No I am not. I don't use Cloud Services I don't run. My Android Phone uses LineageOS with F-Droid and not GApps. I use eGroupware, I use OwnCloud.

USians got Trump because Obama didn't reign in Corruption in the Political Class, fix FDR style guards on the Economy, and basically governed as a Center-Right Republican on Economic issues, and Center Left Democrat on Social issues.

Because he failed to stablize the declining middle class, allowed the decimation of Unions, and because of the Citizens United Ruling, it opened the door for our elections to be bought. This has been happening because the US have basically a far right government in Congress and it's driving the US into Medieval Fudalism. The combination of Economic Collapse, and of the presence of a Black President galvanized elements of White Nationalism that have been bulding since the Bush/Gore Election, and Septermber 11th 2001.

The Abortion and Gay thing, and religious fanaticism issues are actually issues of Whites being able to outbreed non-Whites. So the Conservative republicans are resorting to violence, and fraud now to rig elections. It is the collapse of Democracy in motion, and it will likely take a war to fix it. Maybe. History has a way of surprising everyone.

But as long as the Jim Bakkers and the Lance Wallanaus and the Rick Wiles exist, they present a threat to democracy because they represent the Christian Taliban.

No Qual Comm would mean no CDMA. If they decide to put MediaTek chips for Cellular support it will happen to have the effect of drastically limiting Carrier Support for these devices.

People never liked the x86 PC, but had to have them to use the Internet's content consumption aspects.

But the issue I have is this: I currently have a Lineage OS Running Phone, and a DD-WRT Router that I have to re-flash to fix a terrible security vulnerability. (KRACK) and due to the design of these things, the update could possibly soft brick them. I neevr had this issue with my x86 PCs

BLU Needs to stop locking their boot loaders, and start letting people LineageOS their devices. ADUPS is turning into a Meanace!

Flash the Phone with Lineage OS. Thats what I do with my Phones.

I wonder if cars like the Tesla could use Solar panels on their roof to absorb Solar power to gradually recharge their batteries as they drive to make the battery last longer, and go further on long trips?

SMS Text is mapped to a Phone Number which can be mapped to a real person.

An unwillingness of end users to install other programs.

Why not Open Source this and Classic Yahoo? Allow people to start their own OSCAR Services the AIM or YIM Clients are compatible with, but, change the host name to whatever you want?

Currently, YIM is inoperative on Pidgin, soon AIM will be too. For Pidgin, this really doesn't matter. Some people liked the AIM and YIM Client software, a compatible "gateway" with connections to XMPP or Slack as a backend.

I get it AOL/Oath doesn't want to maintain the service. Open Source it, and let independent organizations host their own.

This would mean the blocking access to publicly funded science. This is a first ammendment violation. (this part of the ruling would be.)

Part of the problem is that while yes, there are many users of the Internet who want it to stay open and free, there is a segment of the Consumer population that wants it to be Cable TV, and Perhaps Gaming Distribution 2.0

The idea behind DRM, and video rental systems over the internet is just asinine. But you have to look at where a particular segment of the Computer using public is going: Android Tablets, which is Linux turned against iteslf, and iPads. What do both of these things look like? Portable Televisions. They don't have keyboards, they don't have mice. They are tools of Content consumption.

Steve Jobs, Woz's partner, was a huge part of this. Openness on the Apple Platforms ended with the Apple II GS series, and the Macs were all largely closed to the outside world until the advent of OSX. Many Pre-OSX Macs, had proprietary EVERYTHING, and even the speaker Jack was proprietary. OSX opened the Mac world up some by giving us a MacOS running on BSD.

This allowed Mac to Survive and gve us the Trusted Computing Nightmare that was iOS. All the sudden you have what the DRM Corps want: A Computing platform where everything is a Rental transaction, and consumers money can be funneled from their wallets constantly. Thats what is happening now with iDevice owners.

Apple should have died off back in the 90s. They should have gone out of business completely. Consumers should have resisted the introduction of DRM into computers and rejected networks like NetFlix.

While i think the removal of the repressive Chinese Government from power is the only real solution to all this. One way is to support additional protocols to support libpurple (the library responsible for Pidgin) and the XMPP Application Spectrum 2. This allows Android XMPP Clients to talk XMPP to a jabber instance, and the XMPP host to use libpurple for the other protocol.

But there are no technical solutions around bad governments. The Chinese should push for a Secular Humanist Democratic reform of China.

I wanted compulsory GSM, not a Merger.
Everywhere CDMA goes, you wind up with people who can't switch, who wind up unable to keep their devices when they switch carriers in the US, Canadian users who pay exorbitant Roaming fees, so on and so forth. But the truth is there are only four real carriers in the US, two are GSM, and two are CDMA. Those CDMA carriers should not be there, there should be 5 or 6 GSM carriers that own Towers, and this confusing MVNO scam needs to stop.

It doesn't go far enough. the iPhone needs to be opened up by Apple such that it will boot Android if that is a desired configuration. The problem is the climate in some places is such that you will be the subject of bullying, harassment, and sectarian abuse if you carry an Android Phone around with you, because it looks different than Android Phones do.

There are also utility reasons as Android's software base is larger than iOS. So if desired, someone knowledgable should be allowed to wipe the Stock Rom of iOS and replace it with an Android Rom built to run on the iPhone hardware. (The catch being once done, you lose all support from Apple.) This would drastically reduce the platform sectarian harrassment by giving Android Fans something that looks like an iPhone, but runs Android as they wish.

No, Mediatek based clones from China aren't the same thing. MediaTek based "Fake" Phones like that tend to have fake hardware in them like Fake Fingerprint scanners.