I could accept the small one if it was also... say... a Tamogatchi. If you could hang the phone on a necklace, it's screen was on all the time, and it could show your mood. Or display your horoscope. Or if it could do *anything*. But it doesn't seem to be for anything at all. It's too small to use for the web realistically, and while I'm sure kids can twitter with it, there are better phones in that mindspace.
And Microsoft still can't make a decent product if their lives depended upon it. I fail to understand how a company that always hires "the best and the brightest" can make such lousy decisions. Seriously, what middle manager or marketing suit looked at this turd and said "killer! -- this is hot!"
Unless this phone is going to be DIRT CHEAP (as in free with a new contract), it's doomed to fail. Kids do not want "low end", they want what they see the celebrities using on MTV. And Rihanna isn't going to be using one of these, she's going to use an iPhone or Blackberry.
How MS continues to strive for mediocrity (and even fails at that) I have to wonder. You would think with all the talent, money and power they control that someone there would be able to convince them they need to make a GREAT product, not a below average product.
Is Steve Jobs really that much of a magician that Apple can come out with really innovative products and market them successfully, or is just that the rest of corporate America has their heads so far up their own asses they couldn't see a good product if you beat them senseless with it?
Isn't Sony going to have to change their TV commercials now?
The current crop of PS3 commercials claim "It only does everything" -- now they are going to have to say "It only does everything*" and then in teeny tiny small print "* Everything except Linux"...
It's called a child booster seat. It turns a 4 or 5 passenger car into a two passenger car "for safety".
When I was kid, we had no such thing, and there was no carrying around an empty booster seat to work. Now laws have gotten so you can't do *anything* without breaking some kind of law.
That's a good point, and I'll bet the Lehman officers will never do even a second of jail-time. But to go back to the parent-post (or gandparent post, I'm lost at this point)... The poster points out that what this loser did was "illegal" and what the banks did to fuck the economy wasn't "illegal".
I'd like to point out that "duh" -- OF COURSE, it's designed that way. Laws in this country ARE DESIGNED to make everything done by a "citizen" illegal, while anything done by large, faceless corps are legal. This is because corporations run the country, buy the laws they want, and do their best to keep down the average guy. Frankly, if Bernie Madoff had just paid off the right guys, he'd not be in jail.
When you get right down to it, what's the difference between legal and illegal -- words in a document or morality and spirit of a law? Does the parent poster REALLY believe the banks were looking out for the best interests of their clients and the country when they ran those "legal" frauds? You're telling me they stayed true to the spirit of the law by cutting up bad mortgages into tiny little pieces that couldn't be identified and packaging them into derivatives and then falsifying their ratings so that Morningstar would recommend these crappy securities?
By the letter of the law what they did was "legal", but don't try to make it that the banks were any better than your common mugger. The only reason what they did was "legal" was because the law in this country is bought by the highest bidder.
Frankly, if muggers had lobby in congress and enough money to buy politicians, it would be "legal" to rob people at gunpoint.
I'm all for "Life without Parole" for DUI, how does that sound to you? And since our prisons are all filled to the brim, we need to start executing. A LOT. I'm all for executing drug dealers, child porn people, rapists and murderers.
We need to put an end to this junk, so if we send the message that the POLICE STATE will KILL YOU for just about anything, that should put citizens in their place. After all, if you're not cop, you're little people.
Didn't some 8-yr old kid at a science fair demonstrate cells that were 30% more efficient a few months back? And before that there was some researcher who figured out how to make 'em 30% cheaper, and another guy who figured out how to make 'em with paint.
All these stories (heck, if I had the free time, I'd find the Slashdot stories that point to these new miracle products) keep saying that "real soon now", we'll have paint-on, dirt cheap, 110% efficient solar panels that will make so much electrcity, you won't need a $3000 bloom-box to turn natural gas into electricity for pennies a day.
Why, electricity will be so cheap, we won't even have to meter it!
Sure, real soon now. And yet, every time I try and get a quote on mounting a few panels on my roof, the cost is $25,000 and it will take me 30 years to break-even on the electricty. Where's the efficient, cheap PRODUCT that will directly enable ME to put panels on my roof?
How many more YEARS do we have to wait? Or are all these researchers just making press releases and not actually making solar panels? And why aren't solar panels being made?
If all this tech si so f'ing great, you'd think some company, even a Chinese company, would be rushing to make them, even under patent license because they would corner the market if the panels were cheap and more efficient!
