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AOL Dropping RIM for Danger Sidekick

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the danger-sidekick-robinson dept.

Eponymous Meow Word writes "After trying to cut the cord for wireless e-mail with RIM, AOL is pulling the plug on its mobile communicator, citing a move away from its older wireless technology. The disgruntled can get a discount on a shiny new T-Mobile color Sidekick." Wireless email is a rather small niche, and it's cool that current users won't be left high and dry, but it looks like they'll have to pay some money to continue using the service.

9 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Oh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    AXJ is the MAN

  2. first sco lawsuit ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    yu0=0wn3d

  3. bleh by greg987 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Danger Sidekick,Danger!

  4. SlashBot Translator-o-matic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Well, yesterday's IRC thing went off without me, though had I been there, my questions would have been dumped anyway, so no big deal. It's a pretty long log, so I took the liberty of snipping the good parts and adding some translations for those who don't speak Slash. Hope you enjoy, and I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies.

    Question
    Answer
    Translation

    <Questions> w00t asks: Will /. users ever be able to change the "look and feel" of Slashdot? Such as the colors, and general layout?

    <CmdrTaco> Maybe a little, but not much. 20:04
    It's computationally expensive.
    <hemos> The new machines will be 2x P3 1.4 Ghz, with 2 gigs of RAM.
    <CmdrTaco> It's programatically tricky.

    Even removing images will increase our computational workload. We'll never change this, but patches are always welcome.

    Patches are always welcome tho ;)

    <Questions> reefer asks: Is there any system in place or a plan on developing some system to prevent duplicate posts?

    <CmdrTaco> Whatever. 20:06
    Next.
    <hemos> Reefer: There is one.

    We have a pretty good system that we copied from fark, but Rob still sneaks a couple through.

    <Questions> jew asks: At LWCE 2000 NYC, you stated that you were considering developing alternate systems of accessing the site's content than HTTP/HTML. You mentioned NNTP. Have you considered or implemented any alternate means of accessing the site, such as RRS? If not, why?

    <CmdrTaco> We don't have time to implement much in the way of other protocols.
    <hemos> CmdrTaco: We did try the chat thing with whatever program that was.
    Er, not chat. 20:07
    Discussion thing.
    <CmdrTaco> Yeah, we had an IRC bot.
    That gated stories & discussions.
    Salsa.
    That was fun.
    Worked really well.
    Nobody used it :)

    The trolls had a very popular IRC bot called Slashbot that gated stories, and we murdered comments.pl and banned about a hundred IPs to shut it down, but we shut down our version because no one used it.

    <CmdrTaco>Karma isn't worth anything. Why would we change that? 20:09

    Except for: how many posts you can make a day, your initial comment score, your ability to moderate or metamoderate, and almost any other interaction with the site, that is. We'll never change karma's fictitious worthlessness like we did before.

    <Questions> OcelotLM asks: Have you considered changing the Games colour scheme to something less garish?

    <hemos> Hahahaha
    <CmdrTaco> Whateever.
    Next.
    <hemos> You should have seen the first round of it.

    Ok, ya, it sucks. Get over it. Remember Slashdot succeeded because our HTML is the best.

    <CmdrTaco> (I'm just skipping trolls btw ;)

    I'm not going to tell you why moderation is anonymous and why we IP banned www.w3c.org from our site. This is because the answers are not for those among us who do not drink the gin with the tonic.

    <Questions> limerickey asks: What happened to John Katz?

    <CmdrTaco> We had to let him go during a round of layoffs last summer.
    We miss him, and were sad to see him go. 20:15
    He added a lot to Slashdot, and it was really unfortunate.
    <hemos> the acerbic nature of some of the people also turned him off.

    Realized that if he continued to pander his career for Matrix fans, he'd never work as a journalist again. Also the trolls.

    <Questions> sebi asks: Did you ever consider adjusting the amount of moderator points based on Metamoderation results (like add a point for every 100 fair metamods, subtract one for every 5 unfair ones ore something like that)

  5. Help me- by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I am Junis Hale, Grandson of famous Cow Crazed professor
    ">Micheal hale!

    I need help writing his biography, so if you know anything then please help me. Yes, I am the famous junis from kabul and I have since upgraded my commodore 64 for a new dell running linux.

  6. PARENT IS A TROLL - SEARCH PARENT FOR ROB MALDA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Please... don't mod this up "informative"!!

  7. MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    +5 informative, please. This is quality stuff.

    1. Re:MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      It's offtopic. End of story.

      I have 2 moderator points left, just wasted 3 of them modding "first post" and goatse-ports down. I want to use remaining on modding good on-topic articles up.

    2. Re:MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      oh i know... but i found it quite informative anyways, so thats what I did. and i could not care less about karma, its so easy to get.