This is exactly the problem, and I'll underscore it with an inquiry to anyone who echoes the grandparent post...

Amongst the reasons Exchange is as readily used as it is, isn't because Exchange itself is some awesome piece of software. Exchange is part of a bigger ecosystem that incorporates a few major pieces:

--ActiveSync - and more to the point, ActiveSync support from billions of phones and tablets.
--Active Directory - single sign-on through Outlook from a domain user, and the reverse: creating a mailbox also creates a user in AD.
--Outlook - a mail/contact/calendar/task client that has a handful of competitors that excel in one area or another (IMO Zimbra coming pretty close), but still a program whose replacement will require a barricade on the door to keep out the execs who wish to use their torches and pitchforks.
--Self-Hosted - Gmail and company don't count.

I've seen plenty of great answers to one or more of these solutions. I'm a fan of the super-easy-to-use-and-manage IceWarp, but the Icewarp mail client is lacking pretty notably. Google is great if you're okay with them having your mail (many are), but unless there's an on-site version of Gmail, it's not a fair comparison fight. Univention makes a pretty good PDC replacement, but using for its mail server isn't the greatest and mobile device support is lacking. Zentyal and ClearOS are also great for small environments, but scaling becomes a problem.

So, to those who say "Exchange Sucks", I say "fine. Show me a better system that satisfies all of the above criteria, and I will be MORE than happy to take a long, hard look at it." I don't like Exchange, or its CAL structure, either...but "worst except all the rest" seems to apply here.

The examples I provided were a replacement for the dialer and the SMS client; I'm unaware of there being unofficial replacements for them in Cydia, but I'm all but certain that there aren't any in the App Store proper.

Because very few users of rooted phones use rooted apps in exclusivity. I like having Xprivacy, but it doesn't mean that I don't also play Angry Birds - I can't have booth without root, but they're not mutually exclusive. There are also apps for Android that don't exist on iOS (again, perhaps in Cydia, but certainly not in the App Store) - there are several torrent clients on Android - they don't require root there, but if they're available at all on iOS (I remember cTorrent being a thing on iOS; don't know if there's anything better that's been released there since like 2010), you most certainly need a jailbreak.

For the purposes of this post, I'll roll with the assumption that Apple doesn't collect that data anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you need an Apple account to use an iPhone, right? If there's no opt-out, then they get an e-mail address as well. iTunes always got my cell number when I would sync the phone (as well as being necessary for iMessage to work, I'd gather), and carrier is a fairly trivial thing to ascertain based on any number of things - a log file that indicates which .PNG file is accessed for the carrier logo, the aforementioned IP address, or even the serial number of the phone - I'd be shocked if they don't have some sort of record of which batch is sold for which carrier. This leaves us with location. Google also gives an opt-out on the location data, but I tend to not-trust them. The difference between iOS and Android in this respect is that Xprivacy gives a method by which to force an opt-out, completely irrespective of what any given application wants - including all of the system apps.

Xprivacy blocks access at a pretty low level and blocks them pretty effectively despite updates. I could see something interesting happening maybe at the driver level, but every time they update the Play Services, the "good luck with that" response from Xprivacy appears to hold thus far.

I can't really dispute that, to be honest. Android, when properly beaten into submission, CAN have more privacy than iOS, but I'd completely agree that this is a very deliberate state that is not the easiest to obtain.

The program is CALLED "Classic Shell", that doesn't mean it's actually a shell overhaul (GNOME isn't a lawn ornament...). It's a simple ~5MB Installshield Wizard that puts a small overlay on the start button and preempts the internal Windows equivalent, providing a more traditional start menu interface reminiscent of either Windows 2000, XP(ish), or 7. The only other thing it touches with regards to the shell is that it can disable the 'hot corners' that Windows 8 seems to believe are actually useful on a desktop.

This is NOT like replacing GNOME with KDE.

At this point, the options are a bit sparse...Google, Apple, Microsoft, maybe Blackberry....I mean, about the only place you won't find that level of mess is an HP Touchpad running WebOS, because I can't see any of the infrastructure still being switched on. The fact of the matter is that, while not outright collusion, I'm unaware of a privacy focused company who has enough chops to release a tablet running their code.

