If you really need a rock crawler or offroad vehicle, recycle an old Jeep Wagoneer. One of the 80s-90s models are tough to kill, reasonably reliable, and probably easier to keep up the an International or a Jimmy. Swap out the rectangular headlights for the round ones, rip out all the screwed up wiring, replace the radiator on sight, and of course solve the many suspension problems, and you'll have it for 10 years or until you can't get a thermostat or distributor cap that fits.
Me? My Explorer has 287k on it, but I'm afraid to put in in 4WD. Something would go B A N G.
Some people actually need a vehicle with more than 12 " ground clearance. Hopefully the H2 delivers this. The H3, OTOH, is a completely inappropriate tool for most anything. For status, get an Escalade. For function, get an H2. For panache, get a Caterpillar.
Mind you, my wife would buy an H1 if she could afford it. And she thinks a Core 2 Duo with a 20" monitor is excessive...
Apparently pre-paid data SIMs in Europe don't really exist. They bill you up to $31/MB in equivalent charges, which empties your pre-paid pretty quick. Not to mention crossing borders and finding out your pre-paid is all of a sudden 'foreign' and charging you for incoming calls. Darn.
Damn, but it figures. Even the Europeans see data as a cash cow. And they are so right. Plan on using hotel WiFi and putting up with marginal service and no VOIP.
"Has anyone found anything on how Android applications dependent on cell phone-ish hardware (like GPS location and the like) will be handled inside a device like the eee PC?"
Um, applications dependent on cellphone-ish hardware would probably not be installed on a device like the eeePC. Who needs SMS when you don't have cell service?
Of course, a dialer would be cool if you implement UMA. Which would be cool on my G1. So I should root my G1 and install Ubuntu? Works for me. Right after I get the Cupcake stuff into a Ubuntu release. Why would I give up A2DP? Or does Ubuntu's BT stack have that already?
The same techniques that are used in radar will be used in sonar;
- Frequency agility will become the norm.
- The cavities will be tuned at first mechanically. It wasn't so long ago that radar was tuned with physical cavities. I haven't kept up on very high powered sets, but I suspect they do it all electronically now. Magnetrons are pretty much declassé.
- I would be surprised that pulse shaping and various AGC techniques are not already in use.
- Backscatter sonar will be developed. This is just an exercise in computing power, and we got that nailed.
- More useful than stealth or masking would be using superlenses for decoys. Nothing makes your sub commander's day like having 6 or 7 targets and KNOWING that only 1 or 2 are genuine. Torps are largely ineffective against decoys, and expose your position. In a robust countermeasures environment, whoever shoots first usually loses. They are dead from the bogey they didn't see, or prioritized wrong, shooting the decoy first. Whatever they shot at may or may not be real.
I wonder if we have many lone attack subs out there. Teamwork solves a lot of problems. Using another sub's pings is the simplest of tactics. Backscattering off of your teammate is somewhat more interesting. Using an array to listen to your teammate's pings and map the hole is even more fun.
Crap, I miss countermeasures. Wonder if the Air force is still hiring...
'Polaroid' is, of course, a trademark of the Polaroid corporation.
'Instamatic' is a trademark of the Kodak corporation, and refers to 100 and 126 film cameras - not instant anything except maybe loading. The film required processing in the conventional way.
These two terms cannot be used to represent a single product. Ask either corporation. Or former users.
Way to mix up trademarks... Somewhere someone is writhing in agony.
It's not necessarily bad to be second. First-place sometimes gets the arrow in the chest. And you duck the incoming. But media server? In my DVD player? Well, maybe right after you make a remote that works, and we find a way past the CableCard fiasco. Until then, I welcome our alien Hulu-spewing overlords. That has promise.
ps - Sorry for the PDF. I'm feeling retro this weekend.
"...Most animals don't foul their own nests either. Ones that have fixed nests just go a distance away from them and ones that don't just move on afterwards."
Yeah, more citations!
Grey Squirrels in the Northeast bail out of their nests when the fleas get too intense. Red Squirrels seem to bail out of their nests in the spring when the crap is too deep. Many bird species leave nests when they are also too infested with vermin and pests to tolerate. We figured out how to avoid this. Just technology.
"A toilet just allows us to move our waste away from ourselves easily, rather than moving ourselves away from our waste. It's also worth noting that proper sanitation is not available to a large chunk of the human race (who have not, therefore, had this lack of evolutionary pressure away from developing a strong immune system) and that the average lifespan of these people is around half that of people who do."
