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You should do some research on the topic. It was a joint agreement between Intel and Skype. It's not just Skype doing this on their own. Intel approached Skype about the whole thing. Here's a link you should check out before you talk about how, "... if you want to blame someone, it's the former [Skype]"

http://www.cnet.com.au/software/internet/0,3902952 4,40060220,00.htm

From the article, "Intel approached Skype with its plan . . . ." Intel may not have a monopoly but it sure seems to be actling like one.

Will this do?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/POKIA-retro-mobile-phone-han dsfree-PHOBILE-cool-gadget_W0QQitemZ9105970823QQca tegoryZ42427QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Or just look elsewhere on eBay for more normal (ahem) old phones.

> And why do I have to get some used POS when all I want is a telephone I can take
> with me?

Stuff that would cost thousands of pounds are pratically given away thanks to mass production. The downside is when stuff goes out of fashion you have to make do with the new stuff. Overall, it works in the consumer's favour (the manufacturers don't do too badly either).

> The largest nationwide network (Cingular/ATT) actually stopped supporting
> older phones a while back, anyway.

Older phone = those old AM radios? I think we're spoiled in the UK for coverage (and phones) compared to outside the EU.

> Can't you damned kids just get a laptop for better email, music, and game
> playing - and maybe a camera for taking better pictures? :)

I don't want my laptop stolen so I'd never use it on the train/bus etc. I have a dedicated MP3 player I always carry for music (though my phone has a radio and mp3 player, but the storage is a relatively small 32megs or so). I have a nice 4mp camera which I take for `proper` pictures, but it's nice to have a 2MP camera on me (on my phone) at all times for when I don't have my main camera with me (not often - doesn't exactly fit in my pocket). Perhaps a car accident, suprise meet-up with friends etc? (It does video too)

> I want a phone that turns on in less than 10 minutes

Never turn mine off!

> and has a display that doesn't run the battery down in seconds

http://www.cnet.com.au/mobilephones/phones/0,39026 174,40054424,00.htm
Nokia rates the N70's 970mAh Lithium Ion battery as being good for up to 3.5 hours talk time and up to 11 days standby. In our testing we averaged around 7 days inbetween recharges with a moderate level of usage, although that's a figure that could vary quite widely depending on how much use you made of battery sapping features such as Bluetooth.

11 days doesn't sound too bad to me.

> hint: it just takes 10 alphanumeric chars to dislay a phone number

UK phone numbers are (practically) all 11 digits long, and more for international numbers or if you're dialling an extension.

>16-bit backlit full color display

16bit? Keep up!

> But using a voice communication device to compose textual communication?

I've never done that - it does sound rather amusing; a little like taking a break from a long drive by stopping off at a service station and playing Sega Rally 2.

Enjoy your...hello?

Hello?

You need a new phone, mate!

check here for more info: http://www.dit-inc.us/

and you might wanna try these too: http://www.google.com/search?cq=freegate&hl=en&lr= &newwindow=1&safe=off&lr=&start=10&sa=N/

http://www.cnet.com.au/downloads/info.htm?swid=104 15392/ I really appreciate what these guys are doing, but i think they are fighting an uphill battle of enourmous proportions.
My gf is chinese and her attitude towards the emails they send, and the above programs is non-caring or outright annoyed.
And the same is the case with many other chinese i talked to, they have very little interest in anything regarding politics and have very patriotic attitudes - which can be really scary sometimes. But i guess that comes from a whole life of brainwashing. So i been trying to teach her alot about the principles of "free" thinking, but everytime i think i have made some progress, she just seem to revert back to her "chinese" thinking.

So where's the XBox 360?

On EBay, which currently accounts for 10% of all 360 sales. Looks like prices from $550 to $1000. I kept wondering why the XBox was being manufactured for shortages, when M$ wasn't taking advantage of shortage pricing, but instead pricing under cost*. One article raises the speculation that the secondary market might be intentional.** Maybe M$ decided it prefers an auction economy, perhaps to dodge allegations of price gouging, which are apparently all the rage, for better or worse.

So where's the congratulatory hype?

Here's some, though we're probably not seeing a huge amount of post-release PR because they can't meet extra demand such PR would generate anyway. And they probably gave their PR department a holiday after all their pre-release work.

Or maybe they fired them after all their ads got banned from TV.

