Re:This kind of hype was exactly the problem
on
The Long Shadow of Y2K
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Indeed - but unfortunately the hype these days has swung completely the other way, with Y2K viewed as a collosal non-event, and it's the programmers and Government - not the media who overhyped it the first place - who are portrayed as being stupid and worrying over nothing.
The point, AIUI, is that there were some genuine issues that needed fixing. And if nothing happened - well that's because they fixed the problems! But far from being praised, it's now widely assumed that Y2K was entirely a hoax, and that any money spent fixing it was a waste.
I wonder what will happen with the 2038 problem - I fear that attempts to fix this genuine problem will be hampered by the ignorant masses going "Oh it's just another Y2K, it's a load of old rubbish, what do these experts know!"...
Talking of bags, I find it hilarious - for decades, men have pigeoned themselves into being unable to carry a bag that's of a too small size, because it makes them "feminine" (the horror). And now we have a whole range of gadgets that people might want to carry, but they can't fit into their pockets. Perhaps one option to this is to produce trousers with ridiculous oversized pockets, but there comes a point (especially with netbooks) when it all fits much more easily in a small bag. Perhaps once and for all, technology can blow away this absurd and unnecessary gender difference.
Indeed - I guess the Iphone is now doomed to be restricted to a pathetic 320 × 480! Even my Nokia 5800, at a third of the price of the Iphone 3GS, is now capable of 640 x 360.
What was the first desktop Apple resolution? ducomputergeek seriously believes that Apple would be better off to have remained at that resolution!
Any decent computer system will support applications that can run independent of a fixed computer resolution. If Iphone applications aren't up to that capability, too bad.
Using my Nokia 5800 with a stylus, rather than fingers, makes the touch keyboard work fine. Handwriting recognition is even better. And no, that doesn't make it an Iphone wannabe - Nokia were making phones long before the Iphone was even thought of, and Apple are still playing catchup to feature phones, let alone smart phones.
Well sure, I just don't think that this has anything to do with the pros or cons of monarchies, since the "person who is appointed to tell the people to get out of office" doesn't have to be a "king" - what you call him or her is just a label. This system also isn't how the UK, or any monarchy in existence, functions AFAIK.
Also the difficulties of this system are not the final point of kicking them out - as I say, generally politicians in western democracies have followed the rules of when they must give up their power, the difficulty is in deciding what those rules are.
Even in non-monarchies such as the US, politicians have to leave when they are voted out, or otherwise follow the legal rules.
revoke the right of the person with absolute power when certain conditions are met
Right, so by your own argument, the "king" has to give up his power if he oversteps the mark, so if that can be done without needing an extra "person to boot out the king", why can't it be done for the politicians? Why don't the public boot out the politicians if they break certain agreed rules - no "king" needed?
I think our whole notion of what government should be has become corrupted and because things are so time consuming and it's a fully time job we need to employ regular people from different walks of life who are passionate about the future of their society
How is that different to what we have now? How would these "regular people" be chosen?
I'm still unclear - does the king make the final decisions (based on "evidence")? Or is it decided by the people, and the king does what the result of the vote or whatever tells him?
What do you mean by "check"? Certainly not a veto - the moment she vetoed any legislation, would be the end of her power to veto. And even if she happened to veto a law I also didn't want, I would be very wary of one person having that power. What happens when she vetos a law I do want?
We already have a much better veto system, as I said here - the House of Lords serves as an unelected house that provides a check. Improvements could be made, sure, but focusing the veto system on a single person chosen through birth is not one of them.
If you don't mean a veto, then what check do you mean?
She's neutral -- she's, ironically, the real voice of the people in gov't
So because she doesn't say anything, that makes her the real voice? That's a lot of use!
I don't see she's anymore neutral than many citizens who also either have no views or keep their views to themselves.
