Are you suggesting Android is not controlled by a huge corporation? Android is a lot more open than iOS, but the interaction with customers is completely controlled by a handful of corporations.

We need an open source hardware device running a truly open source OS. That would be really nice.

EDIT: Even if we don't have open source hardware, what would be great is having the ability to buy modular parts to build up our own devices. This used to be common practice with desktops, but got totally killed since laptops took over.

If I had an extra life, that would be my startup.

I'm worried that we'll never be able to build our own phones the way we can build our own PCs with commodity hardware due to the crazy patent situation.

Probably hardware and software will continue to be locked down (or in Android's case, released to open-source many many months after official release), but we'll be rescued by the web the same way we were in the PC era.

On the other hand, iPhone OS (or how was it called in early days) was a clear inspiration for Android. You cannot deny Apple basically invented many phone UI metaphors, that were directly copied (and I don't mean it in negative sense) into Android UI.

And to your other point... closed nature has its upsides too. Look at gaming consoles, they work quite well despite being crazy controlled. And Apple never wanted to dominate the whole phone market... if you remember the iPhone introduction, they didn't want to own the whole market. They defined its own category, basically :)

I totally acknowledge that the iPhone provided a huge leap forward, and that it inspired / altered the direction android took - I'm very grateful for it.

It is precisely because it was so good that it was such a threat to the technology landscape. We could easily have descended into a windows like era of domination by one company, but this time with the company having complete control over every layer - hardware, software, even content. However we didn't, partly thanks to strategic mistakes that Jobs made (we could have a whole discussion about what those were but I think it would be counterproductive wrt this thread).

I think almost like a natural ecosystem the software world needs both open and closed systems in balance. Each one moves us forward in different ways at different times. It is when they get out of balance that we get stuck (the "windows" era being a good example).

I'm not sure about that. The iPhone UI is definitely a good piece of engineering, and it's certainly more polished than what came before, but I don't think it invented anything novel.

UI is something that is engineered? I'd hate to live on the planet you live on, buddy.

Engineered -- planned with a purpose, designed, put together in order to accomplish a goal. In what world is a UI not engineered?

I would argue that the best gaming console of all time is the PC.

I would argue that the PC is a terrible gaming console, as crappy drivers and graphics APIs (and the wide variety of hardware) rob PC games of huge amounts of the total performance the hardware is capable of.

As it seems that non-hackers and just general idiots become more common on HN, it would be nice if pg & friends thought about some counter-measures.

I understand the general idiots point, but why non-hackers? I remember that a lot of time I read very valuable comments from doctors, or lawyers, or mathematicians. Some of the articles that go to the front page are not related to hacking and this has always been fine.

hm, non-hackers was bad wording on my part. I guess my view of hackers is very broad, describing a mindset, not particular skillsets.

That's what the downvote is for

Actually, in the case of such an egregiously stupid comment, that's what the flag button is for.

While I agree fabulous's comment is totally inappropriate Im caught off guard by some comments to my submissions and or commments left.

For instance I recently unsubscribed to Groupon emails. After doing so Groupon pointed me to a page to watch a tongue and cheek video to get me to change my mind.

I hate getting spam emails and I was very eager to banish any further Groupons (signed up by mistake). There tongue and cheek video was very ineffective for me. I did think it was unique, interesting and something worth sharing. But, since I felt negatively towards it the title of my submission was "Worst Email Unsubscibe Page?". Because that is how I felt about it but still wondered what others thought.

For whatever reason because I chose a negative title the submission was flamed - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2928041

Again that is how I felt time of writing the title because it was un-effective for me, but wondered what others thought about it.

Ive been reading HN since May '07 (various accounts) so Im not a noob. Maybe Im someone who thinks differently at times then others here?

Iirc, the first title was "Worst Email Unsubscribe Page" without question mark. Also, the post was basically an editorial comment. I think it would have been flamed less if you had taken the time to write a short blog post about it and then submitted that.

I am someone who is actively resistant to "group-think". It often gets me in hot water to be so out of step. It's tricky to be very out of step with a group and still participate in a meaningful, constructive fashion. I try extremely hard to avoid framing things in a blatantly negative fashion. Negative framing of that sort seems to only work if the majority are pretty much guaranteed to heartily agree.

Not really. Downvote is for poor responses, which are still more or less acceptable. We don't want to spend our time on HN downvoting trolling clowns and other vermin.