$ ping facebook.com
PING facebook.com (173.252.110.27): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 173.252.110.27: icmp_seq=0 ttl=87 time=59.217 ms
64 bytes from 173.252.110.27: icmp_seq=1 ttl=87 time=58.550 ms
64 bytes from 173.252.110.27: icmp_seq=2 ttl=87 time=58.887 ms
--- facebook.com ping statistics ---

Try harder.

It is outselling Apple's offerings 4:1

Yes, because it's installed on every cheap phone around - that are mostly being used as phones. I have an Android phone myself because it was an easy thing to pick up when I lived in Europe for a short while, but it was so slow and dysfunctional all I could really use it for was tethering data to my iPhone...

I mean it's pretty telling that even when you are supposedly outselling another platform by a factor of four, the platform being outsold manages to outUSE you in turn by a factor of four (or more)! Look at any mobile browser stats or money being made by app store developers; in any metric where phones are being used as smartphones the iPhone is still vastly ahead.

It is easy for people to install what they like on it... that's the attraction,

It's easier on the iPhone because there is more software people want. The real attraction of Android is being cheap, for someone that needs a dirt cheap phone and you don't even know what a smartphone really is about there it is. That is the reality of sales today, is a huge number of devices that you cannot seriously consider "Android" devices the way Slashdot users think of them. And the percentage of NEW devices shipping with 2.2 grimly illustrates this fact.

Android has both a large user base of generally satisfied customers and more freedom for those customers.

Sorry, but iOS users are more free, because they are free from worry about things like these viruses and trojans and negative effects from them. They have more freedom in choice of well built software. They have more freedom to sell old devices because an old iPhone is actually worth something. By any metric a non-technical user cares about, iPhone users have more freedom.

Apple has a tiny market share by comparison

And yet again, this thing with a tiny market share is totally blowing the socks of Android in terms of being used as a mobile computing device. If you really opened your eyes here that would tell you something needs fixing. But you'd rather not see that, would you?

It doesn't help to outsell something if you lose your purpose in life.

MLK was only around as long as he was because he owned guns and was surrounded by people with guns. Had they not had them you would never even heard of him, just another black guy dead at the hands of the KKK and a system that didn't care.

This, of course, applies to both platforms.

Not really, because even the Play apps have far greater reach into the Android system than iOS apps.

running programs from outside the Google Play store is any less safe on Android than running programs from outside the App Store would be if iOS permitted it.

iOS does permit it, when jailbroken. And it's not as safe - but the system still has the inherent sandbox for apps that you run, and people technically apt enough to handle the ability to jailbreak can also properly assess risk of items installed outside the app store. Anyone installing Android apps from the Amazon app store or other alternate app stores is wide open and has no technical ability to assess risk - not to mention that as I said even some Play apps have the ability to deeply modify the system in ways that iOS App Store apps just cannot.

sure, humans would be productive, but orbital mechanics, assuming current and near term rockets, means that you're still looking at 8-9 months on the way out there, and 8-9 months on the way back plus the year or more on the ground while you wait for Mars to get back

Back back back back back.

It's pretty damn obvious at this point there is no "back" for the first people going. When you ignore that part, especially having to launch from the surface, the whole trip is far simpler and cheaper even if you plan for what are essentially colonists to try and stay for 10 years.

There are more than enough people perfectly willing to go so lets do what makes the most sense here.

Lots of people leave Bluetooth enabled because they use it pretty often - car audio, headsets /speakerphones.

NFC I would think you'd leave enabled if you really used it for payments, otherwise it would be almost as slow as a normal credit card.

What people miss is that iOS is MORE customizable for users by default in the ways that matter most. As you say, Skype having my contact list? Hell no!

Or Google Maps app having my location or contacts or anything whatsoever? Don't think so! All I have to do is say no, but I'm still using the app.

But standing at a bus stop and spotting someone sharply-dressed, I could ask to use their phone

You just had to get close enough to have it automatically installed over NFC. No need to have your face ever seen.

Or just install it under a bench at the bus station and have it email you the targets acquired remotely along with images and recordings of whatever conversations they might have had there.

If the platform is so safe, why does Apple have to review and sign every app before it's allowed to run?

Because trojans can use legal API's to do work, and defense in depth means that there is actually depth to your defense.

16.9 million results.

But what can any iPhone trojan actually do? It's limited to sending contacts (and that only IF the user allows it at the time it tries to access the contacts, not on install). It can send the users location IF the user agrees to have the location accessed, at the time the app tries to access location (not on install). It can send your photos to them IF the user agrees to allow access to get to the photos... you get the picture.

What CAN'T it do? It can't access or send SMS messages. It can't access or send email messages (at least not without the user hitting send on the email). It can't make a phone call without the user saying "why yes I would love to dial that number now which is clearly displayed to me in full".

The issue is that because Android makes you agree to what it can do up front, most non-technical users will simply agree to anything, and then the app can really DO anything it likes to the user. There are safegaurds technical users can install; but they are exactly the people who do not need protection or help!

Android is a platform built for the pleasure of the technical elite, with a promise to non-technical users of being their gateway into the new world of mobile computing. But that is a lie; it's simply a PC you can put in your pocket that brings along for the ride every ill ever conceived of on a PC and more besides.

Android could go a long way by simply grantng permissions for things at the time the app wants them as iOS does; but even then the fundamental problem is that there are so many permissions that extend so deep into the system that it allows apps to do things like intercept SMS. You can't take those away now without technical users crying foul, but the cost to non-technical users is monstrous.

I remember seeing a video where they did the math and for a 3 month stay on the ground and round trip from here to there you'd have needed a ship bigger than the empire state building

Your "math" is incredibly bad. Read any book on Mars from Zubrin and become educated.

What you are overlooking is that one human in one day could day about 100x the total research done so far by all of the rovers combined. What doesn't make sense is to continue to send very expensive robots to learn less and less... we've reached the point where we simply need to send humans to really study the place.

Engineers at Michigan Tech believe there is far more potential for 3D printers to make our lives better rather than killing one another.

Guns aren't for killing one another.

They are either for sport, or for keeping people from killing/harming you.

Guns have historically protected groups that might otherwise just have been removed altogether. Travel back in time, ask Martin Luther King and his followers how "bad" guns are.

It's nice that 3D printers can make our lives better in other ways too, but we should not exclude one of them through irrational fear.