I suspect "ghetto phone" wasn't referring to Android, but was referring to Windows Mobile (think 6.5 and older, not Windows Phone 7) and dumbphones, where data plans can be far cheaper in certain cases.
I actually stuck with WinMo 6.5 for far, far longer than I should have, simply due to the plan restrictions required to get an Android phone.
As much as I hate to do this, because it's not right at all... the NASCAR analogy of the 24 Hours of Le Mans would be running a Sprint Cup race, a Nationwide Series race, and a regional-level actual STOCK race (that is, stock unibodies and stock-derived engines and suspension)... all on the same track (and not an oval), all at once, for 24 hours instead of a certain mileage.
In that analogy, this would be the equivalent of placing 2nd in the Nationwide Series race.
Now, excuse me while I go contemplate drinking a few gallons of bleach, for daring to make that analogy...
Except Sony ran a promotion with Nissan, for Gran Turismo players who did exceptionally well to get a spot in a Nissan 350Z GT4 car. Papyrus couldn't offer that, their last game having been NASCAR Racing 2003, iRacing didn't offer that, and Microsoft didn't offer that, either.
So, if you wanted to win a chance to be a real racing driver based purely on your skill, Gran Turismo was the way to go. And, in this case, it paid off for Nissan extremely well - Ordonez was good enough for them to put him in a customer's LMP2 car.
Well, back before LMP2 was neutered, it tended to compete with LMP1 for the overall win in American Le Mans Series races (which pissed Audi off quite a lot, because they'd be the LMP1 winner, which is what matters for championships, but they didn't get the bragging rights for the overall win),
Also, there are physical limits - racing drivers have to be extremely fit, both for weight reasons, and to handle the forces involved in controlling a race car through corners. Simulators expose none of that.
Even finishing the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a huge achievement.
(Completing any 24 hour sports car race is, for that matter, even if it's 3rd out of 5 in the class.)
But, this was 2nd out of 11 in class, 8 classified as completing in class.
And, it was 9th overall out of 56, with 28 classified as completing. All of the first seven places were taken by the faster LMP1 class (and all of the first five places were taken by the remaining diesel cars).
And, with there being multiple classes on the track... nasty incidents (usually between the prototypes (LMP1 and LMP2) and the GT Endurance cars) can and do occur.
There were three Audis at the start of the race, after 1 hour, one was completely DESTROYED.
At the halfway point, another was even worse off.
Both drivers got out of their own cars, and one even returned to the track the next day after being checked out at the hospital.
And, I doubt that HTC got the Touch out THAT quickly - as in, it was conceived before the iPhone was announced, I suspect.
Again, didn't I just say that a bad implementation doesn't mean it wasn't done?
I didn't say WinMo was an advantage, though, just an attribute.
But, there's always the IBM Simon - fully touch-driven UI, and it has finger-friendly UI elements, so it's clearly not a pure stylus device (not even sure if it has a stylus.) In 1994.
In fact, the solution to the bad guy problem is to have the tools to defend against the bad guy when it happens, leaving the police to be janitors, essentially.
Of course, back then, a 60 Hz TV set was designed for actual 60 Hz operation, and the phosphors were still lit up pretty brightly by the time the beam came past again.
60 Hz shutter glasses, OTOH, intend to block light as soon as the frame ends. Therefore, you need a much faster refresh rate on shutter glasses than you would on a CRT that had relatively slow phosphors.
And, while it wasn't active shutter, there have been luxury cars in the recent past using parallax barrier 3D tech to show navigation to the driver, and a movie to the passenger, on the same display.
Alienware? Not really a set-top or an appliance, but I think that's the closest you'll get with anything modern.
If you count the Atari Flashback 2, while it voids the warranty, they do give you the pinouts to add a cartridge port on the PCB, then it can run most Atari 2600 homebrew...
One technique that my high school used (it's a little more difficult for public schools, I was sent to a private school due to behavioral handicaps, paid for by my local school district) was, if they had advanced students, send them to college, starting their freshman year of high school if applicable.
The local technical college even had a program where college classes counted for both college and high school credit. So, they basically outsourced their advanced classes, and students got free college credit.
Except the "invisible hand" of the market actually is pushing politicians in a direction that is beneficial for those that control the hand, here in the US.
You know, saying "omg Nazis were mentioned, Godwin, your point is invalid" is just stupid.
Godwin's law actually says nothing about that. Godwin's law is merely an observation about the probability of Nazis or Hitler being compared in the discussion reaching 1 as the discussion continues.
It's only the corollaries that were made after that that say that mentioning Nazis ends the thread, or invalidates the point.
That said, given that we're talking about some things that Nazi Germany ACTUALLY DID on their way to power, blindly ignoring our world history because some blowhard on the internet made a corollary to a (scientific, not legislative) law saying that talking about Nazis is bad... that is downright fucking retarded.
Make it so that you only need minimal police, because people are equipped to respond to their own incidents, and police just need to come in after the fact, without needing to constantly patrol or quickly respond to a scene to protect everyone.
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I suspect "ghetto phone" wasn't referring to Android, but was referring to Windows Mobile (think 6.5 and older, not Windows Phone 7) and dumbphones, where data plans can be far cheaper in certain cases.
I actually stuck with WinMo 6.5 for far, far longer than I should have, simply due to the plan restrictions required to get an Android phone.
You can buy a dumbphone, or go to an old Windows Mobile phone or something.
Or buy a Chinese-market Android phone, and hack the MEID to match that of your dumbphone. Federal felony, but...
I'd argue that humans are overpopulated for sociological reasons.
A large number of humans are incapable of performing good resource management, which feeds the problem.