Also note that just because she might not endorse one political party doesn't mean she is neutral in her views (e.g., she gets primetime opportunity to give her views on political and other issues, particularly on religion, in the Christmas speech). And other members of the royal family also use their position to give opinions on political matters (e.g., http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/hunting/Prince--Ill-leave-Britain.2363203.jp ).
Please don't tell me the Queen is neutral when she's sitting on primetime national TV on Christmas Day telling us of the virtues of faith - including people of all faiths, whilst ignoring agnostics and atheists (and this is also a political issue in the UK right now, when you consider issues of things like "Faith schools").
Okay, so we get a king to fire politicians - how is it chosen which ones he fires? And what happens after that - we hold another election, and the same people might get elected anyway?
It might be an interesting idea to allow the people to somehow force a bielection or even general election - but you still don't need a king to do that. Our democracy may have flaws, but the MPs do leave when the rules say they have to - there hasn't been any occasion where people have refused to leave office, and therefore I don't see why a "king" is needed, or how that would make any difference.
If this king is only doing exactly what he is told to, and has no powers to do anything else, then what difference does it make? It's just a rubber-stamp monarch (a bit like what we have now, anyway).
Mod abuse again - you got modded troll, but you were pretty close on. 4 Apple products is still way disproportionate (especially with nonsensical mentions like the G4 and the Iphone). Surprisingly Microsoft also got the X Box, but you were right that their other entry was only shared with an Apple product. And you were dead on with the USB flash drive.
Let's think - it's dated 30th December 2009. They start off with "As 2009 winds down and we try to come up with new and clever ways of referring to the early years of this century, there's really only one thing left to do: declare our ten favorite gadgets of the aughts"
Sure they don't explicitly give the dates, but which decade do you think they refer to? February 2nd 1943 to February 1st 1953, perhaps?
You do realise that any 10 years is a decade? The year 10 in fact belongs in ten decades - as does any year.
But traditionally people group the years into blocks that run X0-X9, probably because it's easy to say things like "eighties" and "nineties". This is the "naughties", which is 2000-2009.
If you want to run your own article next year for 2001-2010, no one is stopping you. But that's got nothing to do with this article, which has nothing wrong with it regarding the years chosen.
I had an old brand TV. Good piece of equipment. Ancient, truely ancient. Manufactured in 73. It lasted until the early 90s. Then I bought a new one when it finally was beyond repair (it had two repairs, first time in the early 80s
So in other words, your first TV lasted ten years or less before it needed repairing. The second one lasted ten years (did it need repairing before that?) And your current one after seven years is in need of repairing.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure this is compelling evidence of any dramatic change, or indeed any change, especially when we have such a small sample.
Now, I'd like to replace it with something that lasts me another 5+ years. I'm willing to pay for it, but I guess no matter what money I am willing to invest, I won't get anything that will last 5+ years.
But there's more to the mobile market than Apple and Motorola!
One of Motorola's bad points with phones was UIs, but I've found Nokia for example much better than them too, and they were around long before the Iphone. It didn't need Apple to save the industry (especially since at least Motorola phones could do basic UI things like copy/paste).
Also note that the Iphone came several years later, and was vastly more expensive than the RAZR - you'd damn well hope it was an improvement. That's not "alter the mobile landscape", it's just the normal advancement of technology, as well as getting what you pay for.
That's all well and good until the king has views that you don't agree with. And sure, some people might want the Government asshats kicked out, but some people might not. And then people might not agree on who are the asshats in the first place. So how do we decide? Maybe we could, I dunno, have a vote for it? But then why do you need the king?
Government asshats are easier to vote out than a king asshat...
And it's irrelevant to the UK monarchy, as in practice she has no political power. OTOH, we do have the house of lords as a 2nd unelected house. So the usual argument that we'd be left with the elected politicians having absolute power is wrong, on two counts. Just because someone is against the monarchy doesn't mean that they oppose having a second unelected house.
Yes, I wonder what the point of the monarchy is. If you want to give me 30 million quid a year, I'll rubber stamp your honours list. Hell, I'd do it for 10 million.