Add to your list "Can I use a keyboard with it?" For those of us that think of the iPhone as a computing platform rather than a toy and we might actually want to use it to take notes in a meeting, or compose an email.
The iPhone is capable of email, and yet, their software keyboard only lets you type messages that say "Tbrn tgnsje jwe sdfb".
The killer is Apple themselves sell a bluetooth keyboard. But they don't let you pair it with an iPhone. They will let you pair with a Mac or an iPad. Apple killed Macally's product which was to be a folding keyboard specifically designed for the iPhone.
WTF? I'm not buying an iPhone until I can use a keyboard because I cannot type on that cruddy software keyboard. And I will buy the first smartphone that does let you hook up a REAL keyboard and has a notes application (like the older Palm Treos). Why is it that older tech works better than newer (like older VCRs weren't affected by macrovision) ?
Then the neighbor will go to jail for cyberbullying him with RF. And be charged with statatory rape, and be hounded by the IRS. I think America has gone certifiably bat-shit insane. It's too bad you can't lock up a whole country. Call me when ya'll learn to deal with life and become mature adults.
Some girl kills herself because she was "bullied" and the individuals are charged with all kinds of things (including rape?)-- THEY ARE AT FAULT, NOT HER...., but, some guy was "bullied" by the IRS, and kills himself by flying his plane into their building, and he's just a loon, no charges, no investigation, HE'S AT FAULT, NOT THEM.
Why is it that we have one set of laws for some people, and another set of laws for other people?
Please tell me how these two cases are different. Why are the charges different? Why is the person to blame for the tragic consequenses different?
The talking heads on the news just think he's a loon.
MAYBE it's the wackos trying to screw the little guy in favor of giant, lawyer-heavy, lobby-weilding, under-table dealing faceless mega-corps. And then the wackos that passed the crippling legislation that screws people and forces them to do something drastic, then pass more legislation to make sure they know where everyone's plane is.
I see a new Yakov Smirnoff internet meme... "In oppressive America, XXXXXXX screws you!"
Because I wore glasses. "Four eyes" they called me.
Now those jocks come home, and to watch their 3-D football game *put on glasses*? The same guys that made fun of me for wearing glasses?
What kind of upside-down, bizzarro world are we now living in?
And tell me what kind of fashion-conscious woman is going to wear those dorky glasses? Who really thinks this stupid fad is going to catch on?
What about people that already wear glasses? Or spent a fortune on laser surgery or contacts, only to have to put on glasses *again*, now to watch TV? And when friends come over, do they have to bring their own glasses? How's that Superbowl party going to work out?
I'm already on the fence about throwing out my TV... I believe this is pushing me closer to just giving up on broadcast media entirely.
Even more problematic -- now they have to go back and change all the Star Trek movies and episodes, where some cast member explains "all these vessels were named Enterprise". I know it happened in ST:TMP, and probably in at least one Next Gen episode...
They'll have to CGI in some other spaceships into the display. Heck, Star Trek violated it's own continuity by naming the NX-01 'Enterprise', when the NX-01 wasn't visible in the display in ST:TMP.
If only Derek Meddings were alive today. Take a look at that first picture in the linked article (from the underside), and tell me that's not something straight out of Thunderbirds or UFO, or Captian Scarlet...
Anyone who's ever looked at the Mechanical Designs of the Gerry Anderson shows always thought they were elegant, and yet, somehow unpractical or unworkable has now been shown that the design work over in England was waaaaay ahead of their time.
Either that, or Burt Rutan is the biggest Thunderbirds geek of all time, and he just *made* it work.
Let's see: There are no jobs in the USA, people are losing their houses... The richest person in the world is a Mexican... Therefore, I think Americans should be racing to get into Mexico, the land of opportunity! I'll bet if we had a mass migration of poor Americans into Mexico for their jobs and free health care, they'd build a real wall in no time.
Either that, or let's just declare Mexico a terrorist state. I mean, with all the drug-war related deaths on the border, it's a good bet more Americans have died in Mexico due to the drug wars than were killed on 9/11...
#1) Nuclear bombs *can* be constructed out of everyday household items, assuming you have a proper amount of weapons-grade plutonium laying around. The remainder of the bomb isn't that difficult to construct. And plans on how to construct such bombs were commonly available, that is *before* GWB's paranoid Homeland Security SS agents started burning those library books.