Different apps. I haven't been in Cydia recently, but I'd wager that the variety of apps that leverage the "rootedness" of an Android phone outnumber what's on an iPhone. Similarly, there are a number of apps (Rocketdial, GoSMS, etc.) that require a jailbreak on iOS, but will happily run on a standard issue Android phone.

Well, at initial setup, there's not much that Google can ascertain - your Gmail address, your cell number, your phone carrier, and your location...but neutering that stuff at first run means that they get all of one data point - one more than I'd like, but still not much. Personally, my first installations are Xposed Framework and Xprivacy; I neuter my phone so thoroughly in that respect that it's a royal pain to use the GPS even when I want to...but I'm perfectly fine with that arrangement; ymmv.

Because if you're rooting, and more specifically installing a custom ROM, carrier updates become irrelevant. Depending on the ROM, some do OTA updates, others have more conventional means. Either way, I personally have never once installed a carrier/OEM update; I've never once seen one that I wasn't certain was going to make a mess.

tl;dr: Android sucks, except for all the alternatives. There are roundabout ways to get privacy on Android, and as annoying as it is that it's required to do that, Android is the only contemporary mobile OS that supports them at all.

I get those from time to time so I accidentally give them the wrong name and address. I wonder who they sent out to the apartment complex.

Closing spoofing closes normal business trunking.
Case in point.

I have a DID line. No outgoing phone plan at all. Normal business applications is an 800 toll free number. Call it and an entire bank of phones ring for the first available operator.

I also have several trunk lines. Mush like the local hotel. You know the drill. Dial 9 for an outside line. What was proposed is to give each of the trunks a FIXED phone number. You can call a trunk line, but they don't take inbound calls. Instead the PBX uses the info of the extension to identify the call to the CID system. I call, you call back on my 800 number. It's the way the PBX system works.

Unfortunately with the break up of ma bell, there exists COME equipment outside the control of ma bell. Now ma bell can't own all the PBX'es and be responsible for every extension.

There existed a day when anything attached to a phone line was owned by ma bell.

Now Customer Owned and Maintained Equipment (COME) has let the jeanie out of the bottle and there is no way to put the jeanie back in the bottle. I you have a business trunk line and a DID even over VOIP, setting your own line display name is a normal administrative task.

Unfortunately this is subject to abuse.

For more info on the subject read the manual for any good software PBX such as Asterisk, 3CX, etc. I can directly set the "Display Name" on my SNOM desk phone. I can call from various extensions as needed to display either my local market number or the 800 number.

The government should defend the Constitution instead of tear it apart.

The people should be secure. The people should have the right to assemble, and exclude a government representative from the meeting.

A meeting my phone should have the same protection.

It is illegal for citizens to wiretap a cell phone signal. This should apply to everyone.

It became clear this was not true. Other tools were made to enforce what should have been standard.

Now the government is a little upset that encryption exists.

Nursing is a poor example now. With the obesity epidemic, there is a huge number of men in nursing now. A better example would be social services such as child protective services. Think of the children. All men might molest the kids. The argument makes as much sense as your critical project programmer might get pregnant and leave. Both are a possibility, but not a reason to exclude a gender.

Wrong question to ask. Correct question is; Are there other fields under represented by men? If they diversify those jobs, then the pool of creative and talented women could fill the vacancies created by men taking traditionally ladies jobs,

Use your imagination. Jobs that come to mind are day care workers, social workers, elementary schoolteachers, hospice and adult foster care, etc. Don't flame the thread by suggesting exotic anything. keep on topic.

Some traditional roles are already diversifying such as nursing and other non doctor medical professions such as radiology, etc.

You pose a genuinely interesting question - where, exactly, is the cutoff between "walled garden" and "open"? Google hasn't done much good in the way of proactively keeping their systems open - even the Nexus phones ship with locked bootloaders. KitKat severely limited the utility of MicroSD cards. Using an Android phone without a Gmail account isn't impossible, but it requires a whole lot of deliberate footwork. Lollipop is integrating some of the Samsung Knox stuff, as well as other security enforcing things. Google's "commit" frequency to the AOSP is lacking, especially since much of their work is done within their property apps (e.g. Maps, Gmail, Now, etc.), rather than the OS itself.