I think that the ipod and iphone are probably the most significant devices but not just for what they are but for what they presage.... Iphone put a crack in the usual walled garden arrangement of US carriers and is showing competitors how to do things.
Well that explains why, out of the US, we wonder what the fuss is about. FWIW, it's been that way outside of the US long before the Iphone turned up late, and it doesn't define anything this decade.
Indeed, the only walled garden we see is the Iphone itself, with its locked down nature, lots of useful functions disabled unless you hack it, and only being allowed to run apps from the Apple store.
...and I agree about the G4 - no one thinks about the 2000s and goes "Ah yes, that was when everyone used Mac G4s". Even if one is taking an Apple-biased view of the decade, the G4 is a dead end, with the move to Intel.
Let's have a look at the size of that RDF:
the titanium PowerBook G4 stands as one of those pivotal moments in Apple design history -- a moment when everyone (even non-fanboys) had to take notice
Jesus - seriously? The author of this article needs to get a grip on reality, and get a sense of perspective. Not everyone has the same view, or sense of importance, of whatever 10 gadgets he personally liked.
Agreed but I'd go one step further: I can see the Ipod (it's the most popular mp3 player by far), but not the Iphone. It wasn't the first phone to combine PDA and phone features as they think - that happened long before, and was commonplace on even feature phones, which could access the real Internet and run apps by 2005 or earlier. It certainly wasn't the first smartphone (even their own list includes earlier examples), nor was it the phone to transform them "from niche accessories into must-have status symbols" as they allege. With only a few per cent market share even now, and far fewer sales with the original Iphone, how could they? Instead try Nokia at 40% market share, who have done far more to bring smartphones to the masses. (It's debatable whether the Iphone, especially the first model, counts as a smartphone anyway, and not a feature phone.)
If they're including it because it combined a phone with the Ipod, then that's double counting since the Ipod already has a place (and by 2007, or even 2005, playing mp3s on phones was commonplace).
Then we have the nonsense of "full touch is the new black, finger-friendly UIs are virtually required, and world-class industrial design is a given. The game has changed." - yeah, because obviously no one would have introduced touch if Apple hadn't done it (the reality is that Apple weren't first, and it was an obvious improvement that everyone would want once the technology was perfected and cheap enough), and having good looking phones was a feature long before Apple came to the game late.
It's particularly bizarre, and shows how lacking in facts the article is, when the inset starts "3G changed everything" - yet 3G became commonplace in 2005, while the first Iphone in 2007 still didn't have basic features like 3G.
It ends with the laughable nonsense of "introduced the mass market to the mobile internet. Apple single handedly jumpstarted the mobile applications market while simultaneously re-defining the carrier and handset vendor relationship." Please! The basic facts are that most of the mass of the market are accessing the mobile internet through methods other than Apple. And that's before we take account of all the people who are using netbooks and 3G dongles (which Apple have no presence in whatsoever).
Indeed, if we're going to credit someone for introducing mobile broadband, what about the phone networks and 3G?
Jumpstarting the mobile applications market is nonsense - native apps were common long before Apple, and if anyone deserves real credit here, it should be Java by allowing a cross-platform standard that two billion Java phones can all run.
At least they do mention other earlier non-Apple phones, but for the later generation, I'd expect to see something from a company like Nokia. They already mention the Palm Treo, and stuff Blackberry and Android as "Honorable mentions" - why does the Iphone deserve its own entry? And on that note, why does no Nokia phone, the most dominant smartphone company in the world, even get a mention?
Indeed, although note that it's only with the Ipod that Apple made a dominant product, with the word becoming a generic term for that market.
With everything else - computers, phones - their product remained a niche, and other companies don't give a damn about trying to copy them. Yet still, despite them not being the inventors, or the first companies to do it, you have Apple fans and the media claiming that Apple "invented" or "popularised" it...
All new phones these days are status symbols. E.g., today people see you with a touch screen, but it's not like they can get close and see whether it's a £50 touch screen phone, or a £600 overpriced Jesus phone.
