JPEG XR is actually quite good and is now an open standard. I recently did an extensive evaluation of JPEG 2000 vs. JPEG XR. While JPEG 2000 has slightly better compression quality (less visible artifacts) at the same file sizes it’s decode performance is substantially slower than JPEG XR (the same is true for encode performance, but decode is much more important). In my testing, one of the fastest JPEG 2000 libraries, Kakadu, is anywhere from 1.8 to 2x slower than JPEG XR at decoding files. Kakadu is a commercial framework, the open source OpenJPEG library is supposed to be substantially slower.
Compared to standard JPEG, JPEG XR has on average the same or very similar decode performance. The bottom line is that with JPEG XR you get compression quality and file sizes that are similar to JPEG 2000 with performance that is similar to standard JPEG. In my eyes, it’s the best successor available to replace JPEG. But it has a long uphill battle ahead of it.
That a software license covering a reference software implementation that Microsoft provided, not a patent license. They've made the patents freely available to implementers since 2007 as part of their Microsoft Open Specification Promise:
Microsoft has patents on the technology in JPEG XR. A Microsoft representative stated in a January 2007 interview that in order to encourage the adoption and use of HD Photo, the specification is made available under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise, which asserts that Microsoft allows implementation of the specification for free, and will not file suits on the patented technology for its implementation,[39] as reportedly stated by Josh Weisberg, director of Microsoft's Rich Media Group. As of 15 August 2010, Microsoft made the resulting JPEG XR standard available under its Community Promise.
I gather you haven't actually lived in Manhattan? Refills aren't free at most restaurants in NYC. It's just another one of those "taxes" that you pay for the privilege of living in the city.
Anyway, I'm glad I no longer live there especially with Bloomberg trying to pull crap like this.
His point is that local bandwidth is cheap but long-haul bandwidth is expensive and the equipment necessary to stream the kind of bandwidth Netflix needs to a significant portion of their customers simply can not be purchased and maintained for the current price of a residential broadband connection.
And I call that bullshit. For how many years have Comcast and other ISPs been overcharging their customers for the services they provide? If they sell unlimited bandwidth then they should expect heavy usage and they should be investing heavily in upgrading their network to support the bandwidth requirements of the future. Comcast's customers have been paying a premium for years to use the bandwidth. If Comcast was shortsighted enough to not see that bandwidth usage would be increasing dramatically then it's their own damn fault for not upgrading their infrastructure to keep pace.
The subscribers have been and are currently paying for the bandwidth. Level 3 shouldn't have to pay for something that Comcast's customers have already paid for.
Not to be a dick but I paid for the fucking bandwidth. And so did all of Comcast's other subscribers. Comcast is trying to double-dip here - chargin me, the subscriber, for the bandwidth as well as charging Level 3 for the bandwidth. And that's just bullshit.
No one that matters cares about this. By which I mean almost all consumers could care less if a product is endorsed by the FSF - the vast majority will have never heard of them.
Oh you'll start caring if Skype pulls this same bullshit for their Android client and starts charging for Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G. I think you might care about that.
Why do you think that it took 2 years to get Skype on the iPhone?
Because Skype's been too busy with their thumb up their ass trying to figure out how to "monetize" Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G for the iPhone. And, as others have pointed out, Skype has been available for some time on the iPhone, they've just restricted it to only working over WiFi up until now.
AT&T lifted the 3G VOIP restriction months ago and Skype should have been able to release an update the day that AT&T did that. After all, it requires MORE code to check if you're on a 3G connection and display an error message. When there are no restrictions you don't need any code to check what type of connection you're using you just use the data connection without regard to where it's coming from. But no, Skype sat on their asses trying to figure out - Hey, how can we get iPhone users to pay us more money? Then some conceded dumb fuck said - I know, let's start charging for Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G, that will get us making some money.
