Because of the discounts offered by the networks (in exchange for locking you into a contract), you are a very small minority. The market for directly bought phones is very small and no cell phone maker is willing to put effort into it.

No, because phone makers don't sell phones to us, they sell phones to the cell phone networks. And the cell phone networks don't want you to have control over your hardware. That's why you don't get root unless you crack the phone's security and force it to give you root.

Is there some Looser of the Week competition going on on here that I don't know about?

Yep. You won. Congratulations.

Not really worried about self driving vehicles. It's just not going to happen, sans strong AI and huge changes in liability law.

Don't need strong AI. In fact, effective self-driving vehicles exist *now*, although they need a little more polish to become practical for general use. Liability is the big road block, but the pressure to implement this technology will be great enough that something will be done.

Artoo's still pretty humanoid. He's got a torso, legs, arms of a sort and a head (although no neck).

...tank drives you!

Reread it. He's locked it down. It doesn't matter if she can admin it or not because she's not doing that--he is. She just uses the function he presents to her. One of the great things about Linux (just about *any* distro) is that it's so easy to do lock the end user out of all the admin functions without blocking them from doing what they want to do.

b) Why did a Japanese citizen work on classified US military projects

He's not a Japanese citizen. He emigrated to the US with his mother and two brothers when he was ten and is a naturalized US citizen.

I know not all journalists adhere to a code of ethics, but I believe that many do.

Problem is, it can be tough to know which kind you've got until it's too late.

One assumes that he then defined cardinality as "the quality that uniquely defines a cardinal number."

Yeah. Let's go get sushi and not pay.

Science creates knowledge via controlled experiments

I think astronomers will be very surprised to learn that they aren't scientists.

They have one of those for Windows, too!

Most People don't want to relearn anything.

As well they shouldn't. Having to relearn something you already know how to do is dead, wasted time. By itself it serves no purpose. Forcing people to relearn things is only justified if it is inextricably tied to making those things better, which, alas, too often it is only in the developer's mind.

A proper upgrade is a OS reinstall

Yes, yes, a proper upgrade is a wipe and re-install. A proper patch requires you to reboot your computer at least once. Those things are only true for Windows, because Windows is broken.