You know, I find it interesting who always starts the penis measurement contests...

Except that this doesn't change the law nor what is illegal. It's just guidelines for subjectively selectively applying the law only where they feel like it.

-- "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." From Atlas Shrugs

Literally. I thought this was an Onionesc piece of satire when I started reading it but as far as I can tell it's real.

"[Police are] going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck," Stovall said. "If you're out walking, we're going to stop you, ask why you're out walking, check for your ID."

"This fear is what's given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they're scared, we can do this," he said. "It allows us to do what we're fixing to do."

Welcome to the new world.

The Telegraph too. Unless you have access to the details of how the reporting is done that's you can't state that with any credence.

Ok. The violent crime rate in England is higher than it is in South Africa. Switzerland has a private gun ownership rate over half that of the US (note not counting the government issue rifles) and yet "the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept."

So yeah, it's all about gun control laws.

Switzerland and Finland have a private gun ownership rate of over half that of the US. Should the "caused deaths" there be around half that of the US?

I live in a fairly affluent suburban neighborhood in the US. I'd say my chances of either are a lot less than that of a person in an equivalent type neighborhood in say Britain.

Switzerland and Finland have a private gun ownership rate of more than half that of the US. Shouldn't the massacre rate in those countries be about half that of the US?

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.