I'm sorry, but to all those who say that they're using their mod-chips for legitimate purposes: who are you trying to fool? I can see the point that you might not want your kids or your dogs chewing on your games. Here's your legal solution: DON'T FEED THEM TO YOUR DOGS. If you're too stupid or lazy to keep them out of harm's reach, then you don't deserve to have them. God help your kids if you ever decide to own firearms....
Having lived in a college dorm, I can tell you the real use of mod-chips is for downloading games that you don't own and playing them.... How did this get modded up? -1 Troll. First, it's unrealistic to ask people to treat everything that they own with the same care that they treat a firearm. If you did everything in your house would be locked up in a safe. The analogy is asinine.
And, as many people have pointed out, yes, poor college/high school students tend to pirate games. Your "college dorm room" example may be true, but it also represents a portion of the population that wouldn't have bought the game anyways. People with real jobs and disposable incomes generally buy games because they are willing to support the software company and because it's simply a more efficient use of their time to purchase the game than it is to download, find crack, play with DVD/CD imaging tool, etc.
In any case, the world doesn't begin and end in the college dorm room. Maybe this doesn't apply to you, but those of us with real jobs like to be able to back up the games that we buy.
I just added a new eBay account last night, and when setting my user preferences I noticed two settings for targeted ads from ebay. I opted out of each option in one second.
Sorry to hear this is bothering multitudes of people --- but it is REALLY SIMPLE to disable. You missed the point. The sellers are complaining that by default, this stuff is turned on for the people buying, taking away their business. They aren't bothered by the fact that the ads are on their screen, they are bothered by the fact that the ads hurt business, and since they are paying e-bay to serve as their conduit, e-bay's actions create a conflict of interest.
On the other hand, any self-professed Ubuntu/Mac guy is not who I look to for advice about Windows. Flamebait? Don't have a logical fallacy sig and expect to get away with ad hominem:p. Regardless of who says it, Vista has yet to prove to be anything other than a piece of junk. I think advising MS to pack up and move on to better things is good advice. Windows XP was a welcome relief to Windows ME, and I'm sure whatever shows up after Vista will be a welcome replacement as well.
Due to certain applications I need to run, I am forced to keep a Windows PC around. It runs XP, and will likely continue to do so until absolutely forced to otherwise. Fortunately for us, it's the application that dictate the OS, so as long as everyone hates Vista, companies will continue to develop software that runs on XP.
Apple has already explicitly stated that they are not going to intentionally or proactively do anything to unlocked phones....
Oh, I know a lot of you really want to believe Apple is actually going to intentionally damage phones that are unlocked. Sorry to disappoint, but that is simply not the case.
It isn't? How do you know, because they said so? If you really believe that I have some land in Florida I'd like to sell you. There is clear motive, means, and opportunity to do so, and it's not a big leap to believe that they would.
If a firmware update breaks the iPhone, proving they do so intentionally is not as hard as you might think. In civil court, "preponderance of the evidence" (a.k.a. "more likely than not") is sufficient, unlike criminal court.
Way to miss the point. All I'm saying is, it's inaccurate to claim that Ubuntu isn't ready for the average user. Rather, Dell's system isn't ready for the average user. Another computer company who actually puts an effort into tuning the Ubuntu based systems that they shipped may very well be ready for the average user. The story seems to try to tell the "average uesr" reader to avoid the OS as a whole, which is inaccurate.
To be fair, he's not reviewing Ubuntu, he's reviewing Dell's configuration of Ubuntu. A clean install of windows can't do a lot of the things he complains about the Ubuntu system not being able to do either. However, when Dell ships a Windows desktop, it comes preloaded in a way that it works out of the box with pre-configured software for common tasks, like watching DVD's, syncing your iPod (assuming you bought it with the system), etc. Blaming these faults on the OS is wrong. If Dell had configured all the software to the degree that they configure Windows systems before shipping, the result would be different. Similiarly, if you ship a PC where you slapped the base Windows OS on it without installing all the applications that Dell PCs normally come with, the normal user would have an equally bad time trying to get their system to do everything they wanted (arguably harder on Windows, cause Ubuntu's package manager beats downloading/installing each application manually any day).
