The barn door is about to be wide open in this one. When private App Stores hit on iPhone because of the recent-pending legislation, you're going to have no control at all over what developers do with your data because you'll have 12 different App Store EULAs on your devices.
You comment hits the core of the "problem". Traditionally What "China" wants has been 100% decided by its rulers.. While the people were TOLD what they wanted. Even now China's rulers think about what's useful for their minions to manufacture for outsiders with near contempt that their own people may want something.
A good microcosm of this is iPhone. It took four years for the government to bless iPhone for Chinese people to use... Even though it is nearly 100% made by Chinese people in China. That rigid disparity between what people of a country WANT and what they MAKE doesn't exist like it does in China anywhere else. That's what makes China such a tough nut to crack.. The near absolute control of what the people are "allowed" to like and buy.
If you change the item from smartphones to firearms, the PRC is not at all special, besides Mao's infamous revealing quote, "Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
A more useful illustration is the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) attitude towards civil society (per Wikipedia, "the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens"), it must be extremely limited and restrained, and there are no extremes including mass murder to which the CCP is not willing to go to keep it that way. See the Falun Gong for the most recent severe example, and I've noticed recent headlines WRT to some Christian "sect" and 1,000 people arrested.
In that context, smartphones, which can communicate in ways less subject to surveillance than say SMS, are an existential threat to the CCP, potentially as dangerous as guns.
In English, it's correct grammar to include an article ("the" or "a") before a singular common noun. "iPhone" is a singular common noun, because it's not a discrete entity like Jupiter or Bill Gates, it's a consumer product - there are many, many iPhones. It's also -- despite Apple's marketing to the contrary -- not a singular or distinct concept, at least not in the context of your post. If you prefer to drop the article because it conveys your idea better, you can pluralize the noun. "iPhones" is a completely valid drop-in replacement.
No spite/sarcasm intended - I am genuinely trying to be helpful.
My town is on an aggressive knock-down strategy as well. One problem they ran into was people trying to "save" houses on the chopping block after the tax sale. Since then they are clearly tagging the houses where the PROPERTY is for sale but the HOUSE is condemned.
In certain neighborhoods, the city wants the excess houses GONE. They don't want them fixed up and barely hanging on.. The city wants to collect enough empty lots that NEW BUILDING is worth while... And just sit on empty lots until then.
The problem for somebody like this owner.. When is he city happy to take your tax sale money but leave the block on their "knock-down" list.. And why isn't the list more public.. Who's getting benefits of knocking Dow YOUR HOUSE but not others?
The B-2 bomber pilots are closer to computer hackers... Hacking is long hours spent quietly trolling for marks and acquiring programs and contacts for your "bag of tricks".. With a few hours of frantic planting the hooks and grabbing what you can before the connection is cut.
Ideally, you're like the bomber pilots.. The first time you get noticed is when the bombs are going off and you're already got the data.
It begs the question "where the hell is my tuition going?"
I was taking at a private "degree mill" part time classes at $180 per credit hour. The school required 7 students to teach a 4 credit class during normal hours. So at the minimum number of students the school was just making enough money for overhead... Most clases were 10-15 students. It was a private school, so tuition covered almost all their bills, no state funding.
Now ask where sutdents in State Funded Colleges money is going when there are 50 students (and more!) in a class? Where the hell is the undergrad tuition money going if the school only pays "minimum wage" for adjunct or grad school staff?? Where is State and Federal dinging going if Undergrads are paying more than their share of the university bills? It's not gping to TEACHING... And it's not going to "student contact" professors either, and its not "healthcare" or "retirement"... There's a giant money hole in the system.
You sound like you're trying to justify a bad decision...
Outside of the top-ranked flagship state schools -- which carry as much prestige as an ivy in some fields (e.g. in CS uiuc, u.w., austin, etc.) -- state schools are actually by far the best bang for the buck around.
For example, $180/cr is actually not far off from what most non-flagship state schools cost. In fact, there are schools in my state that cost within $10 or so of that. Crucially, all these institutions have quite good reputations in the region, no one perceives them as diploma mills, and they all have great CS departments with a sense of continuity.
I did some reading about the subject when I was still in college, and I gathered that tuition was used to pay the interest on loans the university system took out to fund expansion (e.g. buildings & development) in order to attract more students.