So in America, we die less from Cholera due to our diminished immune system, not because of our advanced santitation? Or is it that people in other countries die from cholera more often because of poor sanitation, not because of their more robust immune responses? Or is it that our lack of 'evolutionary pressure' has resulted in longer lifespans in America due to the decreased pressure on our immune systems? Which is it?
Actually, the point of that last bit escapes me. I thought our increased lifespan was due to better diet, improved sanitation, and modern medicine. Some countries have even longer lifespans due to even better diets, and some because of 'effective' medicine, not necessarily just 'modern'.
Yeah, I sort of agree, I think, though. We seem to be keeling over due to Salmonella and e.Coli more often recently, and I recall quite vividly my younger days when eating potato salad that had been in the sun for a few hours didn't give me the cramps or anything. Handling hamburg, chicken, no big deal. Eating off the floor didn't even slow me down. Today, I'm warned against everything. This problem in the US isn't about our diminished immune systems - it's about very bad practices in the food industry, from abominable sanitation at poultry plants to managing to contaminate spinach with feces. Not rocket science, gang, and not my immunue system.
And true, among the greatest services we can be to the third world is to help them dig wells for fresh water, latrines to segregate waste, and just plain old sleeping nets so they don't contract malaria so easily.
BTW, the point of TFA is that we pretty much *don't* understand some important parts of the basic mechanics of the Earth. So we can go back 3 squares in understanding deep ocean currents.
Nice. We're pretty sure we're ruining the planet, but we're really not sure what's happening now, so let's predict the future based on not knowing the present. Works for me. Not.
They measure the user with eye trackers, galvanic skin response, and force sensors to find a CPU frequency that the user is satisfied with. They are currently studying user activity and system performance on mobile architectures, specifically the Android G1 phone."
Yeah, so that's why my G1 keeps asking me to turn it over, so the camera can track my eyes. Perhaps they should try tracking the acclerometers so they see them max out when the battery goes dead and I heave it one more time into the trash, only to pick it out again and recharge. Yeah, that's sure scientific. Good work there.
Or maybe they are working with the other Android phone on the market that has a user-facing camera.
For a phone, you do not want background processing tasks - they force the processor to stay "awake" and drain the battery very quickly
Yup. Stop calling my G1 a phone. It's a handheld. Phones have reasonable battery life.
There. Carry on.
This is probably not about fair use, or rights, or anything mundane. It's about the money.
Which is, admittedly, a facile argument. But, if these on-demand services are to thrive, they need to be more universal, and that means essentially storing all the content the cable cos can possibly identify. And that means the providers will have to sign off on viewers being able to time-shift, repeat, and edit (skip commercials). This is about money. Does the SciFi Channel get more $ per subscriber when it allows on-demand delivery? Should it? Will I pay more?
And though this is not thought of often, the cable cos don't want us to have hard-drive-based DVRs. These things are going to become a nightmare support issue when the hard drives start failing, like every few years. And new software causes more problems, stranding weeks' worth of shows I wanted to watch, and encouraging me to bitch out my cable co rep for losing my shows... And new features make them obsolete by the many thousands. A set-top without a hard drive has many advantages. Spinning things are not desireable.
This is all about the money, and maybe both sides think they have a good case to compel the other side to give in. We'll see, but in the end one thing is certain.
True, i use a WRT54G, running stock firmware right now. Same as the RV park uses, though they use newer ones apparently. I've seen the admin pages. He finally changed the admin password last fall.
So they frequency hop, huh? Who knew? So that's why I'm prompted to choose a channel...
I didn't fall off the turnip truck last night. Sharing channels makes my adapter get crazy.
Is that if your system is attached to a publicly-available network, you cannot be curtain of a secure system. Don't even try to tell me you can secure your network against all network-based attacks, current and future.
All you can do is raise the bar sufficiently to deter and defeat the lam0rs, and be able to focus your attention on detection, remediation, and retribution - if that's your style.
Having been rooted a few times, I would have loved to slip a little Ex-Lax into their Dew, but my boss said leave them alone. Just as well, they always come back for revenge. Our government may think differently.
But if it's hooked up to the Internet, count on it being compromised. Encrypt your data separately. Make backups and disaster recovery plans. Pray for this to happen on an otherwise quiet weekend, not the day before the quarterlies go out. And have an alternative. Anything is better than nothing.