I don't think there's any room for interpretation of the word "unlimited." If they use that word, they need to be sued. They have stopped using the word "unlimited" on their site for a while now. They now simply don't mention any limit at all. They basically downgraded themselves from "lawsuit bait" to "deceptive marketer." There's so much other stuff at the "lawsuit bait" level that this downgrade no longer makes them/. worthy, in my opinion.
Oh well, I'm heading back to the threads on Microsoft and the RIAA so I can get back to feeling pissed off.
Here we go again. Let us keep adjusting society based off of the dumbest individuals and not the average individual.
I read the article and decided to try to get some sponsored links to appear. Doing a search for "Digital Camera" resulted in some pretty obviously highlighted results that have the words "Sponsored Links" in the highlight. Who the hell is this not clear enough for? I am not an advocate of mass murder but we really need to figure out a way to weed the gene pool. You do realize that doing a search on google and looking for the phrase "sponsored links" is a pretty dumb way to test how easy it is to recognize sponsored links right? If you're consciously aware of the distinction and looking for it, it in no way simulates actual usage.
Sure, even as a novice user, if you submit a search to google, and when you look at the results, you're consciously trying to pick out which links are sponsored links, it's easy. But that's not how people operate. When you search on google, you're looking for results, you don't consciously scan for which links may or may not be sponsored by google. When you get your result page, your instinct is to simply read from the top down. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that if the most intuitive way that people view the results gets you clicking a bunched of sponsored links, it's somewhat deceptive. Is it that bad of a deception? Probably not. Is it legal? Probably. But there are plenty of legal ways to deceive consumers, so the fact that it's not egregious and legal doesn't mean they couldn't be more clear.
I hate to tell you this but, people who read/. do not represent the average individual. The average age 25+ person in the U.S. is a high school graduate making less than $30,000 a year. And among those people, they are mostly clueless about the nuances of computing such differentiating between a sponsored and normal search result.
You can't use a non-AT&T SIM card with an iPhone. You'd have to open up your iPhone and solder/upload the hack to unlock it. So, swapping to a pay-as-you-go SIM card is not a realistic solution for most iPhone owners.
It sounds like those entertainment lawyers DCMA'd one too many people. The lawyers start letting the fact that they were able to trample on the little people get to their head and eventually piss off someone big enough and with enough teeth to fight back. When SCO declared they were going to start charging $699 Linux licenses, it was the little guys who were concerned. Then they picked on Novell and IBM and look where they are now: Litigated into oblivion.
Microsoft doesn't consider performance and stability to be features?
I guess they think that if the software behaves abnormally, "It's not a bug, it's a feature." Therefore, when you introduce performance and stability, they aren't features.
Move along... Nothing to see here... this has been going on for over two weeks and has only 92 votes. This sample is so unrepresentative it's not funny. When they have well over 10,000 votes and have done a statistical analysis based on age, gender, household income, etc., let me know.
It's true that the poll is flawed, but it's flawed because the respondants aren't chosen randomly, since the people who visit clearware.org are 1) people who are interested license agreements, and 2) more recently, the people who read slashdot. Two groups who probably read the EULA more than the average software user.
Sample size (especially given that the number of responses is growing rapidly due to the site getting/.'d) isn't the problem. There's a lot of misconceptions about the statistical math behind samples sizes and margin of error. The sample size needed doesn't have a linear relationship to the size of the population. For a poll covering a population of 200 million or so people, you only need a sample size of ~400 or so people to get a reasonable (+/- 5%) result. You do not need a poll in the 10,000+ range, because a result doesn't have to be right on the nose to be signifigant. A margin of error of 5% in a poll like this still makes a compelling point.
