How common? On the other hand, perhaps there is a profitable niche there, sort of like how space tourist lies somewhere in between commoner and astronaut. There's a bunch of money involved and a lot of it covers training.

no....
If OLPC wants a new mission, it should be to develop FREE educational software that runs on standard Android tablets.

Sure. They give away all the software they write already, and I assumed that they would give away any Android software they write. It seemed so obvious that I didn't feel the need to put in the word "free" but I guess I should have. Thanks for the comment.

one of the largest problems is that there are not a lot of books printed in the languages of 3rd world countries. and absolutely no advanced education texts.

I agree. IMHO that is the "killer app" for the OLPC devices, or for Android tablets. It's great that they can run software, but it's essential that they serve as textbook reading devices.

I think the ultimate educational tool for developing countries would be a ruggedized Android tablet with an e-ink screen. Color is a nice-to-have rather than essential, and the dramatic increase in battery life would be the win.

This suggests another idea for OLPC's future: they could make a deal with Amazon and ship a customized Kindle e-ink reader. Or maybe make a deal to ship a customized Nook. But either way, ride the coattails of a company that already spent the R&D and focus just on adding educational software.

FTFS:

Developers of the Free Software Foundation-endorsed Replicant OS have uncovered a backdoor through Android on Samsung Galaxy devices and the Nexus S.

I can understand not reading the article, but not reading the summary?!

I disagree with your analogy in which you compare stealing a car with patent grabbing.

Um, no. I said that stealing a car with the keys inside is still stealing; despite the fact that the car owner "enabled" the theft by being careless with the keys.

In the same way, being a jerk with patents is being a jerk, despite the fact that the USPTO "enables" patent jerks by granting patents that should not be granted.

Even if Apple were to have freed every one of their smartphone inventions, there would still be lawyers arguing that those inventions are not comprehensive, that their client has patents that fall between the gaps.

Your language loads the question here. You presuppose that Apple "invented" everything that they patented; I think some of it has prior art, some of it is obvious (like the patent on dialing a number by touching the number on the touchscreen), and some of it is probably genuinely new and interesting but by now I'm predisposed to assume Apple is a jerk.

And as for your main point, you are simply mistaken. If Apple had not patented anything, but just made a public demo of the iPhone, nobody would be able to file a patent after that and use the patent to hammer Apple. Apple's iPhone would now be prior art. If you disagree, please post some sort of reference to any example that would disprove this idea.

I work at an IP company, and it has been hammered into me not to disclose anything that might be patentable, because once the idea has been publicly disclosed, it becomes not patentable. I'm not a lawyer of course.

the analogy here is a defense system vs having weapons of your own.

I understand the possible use of patents as a defense. For example, Google: I am not aware of any case where Google tried to shut down a competitor using patents. This despite the fact that they own many patents.

However, Apple has been trying to use patents to prevent Samsung from selling phones. I have a problem with that.

you can't blame one company for doing it in a world in which everyone has the bomb.

Um, the whole point of my comment is that I do blame one company for doing this. I blame Apple, I blame Microsoft, I blame any company that is getting egregiously bad patents and enforcing them.

Linus' father has stated that NSA approached Linus and asked, quite frankly and up-front, to put a backdoor in linux. He of course refused. Then you have Linus himself answering that question "no" aloud, while nodding his head "yes." I have absolutely zero doubt that they've since attempted to slip something in surreptitiously, I wonder whether or not they succeeded.

This will be wonderful news for criminal defense attorneys. Is your client accused of having a couple of terrorists in his phone's contact list? Did a customs official conveniently find child porn pictures on your client's phone during a border crossing? Did the prosecutor haul out telco logs "proving" that your client was sending text messages to arrange a heroin deal?

Sounds to me like it's quite plausible that someone else put that $ILLEGAL_SHIT on your client's phone. After all, the capability was built right into the phone by Samsung.

He wasn't calling hams retards, quite the contrary. He was pointing out that people with absolutely no control over your cellular carrier's towers, and thus no legitimate path into your cellphone, could give you problems despite not being an "authorized" party. Those people would still need to be extremely technically adept, familiar with radio, etc. so hams was a pretty good example IMO.

nonsense, as soon as you invoke mass production the fact is extremely cheap real and *properly* shaped convex lenses can be made from glass for a penny a pop, that would exceed by far the abilities of this article's tumbled grit.

the article and its device make no sense, they're nonsense

but over or near land generally planes are in constant communication with ground stations anyway, that's why crash sites are very quickly reached