They can prioritize all they want, but no one wants to pay for the carrier certification of thee modified SDRs, particularly when using a T-Zone on a Snapdragon chip in order to run the baseband, and the FCC demands that the SDR be certified as a unit (software + hardware). That's a carrier certifiiation per carrier, per country, per device, per version update.

Also no carrier using a contract lock-in revenue model is going to provide an update that doesn't lock you into a new contract, and a version update won't do that unless there's a charge for the update, based on FAS (Federal Accounting Standard) rules, since without an exchange of consideration, there is no contract. This is why Apple charged for the WiFi software update on iPods, and non-cellular network iPads, but didn't charge for cellular connected iPads and iPhones. It had to do with realization of revenue over time, versus a one time sale, and adding features to the device via software.

You should also be aware that the image that's shipped by the OEM is often not even buildable by Google engineers; apart from the fact that the devices used during development are generally signature neutered, and it's impossible to cryptographically sign the image for the given device without it either being neutered like that, or signing code that they device manufacturer generally does not share due to it containing a signing key they don't want out there... they entirety of the board file is generally not committed back to the Google maintained Android source tree. Nor is it maintained going forward so that it's up to date, nor is the remainder of the OS productization standardized across all the OEMs. They are trying to differentiate their products, after all, and my Samsung device looking and feeling exactly like a non-Samsung device is not in Samsung's interest: it makes them into a commodity, which is a quick race to the bottom on margin.

Google has significant dictatorial powers when it comes to Chromebooks, which are not available to the Android folks, even if they had the ability to code sign, and could dictate a code cut, the Android in the tree is pretty raw, and never productized.

Finally, Android lacks a uniform app ecosystem; this is a more or less direct consequence of having allowed third party stores, without a strong compatibility for the apps across all devices.

Seriously, one of the smartest things that Apple did was keep the baseband processor separate from the application processor so that there was no telecom recertification required, unless they were explicitly hacking the baseband for some reason (e.g. the carrier lock they did by re-doing the SIM/IMEI handshake when doing a hand-off between cell towers in order to intentionally break SuperSIMs and similar techniques for hardware carrier unlocks).

Without the app ecosystem and the continuity of app and other content going forward on Android -- which it doesn't -- I don't see a means of enforcing carrier lock-in to support that economic model, particularly if you started supporting software updates.

Actually, it does.

The Android partner model is to snapshot the tree, and then the OEM productizes the snapshot, adding hardware driver support, their own apps and UI changes, and then they do a deal with the carrier for badging and more apps -- like pointing by default to the OEM or carrier's app store, in order to monetize the device further.

This model exists to avoid disclosing information between OEMs and different carriers, since Google does not do the actual productization.

Because of this, pretty much every Android device, other than the ones which were Google-badged as "buy them from Samsung, resell them under the Google name", is a one-off with a one-off version of the OS. In order to update the OS, it'd be necessary to (effectively) re-do the port of the OS to the device for each new version.

On top of that, there's really not a lot of incentive for the carrier to have the versions of the OS an Android phone is running changing on them, since each new one requires recertification, and, depending on the degree of changes made to things like the baseband and changes in electronic noise due to changes in the software, FCC recertification, or whatever the local equivalent happens to be in your home country.

It's like building a whole new phone, except you're not getting paid for it, and theres no upsell to get you back under contract for the next 18 months.

In other words, it's a lose for everyone involved, due to the way the Android/OEM/Carrier relationship is structured, and there's no product continuity upsell like you have with the various iPhone models.

So Is Mac OS X.

I converted time_t to 64 bits on 64 bit systems (which include the most recent iPhones) as part of the changes for 64 bit binary support on the G5 when I wrote the 64 bit binary loader support into exec/fork/spawn, and again as part of UNIX Conformance. It's basically been fixed since Tiger.

Obviously... if it's AI, and it has some real world utility, then we rename it so that it's not AI any more. Then we complain loudly that "AI has never produced anything useful".

It's not like the script can run without the interpreter. Even if you were stupid enough to mount /tmp other than noexec (the default).

It's a radio transmitter in a can. It would take an even larger departure from known physics to make it go boom. We have a good deal of experience with radio transmitters in space.

OK, I will try to restate in my baby talk since I don't remember this correctly.

Given that you are accelerating, the appearance to you is that you are doing so linearly, and time dilation is happening to you. It could appear to you that you reach your destination in a very short time, much shorter than light would allow. To the outside observer, however, time passes at a different rate and you never achieve light speed.

I am having an equally hard time thinking of how Earth is more habitable than Mars while atomic bombs are going off or impactors are impacting. If you wait a while, sure it's more habitable than Mars. But for that moment, no.

That's not what arbiter1 meant.

"Reading your opponent" doesn't rely on facial expressions or tells when you are playing online poker.

We send drivers on the road every day who don't have a clear idea how cars work.

Knowing how something works is nice, but not knowing how it works won't diminish its utility, so long as it *does*.

We use gravity daily to generate hydroelectric power. Ask a group of physicists how gravity works. We have the math for it, but we don't have the story of it. Either way, the lights come on when the water weight is converted from potential to kinetic energy, and we are still damned if we know the mechanism of conversion. If we did, we'd al be riding around on hoverboards.

Or rejected it anyway?

You are incorrect. The difference between a riot and an insurrection is that, for an insurrection, I'm perfectly happy bringing in the National Guard and shooting the assholes.

A rebellion can be either violent resistance or open resistance. For violent resistance: bring in the national guard. For merely open resistance: put them on national television, and hear what they have to say. Occupy Wall Street was an open resistance rebellion; Rosa Parks was open resistance rebellion; Mahatma Gandhi was open resistance rebellion. The Serbian events which ousted Slobodan Miloevi was open resistance rebellion. Birmingham, Alabama and Selma, Alabama during the U.S. Civil rights movement was open resistance rebellion.

If it's just a riot, you handle it with local policing.

But involuntary manslaughter, manslaughter, third degree murder, second degree murder, and first degree murder are all murder, aren't they?

So it shouldn't matter what we call it: if we have the death penalty for first degree murder, we should have the same penalty for involuntary manslaughter, because "A thing is what a thing is indifferent to what you call it"... right?

Just because you can lump an event into a category does not make it the same as all of the other events you are able to lump into the same broad category.

If you find yourself putting everything into the same bucket, perhaps the problem isn't the thing, it's the fact that you have too few buckets.

To an outside observer. I don't think it's the same in the inertial frame.

Before we call this real, we need to put one on some object in orbit, leave it in continuous operation, and use it to raise the orbit by a measurable amount large enough that there would not be argument regarding where it came from. The Space Station would be just fine. It has power for experiments that is probably sufficient and it has a continuing problem of needing to raise its orbit.

And believe me, if this raises the orbit of the Space Station they aren't going to want to disconnect it after the experiment. We spend a tremendous amount of money to get additional Delta-V to that thing, and it comes down if we don't.