Many articles available on ACM are actually availble elsewhere outside of the paywalls. Every publication I've ever made is on both ACM behind the paywall and my personal site and uni sites for free. I personally just google the name of what I want to read and it often turns up somewhere for free (legitimately). Not ideal though I know.

As mentioned by someone else, ACM has now started a linking service effectively allowing free publication through ACM. Haven't got round to sorting it for my stuff yet, but looks like it's what is wanted for people like me.

Google: We do search that gives better results based on what the person actually wants. It includes a calculator, knowledge engine, currency converter and many more little features you'll take for granted all in one.

Google: We do online mail with quite a nice interface that includes chat features integrated into it, along with a labs section to fiddle with stuff. We give a lot more space for free. We are even trying to innovate with the use of priority inbox's and other features that didn't exist before. You don't have to use them if you don't want to though.

Google: We do smartphones that are open and customisable. You have a variety of hardware to choose from that suits you, and pretty safe ecosystem if you want that and a way to install other stuff too. We introduced desktop widgets and a few other useful features, although we probably weren't the ones to do them first, people seem to like them none the less. All this and funky integration with our other services.

Microsoft: We do Java too!!
Court + Sun: No you don't you do something different
Google: We do Android SDK that runs in a virtual machine using Dalvik bytecode. Oracle claims we violate their patents, which remains to be seen.

Google: Me too! See email. Our chat happily and easily runs in browser and using a variety of clients, includes video and voice chat and phonecalls. Yeah others do it too, but are they as convenient if you're already using gmail?

Google: We do social too. We've tried it before and fucked it up. That taught us to give people what they want instead, and make it easy for people to lock down their profile, send messages to only those they want and generally try to respect their privacy (from an outside perspective. We do use your data, but it's free and we're an advertising company so what do you expect? Do you think facebook doesn't?)

You've got me on this one...

Wow this really makes me sound like a google lover, heck maybe I am. But don't criticise them for making services that in many ways appear to be better than the alternatives in some but not all ways. Remember, you don't have to use them..

Seriously? Isn't this the definition of every single teenager that exists, has existed and will exist? Myself included back in the day of course.

Ummm, why? There is nothing wrong with teachers being friends with their students and doing anything a normal human being would do (within the law and school policy obviously). If they abused it by taking advantage of their position of power, or something else then yeah, it's a bad thing, but I was friends with some of my teachers when I was younger. I did gossip with them, and sometimes see or show holiday pics and things, and these were the teachers I went to when I needed advice, for example when I couldn't ask my parents. Just because some fucker decides to abuse a system doesn't mean I should be punished for it.

Apple have already won, that's why they do it. It won't be a long time before they realise they can't win, they know they can't win the lawsuit but in playing this game they're holding back everyone long enough so that they can make a tiny improvement and claim to have the latest and greatest. If they weren't able to hold everyone back like this people would progress and try to stay ahead of everyone else through actual improvement and innovation, but then they'd have to share a piece of the pie and actually innovate something.

Forgive my nitpicking, but would that not be the same as giving them the right support? Ok, so maybe expulsion and finding the right solution that works there is what is necessary, but this is not what the parent was advocating. There is no solution that will work for everyone, it's the job of parents and teachers to find what will work for each child, but expelling them and giving up on them is not going to help, which is what I took the initial poster to be saying.

Bullshit. You just have to find the right way. Give them the right support.

Oh brilliant. Kids act out for a variety of reasons, none of which deserves to get them expelled. Expelling them shows them that you, and hence the world, has given up on them. You may as well just wait until they are old enough and their disruptions are bad enough that you can lock them up and throw away the key!

Because they're kids. Everybody needs to learn how to deal with assholes. And assholes need to learn how to deal with people.

You make it sound as if Scotland does not have these rights, however this is not the case. Instead, here in Scotland we have a complete "right to roam", far less restrictive than that of England and Wales. I believe the main difference is we can be on any land for a variety of purposes instead of just certain types of land like moorland and coastal land.

I realise this does not necessarily affect the point you were making, I just thought it should be pointed out.

Sources: Me (An Englishman living in Scotland) and wikipedia

The ones they'll decide they need to track down said phone-bomb organisations

I'm not sure I agree. From your link:

Just another slimy conman working the system.

I realise this guy broke software licenses, but I bought these. Now that they're no longer available is Google going to hand out refunds to all those customers who have lost access to their software?

I'm actually not really bothered given I bought them ages ago, I just thought it was an interesting question of what happens when Google pulls something.

Unless the app crashes, locks up, goes into an infinite loop, decides to be designed badly so that the only way you can get back to a certain stage in the program is to fully restart it (not just go home and then back), etc, etc. Agreed though, Android does a really good job of removing the need to close applications and have task killers etc, but they cannot protect you from crappy programmers in general..

FTFY

If you really think that there are no other exploits that can gain root access or other desired privileges then you are living in a dream world. Whether or not they have been discovered yet is irrelevant. And I can guarantee you that new ones will also be introduced at some point.

If you don't believe me just google "max exploit root" for proof that it has already happened at least once.

Any "idiot" that doesn't have a data plan yet still wants to use their phone in public places. Seriously, how is this different from using a laptop on public wifi. It comes with risks... And you can know what is being transmitted, just because you don't know how, again, same with laptops...

Those purchasing deserve blame for what exactly. Yes they lock down their devices, so what. Some people want that, others don't which is why we have competition and alternatives like Android. When Apple crossed a line with personal privacy people stood up and complained and it was resolved. Yes there should be more protections in place to prevent this kind of incident, but those purchasing clearly didn't like what happened and Apple was put in its place. If they didn't, /then/ go ahead and transfer the blame, but until then all the consumers have done is purchase a device in a safe ecosystem that they can't break. If you don't like the restrictions then don't buy it..