In case you're wondering, I am a fatalist when it comes to network security. I see little hope.
People keep telling me security by obfuiscation doesn't work. I can buy a working Alpha server this afternoon for $70, and it is already running Red Hat 7.x. I can steal one faster and cheaper.
Blockbuster was running Alphas a few years ago. Those may be traded out, but thinking your CPU will confuse your attacker is rather pointless.
You don't have to be sophisticated, just successful.
The next TWO movies are already planned
on
Reviews: Star Trek
·
· Score: 1
Yes, we know at least one more with the new cast is planned. But I am convinced there is another needed.
Didn't anyone else notice the timeline paradox they've introduced into the Star Trek storyline? This one is massive, and will take two more flicks to fix.
It so isn't dead. Just the plotlines. Keep the effects coming, and I'll keep buying tickets, J.J. What, am I gonna keep spending money on Bond movies and Angelina's next show-off? C'mon.
I don't buy 2.4GHz wireless phones any more. Not worth the trouble.
I don't call the RV park across the street and ask them to change channels on any of the 6 Aps I can receive. I set up a cantenna and blasted their nearest AP until they changed the channel. ps- their 'Internet Guy' is the owner's brain-damaged nephew. He means well.
I don't bug my neighbors about their changing channels almost weekly. I just rig the cantenna again and blast 'em. They change. Life is good. ps- they do NOT understand that the RV park has 9 APs, and we can easily get 6 of them. They don't know it's me trying to use a channel they chose. pps- they moved in 3 months ago, and just got their AP running. They barely know what to do, and I profess ignorance - I'm not into unpaid support any more. Their 9-year old son is handling the admin duties, I think.
My niece has a baby monitor, but it's probably a 27MHz one, never hurt their WiFi.
WiFi has its limitations. At least here in the US, we let the NSA handle the surveillance, and thyey usually don't interfere with the signal. Nice guys there. Kinda wierd, but nice.
About time someone pointed out the real problem with Exchange interoperability. The only way you get it is if M$ lets you.
And of course, the inscrutible API, poor programming support, and the general fun of making a Windows anything work on a non-Windows anything. You almost have to go back to ASP to get a break.
Of course, they coulda chosen Notes. Or GroupWise. And scrap the rest of their Windows investment. Lock-in sucks, man.
Something tells me that we might get it from Kim Jong Il without asking. In fact, there may be several providers out there that would be HAPPY to send us some plutonium, for free. Special Delivery.
We could, I suppose see if Israel has any, or could make some. They wouldn't charge much, and it would be good stuff.
Depending on how determined you are to beat the system you could keep a perfectly good 'second' drive on the shelf, and subtitute it when the subpoena comes. Hide or trash the actual in-used drive, and your new one shows a bunch of old stuff that you put there before. The drive letters work, you've scrubbed shortcuts, recently-used bits, etc, and it would then be the forensics expert tryint to explain to the judge that they see GUIDS and such tat they believe belong to another physical drive, but the one they got is actually a legitimate drive with apprently good, just out of date, files.
Now, does the RIAA subpoena your credit card records to see how many drives you've bought in the last few years? I can't believe I asked that. Of course they will. At some point, does the judge tell them to 'stop fishing'? I dunno, but real life is much stranger than fiction, so I bet it gets really strange.
I think I'm clever enough to fix this - mostly by doing a DOD wipe and then restoring an image OS and some recent data of non-copyright heritage. Let them explain that...
I'm leaving a lot of steps out of my 'solution', because I don't bother to download music any more. I go out and buy what I want. Which is a LOT LOT LOT less than it used to be, when I could download something, grow to like it, and go buy more from the artist, or focus on the genre, or just get into the habit of listening and buying. That worked out real well for ya, RIAA. You've made me a non-customer. I just don't much care any more. Kinda like hockey for pretty much the same reason. First, 1994 hurt me. Then 2004 broke my heart. I don't miss hockey a bit.
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If you really need a rock crawler or offroad vehicle, recycle an old Jeep Wagoneer. One of the 80s-90s models are tough to kill, reasonably reliable, and probably easier to keep up the an International or a Jimmy. Swap out the rectangular headlights for the round ones, rip out all the screwed up wiring, replace the radiator on sight, and of course solve the many suspension problems, and you'll have it for 10 years or until you can't get a thermostat or distributor cap that fits.
