So I have a question. If I wanted to buy a smartphone that wasn't made by teenagers handling dangerous chemicals on 16 hour shifts for pennies an hour, what brand phone would I buy, and how much could I expect to pay for it?

Does there even exist such a smartphone?

I would love to see object-oriented Brainfuck.

One of the things I love about Linux is that there are a gazillion flavors of it. We call them distros, and they span a whole continuum of configurations. My personal preference is for some, but not too many, bells and whistles, and there's a distro for me! The people who want more bells and whistles than me, but who don't want the whole shebang, there's a distro for them too!

Tivo, not Tivio. And Tivoization is a real problem. It's frustrating enough that I'm locked out of modifying my own devices without risk of breaking them or the law. But it's even more frustrating when I have a device that purports to run free open source software that I can't modify. (I'm looking at you almost every Android device ever.) It's against the whole point of the GPL if I can't tweak the code to fix or improve my device because the manufacturer locks me out.

rms is often not the most mature orator, but he saw a problem, and he fixed it to the best of his abilities. Don't belittle GPLv3 by saying it started with a tantrum.

I will soon be graduating with my PhD in mathematics, and my experience thus far as a graduate student in the US is that it's really hard to get a position in academia where your research is more important than your teaching, and it's almost impossible to get an industry job where you can research what interests you instead of what's immediately applicable to your company.

I won't have any trouble getting a job. I won't even have trouble getting a very well-paying job. But getting a job that lets me pursue my research interests as I see fit? Not without 2 - 5 more years of postdoc positions and some really great papers. And then 5 more years of writing papers like a maniac to get tenure. A lot of pressure to go after low-hanging fruit, even if it's stuff that doesn't interest you. That's a lot of years of 80 hour weeks just for the privilege of studying what you want.

I am a mathematician, and quite frankly I don't want you defending me.

Wait, are you addressing me specifically? If you are, that's decently insulting. If not, you sound like you're a bit off your rocker. Like a guy ranting on a streetcorner.

That's not the argument. Mathematicians aren't going to starve, but they're also not going to find many opportunities in industry to do mathematical research without direct, obvious application. Research that we have no way of measuring the value of, because applications haven't been found.

I agree that the mathematicians in the direct employ of NSA should take a long hard, look at their own ethical code, but the fact of the matter is, the NSA provides lots of funding for university mathematics departments. For research that is open to public scrutiny. From TFA, $4 million goes to a grant program administrated by the AMS and things like undergraduate research programs and number theory conferences. The NSA is just throwing money at mathematicians on the off chance that they discover something useful to national security.

If the AMS were to sever ties with the NSA, there goes $4 million of funding for public mathematical research in a puff of impotent outrage.

I'm all with you when it comes to not working for fascists, but we're talking about public research here, for the enrichment of all humanity. Not shady spying stuff.