More expensive phones can be found, but there isn't this feeling that an iPhone is "just good enough for the basics until I buy a 'real' phone". What people tend to want isn't another phone, it's the next generation of iPhone.
Eh? Given that the Iphone is one of the most expensive on the market, of course people buying it aren't buying it as a "barely good enough"! And this is nothing new with the Iphone - it's always been the case that if you buy the most expensive phone, it's going to be one of the best until next generation phones come along.
Anyway, whether people buy high or low end phones, people have always kept their phones until the next generation came along. Why would you buy a phone, only to throw it away straight away and buy another phone? I don't understand what your distinction between "real" phones and other phones are.
And I'd like to see a citation that people are more likely to stick with Iphones, compared with other makes of phone (and even if it was true, I'm not sure that says anything special about the Iphone - it just means there are a load of loyal Apple fans, which isn't really news).
So in short, your post is yet another "let's make up some mystical significance about the Iphone", when no such significance exists.
As bizarre as it sounds, the drug laws are so batshit and inconsistent in many countries that it wouldn't surprise me that it's actually the new synthehol that gets banned, whilst alcohol remains legal! This is commonly the case with any new chemical (e.g., the recent UK's criminalisation on "legal highs"). All it takes is single death that can be indirectly related to it, a scaremongering campaign by a grieving mother, and it'll be banned.
Indeed, from TFA:
"No ones ever tried targeting this before, possibly because it will be so hard to get it past the regulators. Most of the benzos are controlled under the Medicines Act. The law gives a privileged position to alcohol, which has been around for 3,000 years. But why not use advances in pharmacology to find something safer and better?"
Also note that Professor Nutt, who is quoted, was recently sacked as a Government advisor, because the factual scientific evidence he presented was deemed incompatible with the Government's views on drugs.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed - but unfortunately the hype these days has swung completely the other way, with Y2K viewed as a collosal non-event, and it's the programmers and Government - not the media who overhyped it the first place - who are portrayed as being stupid and worrying over nothing.
The point, AIUI, is that there were some genuine issues that needed fixing. And if nothing happened - well that's because they fixed the problems! But far from being praised, it's now widely assumed that Y2K was entirely a hoax, and that any money spent fixing it was a waste.
I wonder what will happen with the 2038 problem - I fear that attempts to fix this genuine problem will be hampered by the ignorant masses going "Oh it's just another Y2K, it's a load of old rubbish, what do these experts know!"...
Talking of bags, I find it hilarious - for decades, men have pigeoned themselves into being unable to carry a bag that's of a too small size, because it makes them "feminine" (the horror). And now we have a whole range of gadgets that people might want to carry, but they can't fit into their pockets. Perhaps one option to this is to produce trousers with ridiculous oversized pockets, but there comes a point (especially with netbooks) when it all fits much more easily in a small bag. Perhaps once and for all, technology can blow away this absurd and unnecessary gender difference.
Indeed - I guess the Iphone is now doomed to be restricted to a pathetic 320 × 480! Even my Nokia 5800, at a third of the price of the Iphone 3GS, is now capable of 640 x 360.
What was the first desktop Apple resolution? ducomputergeek seriously believes that Apple would be better off to have remained at that resolution!
Any decent computer system will support applications that can run independent of a fixed computer resolution. If Iphone applications aren't up to that capability, too bad.
Using my Nokia 5800 with a stylus, rather than fingers, makes the touch keyboard work fine. Handwriting recognition is even better. And no, that doesn't make it an Iphone wannabe - Nokia were making phones long before the Iphone was even thought of, and Apple are still playing catchup to feature phones, let alone smart phones.
Indeed, anyone would think this was about a rumoured next generation Iphone device!
Well sure, I just don't think that this has anything to do with the pros or cons of monarchies, since the "person who is appointed to tell the people to get out of office" doesn't have to be a "king" - what you call him or her is just a label. This system also isn't how the UK, or any monarchy in existence, functions AFAIK.