Next time you see a poll, don't dismiss it just because the sample size isn't in the thousands or tens of thousands. It doesn't have to be.
Keep your politics, religion, sexual orientation, etc out of the game and play to have fun dammit.
Or... how about I play the game how I want to play and you play how you want to play? You're not required to join a guild that is based on any of the above factors. You have no business telling other people how to have fun. If you want to hate them because you're an elitist, go ahead, but the people who play WoW for the social aspects of the game have as much right to be there as you do.
In what way was the embaressing tale of Gannon related to open source journalism?
To answer your question, you need but read the article linked to in the story. Basically, the reason Gannon was exposed is because so many Bloggers (open source journalists) started writing about it, until there were so many articles about it on blogs that the mainstream media had no choice but to pick up the story.
The Gannon story is just an example of the power of open source journalism.
Obviously owning a physical DVD also allows you to turn it into P2P-friendly files, but that can't be fined yet since it hasn't happened, while the downloader already possesses the file.
Your interpretation is inconsistent. Either you penalize people for the potential to commit the crime or you don't. It's not illegal to own copyrighted material in a P2P friendly format. It's illegal to distribute them.
You're making the arguement that, in the shoplifter's case, he COULD redistribute the movie he stole, but he hasn't yet, so he isn't punished for it.
However, you missed the fact that, in the downloader's case, he COULD redistribute the movie he stole, but he hasn't yet. So why should he be punished for it?
Whether he possesses the work as a file or as a DVD should not matter.
They need food water and vaccines, how fucking Stallman-compliant your operating system is way down the list of priorities.
How did the parent troll post above get modded 5 insightful?
There are millions of children in the world who need food and vaccines. There are also millions of children in the world who have food and vaccines but need a decent education. There are also adults who have food, vaccines, and an education who are suffering from terminal diseases of all kinds, from AIDS to cancer.
The fact that Bill Gates donated $750 mil to vaccinations is commendable. However, remember that the original submitter of the article was challenging the open source community to match Gates' genorosity. The original poster was simply defending that stance that the open source community does already contribute to society in their own way.
It is very narrow minded to think that just because there is a very worthy cause in feeding and vaccinating children, that all other causes such as education and cancer research is automatically worthless.
Re:v6 could help solve some net problems
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IPv6 is Here
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· Score: 1
The originally proposed scheme was unique static IP's for everyone. You referred to it in your reply as "such a scheme" saying it wouldn't affect internet anonymity. He didn't respond to spam prevention in general, he responded to that scheme specifically. Either you're changing the intent of that post now, or you had no idea what you were talking about to begin with. Either way, my reply stands.
Re:v6 could help solve some net problems
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IPv6 is Here
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· Score: 2, Informative
I don't see a way of making the sending of email spammer-proof without ending the concept of email-sender anonymity. But that is not the same thing as Internet anonymity. Such a scheme need have no effect whatsoever on all the other numerous Internet protocols, including the Web.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
John Doe is given static ip x.y. Free porn site logs incoming connection from x.y, immediately knows it's John Doe.
So yes, forcing each user to uniquely identify their IP does affect web traffic. I can uniquely identify any user who connects to my webserver. Think what companies like Amazon and E-Bay could do with this information.
What I'm saying is that saying you're different doesn't make you so. There are a kajillion people out there all claiming to be different, but doing something specifically because it's different isn't different. He can use any excuse to do whatever he likes, but it's still bullshit.
By your definition then, no one is different. There's a bunch of people doing things different because it's different. They're similar to each other, so they're not different. There's a bunch of people who doing things different by chance or that's just the way they are. Well, they're similar to each other too, so they're not different.
The very fact that you're setting any standard whatsoever for being different is bullshit, since the whole idea if being different, on purpose or not, is to not conform to a standard.
