You keep hearing about the things that phones are going to replace and, at least for me, it's never been true.

I like having a Nintendo DS. The iPhone has not provided a game with the depth of most AAA DS titles. It's lack of buttons is a serious problem with gaming.

The camera isn't as good as any half way decent point and shoot. I haven't gotten a chance to play with any GPS software for any smart phone, but I hear there are limitations (including the need for cell service) that stand alone GPSes don't have.

Even the music functions of an iPhone aren't as good as a regular iPod or (gasp, because I love Apple gear) a Zune.

And yeah, you can use it as a watch, but any fashionable man knows that a watch is how a guy shows off. It's the only acceptable piece of jewelry for the well dressed man.

Even today's best smart phones are just communications devices with varying degrees of success. Occasionally a smart phone is "good enough" in a pinch; photographers like to say the best camera is the one you have with you, which certainly applies to smart phones. But if I know I want to play games or take pictures, I take my DS or my camera, or whatever. Phones haven't and won't - because each thing needs its own UI and software guidelines, no device is going to be able to do it all well.

Mmmm, breaded mudskipper.

I am more surprised that this isn't already the case. I lived in Japan for several years and owned a few au phones. My first year I had a low end au phone and the two years after I had a higher end Casio. The higher end had some great features - good camera, 1seg TV, Japanese/English dictionary etc., but it was locked down to all hell. I couldn't even get my own ringtones on it, let alone MP3s or apps. As much as I wanted to customize my phone and not pay through the nose for approved stuff, I could do nothing.

Feature-wise my current Blackberry Curve is way behind my au phone, but I can at least use it's Bluetooth to connect to my laptop and use my own MP3s as ringtones.

There are actually a couple of remakes or reboots -
There's a modern version either out or coming out, for the iPhone with updated graphics.

Also in the mid 90s there was an Amazon Trail game. Not sure if they are related, but the game play was fundamentally the same (even hunting, which became spear fishing from a boat) but with your player character going down the Amazon river.

Temple of Time, that is.

Ocarina and Majora's Mask are related, but Wind Waker and the Ocarina series are related. WW hints at it in the intro and towards the end. Twilight Princess also hints that its related to those three "modern" Zeldas in one of the dungeons towards the middle of the game when you find a dungeon underneath the Temple Time.

But you're fundamentally right - all of these are just vague hints for fanboys like me. You don't need to know any of that to enjoy the games, which are basically self contained plots.

The Sonic Advance games, for the Gameboy Advance aren't quite as good as the original Sonic games, but are still miles better than the 3D ones.

I got it from the comments, I guess, but it would be nice if the summary would mention what the contest is about.
They're having a contest to improve Netflix's algorithm?

Only if you don't speak Japanese.

Wait, this isn't good news at all.

Seriously, the voice actors in Futurama gave their characters heart and soul. It's not just that the actors are good (they are, of course) but the characters have grown along with the actors, such that in my mind, and in the mind of many fans I am sure, the two are inseparable.

Without the original cast, I won't be watching, simple as that.
It's going to cost more money in the long run to produce an abject failure than to put more money into the show from the start and hoping the fanbase comes back.

I hate the "main-stream media" as much as any one (watching CNN irritates the hell out of me - if I wanted to read Twitter, Rick Sanchez, I would get on the Internet!) and don't even get me started on Fox.

But this is obvious - there is very little original research going on the Web (the one counter example are the Abu Ghraib pictures as I remember those being posted to Live Journal long before they hit the rest of the media world). It's more of a sounding chamber for things already being reported - commentary more than original research.

My biggest fear is that the mainstream media is moving in the same direction - closing local branches, relying on Twitter and the Facebook, this competitive advantage that the media has is slowly being dissolved, by itself.

Yeah, law school leaves me ample free time ;p

Seriously, I don't know what's made you so emo, and I was just going to mod you down, but honestly, even people's most banal pictures can become important. I was an Asian Studies major in college and seeing photos from Japan's Meiji and Taisho periods was amazing. These are just family pictures or whatever.

When I lived in Yokohama, the city was celebrating 150 years since the port was opened and had hundreds of photos up of the city throughout that time.

Just because you're having fun in philosophy 101 doesn't mean photos can't be important.

I'm sorry, I thought the phrase getting MDs implied they were, you know, getting medical degrees.

I am going to respond to this comment, even though it's a waste of time - no one is going to see my reply, I think but I would like to respond;

There's a lot to ask (why is it that Chinese coders are on the whole better than Indian ones?). I don't work in IT but I majored in Asian Studies and Japanese in college, but my parents are from Bangladesh so I met a lot of international students both from China (through my major) and India (through my background). The Indian students spoke English better, usually were able to acclimate better, and integrate into school society.

My parents are from Bangladesh, so I feel a kinship to Indian culture, but am not wedded to it either; in that sense I am American - one of the major reasons I buy Macs is because I intensely dislike Indian outsourced call centers (and I have a tendency to call out any Indian tech support guy who gives their name as Bobby or Johnny).

But India's best and brightest aren't coming to the US to be code monkeys. Among the upper middle and upper class of Bangladesh and India, those kind of jobs are considered somewhat middling. India's best and brightest, the people you think should be "smartest," if they are in the US and not Europe, are getting MBAs, JDs, MDs., etc.