Also the difficulties of this system are not the final point of kicking them out - as I say, generally politicians in western democracies have followed the rules of when they must give up their power, the difficulty is in deciding what those rules are.
Even in non-monarchies such as the US, politicians have to leave when they are voted out, or otherwise follow the legal rules.
revoke the right of the person with absolute power when certain conditions are met
Right, so by your own argument, the "king" has to give up his power if he oversteps the mark, so if that can be done without needing an extra "person to boot out the king", why can't it be done for the politicians? Why don't the public boot out the politicians if they break certain agreed rules - no "king" needed?
I think our whole notion of what government should be has become corrupted and because things are so time consuming and it's a fully time job we need to employ regular people from different walks of life who are passionate about the future of their society
How is that different to what we have now? How would these "regular people" be chosen?
I'm still unclear - does the king make the final decisions (based on "evidence")? Or is it decided by the people, and the king does what the result of the vote or whatever tells him?
What do you mean by "check"? Certainly not a veto - the moment she vetoed any legislation, would be the end of her power to veto. And even if she happened to veto a law I also didn't want, I would be very wary of one person having that power. What happens when she vetos a law I do want?
We already have a much better veto system, as I said here - the House of Lords serves as an unelected house that provides a check. Improvements could be made, sure, but focusing the veto system on a single person chosen through birth is not one of them.
If you don't mean a veto, then what check do you mean?
She's neutral -- she's, ironically, the real voice of the people in gov't
So because she doesn't say anything, that makes her the real voice? That's a lot of use!
I don't see she's anymore neutral than many citizens who also either have no views or keep their views to themselves.
Also note that just because she might not endorse one political party doesn't mean she is neutral in her views (e.g., she gets primetime opportunity to give her views on political and other issues, particularly on religion, in the Christmas speech). And other members of the royal family also use their position to give opinions on political matters (e.g., http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/hunting/Prince--Ill-leave-Britain.2363203.jp ).
Please don't tell me the Queen is neutral when she's sitting on primetime national TV on Christmas Day telling us of the virtues of faith - including people of all faiths, whilst ignoring agnostics and atheists (and this is also a political issue in the UK right now, when you consider issues of things like "Faith schools").
Okay, so we get a king to fire politicians - how is it chosen which ones he fires? And what happens after that - we hold another election, and the same people might get elected anyway?
It might be an interesting idea to allow the people to somehow force a bielection or even general election - but you still don't need a king to do that. Our democracy may have flaws, but the MPs do leave when the rules say they have to - there hasn't been any occasion where people have refused to leave office, and therefore I don't see why a "king" is needed, or how that would make any difference.
If this king is only doing exactly what he is told to, and has no powers to do anything else, then what difference does it make? It's just a rubber-stamp monarch (a bit like what we have now, anyway).
Mod abuse again - you got modded troll, but you were pretty close on. 4 Apple products is still way disproportionate (especially with nonsensical mentions like the G4 and the Iphone). Surprisingly Microsoft also got the X Box, but you were right that their other entry was only shared with an Apple product. And you were dead on with the USB flash drive.
Let's think - it's dated 30th December 2009. They start off with "As 2009 winds down and we try to come up with new and clever ways of referring to the early years of this century, there's really only one thing left to do: declare our ten favorite gadgets of the aughts"
Sure they don't explicitly give the dates, but which decade do you think they refer to? February 2nd 1943 to February 1st 1953, perhaps?
You do realise that any 10 years is a decade? The year 10 in fact belongs in ten decades - as does any year.
But traditionally people group the years into blocks that run X0-X9, probably because it's easy to say things like "eighties" and "nineties". This is the "naughties", which is 2000-2009.
If you want to run your own article next year for 2001-2010, no one is stopping you. But that's got nothing to do with this article, which has nothing wrong with it regarding the years chosen.