If you are truly different, then you won't feel the need to talk about how different you are, because everyone seems to want to do that so much, that it is the status quo. Hence it is not necessary to invoke humility.
You are so full of shit.
If they were truly different, they wouldn't have to conform to your standard of not talking about how different they are. You can define wanting to talk about how different you are as being the status quo, making not talking about it being different, but if everyone being truly is not talking about it, then it becomes the status quo.
The bottom line is, any attempt to define talking or not talking about it as the status quo is asinine. He wanted to talk about it, he did. He didn't talk about it because other people expected it of him, he did it because he wanted to. That is enough.
It's not even clear that this guy loves Starbucks' coffee. In fact, he takes pains to distance himself from obsession with it. He is very open that his primary motivation for this idiotic escapade is to be different. That's it.
Sure, some people have a desire to be different. That desire in itself is what sets them apart from the masses. Sure, his method may not "come naturally", but his desire did.
At the very least, I have more respect for this guy than the goths you see who are trying to be different by dressing in black and wearing makeup like all the other goths. He, at the very least, is truly non-conformist.
"Strange though my goal might be, it is not nearly as painful as this guy's effort at being different."
Here he derides some other individual's pathetic attempt at fame, not even realizing that the guy is probably very similiar to him on a sychological level.
No, you missed his point entirely. He pokes fun at the other person because he knows they are psychologically similar in their drive, but the other person chose a much more physically painful route, which he feels is clearly a less wise choice than his pointless task.
I'm not sure you understood the point of my original post. I am not claiming that anyone who doesn't volunteer is a lesser person (and by the way, what makes you think that I *don't* volunteer?). I'm simply stating how sickened I am by this guy's desperate plea for attention and the laughable way he is trying so hard to convince himself that he's not an ordinary person. He reminds me of Meni Savari's character in American Beauty.
A person who's willing to spend that much time going to every Starbucks is not ordinary by definition.
You seem to be equating "true differentness" with humility. You implied that a person who's truly different shouldn't have to proclaim it to the world, it should "come naturally". Differentness coming naturally however, does not preclude you from shoving it down people's throats. They are not mutually exclusive qualities. Besides, how humble or in-your-face about your differentness is a difference in and of itself.
Basically, you're asking someone who is different to conform to your view of what differentness should be and how a "truly different" person should act. That kinda defeats the purpose if you ask me.
Let's face it: this guy doesn't want to be different, he wants to be famous, in his own pathetic way. You want to be different? How about volunteering for your local chapter of the non-profit organization of your choice? Not too many people do that. If that's not different enough for you, how about starting your own non-profit organization? Even fewer people do that. Hell, as long as you have this need to show everyone how different you are, might as well make it something that can benefit someone other than Starbuck's shareholders. Of course, none of these causes would get him a mention on slashdot, or the evening news, or anything else.
Why is it that every time someone gets recognition for doing something that's not particularly useful, someone like you has to come along and insult his hobby and talk down to him about doing something more productive with his time.
Do you ever watch TV? Maybe you spend that time volunteering. Do you ever read Slashdot? Maybe you should spend that time volunteering. It's a ridiculous double standard you are setting when you and everyone else does pointless things to entertain themselves in their spare time, but when he chooses an activity that garners him some attention he is immediately admonished for not spending that time being productive instead.
I own a TJ-37, and it has been one the most useful items I've had for travel. An affordable device with a camera good enough to take pictures to post on the web and built-in wifi is a really amazing accomplishment. Plus with a decent sized memory stick the device doubles as an MP3 player as well.
I for one am sorry to see Sony exit the handheld market.
Slashdot Mirror
Having lived in a college dorm, I can tell you the real use of mod-chips is for downloading games that you don't own and playing them.... How did this get modded up? -1 Troll. First, it's unrealistic to ask people to treat everything that they own with the same care that they treat a firearm. If you did everything in your house would be locked up in a safe. The analogy is asinine.
