hard data. Strange that the violent crime rate in the US is lower than Sweden's or Canada's. It'd be interesting to see differences in reporting statics.

Hmmm...my thinking on that is it's more to protect the Android trademark from crap implementations that would tarnish it's image. I' haven't read the CDD but from the summary it's focus is making sure applications will run correctly on a particular implementation.

The Android compatibility page (where the CDD is hosted) states "Android compatibility is free, and it's easy." Although it does also have the below so there are some other factors that may involve some fee.

Once you've built a compatible device, you may wish to include Google Play to provide your users access to the third-party app ecosystem. Unfortunately, for a variety of legal and business reasons, we aren't able to automatically license Google Play to all compatible devices. To inquire about access about Google Play, you can contact us.

Although requiring a small fee for such certification may technically make it not virtually free, if the fee is relatively moderate I would still consider it essential free.

You have a link to more info? Not just calling "cite". I'm interested.

From itunes:

Navigate your world with Google Maps, now available for iPhone. Get comprehensive, accurate and easy-to-use maps with built-in Google local search, voice guided turn-by-turn navigation, public transit directions, Street View and more.

This isn't a bad thing. It's Google's prime business model. Google is arguable the greatest player pushing against the trend discussed in the article. They don't want people locked into walled gardens or restricted in what they can do with their systems or on the internet. They just want more people to spend more time on the internet. The more people on the internet the more money they make. iOS vs. Android is the perfect example of this. iOS is one of the most restrictive computing platforms ever created (Hmmm...aside from game consoles which I wouldn't consider general purpose computing platforms). Google financed/bought/developed Android to give people an option that didn't require them to live with Apple's restrictions. They gave it away for free because they knew it would ultimately increase their advertising revenue by getting more people to spend more time on the internet. With Apple's system only Apple and the people Apple chooses make money. Consumers suffer by being restricted in their choices to what Apple wants them to have. With Google's everybody wins. Anyone can use Android to make money. But in doing so they increase the revenue of Google's core business while also bringing about a revolution of innovation in the mobile space.

This is pretty much true of nearly every product Google creates. Another example is Google maps. It was a a huge innovative step in online mapping software. They made it wide open for anyone to use for free creating their own useful innovative applications. They make money off it by once again increasing the number of people and the amount of time they're on the internet.

Don't get me wrong. Google isn't the do all be all of the internet. Google has plenty of faults. But they've probable contributed more to a free and open internet than anyone since Mozilla thrashed IE.

just what are we supposed to do? Here in the US it's not like you can actually vote against the oppressive surveillance state. Your average citizen doesn't have anywhere near enough to buy our politicians back from the corporate interests. One of the things I hoped when Obama was elected the first time was he would roll back some of the more obtrusive illegal internal spying programs initiated by Bush after 9/11 and actually make the government more transparent as he promised. Instead he's been far worse than Bush was on both accounts.

You say this like it's a good thing. That terrifies me even more. That's basically giving Microsoft control of the Linux distros.

It's a much bigger deal than apologists are making it out to be. It's a big step in making the switch to Linux MUCH more difficult.

For the last ten years or so Linux has been easier to install on a raw machine then Windows. Microsoft finally came up with a way to reverse that. And of course it has nothing to do with making their OS easier to install.

Also no more booting a live CD/DVD so you can try things out or show them to someone. No more Knoppix STD when you're trying to figure out what crap your mom got on her computer this time or recover data from a flaked hard drive. Etc, etc...

Who knows what they actually told the computer shop. Obviously they weren't very computer literate. It's likely they just told the computer shop to clean some spyware off rather than "re-image" it.

I wasn't in any way denying there would be liability issues. There's massive liability issues now that cost hundreds of millions in the form of idiot drivers and idiotic law suits. What I was trying to point out was that individuals wouldn't need insurance anymore. That insurance burden would be carried by manufacturers and would be rolled into the cost of the car. Those cost should be significantly less than they are right now due to the better safety of the cars, economy of scale and what should be much more cut and dry determinations of cause (fewer expensive law suits). A driverless car would have a detailed log of what occurred causing an accident just like aircraft. Add to that the indirect cost savings in increased fuel efficiency of an auto driven car and much reduced traffic problems that are massively increased by idiot drivers and collisions and I believe you'd find a massive economic savings in driverless cars.

Ummm...pot meet kettle.

I was actually more referring to cat III autoland rather than straight an level autopilots. Autoland is used when conditions are less than optimal and typically do better than the pilots can do under optimal conditions.

That's not cheating. Those are the very technologies that are going make it practical. Or rather improved and cheaper computing making those technologies affordable is what is making it practical.

One word. Aircraft.

They've been pretty much flying themselves for around a decade. You know what's happened to air safety over that period? Do you know how much more difficult it is to fly than it is to drive? Yeah, yeah. You're gonna say not much traffic in the sky. I say BS to that. More traffic or less traffic flying is a LOT more difficult that driving.

Driverless cars are merely a matter of time. All that money that goes to the car insurance industry can be used to support liability issues just like it is now. It's merely a matter of the liability being shifted somewhere it would be much more efficiently handled. Cost is the driving factor. I'd see a car manufacturer having a single driving system with the same set of sensors in all there cars. Set a few parameters (center of gravity, weight, type of tire...) and the software is all set for a new car model.

Your base are assumptions are way, way off. From SFGate:

They spend more on patent wars then they do on research.

You must live in an alternate universe or something. You can get Apple phones from where? Huh, only place I can find is from the same carriers you seem to be claiming Apple freed someone from. They had the Apple fans enslaved exclusively to AT&T for quite a while. The only thing Apple is doing is adding another layer of enslavement to Apple.

Lets see. I can get unlocked Google, Samsung and Motorola phones from all over. I can get phone service for many of their phones from Ting where they even have a forum devoted to helping people root their phones.

Huh. I have really good shades. I thought that was a requirement for us non-morning types. Especially developer non-morning types. You know. Us up at the crack of noon types. I'm pretty sure they'll never change the time so the sun comes up sometime after noon. Thus the really good shades.