OK, as long as they *selectively* kill birds.

I mean, if all they killed were pigeons, that'd be fine, right? We might even build more of them, even without the subsidies...

Yes, it's dependent on carrier certification if there is a new version of the baseband software that runs the Software Defined Radio. A lot of Android phones run the baseband on the same CPU as the rest of the smart Phone; Apple phones have a separate processor for the baseband, so it's not an issue for Apple, but if, for example, you are running a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, the baseband typically runs in a separate hypervisor.

As of the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, the architecture has changes to run as aSMP, so this is less of a problem, but it still requires certification of the baseband, if there's a baseband update as part of the BOM update. Many so-called smart phones, however, are still running the baseband on a partition of the application processor - meaning you certify with the carriers.

Carrier certification in general is a PITA, because you have to do it separately with each carrier that maintains its own communications infrastructure (meaning that as long as you certify on all the carriers which are selling services to a given VNO, you can get the VNO certification for free, but you have to do it on *ALL* the carriers they use. So it's also a separate step for each country, as well.

Also, you should be aware from the rest of my posting that carriers have absolutely zero interest in you obtaining the most recent version of Android so that you can run out your contract with the most recent version, instead of having to re-up your contract, and get a new phone to get a more recent version of Android. In addition, a lot of the productization changes, including any last minute device support improvements, and so on, are not given back to Google for future use - meaning that it's effectively a new port of Android to the platform, to get an updated version.

ChromeOS: A better Android.

Android has never really been productized by Google. ChromeOS has been; it's a finished product, unlike Android.

One of the major problems with Android is that companies shipping products based on it do not pre-announce. The upshot of that fact is that you end up with every Android version being a snapshot of the Android development tree, which carries the same version numbers/names as other Android products from other vendors, but which have incompatibilities. The one saving grace is that the devices are *mostly* running Dalvik, which is *mostly* binary compatible between the same major version of Android, when *mostly* the vendor partner didn't happen to stub its toes on a major library change for an important and commonly used library.

What drives this incompatibility is not only that the Android running hardware is not specified uniformly in terms of capability, screen resolution, input methods, and so on - ChromeBooks *are*, BTW, and so are Apple devices, for the most part - but the business model for the cell phone industry actively discourages manufacturers from pursuing upgraded versions of the OS on existing cell phone hardware. Because it doesn't sell more cell phone hardware, and it doesn't sell more cell phone contracts, and there's no real App ecosystem like there is in the Apple world.

So upgrades are a net negative to the manufacturers, like Samsung, who wants to sell widgets, and they're a net negative to AT&T and Verizon, etc., who want you to have a reason to want new hardware in order to get the new version of Android so that can catch you up in a new contract for the next 18 months until the next widget comes out. And while Google would like everyone to update the OS whenever Google releases a new version, the company rivalry between the licensees will keep their development from ever being open enough that Google will be able to control the productization to the point of being able to drive an App marketplace on the order of the iTunes App store, because they aren't building it themselves. So there's no money in it to drive Google's desires to reality.

So what's point of ChromeOS? It gives Google Apple-like control over the user experience on a platform where they control the update interval and frequency, and specify the hardware closely enough that, while it's not an iPad or an iPhone, it's a close enough analog.

And that's IMO why Android was moved under the same people who ran ChromeOS, rather than the other way around, and why the Android folks are reporting to Sundar Pichai, rather than his organization reporting to Andy Rubin.

I think the hope was that Android would be able to be productized by the only other organization within Google that's been able to successfully productize a hardware product (well, I guess now there's ChromeCast, but Rishi Chandra reports into Sundar's organization, too).

Personally, I don't think this is going to work out for Android, unless there's a delay built into the version releases for supported hardware, and then given the difficulty of carrier certification and getting the specific version on, and the carriers and the widget makers get on board with the idea, which is a lot of ducks to line up in a row. Plus the carrier and manufacturer buy-in would likely come at the cost of any potential profit off an App marketplace for the first few years, unless the plan was to allow third party marketplaces (which I think would be a mistake).

So ChromeOS is a model for what Google would have liked Android to be, but failed to achieve with it.

