Trojaning the passphrase would actually be criminal

Oh I'm sure the sheysters in their legal department could come up with some weasel words to throw into the license blab to make it "consensual".

plus it's unnecessary in almost all cases, so there's no point in them doing it.

In the hypothetical situation the last poster came up with where some list of authorized plugins is singed or something...

They cannot add to the list without using the public key to crack the private key,

Or trojaning the program that prompts the user for the passphrase to intercept the passphrase or just install their malware at that time.

Microsoft, Apple, or Google wouldn't want to have headlines about how they are erasing user passwords just to install obnoxious toolbars.

I don't give them quite so much faith. You'd think they wouldn't want headlines about secretly installing obnoxious toolbars at all, yet here we are...

Encrypted with a key stored where?

Because they can't make it impossible. If they do that installers will simply start directly modifying whatever file contains that list of explicitly approved plugins to add theirs to it.

Uh... no. You're wrong except for the part about unwanted messages not being delivered in the first place being better than just delievered to a special place. I've been doing that with plain old SMTP for years though.

they have said in the past if steam were ever to go offline permanently they'd patch all the games to remove the steamworks drm.

Where? Someone says this in every single steam discussion on slashdot, but I have yet to see it ever substantiated. Why don't they just say that in the terms of service if it is indeed the case?

At least if my desktop PC becomes infested with malware I can go to best buy and have it removed and possibly get better at not acquiring it in the first place. With Android phones the drive-by browser exploit malware installs have been replaced by uninstallable carrier-installed malware. Instead of popups about fake virus software I get notifications asking me to upgrade QuickOffice for 50% off and a message from City ID, whatever the fuck that is, asking me if I want to continue my trial or have it ask me again later every time I end a phone call.

Run the app to root the phone. You can reek plenty of havoc.

Like uninstalling this uninstallable piece of crapware on this verizon droid 2 which asks me if I want to buy or continue a trial after every single call when I hang up on?

Kind of like how end users having direct control over their PCs has resulting in nearly all PCs made over the past 35 or so years being bricked?

That way, no file transfers can take place.

That's not necessarily true. One could still do something like "type > file" or "copy con file" or whatever and have something on their client machine that automatically sends keystrokes to create the remote file (perhaps using alt-NNN as needed for special characters).

Lockdown is becoming increasingly common in the Android phone world. Soon you may not have much of a choice. Are there any completely open android phones sold today aside from the Nexus One?

Wow, how generous of them. For only $99/year they'll stop getting in the way of people doing what they want with their own property.

it could mean more open devices for us

More open devices when? All we have is the Nexus One, if that's still sold today. There could have been open devices all along, yet here we are with android phones loaded with uninstallable crapware, boot loader enforcing software image signatures, "e-fuses", phones that automatically reimage themselves if "tampered" with.

Dev phones? Is there more than the Nexus One?

No they wouldn't. They would be quite simple: "You're running an unsupported firmware. Bye."