the functionality of the devices is about the same

It's very different. On Android, you have to decide whether to grant permission before you've ever run the application, and it's all or nothing. On iOS, you run the application before deciding whether or not to grant it permission. You have the ability to deny permission while still running the application. You can also allow permission for some things but not others.

This functionality is partially available to Android users who root their phones and install the right tools, but that's far from the common case.

Well ... nobody has been scammed by the telcos as much as you have.

If you gave them hundreds of billions and got nothing in return, blame your politicians, and shoot their lobbyists.

Subsidized and conned aren't the same thing.

Honestly, lately I find Firefox to be more of a memory pig than Chrome ... as of the last update to Firefox grows to using 2GB of RAM after a few hours, instead of staying under 1GB after several days.

Because every developer apparently feels that all of my memory is there for just them.

Yeah, Mozilla, I'm looking at you guys -- that's just sloppy.

Ah, but it comes with a catch. These are Mozilla servers.The AX (Administrator Experience) team has made regular improvements to them every month. As of this writing, the case has been modified so that it has no front-panel status display (not even a status bar of LEDs to show temperature and system load), and the case has been modified so that the power button is operated by a foot pedal, and next week the fiber/ethernet ports will be covered over with a 2-inch thick layer of beautifully minimalistic white epoxy laboriously hand-polished to a glossy sheen.

*bites lip* Oh, keep talking nerdy to me.

three HP SL170zG6 (48GB ram, 2*Xeon L5640, 2*1Gbps NIC) servers

LOL ... geez, I wish I had something like that just laying around in a cupboard.

Sheeee-it.

It may come as a surprise to you .... but well used sarcasm can be insightful.

Sorry you don't feel you were consulted, but that's been true for a VERY long time.

You don't have to like it, but you should probably get over it.

Now, let's take the contrary to your position:

The wireless provider is no longer allowed to treat their own subscription offering as being different from, say, Netflix by pretending data which they're sending you is magically different than any other data -- which prevents them from undercutting other services by making those services artificially more expensive.

This basically allowed them to make competition obsolete by giving themselves an exemption, and treat their data packets as special.

This didn't help consumers, or competition ... it helped them get an unfair leg up because they own the network and could cheat.

Do you think people are well served when a company can undercut competition by rigging the system?

Perhaps your ability to detect sarcasm needs some adjustment?

Or ... whoosh!

Give him a little time ... I'm sure they'll come up with something moronic to give the telcos what they want and pretend they're doing something which benefits consumers.

// exception was found
// beyond here be dragons, run
// make your escape now
goto blah;
^^ code master

Leech.

Let's be clear here ... fuck yeah.

I don't surf little private vanity sites, I hit major news agencies, and sites owned by large corporations.

Let me be perfectly clear: I don't give a crap about the revenue of large corporations. Not now, not ever.

You think I should give a shit if Dice gets ad revenue? Or cnn? or google? Or Microsoft? Of Ziff Davis? Or Facebook? Or Twitter?

Fuck that.

They don't owe me a damned thing, and I don't owe them anything -- but until they find a technology solution to stop me, too damned bad.

I'm still going to block as many advertising and analytics companies as I can, using as many plugins as I can find. In every browser I use.

The sites I read aren't in any danger of going under because I don't give them ad views -- and even if they were, I still don't trust the companies involved.

But blocking Facebook and Twitter and the big ad/a analytics companies? If you think I give a crap about that, you're sadly mistaken.

So you go ahead and be a well behaved little consumer, me, I'll continue to not give a crap about the revenue of large corporations.

It's true that the majority of the profits in App Store sales is focused at the extreme top, but it's not true that 99.999% of the rest make "near 0". This analysis estimates that the top 3,175 applications earn at least the average annual income for a US household per year, and applications that rank about number 6000 still earn $25K/yr.

And that's only counting App Store revenue. I've earned a lot more than average since I started developing for iOS, and most of the applications I've worked on are free. You don't see things like banking applications earn revenue directly, but the developers responsible certainly profit from it. The Facebook application is free, but you don't think its developers are working on it for free do you? I've been paid to built plenty of enterprise applications that will never appear in the App Store.

There is a huge amount of profit in the "app economy" that will never be accounted for merely by looking at App Store profits. The "app economy" is much bigger than the App Store.

I'm curious... At this point do we just expect everything to be 100% free? Or do we think money fairies give companies the capital to pay for bandwidth and processing power?

Hey, there will always be people who don't block ads. Some sites have subscriptions, which people are free to use.

But the reality is, most sites with ads are infested with literally dozens of third party crapware, places which sideload junk into your system (specifically through crap like Flash), and which want to collect collate and sell your private information.

I will allow a site which serves its own advertising to show ads as long as they're not overly intrusive. But doubleclick, discus, scrorecard reasearch, quantcast, facebook, twitter -- and literally hundreds of other shit sites I have no interest in, well -- that's not my problem.

I'm visiting your website. Unless you lock me out via subscription (in which case I'll ignore your site), I do not owe you ad revenue, and I sure as shit don't owe the 20 other sites embedded in your website anything.

Honestly, if you eventually go out of business ... that is not my problem. Protecting myself from marketers and malware is my problem, and quite frankly, Flash gets reported as loading up malware pretty regularly. I've treated it as malware for over a decade now.

But let's not act like I owe you something. And let's certainly not act like just because you collect your money from a bunch of shady assholes that I owe them anything.

What? That doesn't sound right ... because I'm pretty sure I've seen a board which comes with both chess and checkers pieces.

I'm not buying that at all -- they're both 8x8.

You're just making shit up.