Where are our promo boxes?

The other comments have covered this pretty well. Really, if M$ sent a big heavy box in the mail to the editors of /., would any of them actually risk opening it?

Or maybe yours just got smashed uh... "in the mail."

*Another estimate of XBox cost/unit, from BusinessWeek.

**I don't actually think M$ planned to sell direct on Ebay to capitalize on created shortages, but it's still an interesting idea.

Those may very well be excellent machines -- good build quality, good components, good performance. I don't doubt that. In fact, their dead-pixel policy and QC in general is something the whole industry should respect.

But I'd be downright embarassed to be seen with something that looked like that. I'd rather be seen with a barbie laptop ( http://www.cnet.com.au/i/r/2004/PC/barbie_laptop_3 00x225.jpg ) for, at the very least, the irony. For god's sake, why do people think that shiny electric blue, or green or red, ( http://www.hypersonic-pc.com/_inventoryImages/imag es/color_choice_m2/piercing.jpg ) and a huge ugly logo is a good thing?

I'm not saying iBooks or Powerbooks are the be all of design, but I'll tell you one thing: They are designed to look adult, and respectable. I can open my powerbook in a meeting with important people -- in a recent situation, bigwigs of the russian oil industry -- and feel like they will still respect me. As agraphic designer that's important.

Really, if I were thinking about buying a console, I would wait for the Play Station 3.

Last I checked, it is still illegal here to make a copy of the music on a CD you own, for any reason at all - personal uses of any type included, even for an MP3 player. We have no fair-use provision in our copyright laws, nor (AFAIK) are we getting any as a result of the Free Trade deal with the USA (though copyright terms are being drastically lengthened to match the US). We own the media, but have no "license to the music".

There are already a few online music stores in Australia, but to my knowledge they only sell songs in WMA format, not much good for iPod owners. iTMS will be the first useful site.

I can imagine that all of our iPods would be desperately looking forward to playing something other than crappy bootlegged highschool bands, home-recorded birdsong & the occasional scroungings from Creative Commons.

Postal 2 has been banned by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) in New Zealand, where it's now illegal to own or sell the game with various fines and even prison time for offenders.

In a major attack on artistic freedom and democratic rights, Australia's censor board has banned screenings of the US film Ken Park at the June 6-20 Sydney Film Festival. The decision was made by the government's Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and is the first time a movie scheduled for a local festival has been banned in Australia for almost a quarter of a century.

"The Australian Senate passed legislation today that requires ISPs to block any web site in the world that is classified as offensive by an Australian film board. The law is set to go into effect January 2000. Check out the news and even more news."

Here in NZ, we didn't require the Black Eyed Peas to rename their song "Don't Phunk With my Heart"

You Americans are so blinded by your own hype you think the entire rest of the world is some 3rd world dictatorship. Grow up, actually LOOK at the rest of the world and realise it doesn't match your cardboard cutout preconceptions. The average US slashbot view of the rest of the world is laughably naive.

I hate to tell you this, but they're trying...

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/0,2000 061791,39202379,00.htm
http://www.cnet.com.au/mp3players/musicsoftware/so a/Music_industry_gains_discovery_win_in_Aussie_MP3 _site_case/0,39029154,40003501,00.htm
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/0,39023166,3 9177280,00.htm
http://www.out-law.com/page-5942
http://addict3d.org/index.php?page=viewarticle&typ e=news&ID=275

They're all stories about the Australian ISP being sued for hosting a site that contained links to copyrighted material.

Not good.

While they haven't posted any hard specs yet, Nintendo has announced that Revolution will be two to three times as powerful as the Gamecube (there are other sources with this info, I just linked to the first one Google gave me). So there is somewhat of a basis for his comments. That being said, comparing it to the current generation gives us a fairly reliable metric for what to expect (none of the unshaded, untextured polygon numbers game bullshit), while we've yet to see any real-world information (Sony and Microsoft's E3 demos are anything but realistic) from the competition. Wait and see is the only option.

According to a CNET article, the PSP sports a MIPS R4000 running at 333 MHz. The performance is probably comparable to a Pentium II running at the same speed.

In other words, the performance is good.

Except Apple does not make a high-end flash player w/a display -- iPod Mini has a hard drive.

http://www.cnet.com.au/mp3players/harddisk/0,39029 146,40000103,00.htm