I had an old brand TV. Good piece of equipment. Ancient, truely ancient. Manufactured in 73. It lasted until the early 90s. Then I bought a new one when it finally was beyond repair (it had two repairs, first time in the early 80s
So in other words, your first TV lasted ten years or less before it needed repairing. The second one lasted ten years (did it need repairing before that?) And your current one after seven years is in need of repairing.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure this is compelling evidence of any dramatic change, or indeed any change, especially when we have such a small sample.
Now, I'd like to replace it with something that lasts me another 5+ years. I'm willing to pay for it, but I guess no matter what money I am willing to invest, I won't get anything that will last 5+ years.
On what evidence do you base this claim?
But there's more to the mobile market than Apple and Motorola!
One of Motorola's bad points with phones was UIs, but I've found Nokia for example much better than them too, and they were around long before the Iphone. It didn't need Apple to save the industry (especially since at least Motorola phones could do basic UI things like copy/paste).
Also note that the Iphone came several years later, and was vastly more expensive than the RAZR - you'd damn well hope it was an improvement. That's not "alter the mobile landscape", it's just the normal advancement of technology, as well as getting what you pay for.
That's all well and good until the king has views that you don't agree with. And sure, some people might want the Government asshats kicked out, but some people might not. And then people might not agree on who are the asshats in the first place. So how do we decide? Maybe we could, I dunno, have a vote for it? But then why do you need the king?
Government asshats are easier to vote out than a king asshat...
And it's irrelevant to the UK monarchy, as in practice she has no political power. OTOH, we do have the house of lords as a 2nd unelected house. So the usual argument that we'd be left with the elected politicians having absolute power is wrong, on two counts. Just because someone is against the monarchy doesn't mean that they oppose having a second unelected house.
Yes, I wonder what the point of the monarchy is. If you want to give me 30 million quid a year, I'll rubber stamp your honours list. Hell, I'd do it for 10 million.
I think that the ipod and iphone are probably the most significant devices but not just for what they are but for what they presage. ... Iphone put a crack in the usual walled garden arrangement of US carriers and is showing competitors how to do things.
Well that explains why, out of the US, we wonder what the fuss is about. FWIW, it's been that way outside of the US long before the Iphone turned up late, and it doesn't define anything this decade.
Indeed, the only walled garden we see is the Iphone itself, with its locked down nature, lots of useful functions disabled unless you hack it, and only being allowed to run apps from the Apple store.
...and I agree about the G4 - no one thinks about the 2000s and goes "Ah yes, that was when everyone used Mac G4s". Even if one is taking an Apple-biased view of the decade, the G4 is a dead end, with the move to Intel.
Let's have a look at the size of that RDF:
the titanium PowerBook G4 stands as one of those pivotal moments in Apple design history -- a moment when everyone (even non-fanboys) had to take notice
Jesus - seriously? The author of this article needs to get a grip on reality, and get a sense of perspective. Not everyone has the same view, or sense of importance, of whatever 10 gadgets he personally liked.
Agreed but I'd go one step further: I can see the Ipod (it's the most popular mp3 player by far), but not the Iphone. It wasn't the first phone to combine PDA and phone features as they think - that happened long before, and was commonplace on even feature phones, which could access the real Internet and run apps by 2005 or earlier. It certainly wasn't the first smartphone (even their own list includes earlier examples), nor was it the phone to transform them "from niche accessories into must-have status symbols" as they allege. With only a few per cent market share even now, and far fewer sales with the original Iphone, how could they? Instead try Nokia at 40% market share, who have done far more to bring smartphones to the masses. (It's debatable whether the Iphone, especially the first model, counts as a smartphone anyway, and not a feature phone.)
If they're including it because it combined a phone with the Ipod, then that's double counting since the Ipod already has a place (and by 2007, or even 2005, playing mp3s on phones was commonplace).
Then we have the nonsense of "full touch is the new black, finger-friendly UIs are virtually required, and world-class industrial design is a given. The game has changed." - yeah, because obviously no one would have introduced touch if Apple hadn't done it (the reality is that Apple weren't first, and it was an obvious improvement that everyone would want once the technology was perfected and cheap enough), and having good looking phones was a feature long before Apple came to the game late.
