gnaffle

Did that cartoonist ever get to court? And how was "The tyranny of silence" censored?

> As pertaining to capitalism, our stance is that true capitalism hasn't ever really been tried

In some sense, when I hear this argument, I'm reminded by the claim of some Marxists, that you shouldn't conclude that communism doesn't work just becuase it failed in so many countries, after all they didn't implement the communist ideal properly!

As you say, I think neither extreme will ever work well as long as we humans are who we are.

When corporations pour money into politics like they do today, couldn't you say that it's just true capitalism working its way as "intended"? Would this problem become worse or better if we removed campaign funding regulations and?

Huh? When was the last film or book banned in a Nordic country?

But that's the thing though, companies like Apple pretty much ignore the whole "phone" and SMS thing, Apple has even shot the operators in the back with iMessage.

You're right that it's easy to make a phone nowadays with off the shelf components, like the article mentions that's exactly what the chinese/asian OEMS are doing now. The question is whether you will be able to make something that can compete with Apple / Google / Samsung. Even HTC is having a hard time doing that with some pretty decent phones.

They still mean something in those countries, because carriers there still have agendas, marketing budgets, partnerships and retail stores even though they may not dictate cell phone features.

Most things needed to make a smartphone is covered by FRAND patents. Software patents are of course a problem for anyone working in the software industry, so that's not limited to smartphones.

Yes. Just do a cursory search on the internet, and you'll see many musicians shipping their instruments in very solid and well protected cases still getting their instruments destroyed.

First of all, a desktop computer will take far, far more abuse than an instrument like a violin or a guitar. Second, a properly backed up desktop computer is easy to replace if it gets damaged, while an instrument can be pretty much impossible to replace (like a Stradivarius).

I don't think they would really care unless you (or many others) started disrupting the network or abusing their services. Unlike Cable TV companies, network operators don't generally have a revenue stream that must be protected by locking down what you can do with the baseband. Whatever traffic filtering they do to keep Skype etc. out is done in the network.

I don't think the firmware for that module is open source, which is what he wanted.

There is an open GSM client stack in OsmocomBB: http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/Software/GettingStarted It only works with certain baseband chips though, but has already been used to crack the A5/1 GSM crypto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrbatnnRxFc

Many of the other things you mention can already be done by using off the shelf GSM baseband chips, since they don't necessarily do much access control of what gets sent.

When you think of it, 8 years of uptime isn't special for a machine running on a UPS and not needing a reboot for software updates. There simply isn't a reason for a well-built operating system running on solid hardware to crash.

While the response might have been unnecessary, the question certainly was as well.

Apple would certainly like that future, but they've released iTunes and even a limited form of iCloud on Windows that can sync calendars, contacts and photos.

The main problem with iCloud is that they tried to do away with the traditional file system and force sync integration at the app level, and they tried oing this while still delivering an inferior solution compared to Dropbox.

IBM has always been one of the biggest contributors to Linux. But I think a major difference is that these companies haven't sold themselves as the open source, pro-internet "don't be evil" company. Google has.

I think they started off with that goodwill because they actually delivered on their promises. Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. So there was this hope that this would be the Good Engineering Company that would make the Right Decisions. Maybe the best example was how they shut down their China operation instead of caving to pressure like many others did.

In a way, I feel that Google has lost what they "were about". If Google overpromised anything, it was that they were the "open internet company". In many ways, that and "don't be evil" was what defined them.

No, it's not just "trendy", there are some legitimate reasons to dislike them. Just like many people have reasons to dislike Apple or Microsoft even though they also make some great stuff.

Google has done a lot to shoot itself in the foot regarding goodwill in the developer community, even though they still contribute a lot to open source.

They killed off Reader and a lot of other products, has closed down many open APIs, so instead of enthusiasm when they launch a new product, now they get "oh yeah, how long is this product going to live?"

They are now forcing every service and pushing their users into Google+ whether they want to or not. It seems like Social is something Google is obsessed with winning, and they are happy to alienate some users in order to do that.

But they _do_ allow that. You have to pay a license fee to Apple for the connectors, programming interface etc, but even without that you can do communication using one of the established protocols like MIDI. Also, you could use Bluetooth 4.0 without any licensing at all. So the question to why they allow it is that they're not consistently evil :)

I agree with you, and I hope that lighter devices like ebooks and phones will be exempted eventually. Personally I always opt for a window seat and spend all that time looking outside enjoying the view of other airplanes. So in short, I'd recommend becoming an aviation geek, that will do a lot to distract you from all those annoyances. :)

I think copying an NFC or smartcard is slightly more complicated :)

What I'm more concerned about is that new, creative innovations (nanobots etc) can have more sinister uses and might ultimately prove a bigger risk than our current bacteria.

Yes, in densely populated areas with high frequencies (3G/LTE). In more rural areas the antennas cover a bigger area. My experience in light aircraft (operating below 10000 feet) is that 2G GSM connectivity is pretty good, 3G not so much.

RF testing requirements and efforts vary from country to country, and even with certified devices there might be manufacturing defects that could cause interference. So it's impossible to be 100% certain.

The rules were there as a "better safe than sorry" measure, implemented at a time when most people didn't carry many electronic devices (way before cell phones became popular). The pilots have training to fly with multiple instrument failures, but even so you want to do what you can to reduce the risk of that happening.

RF interference can occur in a wide area of the spectrum, so it's not really possible to eliminate it just by changing frequencies. Even if you could, getting the aviation community to change their frequencies which are used all over the world in all airplanes and at all airports would be exceptionally expensive.

OK, if you think that's the more likely scenario, and you believe the FAAs analysis is wrong without even reading their report, then I rest my case.

Sure, they may be absurd, but the safety record of commercial air transport is absurd as well. (If you don't want or appreciate that safety level, light, ultralight or experimental aircraft are good options that allow for different risk tradeoffs).

So you think that all the reports dating back to the 60s when superhet transistor radios appered, are likely bunk?

Wouldn't that imply a worldwide, secret pilot conspiracy, especially with incidents where the pilot has been able to reproduce the interference by asking the passengers to turn the device back on?

It's certainly very unlikely that an iPod will cause any problems. That doesn't mean it's physically impossible, as many people seem to think. Which is why I recommend reading the FAA report, which goes into a lot of detail on exactly what considerations they've taken, the risk analysis and why they are changing the rules now.

Yep, if you read the FAA position, that's the idea. The risk wasn't seen as huge, but since there was a possibility of interference the trade-off seemed reasonable. Just one of the many small things done to improve safety.

There haven't been any accidents AFAIK, but there have been several reported incidents: http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/docs/rpsts/ped.pdf - see page 54 for one example.

As newer airplanes are better shielded and old ones are taken out of service, the number of reported incidents have dropped in recent years down to 1-2 per year, which isn't much given the massive increase in PEDs and number of flights.

The report that the FAA published actually has a lot of interesting info about this: http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/ped/media/ped_arc_final...

NSAs job isn't just to prevent terrorist attacks, it's also to gather and analyse information for the US government and to keep US communications secure. I don't know whether or not they're "cost effective", but I don't think anyone would doubt that they've given the US a huge strategic advantage.

I would on the contrary take it as obvious that any CEO of a competing company would take the iPhone as a threat, and anticipate and plan for any possibility, just from having looked at history and seen where Apple went with for instance the iPod.

I think this video very clearly shows how Ballmer managed to not take the iPhone seriously, and that has everything to do with why Microsoft made mistakes and were slow to respond from 2007 onwards. The same thing happened with the iPad as well. From everyting he said, you could see that he regarded them as toys.