If you have root access you can just remove any apks you don't like from /system/app and they're gone for good. You can always get root if you buy the Nexus phones or the so-called "developer" phones. If you can't have root access because the your device is locked down from the bootloader (and no one has yet published an expliot to unlock it), then that essentially means you don't "own" the hardware.

Well, to be fair, they feel that way because they sold you a $600 phone for $200. So it's not really that outrageous they woud try to recoup that difference, by doing their best to force you to use their shitware. The confusion arises from the fact that you expect to fully own a device, while paying subsidized price.

If you really want to have full control of your device, then you'll need to adjust your expectations, that a high-end phone is $600 and not $200.

AFAIK all Nexus devices are bootloader unlocked, which means you can do whatever you want with the device, up to ripping out the whole operating system and installing your own. Does Google make it easy for you to remove their stuff? No. But that's no different from say a laptop. Does Microsoft make it easy for you to remove IE? When I buy a Thinkpad, there's Microsoft shit and Lenovo shit, and they don't make it easy for me remove their shit, but there's nothing stopping me from installing Linux. Same goes for smart phones, which are essentially small computers.

The fact is, it really isn't that bad, at least not yet. The phone manufacturers are more than happy to sell you "developer" devices at a full price, and if that's too expensive then get a Nexus. The subsidized pricing model seems to flourish especially in the US market, presumably because the carriers make back much more than loss on the initial hardware sale over the long run. But the consumers are not without blame, as they've basically voted with their wallets saying that it's OK to trade their freedom (to tinker) and their privacy for a couple hundred bucks off their new shiny device. Luckily the choice is still there, but just don't expect to pay $200 for a $600 device and still be able to do whatever you want with it.

Aha, but there is a difference: collecting user data doesn't take any "time and attention", it's basically just pure "profit". In fact, for a company like Apple, I imagine it'd take enormous will power to resist the temptation to collect data on its users. If they're true to their words, kudos to them, but the business practice of Apple really doesn't give me any reason to trust them on that.

Exactly. That was a pretty poor example to hypothesize on the limitation of computers. I'd imagine if there was _any_ way around those bumps at all, the autopilot would find it in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, its chosen trajectory would most likely be more optimal than the one chosen by the human through trial and error. What the GP has described seems like a situation where an autopilot would _excel_ at.

It's always nice to see the Apple customers so very satisfied with their ... things. Brings a warm fuzzy feeling to the heart!

So what you're saying is that the movie producers are not allowed to have opinions at all? By your standard all movies having any ties to history and current events are propaganda, and all documentaries are automatically propaganda too.

What?? Which China are you talking about?

No Chinese would ever see themselves as colonists, only as victims of colonialism (first the British, then the Japanese).
No Chinese would ever think of Tibet as an "occupation", only as an "Autonomous Region". Tibet has never been an "issue" in the minds of most Chinese. Chinese travel freely in Tibet, seldom aware that foreigners are often denied access.

As such, if the Chinese sees any message in the movie Avatar, it can only be about the struggle of indigenous people against the colonial powers, and they would most likely see part of themselves in the navi (especially the signature pony tails) and not the colonists.

The source you link doesn't even mention Tibet anywhere. The Chinese sources referenced from that page are all mistranslated sarcastic rants against the Chinese government, not really having much to do with how the Chinese interpret the movie Avatar, and most certainly have nothing to to with Tibet.

Meanwhile as of 3.11 the kernel "radeon" driver is already fully functional, complete with power management and KMS support.

Frankly I'd wager nvidia has already lost on Linux, even though it may currently appear they are still the preferred platform with their higher quality binary driver. But binary drivers have a very limited future on Linux, especially such a critical one as the graphics driver. AMD may have a shitty binary driver, but the "radeon" driver is miles ahead of "nouveau", and once they start seeing the signs on the wall it will be a simple matter for them to put in a little effort and make "radeon" the best graphics driver for gaming on Linux. It's hard to see how nvidia can ever catch up with AMD even if they somehow miraculously changed their attitude toward open source in the near future.

Does NoScript still upgrade itself Every.Single.Day?

Well except it won't be Snowdens they catch. Snowden aint your average opportunist who seeks to profit from classified info, Snowden is an idealist who chose to forfeit his life for something he believed in. You don't catch a Snowden with such a petty scheme. On the other hand, whoever does get caught by this totally deserves to get ass fucked for life.

Yes. But silent data corruption is obviously a problem of the filesystem, ext4 in this case. Too bad btrfs is still years from stable.

Oh I wouldn't worry about that. We've only had radio for less than 150 years. How many stars are there within a 150 ly radius? By the time the very first signal from Earth reaches the center of the galaxy, the human kind may have long destroyed itself.

The belief in extraterrestrial life is at least based on the observation that life exists on Earth, and the number of stars and planets like our Sun and Earth in the universe is .. astronomical.

The belief in God has no such basis.

Yes, I did, it does not work, they are able to distinguish VPN from HTTPS traffic. Their detection scheme doesn't seem to care about the port number.

I find SSH tunneling to be much less efficient than OpenVPN. With OpenVPN I can have a more-or-less usable remote VNC desktop from Beijing to New York, which is not possible using SSH tunneling.

Anyway, that is not a real solution, as there is nothing to prevent them from cutting off SSH connections when they feel like it. There is no technical solution to a political problem.

I was just in Beijing for two weeks. I have access to two OpenVPN servers, one in New York another in California. These are personal servers so they aren't on the IP based blacklist. However, my connection from Beijing to either of the two would crap out after a day or two, and the only remedy was to change the OpenVPN server port.

It seems right now they update their blacklist every 24~48 hours. I did not test whether the amount of traffic (idle vs. busy) would affect the time it takes them to block you. Blacklists last longer than two weeks, as the original ports I used was still blocked by the time I left. SSH connections does not seem to be affected at this time.