The following quote from Adam Wilkinson found via Linux Weekly News makes it clear:

You're working on a massive project that involves hundreds/thousands of people. It is not possible, however you organize such a project, for everyone to have a voice in everything. It is not possible to subject every decision to some kind of public review process. It is a statistical certainty that things you disagree with are going to happen. This is something you need to reconcile yourself to. Of course you can raise your voice on topics that concern you, and of course we can try to make our processes as open as possible, but however we do things, stuff you don't like is going to happen, and you've got to be comfortable with that, or you're going to get frustrated and burnt out very quickly.

This applies equally to the lowly worker as to the leader of a project. The former is more likely to figure this out than the latter! If leaders do not recognise contradictions between proposed policies and the ground reality, the smallest issues will often escalate to the highest level---and the leaders will have to deal with them.

Everyone has ambitions that go beyond the role(s) assigned to them---goals that require various resources beyond those available to their assigned role. As a leader, the precious resource is time and so one way to try to extract such "extra-curricular" goals is by dumping work on someone else (typically a lowly worker). The lowly worker might respond by "papering over" problems until one day, they blow up.

However, this is not called "playing a team game", it is "playing a game against your team-mates". Team players do not play zero-sum games against their colleagues and compatriots.

A lowly worker can work "outside the system" to pursue a private project. A leader does not have such a luxury and must step outside the leadership role to achieve a private goal.

This is not to say that one should not have such goals---far from it. In fact, no matter how democratic, transparent and other such good-ness (that you find in) an organisation, there is always a use/need to explore "the fringes of normality".

So everyone should play their role(s) to the best of their abilities ... and once in a while, take a break and step outside for a breath of fresh air!

However, after installing Maps, I noticed that it was not able to get a tight fix on my location. (Note that Maps also gets a "loose" fix by getting the co-ordinates of the nearest cell tower using the NetworkLocator.) Searching the web turns up thousands of "GPS fix" therapies from all kinds of places.

In earlier experiments, I had been wary of "brick"ing my phone. Now that it is working so well, I am doubly so! Hence, any solution which seemed to be reversible was acceptable and those which were not, were not. Solutions that involved software changes alone would appear to be reversible. Hence, I tried:

• Making changes to /system/etc/gps.conf, such as putting in in.pool.ntp.org in place of a European NTP server, or removing the SUPL entries etc. (All these changes were made after making a backup of this file and noting its exact permissions of course!)
• Installing the GPSStatus application for Android and using it to reset the GPS internal state and download a-GPS data from the net.
• Re-installing the earlier HTC "stock" version of Android from backup, then reset-ting GPS internal state and finally booting back to Cyanogenmod 7.2.0
• Powering down, removing and re-inserting the battery. Clearing the cache from recovery.

All of these resulted in the following experience:

1. Immediately after cold-start (power-off, battery removal and re-insert and reboot), the GPS fix would be done in seconds.
2. About a minute or so later this GPS fix would be lost.
3. In a completely un-predictable way, the GPS fix would be re-gained at different times and places only to be lost in a minute or so again!

One solution suggested in various places was to re-flash the radio. However, given the equally large number of warnings about "brick"ed phones due to radio flashing, I was unwilling to give it a go. Moreover, the current radio on the phone is "13.55.55.24H_3.35.20.10" which appears to be the latest (and last!) version for this model.

Finally, I came across a suggestion (see the fourth entry under Modifications to the System) that the file /system/lib/libgps.so from an earlier build (Froyo?) would fix the problem. Now, the file /system/lib/libgps.so on Cyanogenmod 7.2.0 is actually the same as that on the HTC stock image that was backed-up from my phone. So, I was a bit disbelieving, but the change was easy and reversible, so why not?

So I downloaded the Wild Ginger ROM by following a link on the same page and extracted the 96Kb file (from a 70Mb download ;-)). I then installed this file in place of the default /system/lib/libgps.so. Reboot the phone and GPS is working stably for 10 minutes! Go indoors for 5 minutes come back out and its back again!

Now a hacker cannot just let this go! So what would happen if I put back the CM-7.2.0 version of /system/lib/libgps.so? Surprisingly, the GPS continued to be stable! Perhaps there was something in the volatile memory, so do a cold-restart (power-off, re-insert battery and boot). Still stable! Wipe out the "Dalvik cache", the GPS loses its compass and pitch-roll settings. However, the wonderful GPSStatus can be used to fix that. Sure enough, once those are fixed, GPS is back to being stable again!

This feels like blackmagic! The software running on the phone is the same as before, but GPS which was not working earlier is working now. The indication seems to be that the older (HTC Froyo) library managed to "kickstart" the GPS somehow. Perhaps the downloading and injection of aGPS data into the GPS sensor was not working with the newer library. Perhaps there was some flag that needed to be reset.

So a lot of questions remain and at this point it just looks like blackmagic. In summary, I am now running the same software that I was running earlier --- even the firmware has not (as far as I can see) been changed. By some sort of "blackmagic" GPS is now working!