#2) Why is it that wackos such as yourself want to suppress information like 'how to build XXXXX weapon', but God forbid any democrat might want to take away your guns? It's not ok to have a *book* on building a bomb, but it's ok to have an automatic assault rifle and thousands of rounds of ammo? I bet your gun can kill more people than any bomb I can make, but somehow my *book* is more of a threat?
And the problem with the above policy is that the government will regularly abuse its power to keep secrets.
Instead, it will spy on its own citizens, crush freedoms, trample the constitution, and generally run amok big-brother-style, all in the name of "protecting the country", when what it really is protecting is itself and its powers -- power for the purpose of power.
As far as I am concerned, this government lost its rights to keep secrets. They cannot be trusted to keep secrets. They cannot be trusted, period. When the government has lost its respect for its people, how can the people be expected to respect the government?
No, you see. Tibet had all that explosive ice -- essentially weapons of mass destruction. And this threatened China, who didn't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. So Shock and Awe was the only answer, an invasion that would only last a few weeks, and be paid for with the oil.
Oh Sorry, were we talking about CHINA? I'm sure the Chinese feel that what happened to Tibet was fo their own good, just as most Americans think what happened in Iraq was for their own good. Amazing how propaganda can influence the masses, eh? Just keep on watching Faux News and you'll even believe that 99% of Americans don't want Health care reform...
The only time it's "unnecessary" to have some form of self defense handy is when you're already dead. ---
Which for you won't be long. Anybody that ready to get into a gunfight will find one for himself soon enough. And then you'll either be dead, or in jail for murder. Good luck with that.
Yes, I'm wracked with guilt after robbing that bank. I shouldn't go to jail, the emotional tragedy of what I did was punishment enough. There's not a day that goes by I don't think about what I did, buying expensive dinners, driving fast cars.. Oh, the PAIN!
Slashdot Mirror
I could accept the small one if it was also... say... a Tamogatchi. If you could hang the phone on a necklace, it's screen was on all the time, and it could show your mood. Or display your horoscope. Or if it could do *anything*. But it doesn't seem to be for anything at all. It's too small to use for the web realistically, and while I'm sure kids can twitter with it, there are better phones in that mindspace.
And Microsoft still can't make a decent product if their lives depended upon it. I fail to understand how a company that always hires "the best and the brightest" can make such lousy decisions. Seriously, what middle manager or marketing suit looked at this turd and said "killer! -- this is hot!"
Unless this phone is going to be DIRT CHEAP (as in free with a new contract), it's doomed to fail. Kids do not want "low end", they want what they see the celebrities using on MTV. And Rihanna isn't going to be using one of these, she's going to use an iPhone or Blackberry.
How MS continues to strive for mediocrity (and even fails at that) I have to wonder. You would think with all the talent, money and power they control that someone there would be able to convince them they need to make a GREAT product, not a below average product.
Is Steve Jobs really that much of a magician that Apple can come out with really innovative products and market them successfully, or is just that the rest of corporate America has their heads so far up their own asses they couldn't see a good product if you beat them senseless with it?
Isn't Sony going to have to change their TV commercials now?
The current crop of PS3 commercials claim "It only does everything" -- now they are going to have to say "It only does everything*" and then in teeny tiny small print "* Everything except Linux"...
It's called a child booster seat. It turns a 4 or 5 passenger car into a two passenger car "for safety".
When I was kid, we had no such thing, and there was no carrying around an empty booster seat to work. Now laws have gotten so you can't do *anything* without breaking some kind of law.
That's a good point, and I'll bet the Lehman officers will never do even a second of jail-time. But to go back to the parent-post (or gandparent post, I'm lost at this point)... The poster points out that what this loser did was "illegal" and what the banks did to fuck the economy wasn't "illegal".
I'd like to point out that "duh" -- OF COURSE, it's designed that way. Laws in this country ARE DESIGNED to make everything done by a "citizen" illegal, while anything done by large, faceless corps are legal. This is because corporations run the country, buy the laws they want, and do their best to keep down the average guy. Frankly, if Bernie Madoff had just paid off the right guys, he'd not be in jail.