And, as many people have pointed out, yes, poor college/high school students tend to pirate games. Your "college dorm room" example may be true, but it also represents a portion of the population that wouldn't have bought the game anyways. People with real jobs and disposable incomes generally buy games because they are willing to support the software company and because it's simply a more efficient use of their time to purchase the game than it is to download, find crack, play with DVD/CD imaging tool, etc.
In any case, the world doesn't begin and end in the college dorm room. Maybe this doesn't apply to you, but those of us with real jobs like to be able to back up the games that we buy.
Due to certain applications I need to run, I am forced to keep a Windows PC around. It runs XP, and will likely continue to do so until absolutely forced to otherwise. Fortunately for us, it's the application that dictate the OS, so as long as everyone hates Vista, companies will continue to develop software that runs on XP.
It isn't? How do you know, because they said so? If you really believe that I have some land in Florida I'd like to sell you. There is clear motive, means, and opportunity to do so, and it's not a big leap to believe that they would.
If a firmware update breaks the iPhone, proving they do so intentionally is not as hard as you might think. In civil court, "preponderance of the evidence" (a.k.a. "more likely than not") is sufficient, unlike criminal court.
Right, which is why the reviewer needs to be accurate in his review. His job is to inform the average user.
Way to miss the point. All I'm saying is, it's inaccurate to claim that Ubuntu isn't ready for the average user. Rather, Dell's system isn't ready for the average user. Another computer company who actually puts an effort into tuning the Ubuntu based systems that they shipped may very well be ready for the average user. The story seems to try to tell the "average uesr" reader to avoid the OS as a whole, which is inaccurate.
To be fair, he's not reviewing Ubuntu, he's reviewing Dell's configuration of Ubuntu. A clean install of windows can't do a lot of the things he complains about the Ubuntu system not being able to do either. However, when Dell ships a Windows desktop, it comes preloaded in a way that it works out of the box with pre-configured software for common tasks, like watching DVD's, syncing your iPod (assuming you bought it with the system), etc. Blaming these faults on the OS is wrong. If Dell had configured all the software to the degree that they configure Windows systems before shipping, the result would be different. Similiarly, if you ship a PC where you slapped the base Windows OS on it without installing all the applications that Dell PCs normally come with, the normal user would have an equally bad time trying to get their system to do everything they wanted (arguably harder on Windows, cause Ubuntu's package manager beats downloading/installing each application manually any day).
Oh well, I'm heading back to the threads on Microsoft and the RIAA so I can get back to feeling pissed off.
I read the article and decided to try to get some sponsored links to appear. Doing a search for "Digital Camera" resulted in some pretty obviously highlighted results that have the words "Sponsored Links" in the highlight. Who the hell is this not clear enough for? I am not an advocate of mass murder but we really need to figure out a way to weed the gene pool. You do realize that doing a search on google and looking for the phrase "sponsored links" is a pretty dumb way to test how easy it is to recognize sponsored links right? If you're consciously aware of the distinction and looking for it, it in no way simulates actual usage.
Sure, even as a novice user, if you submit a search to google, and when you look at the results, you're consciously trying to pick out which links are sponsored links, it's easy. But that's not how people operate. When you search on google, you're looking for results, you don't consciously scan for which links may or may not be sponsored by google. When you get your result page, your instinct is to simply read from the top down. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that if the most intuitive way that people view the results gets you clicking a bunched of sponsored links, it's somewhat deceptive. Is it that bad of a deception? Probably not. Is it legal? Probably. But there are plenty of legal ways to deceive consumers, so the fact that it's not egregious and legal doesn't mean they couldn't be more clear.
I hate to tell you this but, people who read
You can't use a non-AT&T SIM card with an iPhone. You'd have to open up your iPhone and solder/upload the hack to unlock it. So, swapping to a pay-as-you-go SIM card is not a realistic solution for most iPhone owners.