Yeah, the service that's always been free for any other computer, phone or any other device. Skype's going to start charging us for the 3G data plan that we're already paying for. Well, I'm sorry Skype but you can go fuck yourselves if you think I'm going to pay you for that.
The problem is that the fundamentalist/extremist Muslims don't fear the repercussions of their actions. The reason why they don't fear retaliation is because we don't have the resolve or guts to break their will. In ancient warfare you decimated your enemy until he had no desire or will to continue fighting. There was no care or hesitation for collateral damage. That type of warfare will never happen in this day and age (at least not from us) which is why we'll never be able to fully suppress zealots such as these.
What Comedy Central did was absolutely pathetic. Parker & Stone had already self-censored the episode by not actually showing any pictures of Muhammad and the way they did it was absolutely hilarious. But apparently you can't even speak the work "Muhammad" on Comedy Central. That Comedy Central allows them to ridicule anything and everything - any and all other religions are open game - but when it comes to anything Islam-related suddenly there's a whole new set of rules. Hypocrisy and cowardice at its finest.
I hope that the uncensored version makes its way out soon.
The solution is to start a movement among people with unlimited data plans to download as much stuff as they can as often as they can until the Cell companies include unlimited texting with unlimited data plans.
Oh, you don't want me to download 2 GBs a day every day? Just give me unlimited texting please.
I'm in the same situation, I got a data-enabled phone way back when Sprint was offering $10 for unlimited data and have had that transferred to my Treo 700p. So now I've got unlimited EVDO for only $10 a month and only pay a total of about $50 a month for 1000 minutes and other goodies. I like Sprint simply because they have good prices, for me at least. Try to find unlimited 3G data anywhere else for only $10 a month.
I'll probably be getting the iPhone 3G though so now I'm dreading having to pay $70 a month for 450 voice minutes, unlimited data and no text messages. I wish there could be some real competition, but if you want an iPhone you've only got one choice and AT&T knows it and will charge whatever they can get away with.
Do you really need a tower machine? No, but I'd rather not pay for a new monitor every time I buy a new computer. I've got a very nice monitor already and I don't want to pay a premium for an iMac and its built-in monitor. Give me something powerful (4 Core) with a replaceable video card, no built-in monitor and up to 8 GB of RAM and I'd be happy - i.e. something between a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro.
Actually, according to all rumors about "Snow Leopard", those are exactly the issues that it's supposed to address. That's the entire rumor about Snow Leopard, that it's going to be a quick release that won't add much in the way of features, but it will be cleaning out legacy code, squashing bugs, and making the whole thing run fast. Some people have also noted that the last time Apple did this (10.1) the upgrade was free.
And this is exactly why the rumors are very likely false at least in regards to no major new features. If there aren't any new features then Apple will have nothing to demo at WWDC. And if Steve Jobs is anything it's a showman - he's not going to get up and demo 10.6 if there aren't any new features to show off. If the rumors are true Jobs just might show off the new iPhone and make no mention of 10.6.
Here's what I think regarding the rumors:
No new big features, just a performance and stability release - very likely false.
Will drop support for Carbon - extremely likely false (more likely that there will be more Cocoa wrappers for Carbon).
Will be released in January 2009 - likely false (too soon especially with the release of the iPhone 2.0 & SDK).
Will drop PPC support - probably false (though I think this is the most likely of all the rumors).
I don't think we'll see much announced about 10.6 at WWDC. I think it's mostly going to be a big iPhone show. Of course I've been wrong too many times about Apple rumors, if anything it'll be interesting to see what happens.
It's uninformed BS like this that makes me sick. Carbon may have initially been a "backwards compatibility" layer in the initial versions of Mac OS X but since that time it has involved into a fully native modern API that is every bit as native as Cocoa is on Mac OS X. Modern Carbon applications work just as well, look just as good and can have just as many features as any Cocoa application.