When you get right down to it, what's the difference between legal and illegal -- words in a document or morality and spirit of a law? Does the parent poster REALLY believe the banks were looking out for the best interests of their clients and the country when they ran those "legal" frauds? You're telling me they stayed true to the spirit of the law by cutting up bad mortgages into tiny little pieces that couldn't be identified and packaging them into derivatives and then falsifying their ratings so that Morningstar would recommend these crappy securities?
By the letter of the law what they did was "legal", but don't try to make it that the banks were any better than your common mugger. The only reason what they did was "legal" was because the law in this country is bought by the highest bidder.
Frankly, if muggers had lobby in congress and enough money to buy politicians, it would be "legal" to rob people at gunpoint.
And which "junk" would that be ?
I'm all for "Life without Parole" for DUI, how does that sound to you?
And since our prisons are all filled to the brim, we need to start executing. A LOT.
I'm all for executing drug dealers, child porn people, rapists and murderers.
We need to put an end to this junk, so if we send the message that the POLICE STATE will KILL YOU for just about anything, that should put citizens in their place. After all, if you're not cop, you're little people.
Because it contrasts better against their blonde hair.
Same reason they look better in a little black dress.
Solar cells that are right around the corner!
Didn't some 8-yr old kid at a science fair demonstrate cells that were 30% more efficient a few months back? And before that there was some researcher who figured out how to make 'em 30% cheaper, and another guy who figured out how to make 'em with paint.
All these stories (heck, if I had the free time, I'd find the Slashdot stories that point to these new miracle products) keep saying that "real soon now", we'll have paint-on, dirt cheap, 110% efficient solar panels that will make so much electrcity, you won't need a $3000 bloom-box to turn natural gas into electricity for pennies a day.
Why, electricity will be so cheap, we won't even have to meter it!
Sure, real soon now. And yet, every time I try and get a quote on mounting a few panels on my roof, the cost is $25,000 and it will take me 30 years to break-even on the electricty. Where's the efficient, cheap PRODUCT that will directly enable ME to put panels on my roof?
How many more YEARS do we have to wait? Or are all these researchers just making press releases and not actually making solar panels? And why aren't solar panels being made?
If all this tech si so f'ing great, you'd think some company, even a Chinese company, would be rushing to make them, even under patent license because they would corner the market if the panels were cheap and more efficient!
You'll get it.
I'd better!
'nuff said.
Add to your list "Can I use a keyboard with it?" For those of us that think of the iPhone as a computing platform rather than a toy and we might actually want to use it to take notes in a meeting, or compose an email.
The iPhone is capable of email, and yet, their software keyboard only lets you type messages that say "Tbrn tgnsje jwe sdfb".
The killer is Apple themselves sell a bluetooth keyboard. But they don't let you pair it with an iPhone. They will let you pair with a Mac or an iPad. Apple killed Macally's product which was to be a folding keyboard specifically designed for the iPhone.
WTF? I'm not buying an iPhone until I can use a keyboard because I cannot type on that cruddy software keyboard. And I will buy the first smartphone that does let you hook up a REAL keyboard and has a notes application (like the older Palm Treos). Why is it that older tech works better than newer (like older VCRs weren't affected by macrovision) ?
Then the neighbor will go to jail for cyberbullying him with RF. And be charged with statatory rape, and be hounded by the IRS. I think America has gone certifiably bat-shit insane. It's too bad you can't lock up a whole country. Call me when ya'll learn to deal with life and become mature adults.
People are responsible for their actions but inhuman assholes get off scot-free?
--- ---
Yes, that's called People VS. Corporations.
Serious Question:
Some girl kills herself because she was "bullied" and the individuals are charged with all kinds of things (including rape?)-- THEY ARE AT FAULT, NOT HER...., but, some guy was "bullied" by the IRS, and kills himself by flying his plane into their building, and he's just a loon, no charges, no investigation, HE'S AT FAULT, NOT THEM.
Why is it that we have one set of laws for some people, and another set of laws for other people?
Please tell me how these two cases are different.
Why are the charges different?
Why is the person to blame for the tragic consequenses different?
The talking heads on the news just think he's a loon.
MAYBE it's the wackos trying to screw the little guy in favor of giant, lawyer-heavy, lobby-weilding, under-table dealing faceless mega-corps. And then the wackos that passed the crippling legislation that screws people and forces them to do something drastic, then pass more legislation to make sure they know where everyone's plane is.
I see a new Yakov Smirnoff internet meme... "In oppressive America, XXXXXXX screws you!"
