If you compare Android with any other mobile OS you'll see that Android is open, or at least as open as it gets. Now, the definition of open is obscure, so we both can claim whatever we'd like (for one thing open never means free). Google has the right to call their OS whatever they'd like, just as Apple has the right to claim whatever BS they want too (e.g. the Mac vs PC ads). If you say Google is wrong to call Android open, then Apple is wrong to call a lot of BS about iPhone.

Yes, a different UI must really be hard. The only people I find that complain about this are the same ones who need to write down a step by step list of actions to perform a task (those would be people who do not like to think, even a bit). My god, whatever will clicking or touching an icon do, or scrolling the screen with my finger in the direction of the scroll bar? While there are differences between UIs, the common concepts behind them are all the same. But shit, it takes effort to learn new things. It's as hard as it is for a monkey to peal a banana. As far as the iPhone being the more innovative platform, I'd have to disagree. Because you see, you can't really be innovative with the iPhone. Remap the wrong keys and your app is history, regardless of how useful it might be. God forbid should we want to have something useful like a P2P app, or something that does not fit into Jobs moral guidelines. What is it that you can do with an iPhone or with iOS that you can't do with an Android, aside from being a douche. Google is right about calling iPhone closed. Because it IS CLOSED. Jobs would like to bend the truth here. Does Apple give me the iOS sources, unfettered transfer of files and apps, control over the device I bought, free use wherever and however I like? NO! Hence, it's closed. Case closed, my dear Watson.

I stopped reading at "ISPs lie", that's no news.

As a meal for the poor souls who are trapped alive in the post-apocalyptic world. Enjoy the happy meal!

...with frickin' EMP attached to their heads!

The primary reason why I decided not to use DirectX is because there is no DirectX on Linux, Mac or anything else that does not come with a Microsoft branded logo. Advantages or not, DirectX is a proprietary API which cannot be used on non Microsoft platform, other than by means of reverse-engineering it (a la WINE).

Why do they call it piracy?

It's not like you had to board a ship, kill it's crew and rape the women, and then take the chest full of gold. Yeah, the author really had to walk the plank.

Here in Bosnia and Herzegovina you can get flat rate at our only ISP (HT Mostar) that provides ADSL (with fair use clause, which means it's not flat) internet access for over 40 euro with a 512/64 KBits/s connection (it's a mockery to call it broadband), with a 12 month contract minimum or you pay more. RIP-OFF.

Their advertisements and their behavior make me wanna puke.

I pay 20 for my 2048/256 KBit/s connection with 5 GiB monthly traffic. Seeing as there are 3 more people using the connection other than me, this is barely enough to have decent use of the internet. This means no internet radio, no YouTube and video, no surfing all you want. The last 10 days I can't even do much besides IM and e-mail since I'm always close to the traffic limit. Sure I could go over the limit and get a a much larger bill.

The largest flat rate package (again with the fair use policy) costs over 80 euro. Well, that's monopol.

And no, I don't starve. I have water (most of the time), even though we don't have water supply here (we use large reservoirs and collect rain water). But shit happens and sometimes we run out of water during summer, then we pay someone to get us a cistern of water. Apparently our local government are working on that (yay!). We have food and electricity (most of the time as the infrastructure is a disaster). We aren't dying of starvation like people in Ethiopia, but it is not easy compared to some people in the world who take food, water and electricity for granted.

Could I live without internet? Probably, but probably not as I'm a computer technologies student.

But hey, I want to surf the web, be able to update my OS and software, download Linux distributions and (free) games and play them, keep in touch with my relatives over Skype or other communication means (cause it's way cheaper than what the same company that gives us ADSL charges us for telephone), watch video and listen to internet radio, be part of the community, perform any tasks that for college requires internet, download drivers and other stuff, help my friends remotely over internet (e.g. Remote Desktop). I don't need to download gigabytes of music, videos and games, I just don't want to count every megabyte of traffic I spend in fear that I'll go over the limit and will have to pay more.

Soon Fedora 12 will be released and downloading the Fedora 12 DVD will be a pain, because I can kiss internet access goodbye for most of the month. Let's not mention downloading any extra packages I may need (there are always those) and updating Fedora and other packages over time.

Developing Nations Crippled By Broandband Costs. Well, duh! We're mostly crippled by those monopolistic opportunistic bastards in government and companies who don't give shit about people and progress as long as they have a comfortable life.

RIP OFF!

... the final frontier ...

I've seen some here say that memory usage is not important unless you have a old computer. What if you run a lot of processes like I do. I have my IDE open, Firefox, Pidgin, Winamp or Rhytmbox, Several explorer or nautilus windows, subversion server, TortoiseSVN explorer extension(when on windows) etc. And I only have 512 MiB of memory. If I wanted to buy some more memory for my computer I'd probably have to decide between paying for memory(DDR400, which costs about twice as much as DDR2, even though it's older) or not paying for my internet connection(that would make the ISP very unhappy and me ending up on court getting sewed for not paying). I'm a student, don't have a job, and yeah, money is important, as well as memory is. Just because memory is 'cheap' these days is no excuse for writting a bloated memory hogging program. The browser is not the only thing that is running on peoples computers.

They may be coming in late on the parallel processing game, but they're ahead when it needs to patent it. They'd patent parallel parking if they could.

Walt Disney is screwed if the company that has him criogenically stored bankrupts. Though I am not sure if Walt Disney is actually frozen, it kinda shows that there are always perils when you entrust your private property(let's not mention your life) to other companies(or people). I always considered USA to be the role model for private property. The problem here is it seems that little in USA these days is private property.

I can hear the dogs outside...

It just goes to show that you're never safe from malware, at least not when using Windows.