It's quite easy: put CyanogenMod on it and you're good to go. The Motorola bootloader was this past summer, so whatever phone you have probably has a build now.

Couldn't they take Android as a base and built their lauded security and centralized control back into the codebase? Sure, it'd be tough, but it's not impossible. They would have to rewrite a large portion of the OS, as well as their own version of the Cloud to Device Messaging Service, but it's easier than starting from scratch. Messy apps that demand all kinds of random privileges could be run in some sort of Internet-access sandbox that pretends to grant low-level access.

Google+ also really, really needs to open up to teens. I'm a college student, but I still have a lot of high school friends who can't join. I can do all the inviting Google wants and carry their water, but it's unreasonable to invite people to something they can't join.

Someone named Hamid Kashfi tweeted about the suspected cert yesterday: https://twitter.com/#!/hkashfi/status/107758824810758144
Mikko Hypponen at F-Secure picked it up about two hours ago and was retweeted by wikileaks: https://twitter.com/#!/mikkohypponen/status/108234294056599553

Source Links:
https://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/108261633859649536
https://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/108251897961517056

Seems like it would also be easy resist electronically. Get a vacuum tube and make a high-powered, messy x-ray emitter and just hose the van with it. (Also, carrying an x-ray detector to ensure you have the right van would probably be courteous to innocent van drivers.)

I'm guessing the effect of an x-ray blaster on a van like this would be to wash out the image and maybe induce some concern in the operators about personal exposure. It could also get you in trouble if you just stood there and held it, but I'm sure some enterprising chap could make cheap, unattended units that one could simply embed somewhere.

I wonder - if powerful enough, could an x-ray emitter possible damage the van's sensors?

I would draw a bit of a parallel between your comments and economic planning. Which works better, a centralized planning system controlling every action and reaction, or a neural net of independent units making decisions at the smallest levels? Obviously, central economies tend to stagnate. However, a system where every room has it's own independent sensors and simple decision-makers may not fit Google's data-collection plans.

Carriers will continue to think the phone belongs to them until more customers start buying them outright. If it's subsidized, it might as well belong to the carrier.

According to this article it has a range of 3 km.

Here's a better article on it with some pictures that show scale (in case you're not on board with the video craze): http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/aeryon-scout-quadrotor-spies-on-bad-guys-from-above
It can easily fit in a small suitcase, so no, you're not going to be mounting firearms on it.

Oops, that should have been "whomever" in my last sentence. May the grammar nazis forgive me...

It's very easy to see how this is a bad thing: look at Social Security Numbers. They were originally voluntary, opt-in, and only for specific purposes. Now, you receive one at birth, everybody you bump into wants it, and they are controlled exclusively by the government.

If a similar "internet security number" existed (even as multi-factor tokens), you can bet that the government would soon require to you get one for official online transactions, say, e-filing your taxes. It would be voluntary, because you could still mail them. (By the way, you'll probably need a computer with a Trusted Computing (TM) capable hardware platform and OS (ie. non-free).) Soon the Post Office would want it for your USPS account, banks would be all over it, facebook might offer it as an optional feature, and in time, little by little, online anonymity dies. Eventually it would reach the point where it's required for air travel, passports, cell phone and internet service, etc.

If it's revamped in a few decades for convenience, it could be easy enough to require it for credit card transactions (to combat identity theft, you know), and eventually could be merged with the RealID system (which is law, btw. It's just being effectively nullified by some state governments who missed the memo on libertarianism being outmoded). It would then be required for motor vehicle registration and similar systems.

However, woe are you if you do something to displease the issuers of such a critical token! It would be like not having a Social Security Number, or like having one tied to an E credit score or a sex offender list. Life could be made very hard on certain authors, people who condemn homosexuality (or other up-and-coming sins), journalists who are a little too critical of authority, libertarians, people who use "criminal" tools like BitTorrent or decentralized encryption, etc.

Despite all this doom and gloom, I don't think it will happen. Hyperinflation is a far more realistic fear. By the way, you'll notice I called homosexuality a sin. Imagine what could happen to me if I had posted this using a Trusted Internet ID that someone could report to whoever is in charge of hate crime prosecution!

Uh, this article is by an Australian author. http://asiancorrespondent.com/author/gavinatkins/
As a side note, here's a direct link to the map: http://maps.grida.no/library/files/storage/11kap9climat.png

The FCC's version of Net Neutrality is not what you think it is. Slashdotters should be rejoicing that Congress is putting the kibosh on this. We want a law, not an FCC regulatory regime. Why? Because the FCC can change whenever it gets a new chairman. Changing a law requires a vote. Unfortunately, it's also notoriously difficult to get legislation as tricky as Net Neutrality initially passed into law without having it mangled beyond recognition on the way there.