It's particularly bizarre, and shows how lacking in facts the article is, when the inset starts "3G changed everything" - yet 3G became commonplace in 2005, while the first Iphone in 2007 still didn't have basic features like 3G.
It ends with the laughable nonsense of "introduced the mass market to the mobile internet. Apple single handedly jumpstarted the mobile applications market while simultaneously re-defining the carrier and handset vendor relationship." Please! The basic facts are that most of the mass of the market are accessing the mobile internet through methods other than Apple. And that's before we take account of all the people who are using netbooks and 3G dongles (which Apple have no presence in whatsoever).
Indeed, if we're going to credit someone for introducing mobile broadband, what about the phone networks and 3G?
Jumpstarting the mobile applications market is nonsense - native apps were common long before Apple, and if anyone deserves real credit here, it should be Java by allowing a cross-platform standard that two billion Java phones can all run.
At least they do mention other earlier non-Apple phones, but for the later generation, I'd expect to see something from a company like Nokia. They already mention the Palm Treo, and stuff Blackberry and Android as "Honorable mentions" - why does the Iphone deserve its own entry? And on that note, why does no Nokia phone, the most dominant smartphone company in the world, even get a mention?
Indeed, although note that it's only with the Ipod that Apple made a dominant product, with the word becoming a generic term for that market.
With everything else - computers, phones - their product remained a niche, and other companies don't give a damn about trying to copy them. Yet still, despite them not being the inventors, or the first companies to do it, you have Apple fans and the media claiming that Apple "invented" or "popularised" it...
All new phones these days are status symbols. E.g., today people see you with a touch screen, but it's not like they can get close and see whether it's a £50 touch screen phone, or a £600 overpriced Jesus phone.
More expensive phones can be found, but there isn't this feeling that an iPhone is "just good enough for the basics until I buy a 'real' phone". What people tend to want isn't another phone, it's the next generation of iPhone.
Eh? Given that the Iphone is one of the most expensive on the market, of course people buying it aren't buying it as a "barely good enough"! And this is nothing new with the Iphone - it's always been the case that if you buy the most expensive phone, it's going to be one of the best until next generation phones come along.
Anyway, whether people buy high or low end phones, people have always kept their phones until the next generation came along. Why would you buy a phone, only to throw it away straight away and buy another phone? I don't understand what your distinction between "real" phones and other phones are.
And I'd like to see a citation that people are more likely to stick with Iphones, compared with other makes of phone (and even if it was true, I'm not sure that says anything special about the Iphone - it just means there are a load of loyal Apple fans, which isn't really news).
So in short, your post is yet another "let's make up some mystical significance about the Iphone", when no such significance exists.
Will a touch screen dial do? Possible on the Nokia 5800: http://nokia5800.net/nokia-app-rotary-dialer-touch/
And you can always warble a digital sound that sounds identical to a ring (which is what my Nokia 5800 does)...
Note there are smartphones in the low end too (e.g., the Nokia 5800 I got without contract at £180).
As bizarre as it sounds, the drug laws are so batshit and inconsistent in many countries that it wouldn't surprise me that it's actually the new synthehol that gets banned, whilst alcohol remains legal! This is commonly the case with any new chemical (e.g., the recent UK's criminalisation on "legal highs"). All it takes is single death that can be indirectly related to it, a scaremongering campaign by a grieving mother, and it'll be banned.
Indeed, from TFA:
"No ones ever tried targeting this before, possibly because it will be so hard to get it past the regulators. Most of the benzos are controlled under the Medicines Act. The law gives a privileged position to alcohol, which has been around for 3,000 years. But why not use advances in pharmacology to find something safer and better?"
Also note that Professor Nutt, who is quoted, was recently sacked as a Government advisor, because the factual scientific evidence he presented was deemed incompatible with the Government's views on drugs.