Also, prior to WWDC 2007 Apple has never said that "You're not supposed to use Carbon anymore!" Apple has been evolving Carbon since Mac OS X has shipped (HIViews, Quartz 2D, HIThemes, HICocoaView, Carbon Events, etc.) and if you had a large, complex application that was already built in Carbon there was no compelling reason to switch to Cocoa, especially since Apple announced and provided a working version of 64-bit Carbon up until WWDC 2007. Yes Cocoa usually gets access to new APIs first, but you can usually access these fairly easy from Carbon if you want to. For new applications Cocoa has been a better choice over Carbon as Cocoa apps are easier to create and maintain. But if you've already got a very large and complex Carbon application (such as Photoshop) then there's never been a compelling reason to rewrite the app in Cocoa since anything you can do in Cocoa you can also do in Carbon (although usually with a bit more work).
It wasn't until WWDC 2007 that Carbon really became a dead API. Prior to WWDC 2007 Carbon had been updated regularly including many sessions on building applications with Carbon at every prior WWDC. And I believe the WWDC 2007 build of Leopard still included a working version of 64-bit Carbon (it was removed in seeds after WWDC). When it was realized that 64-bit Carbon was dead people had to ask (including Apple Engineers) - What is Carbon? Because really there are many parts of Cocoa that are built on top of Carbon. You couldn't just take out all of 64-bit Carbon and still have 64-bit Cocoa work. It was decided that Carbon for 64-bit intents and purposes was anything GUI related (Appearance Manager, HIView, HIToolbar, Menu Manager, etc). There are still a number of Carbon technologies that are available to 64-bit applications - much of Carbon Events, Core Foundation, ColorSync, etc.
There are some Apple applications that are built on Carbon as well - iTunes and Final Cut Pro for example. Final Cut would benefit from a 64-bit Cocoa version, but it's hard to see iTunes ever needing to be 64-bit. It might as well remain a 32-bit Carbon application and no one would ever care.
I think that dropping 64-bit support for Carbon was the good decision in the long run, but Apple really dropped the ball in the way they killed it. They should have done it at WWDC 2006 rather than give developers a year of play time with the soon-to-be-doom 64-bit Carbon. Had they done that Adobe and others could have started work on a 64-bit Cocoa port in 2006 rather than 2007 and there would have been a slim possibility of a 64-bit CS4.
The bottom line is that the blame is largely on Apple for this one. Adobe was using one of the two APIs that Apple has officially supported and continued to improve since Mac OS X shipped. Apple even announced the transition of this API to 64-bit and provided developers with every indication that it would be supported well into the future. Yes, Adobe might have looked at Cocoa and seen its benefits - more modern and easily maintainable with easy access to the latest Mac OS X technologies. But those benefits are lessened when compared to the task of rewriting a very large and complex program such as Photoshop (let alone the rest of the CS apps). Apple should have dropped 64-bit Carbon in 2006 (by never announcing it) to give developers the time to rewrite their applications, rather than drop it just months before they shipped Leopard.
The other side to this that News.com is reporting is that the music industry feels entitled to a cut of iPod sales. The key piece from that article is as follows:
At this stage in the game, the music industry feels it is entitled to something.
Entitled to something!? Are you kidding me? Entitled to a middle finger up their ass maybe. Certainly not entitled to stealing the profits of another company's successful product.
I'm not sure it's Apple that's thinking about this but rather the Music companies trying to push this on Apple. What they'd really want is a monthly fee from you every month of every year for the rest of your life. Oh and if you decide to stop paying, well then you're shit out of luck. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with paying for the music I want once and keeping it forever.
If you're looking for a Color-managed photo editing program (especially RAW processing) on Linux then you might want to give Bibble a try. While it doesn't offer all the features of Photoshop it is an excellent photo processing application. And best of all it is Color-managed on Linux.
I don't understand why there's no Mail application on the new touch. They give us Safari for web browsing, but no email client? It doesn't make sense. Sure there are those that will say that you can use web mail with Safari. But why would you want to use web mail designed for a desktop screen instead of an email app designed specifically for the iPod/iPhone?