Because I wore glasses. "Four eyes" they called me.
Now those jocks come home, and to watch their 3-D football game *put on glasses*? The same guys that made fun of me for wearing glasses?
What kind of upside-down, bizzarro world are we now living in?
And tell me what kind of fashion-conscious woman is going to wear those dorky glasses? Who really thinks this stupid fad is going to catch on?
What about people that already wear glasses? Or spent a fortune on laser surgery or contacts, only to have to put on glasses *again*, now to watch TV? And when friends come over, do they have to bring their own glasses? How's that Superbowl party going to work out?
I'm already on the fence about throwing out my TV... I believe this is pushing me closer to just giving up on broadcast media entirely.
Even more problematic -- now they have to go back and change all the Star Trek movies and episodes, where some cast member explains "all these vessels were named Enterprise". I know it happened in ST:TMP, and probably in at least one Next Gen episode...
They'll have to CGI in some other spaceships into the display. Heck, Star Trek violated it's own continuity by naming the NX-01 'Enterprise', when the NX-01 wasn't visible in the display in ST:TMP.
Ah... nevermind! It's just a frickin' TV show.
If only Derek Meddings were alive today. Take a look at that first picture in the linked article (from the underside), and tell me that's not something straight out of Thunderbirds or UFO, or Captian Scarlet...
Anyone who's ever looked at the Mechanical Designs of the Gerry Anderson shows always thought they were elegant, and yet, somehow unpractical or unworkable has now been shown that the design work over in England was waaaaay ahead of their time.
Either that, or Burt Rutan is the biggest Thunderbirds geek of all time, and he just *made* it work.
Let's see: There are no jobs in the USA, people are losing their houses... The richest person in the world is a Mexican... Therefore, I think Americans should be racing to get into Mexico, the land of opportunity! I'll bet if we had a mass migration of poor Americans into Mexico for their jobs and free health care, they'd build a real wall in no time.
Either that, or let's just declare Mexico a terrorist state. I mean, with all the drug-war related deaths on the border, it's a good bet more Americans have died in Mexico due to the drug wars than were killed on 9/11...
*That* explains why thing get continually worse in the USA....
#1) Nuclear bombs *can* be constructed out of everyday household items, assuming you have a proper amount of weapons-grade plutonium laying around. The remainder of the bomb isn't that difficult to construct. And plans on how to construct such bombs were commonly available, that is *before* GWB's paranoid Homeland Security SS agents started burning those library books.
#2) Why is it that wackos such as yourself want to suppress information like 'how to build XXXXX weapon', but God forbid any democrat might want to take away your guns? It's not ok to have a *book* on building a bomb, but it's ok to have an automatic assault rifle and thousands of rounds of ammo? I bet your gun can kill more people than any bomb I can make, but somehow my *book* is more of a threat?
How the frack do you justify that in your head?
And the problem with the above policy is that the government will regularly abuse its power to keep secrets.
Instead, it will spy on its own citizens, crush freedoms, trample the constitution, and generally run amok big-brother-style, all in the name of "protecting the country", when what it really is protecting is itself and its powers -- power for the purpose of power.
As far as I am concerned, this government lost its rights to keep secrets. They cannot be trusted to keep secrets. They cannot be trusted, period. When the government has lost its respect for its people, how can the people be expected to respect the government?
CAPTCHA == Founders
No, you see. Tibet had all that explosive ice -- essentially weapons of mass destruction. And this threatened China, who didn't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. So Shock and Awe was the only answer, an invasion that would only last a few weeks, and be paid for with the oil.
Oh Sorry, were we talking about CHINA? I'm sure the Chinese feel that what happened to Tibet was fo their own good, just as most Americans think what happened in Iraq was for their own good. Amazing how propaganda can influence the masses, eh? Just keep on watching Faux News and you'll even believe that 99% of Americans don't want Health care reform...
Ah, ignorance is strength.
The only time it's "unnecessary" to have some form of self defense handy is when you're already dead.
---
Which for you won't be long. Anybody that ready to get into a gunfight will find one for himself soon enough. And then you'll either be dead, or in jail for murder. Good luck with that.
Yes, I'm wracked with guilt after robbing that bank. I shouldn't go to jail, the emotional tragedy of what I did was punishment enough. There's not a day that goes by I don't think about what I did, buying expensive dinners, driving fast cars.. Oh, the PAIN!