I would ultimately say that the ability to install apk's from third party sources, the ability for root-requiring applications to live in the Play Store, and the availability of apps that modify core system functions (e.g. RocketDial, GoSMS, NovaLauncher, etc.) keeps Google in the "not a walled garden" category. I remain unconvinced, however, that Google will stay this way - their recent steps regarding Android's architecture has consistently decreased openness, instead of increasing it. Personally, I still run Android because it's the worst except for all the rest. The next mobile OS that has Swype and XPrivacy is the next recipient of my mobile device dollars.

So you think neurologists should be spending a lot of time keeping up to the State of the Art in all new technologies? I would rather they were good neurologists, and waited for people with advanced new technology to offer it to them - as happened in this case. The only difference from what I would expect to be the normal process is that an end user rather than a manufacturer looking for a market came up with the idea. But I do not think skilled medial staff should spend their time surfing the technology scene for possibly good ideas.

I see what you did there.

Come on. I have used this exact same method on a Windows Mobile 5 device (HTC Touch HD) waaaay back when, using the accelerometer and gravity to determine how my screen was moving and moving a virtual object in virtual space and showing that on my phone's screen.

Not only that, but it's a rather OBVIOUS solution to a problem. Whatever happened to the "non-obvious" requirement?

Einstein and Feynman were both nobel prize winners and Hawkins has Sir Isaac Newton's mathematics chair - we probably shouldn't downplay their achievements!

Carl Sagan was on the slippery slope. He certainly did some good science - but he's hardly up there with the previous three. Tyson has a few decent papers to his name, and his career isn't over yet - but I don't think he's coming close to the others in terms of science achievements.

Einstein was the world's worst communicator. Feynman and Hawkins are better - Sagan was astounding and Tyson may be yet better.

I suppose we might be concerned that there is a pattern here. We're taking people who are better communicators in preference to those who really know their stuff.

But honestly, does it matter? The presenter of a show reads from a script - (s)he is basically an actor. If the author of the script sticks to an accurate portrayal of what's written by the hard-core scientists - then why not pick an engaging personality to present it to us?

The critical part of the cycle is the person who decides WHICH science gets discussed. De Grasse Tyson is often talking about tacheons, wormholes and white holes and other claptrap that's horribly speculative, wildly unusupported, and very probably untrue. As an astrophysicist, he should know better - but as a TV presenter, he does a reasonable job of reading the script.

I'd prefer to have a complete non-scientist who is a supreme communicator be given a script written by good script writers from material handed to them by the hard core scientists behind the scenes - than to rely on a lower-tier scientist (or a high-tier scientist with poor communications skills) to do the entire job.

    -- Steve

Obnoxiously, this is a situation where Open Source is still "note quite there". Quickbooks casts a pretty wide net in my experience, from the sole proprietor whose wife does the data entry, to the $30 million/year medium business that has a finance department and is using one of their enterprise editions, to "basically every accountant ever", who has quickbooks because all of his business clients have a quickbooks file that they e-mail him in order to have their taxes done. Now one of the reasons why Quickbooks is as popular as it is, is the fact that it's like Facebook - everyone uses it because everyone uses it. Even Microsoft failed back in 2007 when they tried to take them on.

The single reason why I see OSS have issues with the small business accounting software department is the fact that every title I've seen is double entry. GNUcash is, Xtuple is, and odoo is. Quickbooks is single entry, and populates the charts of accounts for you. I wanted Xtuple to work for me, but double entry accounting is a bit of an enigma to those without formal accounting training. One could argue that people who do the books should be familiar with regular accounting practices, but Intuit has made a fortune from nixing that requirement. Gnucash is a simple Installshield wizard, but Xtuple and odoo have their own issues in that they require networking experience as well (more so odoo; I think it's possible for Xtuple to do a fully local install). Most businesses, be it construction, interior design, small auto repair, landscaping, cupcake baking, etc...they don't exactly have someone familiar with both configuring a PostgreSQL server AND double entry accounting on their payroll...thus, Quickbooks again fills that void.

Intuit needs competition.The best they have right now is Xero, but they (and many of their competitiors) are web based SaaS titles that don't offer a self hosted option, at any price. I'm surprised that no one has come up with a solid, single-entry accounting title, be it either half the price, or full-on OSS. There's money to be made there, and right now, Intuit is getting it.