I think it unlikely that Google would use on-device ads to help phone costs: their traditional strategy has been to use ads to monetize core offerings, not ancillary ones. Ancillary offerings bring you back to the core offerings, where ads are effectively placed.

There's so much speculation right now on the market, but I think that it's clear that Google could do something really interesting without the use of on-device monetization right now, e.g. the $199 unlocked super-phone that's being discussed in the more rumor-mill-ish blogs right now. If they could be cash-neutral doing that, and simultaneously disintermediate wireless carriers (a side-goal they've had for some time now), AND double Android's market share in the US, the mobile device group will be getting large bonuses, mark my words.

A totally new business model which likely reduces the amount of uptake from consumers: not so likely right now; Google has lots of cash and wants lots of market share. It's not a time to futz around with stuff like this: consumers would generally LOVE an iphone-a-like which costs $30 a month for unlimited calling and only costs $199. If Google can get that out the door, they'll have done plenty already in the last eighteen months.

I haven't read the contract, but I can tell you exactly what happened:

Arrington has good idea, promises to market it, and work on it, plus provide a (modicum) of resources. Engineering Company gets involved. Capitalists get involved and put money in. Guaranteed: Arrington's dollars are all soft-dollars, time, energy, shared office space, PR, marketing, etc.

In the end: it works. Woohoo!

Now, Money guys look at the project, and they think: "OMG, this looks like it will ship and sell. We're all going to make some money, that's good. Let's review the Cap table to see what we'll be making. Hey, WTF? This Arrington guy negotiated like 35-45% of this project for himself, and all he's done is write a few articles about it, and pestered Fusion's engineers.. We could have paid like $20k to some PR firm to do that, how did he end up with 40% of this project?"

They call the engineering guys and say: "Do we need Arrington?"

Engineering guys say "Um, to build this project and ship it, we definitely do not need Arrington. Why?"

Capitalists say: "Because he's worthless, and it would be WRONG to give him the stake he got in the project."

Engineers say: "... um, ?"

Capitalists say: "We're going to execute a clawback, drill Arrington down to 8-10%, and then you and we will get to split the remainder. This isn't being bad, this is being right and moral. He just got too much of the pie up front."

Engineers say: ".. will you talk to him about it?"

Capitalists say: "You're the CEO, you talk to him."

Engineers " .. Okay. "

Guess what, it happens ALL THE TIME. There are a number of possible solutions to a situation like this, but usually you need to plan upfront for it, and be ready. I don't think he was ready, which is too bad.

The fine letter linked to in the above points out the real problems inherent in calculating this out: actually simulating NEURONS, rather than so-called "neural networks" is really hard, and requires a lot of computing power, plus development of techniques that are still cutting edge research. There is no chip array that can do all the (currently not completely specified) simulating of a cat brain at 1 kW.

Sci-Fi, the act of writing out speculations on our future, or an alternate one, isn't dead. The Spec-Fiction portion of it isn't dead, at least. The extrapolating current life into the future portion is having trouble, though. Vernor Vinge explains this nicely in his Singularity essays. He claims that sci fi writers have been dealing with the difficulties of making quality predictions for at least a decade, maybe two decades now.

In short, rate of change is speeding up, ergo change is going to be geometric, maybe exponential, ergo there will be some period of time, reasonably short, after which we (as current humans living on earth) will not understand very much about the world.

Vinge (and Ray Kurzweil) call this the Singularity. It's a nice, compelling idea if you're a math guy or gal (and I am a math guy).

Corollary to all this: Either you can write near-term extrapolative fiction or you can write post-singularity fiction, but there's no mid-range future. The mid-range future will happen in like an afternoon one day, and nobody will notice it due to what happens shortly after. This lack of mid-range predictability is what's bugging some people. But, functionally, I don't understand why. Scientists don't need Arthur C. Clarke to dream impossible dreams right now -- IBM neuroscientists are physically simulating a cat brain ALREADY for goodness sake! They don't need to think 'out of the box' about what the future could hold. The world has moved on, and into a space where finance guys will PAY people to IMPLEMENT their crazy sci-fi ideas.