Web mail sucks anyway. Besides, you couldn't configure a web mail client to auto check your email - say every time you have WiFi access. I really hope they include Mail at some point very soon in the future. Otherwise I think people will probably try to hack the Mail app on the iPhone to run on the iPod.
I'm not sure that fructose or high fructose corn syrup is what is making everyone fat, it's probably just that we're eating more high calorie products (sugar-based, fructose-based, etc.) than we used to. That being said, sugar-based soft drinks taste a hell of a lot better than high fructose corn syrup-based ones.
I recently moved to Texas and was introduced to Dublin Dr. Pepper which is bottled by the first and oldest Dr. Pepper bottler in Dublin, TX. They kept using pure cane sugar when everyone else switched to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It's somewhat hard to come by outside of Dublin, but if you can find it I highly recommend it. I've also tried some other sugar-based soft drinks (Mexican Coca-cola for one) and they have a much cleaner taste with no nasty aftertaste compared to other HFCS-based drinks.
PS If you live near Austin, TX then read Dublin Dr. Pepper and Austin to learn where to find a good, cheap source of Dublin Dr. Pepper near Austin.
That'd be my number one annoyance these days. The actual content of the article only takes up about one-third of the page and then they break it into 7 pages so you are bombarded with annoying adds and clutter. The other two-thirds of each page is full of adds and cluttered up links to other parts of their site. Their site is just as annoying as any of the 20 products they profile.
How about a nice clean layout that lets you actually read the article and not be distracted?
The subject says it all and this is why I love Sprint more than anything. I got a Treo 700p and was able to upgrade my old $10 unlimited data plan to unlimited EVDO for the same price. Normally it's $15-20 more a month, but even at that price it's a lot cheaper than most everybody else.
Customer support is good enough, but the best thing is the great price for high-speed data. I've clocked downloads at over 1 Mbps which is amazing to me for a phone. Who needs 802.11 WiFi when you've got unlimited EVDO?
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JPEG XR is actually quite good and is now an open standard. I recently did an extensive evaluation of JPEG 2000 vs. JPEG XR. While JPEG 2000 has slightly better compression quality (less visible artifacts) at the same file sizes it’s decode performance is substantially slower than JPEG XR (the same is true for encode performance, but decode is much more important). In my testing, one of the fastest JPEG 2000 libraries, Kakadu, is anywhere from 1.8 to 2x slower than JPEG XR at decoding files. Kakadu is a commercial framework, the open source OpenJPEG library is supposed to be substantially slower.
Compared to standard JPEG, JPEG XR has on average the same or very similar decode performance. The bottom line is that with JPEG XR you get compression quality and file sizes that are similar to JPEG 2000 with performance that is similar to standard JPEG. In my eyes, it’s the best successor available to replace JPEG. But it has a long uphill battle ahead of it.
That a software license covering a reference software implementation that Microsoft provided, not a patent license. They've made the patents freely available to implementers since 2007 as part of their Microsoft Open Specification Promise:
Microsoft has patents on the technology in JPEG XR. A Microsoft representative stated in a January 2007 interview that in order to encourage the adoption and use of HD Photo, the specification is made available under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise, which asserts that Microsoft allows implementation of the specification for free, and will not file suits on the patented technology for its implementation,[39] as reportedly stated by Josh Weisberg, director of Microsoft's Rich Media Group. As of 15 August 2010, Microsoft made the resulting JPEG XR standard available under its Community Promise.
I gather you haven't actually lived in Manhattan? Refills aren't free at most restaurants in NYC. It's just another one of those "taxes" that you pay for the privilege of living in the city.
Anyway, I'm glad I no longer live there especially with Bloomberg trying to pull crap like this.
That's what happens when you become a god.
