Also, go to the the hip neighborhoods in NYC (LES Williamsburg), notice the tall buildings being built. Units in these buildings are being bought for large amounts of money.
I dunno. I love Alien as much as the next guy, but there are a few times when you see the alien and think "that's just a thin person in an elaborate suit".
Sure, you can do that in certain parts of LA. But you can see these ruins almost everywhere in Detroit. It's really one of the most depressing cities I've ever been to.
Yea - Detroit is a sobering experience. I was honestly in shock the first time I went downtown. Bad parts of town and abandoned or nearly abandoned plazas are not new to me, but the scale of decay in Detroit - 20,000 people on the streets! - is overwhelming and depressing.
I get your point that there is "ruin porn" in almost any city.
I don't think you get my point though. Detroit is almost entirely "ruin porn", there are no million dollar homes next to any ruins in Detroit, I doubt there are any million dollar homes in Detroit at all.
Android is still much more open than Apple. A developer can actually view the Android source code, you can deploy an application to a device without Google's permission, you can access much more of the OS features from Android than with the iPhone.
The only people this limits "openness" for is device manufactures, which most developers would probably consider a good thing.
Instead of being an open platform, we're apparently devolving into specifying particular degrees of openness. If you want to play that game, the Darwin operating system that provides the foundation of iOS is also open source, and it doesn't require a license to use or approval from Apple over modifications.
> A developer can actually view the Android source code
No, Google is withholding Honeycomb's source code for the indefinite future--unless you're lucky enough to be one of Google's privileged partners.
Your post is another example of the justifications we often see from Android supporters for behaviors that Apple has been criticized for in the past, such as withholding source code and holding final approval over third-party development. Google declared pretty loudly that Android exists to prevent a "draconian future" of strict control. However, Google is now exerting aspects of that control.
The problem is that I want my OS to be open to me, so that I can do with it as I choose. If you give that openness to the person above me who sells me my phone, they're just going to use it to take away my freedoms with the OS, like we've seen Verizon doing for years now. I want it, and if I have to take it from Verizon, then fine, I don't care about conforming to some FOSS ideal.
Which is great, right up until Google decide that the latest version which was on the new phone you just bought isn't going to be made available for the foreseeable future.
The issue is surely that something is open or it isn't? The minute that Google start closing off or controlling bits of it, don't you have to ask yourself whether the thing you care about is next and therefore whether it's actually open or just probably open?
And for me probably open isn't really open enough.
If you fail as an entrepreneur, your debts are wiped. Either because the investors pay them back or you declare bankruptcy. There is no escape from student loans, even if you declare bankruptcy you are still required to pay them back.
So it's quite different than what happens to entrepreneurs, they can fail and comeback several times, tabula rasa. Someone saddled with student debt is forced to live with that choice until they pay it off or they die.
http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2010-02-01/learning...