Let me venture a guess... 10 years?
It must be a bunch of Unix developers trying to avoid having to deal with the 2038 overflow problem. Us geeks will do just about anything to slack.
It sounds like those entertainment lawyers DCMA'd one too many people. The lawyers start letting the fact that they were able to trample on the little people get to their head and eventually piss off someone big enough and with enough teeth to fight back. When SCO declared they were going to start charging $699 Linux licenses, it was the little guys who were concerned. Then they picked on Novell and IBM and look where they are now: Litigated into oblivion.
Microsoft doesn't consider performance and stability to be features?
I guess they think that if the software behaves abnormally, "It's not a bug, it's a feature." Therefore, when you introduce performance and stability, they aren't features.
That totally makes sense.
Move along... Nothing to see here... this has been going on for over two weeks and has only 92 votes. This sample is so unrepresentative it's not funny. When they have well over 10,000 votes and have done a statistical analysis based on age, gender, household income, etc., let me know.
/.'d) isn't the problem. There's a lot of misconceptions about the statistical math behind samples sizes and margin of error. The sample size needed doesn't have a linear relationship to the size of the population. For a poll covering a population of 200 million or so people, you only need a sample size of ~400 or so people to get a reasonable (+/- 5%) result. You do not need a poll in the 10,000+ range, because a result doesn't have to be right on the nose to be signifigant. A margin of error of 5% in a poll like this still makes a compelling point.
It's true that the poll is flawed, but it's flawed because the respondants aren't chosen randomly, since the people who visit clearware.org are 1) people who are interested license agreements, and 2) more recently, the people who read slashdot. Two groups who probably read the EULA more than the average software user.
Sample size (especially given that the number of responses is growing rapidly due to the site getting
Next time you see a poll, don't dismiss it just because the sample size isn't in the thousands or tens of thousands. It doesn't have to be.
Keep your politics, religion, sexual orientation, etc out of the game and play to have fun dammit.
Or... how about I play the game how I want to play and you play how you want to play? You're not required to join a guild that is based on any of the above factors. You have no business telling other people how to have fun. If you want to hate them because you're an elitist, go ahead, but the people who play WoW for the social aspects of the game have as much right to be there as you do.
The Gannon story is just an example of the power of open source journalism.
You're making the arguement that, in the shoplifter's case, he COULD redistribute the movie he stole, but he hasn't yet, so he isn't punished for it.
However, you missed the fact that, in the downloader's case, he COULD redistribute the movie he stole, but he hasn't yet. So why should he be punished for it?
Whether he possesses the work as a file or as a DVD should not matter.
How did the parent troll post above get modded 5 insightful?
There are millions of children in the world who need food and vaccines. There are also millions of children in the world who have food and vaccines but need a decent education. There are also adults who have food, vaccines, and an education who are suffering from terminal diseases of all kinds, from AIDS to cancer.
The fact that Bill Gates donated $750 mil to vaccinations is commendable. However, remember that the original submitter of the article was challenging the open source community to match Gates' genorosity. The original poster was simply defending that stance that the open source community does already contribute to society in their own way.
It is very narrow minded to think that just because there is a very worthy cause in feeding and vaccinating children, that all other causes such as education and cancer research is automatically worthless.
The originally proposed scheme was unique static IP's for everyone. You referred to it in your reply as "such a scheme" saying it wouldn't affect internet anonymity. He didn't respond to spam prevention in general, he responded to that scheme specifically. Either you're changing the intent of that post now, or you had no idea what you were talking about to begin with. Either way, my reply stands.
I don't see a way of making the sending of email spammer-proof without ending the concept of email-sender anonymity. But that is not the same thing as Internet anonymity. Such a scheme need have no effect whatsoever on all the other numerous Internet protocols, including the Web. You have no idea what you're talking about. John Doe is given static ip x.y. Free porn site logs incoming connection from x.y, immediately knows it's John Doe. So yes, forcing each user to uniquely identify their IP does affect web traffic. I can uniquely identify any user who connects to my webserver. Think what companies like Amazon and E-Bay could do with this information.
