I believe that government SHOULD be a business. It should be run like a not-for-profit organization actually.
Think about it, those organizations can do a hell of a lot per dollar and contrary to the government, when they have a budget of x$, they spend x$, not x+gazillion$. On top of that, these organizations have the people at heart, not corporations.
It'll never happen, I know.
There's one flaw in your argument: most non-enthusiasts don't care about getting the latest version of their Phone's OS. Most probably don't even know that a phone's OS can be updated.
The phones work quite well without the latest and greatest OS version. Case and point, my cousin and I both have Nexus Ones, I updated my phone manually while he didn't, he didn't even know that he could before I told him and it never prevented him from enjoying his phone after he did know. He eventually got an over the air update of the carrier's nerfed version of the OS and again, to him the phone works just fine.
Some people call it accidents, I call it natural selection. I'm sorry, but if you're dumb enough to text and email while driving then don't be surprised when you hit a pole.
The sad thing in all of this are the innocent people that get rammed into by these idiots.
the retirement age is 65. Don't expect that to last.
Indeed... with the way the economy is going, most of the middle-class people will have to save even more if they want to retire at that age and lower income folks will most likely not be able to retire at 65, or maybe even ever.
Kinda ironic that at the same time there's another story on Slashdot about a guy who got his Macbook stolen and the police won't do anything about it even though he has the thief's IP.
Again we have proof of the preferential treatment given to corporations. This is the type of shit that the Occupy protesters are trying to bring attention to.
Elliptic paraboloids for sale.