Me? My Explorer has 287k on it, but I'm afraid to put in in 4WD. Something would go B A N G.
Some people actually need a vehicle with more than 12 " ground clearance. Hopefully the H2 delivers this. The H3, OTOH, is a completely inappropriate tool for most anything. For status, get an Escalade. For function, get an H2. For panache, get a Caterpillar.
Mind you, my wife would buy an H1 if she could afford it. And she thinks a Core 2 Duo with a 20" monitor is excessive...
Apparently pre-paid data SIMs in Europe don't really exist. They bill you up to $31/MB in equivalent charges, which empties your pre-paid pretty quick. Not to mention crossing borders and finding out your pre-paid is all of a sudden 'foreign' and charging you for incoming calls. Darn.
Damn, but it figures. Even the Europeans see data as a cash cow. And they are so right. Plan on using hotel WiFi and putting up with marginal service and no VOIP.
Which wired arm of T-Mobile would you want to integrate their wireless service with? I don't think DT is coming to America any time soon.
Just sayin'...
"Has anyone found anything on how Android applications dependent on cell phone-ish hardware (like GPS location and the like) will be handled inside a device like the eee PC?"
Um, applications dependent on cellphone-ish hardware would probably not be installed on a device like the eeePC. Who needs SMS when you don't have cell service?
Of course, a dialer would be cool if you implement UMA. Which would be cool on my G1. So I should root my G1 and install Ubuntu? Works for me. Right after I get the Cupcake stuff into a Ubuntu release. Why would I give up A2DP? Or does Ubuntu's BT stack have that already?
The same techniques that are used in radar will be used in sonar;
- Frequency agility will become the norm.
- The cavities will be tuned at first mechanically. It wasn't so long ago that radar was tuned with physical cavities. I haven't kept up on very high powered sets, but I suspect they do it all electronically now. Magnetrons are pretty much declassé.
- I would be surprised that pulse shaping and various AGC techniques are not already in use.
- Backscatter sonar will be developed. This is just an exercise in computing power, and we got that nailed.
- More useful than stealth or masking would be using superlenses for decoys. Nothing makes your sub commander's day like having 6 or 7 targets and KNOWING that only 1 or 2 are genuine. Torps are largely ineffective against decoys, and expose your position. In a robust countermeasures environment, whoever shoots first usually loses. They are dead from the bogey they didn't see, or prioritized wrong, shooting the decoy first. Whatever they shot at may or may not be real.
I wonder if we have many lone attack subs out there. Teamwork solves a lot of problems. Using another sub's pings is the simplest of tactics. Backscattering off of your teammate is somewhat more interesting. Using an array to listen to your teammate's pings and map the hole is even more fun.
Crap, I miss countermeasures. Wonder if the Air force is still hiring...
Actually, I had my Kodak up to about 1999 or so. You might be talking about people ditching their Kodamatic cameras.
See, not getting the name right causes all sorts of problems. Next thing you know, we'll be calling him 'W' or something...
'Polaroid' is, of course, a trademark of the Polaroid corporation.
'Instamatic' is a trademark of the Kodak corporation, and refers to 100 and 126 film cameras - not instant anything except maybe loading. The film required processing in the conventional way.
These two terms cannot be used to represent a single product. Ask either corporation. Or former users.
Way to mix up trademarks... Somewhere someone is writhing in agony.
"We want this device to be in your TV, your stereo system, your DVD player.'"
Kinda like this?
It's not necessarily bad to be second. First-place sometimes gets the arrow in the chest. And you duck the incoming. But media server? In my DVD player? Well, maybe right after you make a remote that works, and we find a way past the CableCard fiasco. Until then, I welcome our alien Hulu-spewing overlords. That has promise.
ps - Sorry for the PDF. I'm feeling retro this weekend.
"...Most animals don't foul their own nests either. Ones that have fixed nests just go a distance away from them and ones that don't just move on afterwards."
Yeah, more citations!
Grey Squirrels in the Northeast bail out of their nests when the fleas get too intense. Red Squirrels seem to bail out of their nests in the spring when the crap is too deep. Many bird species leave nests when they are also too infested with vermin and pests to tolerate. We figured out how to avoid this. Just technology.
