LINEAGE OS! I keep doing that! Legacy OS has been in brain longer. Lineage is the successor of Cyanogenmod. It is a completely Open Source build of android, and by default does not come with GAPPS.
Probably the most viable phone OS is Legacy OS, which is just an open source version of Android. You can install it, and provided you don't instal gapps, it is pretty secure. It also gives you complete control over your phone. Legacy OS + Fdroid gives you a FOSS solution that protects your privacy about as well as any OS for a tracking device can.
There is also the openmoko stack from a few years ago. If you can get your hands on a Neo FreeRunner, they are an acceptable phone. You'll be on your own for software though, as that project is effectively dead.
No matter what you do, you can't really trust a phone completely. The nature of the cell network means that any cellphone is a defacto tracking device. Your whereabouts are logged, and because you have shared them with a third party you have no expectation of privacy. They don't even require a warrant for law enforcement. Also, private citizens can simply purchase the location data from most providers. So keep that in mind. I carry a phone, but I am ready to stick it in a microwave and run from it at a moment's notice.
I hate the mouse. Every time I touch it I die a little inside. So I use ratpoison as my primary desktop. Slap vimperator onto firefox and you don't have to touch that travesty of an input device ever again. Join me!
I, an active professor and research scientist, drive a 1982 Dodge Ram Pickup. No tracking, no disconnect, easy to work on engine. I will keep this baby going for the rest of my life, and no company will be tracking my whereabouts. (So long as I remember to turn off my cell phone, which I usually do.)
I use a Casio FX-260 Solar for these sorts of things. It has all your basic scientific functions, plus a nice statistics package. It doesn't have complex numbers or base conversions though. Still, for $10.00, it's not half bad!
They did willingly sign up to work for the TSA. They have also witnessed and participated in violations of American's rights, and they remain at their posts. Therefore they are culpable as traitors to the cause of liberty. Should justice ever prevail, their heads will line the streets of our free cities!
All you do is just rubber stamp all the plans which cross your desk.
Well, maybe you have to sort it into two piles. "Stuff we admit to" and "Stuff that will piss off the whole civilized world" Still, this would be very easy. It's the only job which will do less than a police departments internal investigation board!
Ah, but with online dating, you have $30/mo plus the cost of the dates. I met my wife for free, but I certainly did not court her for free!
Good thing I did it the traditional / free way. I would have felt ripped off it was no better
(Note: I love my wife very much. I just have a twisted sense of humor.)
I am a college instructor, and I have been for about 7 years now. I'll be upgrading to professor soon, so I can tell you first hand that your observations are quite correct. The undergraduate education system of the USA is considered to be the laughing stock of the academic world. However, our graduate schools are perceived as the best in the world. The reason for this is the utter failure of our public primary schools.
Think of it this way. The average high school graduate in the US can only read on a 6th grade reading level. They come to me, a scholar in the field of Computer Science, and I have to try to teach them complex mathematical ideas that are only truly expressible in a new language. I have a couple of options. I can either dumb down my course to give them a chance, or I can maintain my integrity and demand that they come up to speed. The answer is that I have to do a mixture of them. If I taught as I was supposed to, my student success rate would plummet and my perception scores would be low, hence I would be fired. However, if I make the course too easy, I've polluted my own field in the next generation. Instead, I try to ramp them up with basic skills, but push them just to the edge of what their minds can actually handle. I also try to encourage them in other areas of study outside my own. Most of my students consider me a very tough but fair instructor, and most are grateful for my help. However, I do fail a larger percentage of my students than other instructors. Most have gone the field pollution route.
This is a serious problem in our society. One thing we could do to fix it is stop pushing college so hard. Many of my kids would be better served in a tradeschool than a university, and yet they are pressured to come to me. They waist 4 years of their lives, learn nothing usable, and then end up back where they started.
Oh, and one last thought. About the perception of the rest of the world. If you have a Bachelor's degree, that basically brings you up to par with the high school graduates in other countries. That also brings you up to the level your grandparents in the US had when they finished High School. We need to stop the degradation of the primary schools, but we never will. No child left behind has basically ensured that all future generations of Americans will be too stupid to find their a**hole with both hands.
Yggdrasil -> Slackware -> Redhat (for an hour)->
Debian -> Slackware -> Gentoo -> Knoppix -> Ubuntu ->
Gentoo (Forever!)
UNIX wise, I've owned HP-UX machines, 1 AIX server,
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, then NetBSD
Prior to Yggdrasil, I had a cross compiled linux from scratch sort of setup. Ah, those were good days!
I'm a theoretical computer scientist who slings code for fun. I question the validity of teaching programming as part of computer science. Sadly, that battle was fought, and lost by my side, way back in the early 70's!
The most ethical thing you can do is fully disclose the hack to the media, and to as many websites as possible. This will force the developers to either fix the problem or let the company go down in flames. If you keep it secret, innocent pepole will be harmed when their information is leaked by the faulty code. If you could hack it, others can too. They may be less altruistic about what they find.
Write to 2600, call your local media, write to your newspaper, post the info here, go to the forums, and take the word to the street!
Shoulda used gentoo. If gcc can compile for it, gentoo can do it! Plus it would have been a hack too, as all gentoo boxen are hacks!
And yes, I run gentoo on all my machines and have done so since 2003. (My first gentoo box was in 2002, the rest of my machines were converted a year later.)
I say we implement a program which scrapes all of slashdot's content and presents it in the old format. Add a couple of ads in there and maybe we could make a buck or two off it.
Honestly though, I believe that all the code these "designers" created really amounts to a lengthy suicide note for slashdot. I've been here since 1997, and I won't be here much longer.
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none.