What I'm saying is that saying you're different doesn't make you so. There are a kajillion people out there all claiming to be different, but doing something specifically because it's different isn't different. He can use any excuse to do whatever he likes, but it's still bullshit.
By your definition then, no one is different. There's a bunch of people doing things different because it's different. They're similar to each other, so they're not different. There's a bunch of people who doing things different by chance or that's just the way they are. Well, they're similar to each other too, so they're not different.
The very fact that you're setting any standard whatsoever for being different is bullshit, since the whole idea if being different, on purpose or not, is to not conform to a standard.
If you are truly different, then you won't feel the need to talk about how different you are, because everyone seems to want to do that so much, that it is the status quo. Hence it is not necessary to invoke humility.
You are so full of shit.
If they were truly different, they wouldn't have to conform to your standard of not talking about how different they are. You can define wanting to talk about how different you are as being the status quo, making not talking about it being different, but if everyone being truly is not talking about it, then it becomes the status quo.
The bottom line is, any attempt to define talking or not talking about it as the status quo is asinine. He wanted to talk about it, he did. He didn't talk about it because other people expected it of him, he did it because he wanted to. That is enough.
It's not even clear that this guy loves Starbucks' coffee. In fact, he takes pains to distance himself from obsession with it. He is very open that his primary motivation for this idiotic escapade is to be different. That's it.
Sure, some people have a desire to be different. That desire in itself is what sets them apart from the masses. Sure, his method may not "come naturally", but his desire did.
At the very least, I have more respect for this guy than the goths you see who are trying to be different by dressing in black and wearing makeup like all the other goths. He, at the very least, is truly non-conformist.
"Strange though my goal might be, it is not nearly as painful as this guy's effort at being different."
Here he derides some other individual's pathetic attempt at fame, not even realizing that the guy is probably very similiar to him on a sychological level.
No, you missed his point entirely. He pokes fun at the other person because he knows they are psychologically similar in their drive, but the other person chose a much more physically painful route, which he feels is clearly a less wise choice than his pointless task.
I'm not sure you understood the point of my original post. I am not claiming that anyone who doesn't volunteer is a lesser person (and by the way, what makes you think that I *don't* volunteer?). I'm simply stating how sickened I am by this guy's desperate plea for attention and the laughable way he is trying so hard to convince himself that he's not an ordinary person. He reminds me of Meni Savari's character in American Beauty.
A person who's willing to spend that much time going to every Starbucks is not ordinary by definition.
You seem to be equating "true differentness" with humility. You implied that a person who's truly different shouldn't have to proclaim it to the world, it should "come naturally". Differentness coming naturally however, does not preclude you from shoving it down people's throats. They are not mutually exclusive qualities. Besides, how humble or in-your-face about your differentness is a difference in and of itself.
Basically, you're asking someone who is different to conform to your view of what differentness should be and how a "truly different" person should act. That kinda defeats the purpose if you ask me.
Why is it that every time someone gets recognition for doing something that's not particularly useful, someone like you has to come along and insult his hobby and talk down to him about doing something more productive with his time.
Do you ever watch TV? Maybe you spend that time volunteering. Do you ever read Slashdot? Maybe you should spend that time volunteering. It's a ridiculous double standard you are setting when you and everyone else does pointless things to entertain themselves in their spare time, but when he chooses an activity that garners him some attention he is immediately admonished for not spending that time being productive instead.
Don't be a hater.
I own a TJ-37, and it has been one the most useful items I've had for travel. An affordable device with a camera good enough to take pictures to post on the web and built-in wifi is a really amazing accomplishment. Plus with a decent sized memory stick the device doubles as an MP3 player as well.
I for one am sorry to see Sony exit the handheld market.