And the Apple II had it in 1977.
Except video drivers are about as secure and stable as IE4.
As much as I hate to do this, because it's not right at all... the NASCAR analogy of the 24 Hours of Le Mans would be running a Sprint Cup race, a Nationwide Series race, and a regional-level actual STOCK race (that is, stock unibodies and stock-derived engines and suspension)... all on the same track (and not an oval), all at once, for 24 hours instead of a certain mileage.
In that analogy, this would be the equivalent of placing 2nd in the Nationwide Series race.
Now, excuse me while I go contemplate drinking a few gallons of bleach, for daring to make that analogy...
Except Sony ran a promotion with Nissan, for Gran Turismo players who did exceptionally well to get a spot in a Nissan 350Z GT4 car. Papyrus couldn't offer that, their last game having been NASCAR Racing 2003, iRacing didn't offer that, and Microsoft didn't offer that, either.
So, if you wanted to win a chance to be a real racing driver based purely on your skill, Gran Turismo was the way to go. And, in this case, it paid off for Nissan extremely well - Ordonez was good enough for them to put him in a customer's LMP2 car.
Well, back before LMP2 was neutered, it tended to compete with LMP1 for the overall win in American Le Mans Series races (which pissed Audi off quite a lot, because they'd be the LMP1 winner, which is what matters for championships, but they didn't get the bragging rights for the overall win),
Also, there are physical limits - racing drivers have to be extremely fit, both for weight reasons, and to handle the forces involved in controlling a race car through corners. Simulators expose none of that.
See the iRacing champion's experience with driving a real race car: http://www.topgear.com/uk/photos/geek-rebooted-2010-11-26
Even finishing the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a huge achievement.
(Completing any 24 hour sports car race is, for that matter, even if it's 3rd out of 5 in the class.)
But, this was 2nd out of 11 in class, 8 classified as completing in class.
And, it was 9th overall out of 56, with 28 classified as completing. All of the first seven places were taken by the faster LMP1 class (and all of the first five places were taken by the remaining diesel cars).
And, with there being multiple classes on the track... nasty incidents (usually between the prototypes (LMP1 and LMP2) and the GT Endurance cars) can and do occur.
There were three Audis at the start of the race, after 1 hour, one was completely DESTROYED.
At the halfway point, another was even worse off.
Both drivers got out of their own cars, and one even returned to the track the next day after being checked out at the hospital.
Show me when you could actually use an iPhone in January, 2007.
It came out on June 29th.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/03/iphone-release-date-confirmed-yours-on-june-29th/
And, I doubt that HTC got the Touch out THAT quickly - as in, it was conceived before the iPhone was announced, I suspect.
Again, didn't I just say that a bad implementation doesn't mean it wasn't done?
I didn't say WinMo was an advantage, though, just an attribute.
But, there's always the IBM Simon - fully touch-driven UI, and it has finger-friendly UI elements, so it's clearly not a pure stylus device (not even sure if it has a stylus.) In 1994.
What about roads?
Private roads get into some nasty issues with rights of access and such, and therefore roads are almost all government owned.
In fact, the solution to the bad guy problem is to have the tools to defend against the bad guy when it happens, leaving the police to be janitors, essentially.
Just because previous attempts were badly done doesn't mean that current attempts aren't derivative of those previous attempts.
And, there's always the HTC Touch - it was meant for FINGER use, ran WinMo, and came out before the iPhone.
Of course, back then, a 60 Hz TV set was designed for actual 60 Hz operation, and the phosphors were still lit up pretty brightly by the time the beam came past again.
60 Hz shutter glasses, OTOH, intend to block light as soon as the frame ends. Therefore, you need a much faster refresh rate on shutter glasses than you would on a CRT that had relatively slow phosphors.
And, while it wasn't active shutter, there have been luxury cars in the recent past using parallax barrier 3D tech to show navigation to the driver, and a movie to the passenger, on the same display.
Alienware? Not really a set-top or an appliance, but I think that's the closest you'll get with anything modern.
If you count the Atari Flashback 2, while it voids the warranty, they do give you the pinouts to add a cartridge port on the PCB, then it can run most Atari 2600 homebrew...
One technique that my high school used (it's a little more difficult for public schools, I was sent to a private school due to behavioral handicaps, paid for by my local school district) was, if they had advanced students, send them to college, starting their freshman year of high school if applicable.
The local technical college even had a program where college classes counted for both college and high school credit. So, they basically outsourced their advanced classes, and students got free college credit.
Technically, it's an incorrect spelling of a valid alternate pronunciation of gigawatt...
Except the "invisible hand" of the market actually is pushing politicians in a direction that is beneficial for those that control the hand, here in the US.
You know, saying "omg Nazis were mentioned, Godwin, your point is invalid" is just stupid.
Godwin's law actually says nothing about that. Godwin's law is merely an observation about the probability of Nazis or Hitler being compared in the discussion reaching 1 as the discussion continues.
It's only the corollaries that were made after that that say that mentioning Nazis ends the thread, or invalidates the point.
That said, given that we're talking about some things that Nazi Germany ACTUALLY DID on their way to power, blindly ignoring our world history because some blowhard on the internet made a corollary to a (scientific, not legislative) law saying that talking about Nazis is bad... that is downright fucking retarded.
Do what Kennesaw, Georgia does.
Make it so that you only need minimal police, because people are equipped to respond to their own incidents, and police just need to come in after the fact, without needing to constantly patrol or quickly respond to a scene to protect everyone.
The 14th Amendment extends the Constitution to limit state and local powers, too.
Stream to a cloud company in the US, your own server, AND to a server located in a foreign country that does not respect US treaties.