"A toilet just allows us to move our waste away from ourselves easily, rather than moving ourselves away from our waste. It's also worth noting that proper sanitation is not available to a large chunk of the human race (who have not, therefore, had this lack of evolutionary pressure away from developing a strong immune system) and that the average lifespan of these people is around half that of people who do."
So in America, we die less from Cholera due to our diminished immune system, not because of our advanced santitation? Or is it that people in other countries die from cholera more often because of poor sanitation, not because of their more robust immune responses? Or is it that our lack of 'evolutionary pressure' has resulted in longer lifespans in America due to the decreased pressure on our immune systems? Which is it?
Actually, the point of that last bit escapes me. I thought our increased lifespan was due to better diet, improved sanitation, and modern medicine. Some countries have even longer lifespans due to even better diets, and some because of 'effective' medicine, not necessarily just 'modern'.
Yeah, I sort of agree, I think, though. We seem to be keeling over due to Salmonella and e.Coli more often recently, and I recall quite vividly my younger days when eating potato salad that had been in the sun for a few hours didn't give me the cramps or anything. Handling hamburg, chicken, no big deal. Eating off the floor didn't even slow me down. Today, I'm warned against everything. This problem in the US isn't about our diminished immune systems - it's about very bad practices in the food industry, from abominable sanitation at poultry plants to managing to contaminate spinach with feces. Not rocket science, gang, and not my immunue system.
And true, among the greatest services we can be to the third world is to help them dig wells for fresh water, latrines to segregate waste, and just plain old sleeping nets so they don't contract malaria so easily.
Again, not rocket science.
How hard would it be to slap Moblin into Android?
Since Android is already running on a netbook, and already runs on ARM, I suspect this is not so hard.
BTW, the point of TFA is that we pretty much *don't* understand some important parts of the basic mechanics of the Earth. So we can go back 3 squares in understanding deep ocean currents.
Nice. We're pretty sure we're ruining the planet, but we're really not sure what's happening now, so let's predict the future based on not knowing the present. Works for me. Not.
They measure the user with eye trackers, galvanic skin response, and force sensors to find a CPU frequency that the user is satisfied with. They are currently studying user activity and system performance on mobile architectures, specifically the Android G1 phone."
Yeah, so that's why my G1 keeps asking me to turn it over, so the camera can track my eyes. Perhaps they should try tracking the acclerometers so they see them max out when the battery goes dead and I heave it one more time into the trash, only to pick it out again and recharge. Yeah, that's sure scientific. Good work there.
Or maybe they are working with the other Android phone on the market that has a user-facing camera.
For a phone, you do not want background processing tasks - they force the processor to stay "awake" and drain the battery very quickly
Yup. Stop calling my G1 a phone. It's a handheld. Phones have reasonable battery life. There. Carry on.
This is probably not about fair use, or rights, or anything mundane. It's about the money.
Which is, admittedly, a facile argument. But, if these on-demand services are to thrive, they need to be more universal, and that means essentially storing all the content the cable cos can possibly identify. And that means the providers will have to sign off on viewers being able to time-shift, repeat, and edit (skip commercials). This is about money. Does the SciFi Channel get more $ per subscriber when it allows on-demand delivery? Should it? Will I pay more?
And though this is not thought of often, the cable cos don't want us to have hard-drive-based DVRs. These things are going to become a nightmare support issue when the hard drives start failing, like every few years. And new software causes more problems, stranding weeks' worth of shows I wanted to watch, and encouraging me to bitch out my cable co rep for losing my shows... And new features make them obsolete by the many thousands. A set-top without a hard drive has many advantages. Spinning things are not desireable.
This is all about the money, and maybe both sides think they have a good case to compel the other side to give in. We'll see, but in the end one thing is certain.
We pay.
Cause they suck.
True, i use a WRT54G, running stock firmware right now. Same as the RV park uses, though they use newer ones apparently. I've seen the admin pages. He finally changed the admin password last fall.
So they frequency hop, huh? Who knew? So that's why I'm prompted to choose a channel...
I didn't fall off the turnip truck last night. Sharing channels makes my adapter get crazy.
Is that if your system is attached to a publicly-available network, you cannot be curtain of a secure system. Don't even try to tell me you can secure your network against all network-based attacks, current and future.
All you can do is raise the bar sufficiently to deter and defeat the lam0rs, and be able to focus your attention on detection, remediation, and retribution - if that's your style.