His point is that local bandwidth is cheap but long-haul bandwidth is expensive and the equipment necessary to stream the kind of bandwidth Netflix needs to a significant portion of their customers simply can not be purchased and maintained for the current price of a residential broadband connection.
And I call that bullshit. For how many years have Comcast and other ISPs been overcharging their customers for the services they provide? If they sell unlimited bandwidth then they should expect heavy usage and they should be investing heavily in upgrading their network to support the bandwidth requirements of the future. Comcast's customers have been paying a premium for years to use the bandwidth. If Comcast was shortsighted enough to not see that bandwidth usage would be increasing dramatically then it's their own damn fault for not upgrading their infrastructure to keep pace.
The subscribers have been and are currently paying for the bandwidth. Level 3 shouldn't have to pay for something that Comcast's customers have already paid for.
Not to be a dick but I paid for the fucking bandwidth. And so did all of Comcast's other subscribers. Comcast is trying to double-dip here - chargin me, the subscriber, for the bandwidth as well as charging Level 3 for the bandwidth. And that's just bullshit.
Set up multi-tiered data plans and charge the bandwidth hogs accordingly.
Kind of like what AT&T just did for the iPhone and iPad?
No one that matters cares about this. By which I mean almost all consumers could care less if a product is endorsed by the FSF - the vast majority will have never heard of them.
Nobody cares anymore.
Oh you'll start caring if Skype pulls this same bullshit for their Android client and starts charging for Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G. I think you might care about that.
Why do you think that it took 2 years to get Skype on the iPhone?
Because Skype's been too busy with their thumb up their ass trying to figure out how to "monetize" Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G for the iPhone. And, as others have pointed out, Skype has been available for some time on the iPhone, they've just restricted it to only working over WiFi up until now.
AT&T lifted the 3G VOIP restriction months ago and Skype should have been able to release an update the day that AT&T did that. After all, it requires MORE code to check if you're on a 3G connection and display an error message. When there are no restrictions you don't need any code to check what type of connection you're using you just use the data connection without regard to where it's coming from. But no, Skype sat on their asses trying to figure out - Hey, how can we get iPhone users to pay us more money? Then some conceded dumb fuck said - I know, let's start charging for Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G, that will get us making some money.
Yeah, the service that's always been free for any other computer, phone or any other device. Skype's going to start charging us for the 3G data plan that we're already paying for. Well, I'm sorry Skype but you can go fuck yourselves if you think I'm going to pay you for that.
They made the change when they unveiled iPhone OS 4. That the release of CS 5 was coming soon is a coincidence and nothing more.
The problem is that the fundamentalist/extremist Muslims don't fear the repercussions of their actions. The reason why they don't fear retaliation is because we don't have the resolve or guts to break their will. In ancient warfare you decimated your enemy until he had no desire or will to continue fighting. There was no care or hesitation for collateral damage. That type of warfare will never happen in this day and age (at least not from us) which is why we'll never be able to fully suppress zealots such as these.
What Comedy Central did was absolutely pathetic. Parker & Stone had already self-censored the episode by not actually showing any pictures of Muhammad and the way they did it was absolutely hilarious. But apparently you can't even speak the work "Muhammad" on Comedy Central. That Comedy Central allows them to ridicule anything and everything - any and all other religions are open game - but when it comes to anything Islam-related suddenly there's a whole new set of rules. Hypocrisy and cowardice at its finest.
I hope that the uncensored version makes its way out soon.
Yes, because we should all get our security patches from unknown 3rd-Party sources. Sounds like a plan for success to me.
BTW, I've got this great IE patch, it makes the Internet 10x faster!
The solution is to start a movement among people with unlimited data plans to download as much stuff as they can as often as they can until the Cell companies include unlimited texting with unlimited data plans.
Oh, you don't want me to download 2 GBs a day every day? Just give me unlimited texting please.