We call the finance guys venture capitalists. They are helping build hotels in space, yadda,yadda,yadda. The future is already here at some level, and the mid-range future is being obsessively considered by inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs and VCs,

The stross quote backs this idea, change is already happening rapidly, and speeding up in a way that surprises a hard-SF writer.

This is why I like the tack Vinge has recently taken: think about INTERFACE to a new world. Think about ethics right around the time of the singularity. These are good places for sci-fi authors, traditionally a pretty thoughtful bunch.

I thought to myself "You haven't been here long, have you?" Then I checked your UID, and well, it is higher than mine. But still, pretty damn low. So, I'd like to thank you for bringing back that old-timey belief that the editors of slashdot care about selecting only scientifically accurate content for the front page. Excepting JonKatz of course.

Also, I totally agree -- bad summary, bad study, but probably correct conclusions -- some people can't hear music for shit.

I office in the middle of a headhunter firm right now, and I just finished having lunch with one a couple days ago where she talked to me about their business. Here is the summary:

1) They just match your name and experience against a request from a client -- it's all keyword search all the time.
2) Skip the cover letter, it wastes their time -- just a 'I'm looking for work in these areas' will do fine, thank you
3) E-mailing the Resume is the way to go, there are well established processes to get your e-mail in the system
4) Send out resumes to as many recruiters as you can stomach -- companies frequently just use one recruiter, so you need to make sure that you fulfill the breadth side of the equation by getting onto as many databases as possible.
5) Recruiters hate hard questions and anomalies and prefer no hassle. This is probably why your resume is getting edited, even though it's an unethical thing to do.

Okay, so all that said, I would recommend you:

a) Make something useful sounding that you can say you've been doing in your non-work time, like an open source project, or a website catering to charities who want to learn about technology, or whatever. You can then gloss your layoff time at the end, saying "when I am not working, I volunteer with ... or build this cool ". This is the ethical version of lying on your resume

b) Complain to the recruiter's boss, but don't expect to get anywhere.

c) Think like a swinger man -- the more the merrier! Get out there and find 30 tech recruiters. They certainly aren't more committed to you than that.

This story can be summarized: JWZ Wins. Big Time.

I'm impressed, I didn't expect he'd get this kind of leverage.

There are a few technical pieces missing from the comments here, and this story is still definitely developing. From Cyanogen's twitter feed today: "This is about proprietary device drivers and not Google at this point. These drivers are not redistributable."

This is a nice reminder that there's likely no building a usable phone room without infringing on some agreements. I do not expect this to change in the near future; what this means is that a sort of 'merge' or 'overwrite' or patch system will need to be put in place for people modding their phones.

This will take a little time to build would be my guess, but isn't insurmountable; I think the complexity of building such a thing should fit inside of the typical hacker attention span that's been piqued right now.

The most practical solution probably won't get you many friends, commodore64_love. I think that the original question asker wants to, you know, have people who like and appreciate him at his art-oriented school.

Since you seem like a black and white sort of dude, I'll say it in nerdish black and white: refusing to participate in social 'gifting' if you are not an alpha male guarantees that you will drop to the bottom of the social pecking order. Most non-outcast-y people get this intuitively, and it's one reason they have more friends. Outcasts can learn to do this, along with other social niceties and reintegrate, if they choose to.

Or, they can, you know, keep their laptops to themselves.

If it sounds harsh, sorry. I'm just trying to engage with you on the level and tone you did. Maybe it will help your social life.

For a number of years I've wanted a slashdot greasemonkey extension called something like "slashback" which would restrict all comments to people with UID lower than your own, thus returning slashdot to the same user community that got you to sign up in the first place.

I tear up a little just thinking about it, of course not enough to actually write such a thing.

Maybe next year, Taco? And, please keep the achievements, I love them! I'll come back tomorrow and be logged in, I promise!