Totally disagree. I took 5 AP classes in High School in ~1980. I was the first person in my High School to achieve this number of AP classes, and I was able to skip my freshman year of college and immediately begin taking more advanced math, physics, chemistry, honors English, and when I discovered them, CS courses. I was well on my way to multiple degrees, while most of the people I went to High School with were still deciding what to major in.

Testing out of a class is a more iffy proposition. I found that CLEP testing, at least for information learned as an autodidact, rather than in a classroom and labs, as the AP credit was, tends to give you spotty coverage of a subject, unless you are going to read the textbook for the course you intend to CLEP out of from cover to cover, and do the exercises. It also can somewhat rob you of a year in college; it's actually quite easy, by combining CLEP and AP testing, to drop your distance to a Bachelor's degree to two years. Less, if your college/university administration allows you to carry ~20 credit hours, rather than the "normal" 12-14 (admittedly, this can still be a deal, if you are there on academic scholarship, and your parents wouldn't be able to pay your tuition for you otherwise). This will generally translate to one fewer internship, and one fewer year of college social life, such as it is.

Practically speaking, I'd say that piling on the AP classes is a great way of saving money in the long term by front-loading the costs of college credit onto the state, rather than having it come out of your, or your parents, pockets, especially if you can't afford it. Assuming you apply yourself and do well on the tests, it's also exactly the thing that a college or university is going to want to see, should you apply for an academic scholarship, and between that, and a Pell Grant (now called BEOGs), it can cover your tuition, books, and living in the dorms, which is, for a poor person from a poor family, your entire opportunity for a higher education.

Typically, you trust the people you are working with the first one or two times, with the expectation that they will also trust you. Then your trust gets violated, and you either learn caution (e.g. "Get everything in writing"), or you continue to get screwed. If you've ever read the book "The Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod, a perfectly logical player in the mutual security game will operate for mutual long term overall benefit, rather than short term benefit for themselves. Sadly, not everyone is entirely logical, and for many of those persons, it's not enough that they have more as a result of your mutual efforts, for them to feel good about it, *you* must have less.

The problem was (and remains, despite vortex-based and similar proposals), "ash removal", which is to say, getting rid of the He generated as a fusion by-product to keep it from damping the fusion reaction. It was a problem with the TFTR Ttkamak in 1982, and was a problem with the NSTX, and it's a problem with this follow-on device, the spheromak (of which this article is reporting an example, dynomak).

The problem was never containment (and this dynomak, as all spheromak's, has some really clever mechanisms for containment), the problem is *still* He ash removal from the reaction plasma mixture.

So when you are ready to talk to "grown ups", leave your graduate student class projects, and address the ash removal problem, please.

Future relationship?!?

So they can buy *more* products with bugs an unresponsive support in the future? I can see why you'd want to protect *that* relationship...

Concepts are practically free.

As long as you never build anything, free is always "cheaper than coal"...

Linux isn't tied to systemd, and you don't even know how to spell systemd (hint: it's not SystemD). Still, you're modded up by the muppets who know less.

Ironically...

Crime Agency Boss Must Trade Job For Dole, Says Brits

You do realize that we are no longer talking about Cessna's with Hemi's and whitewalls, we are talking about VTOL craft at this point, right? And some of us do have pilot's licenses, so we realize how ridiculous this particular vehicle is, right?

With a reserved airspace that has no manually controlled vehicles whatsoever, it's definitely a better target for automation (assuming quadrotor style manueverability). The thing that makes the ground hard is the manually controlled vehicles, the people, trash cans, road surface damage, and other mobile obstacles. Take that away, and you no longer need vision systems or any of it.

Obviously manual controls would only work outside of restricted airspace; within restricted airspace, you'd be under the guidance of the airspace control computer.

The hatred is mostly due to internet communities creating circle-jerks where some really retarded opinions get reinforced due to their mere popularity. People who have no idea what you're talking about think your comment is "insightful" just because it's marked as such, and adopt them as their own.

Given that the policy applies to "Glassware", which is on-board software, and the facial recognition is on a back end server ("not Glassware"), they probably are not going to do dick about it.

If they *were* going to do something about it, it would be to not allow the Dubai police to distribute their Glassware in the Google store. I'm pretty sure the Dubai police will be side-loading the client app anyway, and would be just as happy that *NOTHING* from the Google store got onto their officers Glass devices anyway.

So it's a non-issue.