I'm in the same situation, I got a data-enabled phone way back when Sprint was offering $10 for unlimited data and have had that transferred to my Treo 700p. So now I've got unlimited EVDO for only $10 a month and only pay a total of about $50 a month for 1000 minutes and other goodies. I like Sprint simply because they have good prices, for me at least. Try to find unlimited 3G data anywhere else for only $10 a month.
I'll probably be getting the iPhone 3G though so now I'm dreading having to pay $70 a month for 450 voice minutes, unlimited data and no text messages. I wish there could be some real competition, but if you want an iPhone you've only got one choice and AT&T knows it and will charge whatever they can get away with.
Actually, according to all rumors about "Snow Leopard", those are exactly the issues that it's supposed to address. That's the entire rumor about Snow Leopard, that it's going to be a quick release that won't add much in the way of features, but it will be cleaning out legacy code, squashing bugs, and making the whole thing run fast. Some people have also noted that the last time Apple did this (10.1) the upgrade was free.
And this is exactly why the rumors are very likely false at least in regards to no major new features. If there aren't any new features then Apple will have nothing to demo at WWDC. And if Steve Jobs is anything it's a showman - he's not going to get up and demo 10.6 if there aren't any new features to show off. If the rumors are true Jobs just might show off the new iPhone and make no mention of 10.6.Here's what I think regarding the rumors:
I don't think we'll see much announced about 10.6 at WWDC. I think it's mostly going to be a big iPhone show. Of course I've been wrong too many times about Apple rumors, if anything it'll be interesting to see what happens.
It's uninformed BS like this that makes me sick. Carbon may have initially been a "backwards compatibility" layer in the initial versions of Mac OS X but since that time it has involved into a fully native modern API that is every bit as native as Cocoa is on Mac OS X. Modern Carbon applications work just as well, look just as good and can have just as many features as any Cocoa application.
Also, prior to WWDC 2007 Apple has never said that "You're not supposed to use Carbon anymore!" Apple has been evolving Carbon since Mac OS X has shipped (HIViews, Quartz 2D, HIThemes, HICocoaView, Carbon Events, etc.) and if you had a large, complex application that was already built in Carbon there was no compelling reason to switch to Cocoa, especially since Apple announced and provided a working version of 64-bit Carbon up until WWDC 2007. Yes Cocoa usually gets access to new APIs first, but you can usually access these fairly easy from Carbon if you want to. For new applications Cocoa has been a better choice over Carbon as Cocoa apps are easier to create and maintain. But if you've already got a very large and complex Carbon application (such as Photoshop) then there's never been a compelling reason to rewrite the app in Cocoa since anything you can do in Cocoa you can also do in Carbon (although usually with a bit more work).
It wasn't until WWDC 2007 that Carbon really became a dead API. Prior to WWDC 2007 Carbon had been updated regularly including many sessions on building applications with Carbon at every prior WWDC. And I believe the WWDC 2007 build of Leopard still included a working version of 64-bit Carbon (it was removed in seeds after WWDC). When it was realized that 64-bit Carbon was dead people had to ask (including Apple Engineers) - What is Carbon? Because really there are many parts of Cocoa that are built on top of Carbon. You couldn't just take out all of 64-bit Carbon and still have 64-bit Cocoa work. It was decided that Carbon for 64-bit intents and purposes was anything GUI related (Appearance Manager, HIView, HIToolbar, Menu Manager, etc). There are still a number of Carbon technologies that are available to 64-bit applications - much of Carbon Events, Core Foundation, ColorSync, etc.
There are some Apple applications that are built on Carbon as well - iTunes and Final Cut Pro for example. Final Cut would benefit from a 64-bit Cocoa version, but it's hard to see iTunes ever needing to be 64-bit. It might as well remain a 32-bit Carbon application and no one would ever care.
