Also, XDA kicks Apple in the nuts.

Cyanogenmod on my phone and tablet, the cost of both being less than an iPhone 4, compatible with every game I've ever bothered buying, and I somehow am not weeping at the lack of Steve Jobs personal approval of the situation. It's smooth, supported, and consistent. If I *REALLY* need a driver or custom software, it can be done. Sorry, Android simply makes sense for a lot of things, from a rational, market perspective. I'm not saying Apple is worthless, or that the extra money you're dumping into their products is wasted. I'm saying that it's not necessary, and that I prefer independence to the Apple experience. I find it bothersome that fanbois seem to dispute my preference as some sort of evil. I'm not telling you what to do or what to think. I'm offering a personal observation from a casual users standpoint.

The choices are still right there. You get to trade off universal compatibility for pricing, support, community, customizability, and hardware specifications according to your own preference, rather than being restricted to only that mandated by the almighty fruit. Also, good luck getting iOS to behave as a good basic platform for anything other than Apple devices - whereas you can get Android to run on anything with a chip, short of a bag of Doritos.

I think Android kinda sucks because it's so incredibly tainted by the walled garden mindset, but the whole idea of fragmentation being bad is premised on the notion that what Apple is doing is the "right" thing. It's not - it's good for Apple from a business standpoint, period. They're not in business to make a better world, they're in business to peddle gizmos with a logo.

The case could be made that Android is in the business of making a better world, giving everyone a chance to peddle gizmos with a common logo.

Yeah, I see a lot of silicone forms at Hooters.

What's wrong with timothy?
He can't even spell the title correctly... seriously, 'mision'? What the hell is this crap?

Contracts at the time made it impossible for BP-ARCO to recover what was lost in the acquisition. The Wikipedia article about the Berkely Pit and Montana Resources is a good starting point if you're interested in the story. It's kinda ironic, but the profit from the other mines acquired with the Pit more than make up for the loss in keeping it clean and research into cleaning technology. Butte provided a helluva lot of copper and other resources to the world - and our mines continue to do so.

It's a perfect example of mining and resource extraction evolving with our understanding of environmental impacts and the balance between human expansion and long-term survivability. They tear down mountains in Butte, MT, to provide copper, molybdenum, silver, and other valuable resources for the rest of the world. It's an amazing thing to watch, having grown up there - you learn a little bit of awe at the fact that humans can tear down mountains, take what they want, and rebuild a mountain on the southeast end of the property. Trucks bigger than your house keep rolling loads of rock and soil, 24 hours a day. Fun stuff, for sure.

Come visit our giant toxic Butte-hole!

Soylent Green! Now in tasty new all natural mango flavor (no artificial flavorings added, only available in select locations, see central distribution outlets for details.)

In Jurassic Park, they used frog DNA and produced only males. The frog DNA caused them to spontaneously change sex, letting the mommy velociraptor and daddy velociraptor love each other very much to make the baby velociraptor.

So Slashdot's variation on the solution is... giant mango flavored genetically engineered vampire bat bugs? I for one welcome our new fruity overlords.