to the data we generate. What we don't need is some way to make everything a link.
In order to make any project successful, it is necessary to be able to both plan ahead to take care of contingencies before they appear and also be able to be flexible enough to work around unforeseen problems. This latest effort, though definitely a good step away from the shuttle program, does not allay the fears of a lack of the second point above. They think they can plan ahead for each contingency, but the NASA bureacracy is too heavy and too heavily dependent on Congressional support.
Congressional support, in turn, is heavily dependent on the contractors who stand to make a mint off of a new space program. So instead of good science being the leading light, it is special interests who hold the purse strings to NASA's budget.
The problem is that space is not a priority, so NASA will not get what it needs to succeed. Rather, it will continue to get pushed around by its suppliers because Congress wouldn't have it any other way.
If you are a web "programmer", it's definitely nice to have well-built tools that let you think even less about what you are doing and come up with something useful.
I suppose that's true in most jobs, though.
What kind of pleasure can be had from doing this kind of hacking? After a while, doesn't it just become old hat?
Or is there a Matrix-esque cabal of midnight hackers out there dressed in trenchcoats and sunglasses who are busy at work undermining the government? I find that hard to believe.
I find it easy to believe that there are foreign governments very interested in this type of thing, but it is difficult to imagine ordinary citizens having both the desire and the wherewithal to perform serious attacks and avoid prosecution.
Or maybe I am just having the wool pulled over my eyes.
The 10th was on a Monday. Or will the release be next month when the 10th actually falls on Thursday?
I'm confused because the editors didn't even do the smallest amount of fact-checking. Thanks, guys!
There was an episode of Nova or something similar on PBS that described how foreign companies or NPOs invested a lot of money in bringing technology and training to Ethiopia (I think) in an effort to bring them up to Western levels of progress. Ethiopia was going through a famine at that time and desperately needed external support. So the idea was to bring in farming equipment like tractors and irrigation machines. They also tried to teach the locals how to use the new tools. Improvements in infrastructure were attempted as well, if I remember correctly.
All of it failed. The Africans were simply uninterested in doing for themselves what external nations were willing to do for them. As long as the Red Cross kept the bags of oats coming, it wasn't worth it to the "farmers" to go out of their way to produce the food locally. The impact of the technology was nil. The mindset of the Africans had been so rooted in help for free that they simply let the machinery rust.
You can see this type of "money for nothing" mindset even in wired countries like Nigeria where the national pastime seems to be sending scam emails.
Gates is not incorrect in saying that Africa doesn't need free software. What Africa needs is the ability to interact with the rest of the world as equals, and software, free or not, must make this possible. This means becoming a trustworthy trading partner. It may mean becoming consumers of for-pay software. It may mean producing their own software.
What it ought not mean is that Africa gets a free handout.
My guess is that only the phonebook and recently called/received lists would be blocked. This is to safeguard the information on the device, not to make it impossible to make calls.
Although I'm sure that you'd be able to set that too. However, as others have noted in this thread, emergency calls can still be made from PIN-locked phones and phones without any service provider. It's a software setting, so it's probably up to the user how much or little access he wants to grant unauthorized users.