Having been rooted a few times, I would have loved to slip a little Ex-Lax into their Dew, but my boss said leave them alone. Just as well, they always come back for revenge. Our government may think differently.
But if it's hooked up to the Internet, count on it being compromised. Encrypt your data separately. Make backups and disaster recovery plans. Pray for this to happen on an otherwise quiet weekend, not the day before the quarterlies go out. And have an alternative. Anything is better than nothing.
In case you're wondering, I am a fatalist when it comes to network security. I see little hope.
People keep telling me security by obfuiscation doesn't work. I can buy a working Alpha server this afternoon for $70, and it is already running Red Hat 7.x. I can steal one faster and cheaper.
Blockbuster was running Alphas a few years ago. Those may be traded out, but thinking your CPU will confuse your attacker is rather pointless.
You don't have to be sophisticated, just successful.
Yes, we know at least one more with the new cast is planned. But I am convinced there is another needed.
Didn't anyone else notice the timeline paradox they've introduced into the Star Trek storyline? This one is massive, and will take two more flicks to fix.
It so isn't dead. Just the plotlines. Keep the effects coming, and I'll keep buying tickets, J.J. What, am I gonna keep spending money on Bond movies and Angelina's next show-off? C'mon.
I don't buy 2.4GHz wireless phones any more. Not worth the trouble.
I don't call the RV park across the street and ask them to change channels on any of the 6 Aps I can receive. I set up a cantenna and blasted their nearest AP until they changed the channel. ps- their 'Internet Guy' is the owner's brain-damaged nephew. He means well.
I don't bug my neighbors about their changing channels almost weekly. I just rig the cantenna again and blast 'em. They change. Life is good. ps- they do NOT understand that the RV park has 9 APs, and we can easily get 6 of them. They don't know it's me trying to use a channel they chose. pps- they moved in 3 months ago, and just got their AP running. They barely know what to do, and I profess ignorance - I'm not into unpaid support any more. Their 9-year old son is handling the admin duties, I think.
My niece has a baby monitor, but it's probably a 27MHz one, never hurt their WiFi.
WiFi has its limitations. At least here in the US, we let the NSA handle the surveillance, and thyey usually don't interfere with the signal. Nice guys there. Kinda wierd, but nice.
About time someone pointed out the real problem with Exchange interoperability. The only way you get it is if M$ lets you.
And of course, the inscrutible API, poor programming support, and the general fun of making a Windows anything work on a non-Windows anything. You almost have to go back to ASP to get a break.
Of course, they coulda chosen Notes. Or GroupWise. And scrap the rest of their Windows investment. Lock-in sucks, man.
Something tells me that we might get it from Kim Jong Il without asking. In fact, there may be several providers out there that would be HAPPY to send us some plutonium, for free. Special Delivery.
We could, I suppose see if Israel has any, or could make some. They wouldn't charge much, and it would be good stuff.
Depending on how determined you are to beat the system you could keep a perfectly good 'second' drive on the shelf, and subtitute it when the subpoena comes. Hide or trash the actual in-used drive, and your new one shows a bunch of old stuff that you put there before. The drive letters work, you've scrubbed shortcuts, recently-used bits, etc, and it would then be the forensics expert tryint to explain to the judge that they see GUIDS and such tat they believe belong to another physical drive, but the one they got is actually a legitimate drive with apprently good, just out of date, files.
Now, does the RIAA subpoena your credit card records to see how many drives you've bought in the last few years?
I can't believe I asked that. Of course they will. At some point, does the judge tell them to 'stop fishing'? I dunno, but real life is much stranger than fiction, so I bet it gets really strange.
I think I'm clever enough to fix this - mostly by doing a DOD wipe and then restoring an image OS and some recent data of non-copyright heritage. Let them explain that...
I'm leaving a lot of steps out of my 'solution', because I don't bother to download music any more. I go out and buy what I want. Which is a LOT LOT LOT less than it used to be, when I could download something, grow to like it, and go buy more from the artist, or focus on the genre, or just get into the habit of listening and buying. That worked out real well for ya, RIAA. You've made me a non-customer. I just don't much care any more. Kinda like hockey for pretty much the same reason. First, 1994 hurt me. Then 2004 broke my heart. I don't miss hockey a bit.
Sorry, I lost interest in your post right around 'cell phone'... After that, it was inexplicably uninteresting.