I am never going to be able to unthink this post... you may have just ruined this movie for me.

Meh... because on this issue I don't care? I actually kind of like that Verizon and Motorola are managing the OS on my phone because I want it to just work. I am a little bummed that in 2 years when I want to upgrade the OS and they want me to upgrade the handset I'll have to upgrade the handset... but I'll get over it because it's a $200 device that I just want to work.

If I wanted an Android phone I could put custom OS's on, I would've bought a Nexus One. But I don't.

The thing you have to remember is that it's a balance of features, cost, usability, openness, etc. Virtually every purchase you'll have make has pros and cons, you determine what is precisely important to you and then make your choice. For the people who are buying the DroidX, an open bootloader is not one of them.

The portion that makes it tricky is those who don't know what a bootloader is... fact is they're a much larger market force than you or I. That's when regulators step in and decide what should be done for the sake of the consumer. You can argue that regulators should step in here, signed ROMs only circumvent the consumer's right to own their own property or some such, but I personally think you'd be stretching it. But asking why consumers would ever support a company that does this is willfully ignoring that a) most people don't know what you're talking about and b) many of us who do know what you're talking about just don't care.

My car also has a governor that keeps me from going over 120mph. But I still bought it as well, speeds over 120mph aren't something I'm too concerned with.

And you know, the menus on my TV are locked. Sony didn't give me the options to flash the OS on my TV, very upsetting... still bought it, which open TV did you buy?

Yes, irreducible complexity is irreducible. But C++ has plenty of reducible complexity.

Adjusting code for multi-threading or moving from 32 to 64bit are two simple examples. It's reasonable to consider a compiler having the smarts to do that. Garbage collection is another obvious example that many languages have dealt with. Memory protection.

I dunno, that's what comes to mind immediately. C++ let's you handle virtually every registry action and memory copy. That's not a bad thing, but it's probably not necessary for a lot of the programs it's used for. More to the point, it likely costs many of those programs a lot of developer/testing/user time because they're putting a lot of time into resolving the same issues again and again that the compiler is perfectly capable of handling.

I think the article pretty succinctly draws the ends of the spectrum between assembler and non-typed interpreted languages. The real question is where does the best compromise lie on that spectrum. It's going to be different for every product, but the supposition in the article is that C++ is way too far towards assembler.

Personally, I can agree with that.

Unless you were already a t-mobile customer. Then you had to cancel your t-mobile contract, and sign back up because the full discount was only available to new customers.

I called and told them I wasn't happy about that, they said that they understood and the policy was under review but there was nothing they could do. Then they offered me discounts on a 3G Slide instead.

Personally, I think a big part of the problem with the Nexus One pricing was that it wasn't simple enough, depending on how you bought it I believe there were 4 different prices available. Most phones there are two, with contract and without contract.

Well then we're in violent agreement!

Then they need a system which is not open to the free market. At this point in time these kinds of tickets are, and quiet simply they're SOL if they're going to stay in that realm.

Switch to non-transferable tickets that require ID to purchase (think air travel) or maybe day of purchase only (then you'll only get the die hard fans who think it's worth the gamble to go to the venue).

I don't like what the scalpers are doing any more than most people here, I'm just saying it shouldn't be a surprise and it's completely within the very common understanding of a free market system.

I don't necessarily disagree with you. But what's the alternative in this case? A tax on each ticket sold which is then used to fund a regulatory body that enforces a no scalping law? Or do you just want good old human nature to change?

My post was simply pointing out that the parent poster misunderstands the free market, not that the free market is something to worship.

A broker looking to make an arbitrage profit is not the antithesis of the free market. They've found a pricing discrepancy in the supply/demand chain, and it's so far out of whack that they can still profit without moving 100% of their goods. That is precisely the free market.

The only system being broken is the one where the venue sets a "fair price". That fair price is turning out to be much lower than the price the consumer is considering worthwhile. The venues are doing a terrible job pricing supply/demand for the more popular concerts. That's great for the consumer, so great that a marketplace has grown up around exploiting the arbitrage.

I also prefer driving manuals, but that's a preference.

All of the information in your post is just out of date. Plenty of race cars have gone automatic, especially double clutch autos. Same with decent sports cars. Some cars are getting better MPG and 0-60 times with their automatic equivalents in ideal conditions. And many more are getting better MPG and 0-60 times with their automatic equivalents when compared to a normal driver rather than one who shifts at all the optimal times.

So, in short, you need to update your information.

That's not just people being stupid. The assumption is the cost to support one is close enough to the cost of supporting the other to disregard any differences.

The obvious issue bandied about for Linux - additional support cost (pricier personnel, fewer contracts/vendors, etc.) vs. the MS licensing cost.

Mind you I'm not agreeing or disagreeing on this particular example, but there is a why.

That's not quite true, while there's backwards compatibility issues, there're also forward compatibility issues.

I need the shim so I can keep running ProgramX 2005 on my new Win7 box, but when ProgramX is upgraded using the latest and greatest, I also want to keep running it.

WINE programs tend to fail here for obvious reasons. I remember this hit me hard with Quickbooks... got it running under WINE, was thrilled, and then QB switched to .NET and wouldn't run under WINE anymore. I'm sure the WINE or Mono folks figured it out in the course of a few weeks or months, but I wasn't going to take my books offline while I waited for them.

And, no, I couldn't switch to LinuxAccountingPackageOfAwesomeness because I have to supply files of a certain format to an accounting professional. For us small guys, he only accepts Quickbooks.