Sure people are free to take whatever risks they want with their own lives. Regulations are there to stop people taking risks with other people's lives, who don't wish to accept that level of risk.
They're also there to keep desperate and/or ignorant people from being taken advantage of.
If you want to be as safe as apple's walled garden, stay within the official marketplaces and you get that.
The other alternative would be if the OS asked for user permission before an application could access the internet (just one time, not every time).
Android already does this. When installing an app, it displays all the permissions an app can use, and you get to accept or reject the app at that point. After accepting and then installing the application you no longer get prompted. Network Access is one of the permissions that must be requested by the app.
Read the article. There is a randomly-generated application-specific 16 digit password that is used for things like IMAP and POP3. If someone gets access to that (unlikely, since you would never need to write it down, and Google encrypts IMAP and POP3), they can only access that specific service, and its not going to be the same password you use anywhere else.
To add to the parent's statement, the application-specific passwords you generate aren't temporary. Instead, they continue to work in perpetuity until you decide to revoke them from your Google account page.
Yes, although it's moved to a more logical spot (the URL bar)
When I hover over a link, there's a few things I'm expecting to see. I want to see the protocol, the domain, and finally the end of the link that would have the actual page/file that the link is pointing to. When the status bar is at the top next to the URL, there isn't enough space to display all of those things. I much prefer the status information at the bottom because the available horizontal space is much larger, and there's a better chance I'll be able to see all the info I need. In that sense, I believe locating the status information at the bottom is much more logical.
...That said I will never purchase another Samsung device that needs updating. I was promised Froyo in September after purchasing in June. Still haven't gotten it. Sure I got my own Froyo update in December, but I expected an update and got shafted. I'd read bad reports about Samsung not updating in the past and thought "this time will be different... this is a flagship device." Nope...
Is it really fair to blame Samsung for the lack of updates? I've had a Samsung Galaxy S since October, and it was released with Froyo. That means that Samsung had provided an update for carriers several months ago. The problem isn't Samsung, its your phone carrier which is dragging their heels. Blaming Samsung for that seems disingenuous.
"I am, therefore I am." -- Akira