The following is a brief summary of what I understood from that write-up and my experience with the HTC Wildfire over the past week.

root: This is simply having a root shell on a running phone (which is after all running some version of Linux and shell). This means one can make whatever modifications one wants to the portions of the system that are not hardware locked or otherwise inaccessible to the running kernel. (One can run shell commands on the phone using a program called "adb" distributed by Android/Google.)

recovery: this is a separate system-partition which has limited functionality. Mainly meant for "recovery" in case of corrupted or un-installed "system" partition.

unlocked bootloader: This means that you are permitted to flash the "system" partition, "kernel" partition and the "recovery" partition of the phone through the bootloader (using a program called "fastboot" distributed by Android/Phone). Some checks are made on images before they are "flash"ed.

S-ON: The "radio" partition and the bootloader itself cannot be over-written. Before booting normally or into recovery, the "kernel" partition is locked and possibly the "recovery" partition as well.

S-OFF; all security restrictions in the bootloader are off. No checks are made on any images being flashed.

So, with an "unlocked" bootloader (even with S-ON) one can make whatever modifications one wants to the O/S. First using the bootloader to flash a custom recovery and/or kernel and then using that recovery to change the "system" partition as and when required.

However, one cannot change the configration of the radio (which handles GSM and GPS) or the bootloader. Since the latter should have nothing to do with a running phone and the former is really something that is like "firmware" for a wireless/ethernet card, most people would not need to mess with either. (Note that this is not true in places where the Phone/Tablet is obtained from some phone network company as they may have put some sort of restricted "radio" which cannot connect to a different network.)

The "superuser" application Superuser-3.1.3-arm-signed.zip can be downloaded from "andoidsu.com". It can then be put on the SD card. Since one does not have "root" access, this cannot be installed---and that appears to be a "Catch-22". However, by booting into ClockworkMod "recovery", one can select this application to be installed as an "update" to the existing operating system. This then installs the relevant binary "su" so that one can log in as root after booting the phone.

In addition, this installs a "superuser.apk" as a system application so as to control if and when an application running on the phone is granted "root" privileges. In case, non-market applications are disabled on your phone (as they usually are on mine) then you must temprarily enable such applications in order to complete the installation of "superuser.apk".

Having done this one can follow the excellent guide or an alternative guide to install and use Debian in a chroot. I join the authors of those write-ups in thanking the developers who made it possible to use my phone this way!

Finally, if one is tired of pussy-footing around with the existing operating system, it is best to download the latest stable build of Cyanogen for Buzz by following the instructions regarding Buzz on the Cyanogen Wiki. However, the instructions page indicates that gaining "S-OFF" is necessary. It is not!

The downloaded ".zip" file needs to be placed on the SD card. We then reboot the phone into ClockworkMod recovery. It is best to take a backup before doing anything else. The backup will be stored on SD card. Next one uses the "recovery" menu to wife the the main partition, the "userdata" and the (Dalvik) "cache". After this one selects "install from .zip" file in the ClockworkMod recovery menu. Finally, once installation is complete, one can boot into Cyanogen.

Note that the first boot takes a while. Be patient, have a snooze or something! The great thing one notices after the installation and first-boot is complete, is how responsive the phone has become! Moreover, the memory and storage usage has also been drastically reduced. Now all one has to do is to restore the Concats (which were stored as vcard on the SD card) and one is good to go!

Note that this does not change the "normal" functionality of the phone. It merely prepares the phone for "non-standard" usage by replacing the "recovery" image.

First of all one needs the "Clockworkmod" image. The possible images can be seen on the ROM Manager homepage. My phone, the HTC Wildfire (Buzz) is listed as "Buzz" with the Clockworkmod recovery version 5.0.2.0. Unfortunately, the file for the image on that page is wrong. The correct file is recovery-clockwork-5.0.2.0-buzz.img. This can be downloaded by a simple

wget http://download2.clockworkmod.com/recoveries/recovery-clockwork-5.0.2.0-buzz.zip

Now that we have the image, it has to be flashed.

Note that this will erase the existing recovery image so the potential for "brick"ing is ever present! I was impatient and did not backup the recovery image. Perhaps a more cautious approach would be to install the "su" binary and then use an application like "ROM Manager" to backup the recovery first. Luckily, it all worked for me!

The phone has to be rebooted into "fastboot usb" mode. This can be done by connecting the USB cable and running 'adb reboot bootloader'. (It may be worth reading the earlier post to figure out the different states of the bootloader if you get error messages.) After this the procedure is simple

fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-5.0.2.0-buzz.img

Once it completes, reboot the phone and disconnect the USB.

To get a hang of using "ClockworkMod", reboot to the bootloader in "fastboot" mode and highlight "recovery" with the Volume Button. Now press the power button once to run recovery. You should see the "clockworkmod" screen. The buttons work as follows:

• Use the Volume Button to highlight items on the clockworkmod menus
• Use the back button (at the touch screen base) to go to a previous menu
• Use the camera/pointer button (little circular button below the touch screen) to execute the selected menu item. (Some guides indicated that the power button was for this but that does not work.)

The first thing to do is to run the "backup" from clockworkmod and backup your current state of the phone to (micro) SD card. It is probably a good idea to copy this from the SD card to your laptop in a safe location.