I think that dropping 64-bit support for Carbon was the good decision in the long run, but Apple really dropped the ball in the way they killed it. They should have done it at WWDC 2006 rather than give developers a year of play time with the soon-to-be-doom 64-bit Carbon. Had they done that Adobe and others could have started work on a 64-bit Cocoa port in 2006 rather than 2007 and there would have been a slim possibility of a 64-bit CS4.
The bottom line is that the blame is largely on Apple for this one. Adobe was using one of the two APIs that Apple has officially supported and continued to improve since Mac OS X shipped. Apple even announced the transition of this API to 64-bit and provided developers with every indication that it would be supported well into the future. Yes, Adobe might have looked at Cocoa and seen its benefits - more modern and easily maintainable with easy access to the latest Mac OS X technologies. But those benefits are lessened when compared to the task of rewriting a very large and complex program such as Photoshop (let alone the rest of the CS apps). Apple should have dropped 64-bit Carbon in 2006 (by never announcing it) to give developers the time to rewrite their applications, rather than drop it just months before they shipped Leopard.
Entitled to something!? Are you kidding me? Entitled to a middle finger up their ass maybe. Certainly not entitled to stealing the profits of another company's successful product.
I'm not sure it's Apple that's thinking about this but rather the Music companies trying to push this on Apple. What they'd really want is a monthly fee from you every month of every year for the rest of your life. Oh and if you decide to stop paying, well then you're shit out of luck. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with paying for the music I want once and keeping it forever.
If you're looking for a Color-managed photo editing program (especially RAW processing) on Linux then you might want to give Bibble a try. While it doesn't offer all the features of Photoshop it is an excellent photo processing application. And best of all it is Color-managed on Linux.
Full disclosure: I work for Bibble Labs.
I don't understand why there's no Mail application on the new touch. They give us Safari for web browsing, but no email client? It doesn't make sense. Sure there are those that will say that you can use web mail with Safari. But why would you want to use web mail designed for a desktop screen instead of an email app designed specifically for the iPod/iPhone?
Web mail sucks anyway. Besides, you couldn't configure a web mail client to auto check your email - say every time you have WiFi access. I really hope they include Mail at some point very soon in the future. Otherwise I think people will probably try to hack the Mail app on the iPhone to run on the iPod.
Oh, and no Google Maps either!? WTF!
I'm not sure that fructose or high fructose corn syrup is what is making everyone fat, it's probably just that we're eating more high calorie products (sugar-based, fructose-based, etc.) than we used to. That being said, sugar-based soft drinks taste a hell of a lot better than high fructose corn syrup-based ones.
I recently moved to Texas and was introduced to Dublin Dr. Pepper which is bottled by the first and oldest Dr. Pepper bottler in Dublin, TX. They kept using pure cane sugar when everyone else switched to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It's somewhat hard to come by outside of Dublin, but if you can find it I highly recommend it. I've also tried some other sugar-based soft drinks (Mexican Coca-cola for one) and they have a much cleaner taste with no nasty aftertaste compared to other HFCS-based drinks.
PS If you live near Austin, TX then read Dublin Dr. Pepper and Austin to learn where to find a good, cheap source of Dublin Dr. Pepper near Austin.
That'd be my number one annoyance these days. The actual content of the article only takes up about one-third of the page and then they break it into 7 pages so you are bombarded with annoying adds and clutter. The other two-thirds of each page is full of adds and cluttered up links to other parts of their site. Their site is just as annoying as any of the 20 products they profile.
How about a nice clean layout that lets you actually read the article and not be distracted?
The subject says it all and this is why I love Sprint more than anything. I got a Treo 700p and was able to upgrade my old $10 unlimited data plan to unlimited EVDO for the same price. Normally it's $15-20 more a month, but even at that price it's a lot cheaper than most everybody else.
Customer support is good enough, but the best thing is the great price for high-speed data. I've clocked downloads at over 1 Mbps which is amazing to me for a phone. Who needs 802.11 WiFi when you've got unlimited EVDO?
Sprint all the way!