Easy:
Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of Putrid Debris :)

What I don't understand is why these high resolution apps can't be for the next generation iPhone...

Compared to the Droid, the screen on the iPhone is lacking. Apple might be looking to compete with them.

Ugh, first I'm surrounded by assholes, and now I find they're trying to copy my behavior.

Now say goodbye to your two best friends...

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to replacing email. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can still use the service, so it has no benefit over email.
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(X) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for messaging
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
(X) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(X) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(X) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

I could not disagree with you more in this post.

Right now, the majority of newspapers out there are running stories that aren't even being written within their own organization. They basically take stories posted by Associated Press and broadly publish it across several hundred newspapers.

The issue isn't that the newspapers are overstaffed. The issue is that they are not getting enough money to justify having *real* reporters doing *real* journalism, which takes *real* time and money.

Look ... when I buy a product, I expect it to come in its original packaging straight from the factory. When its out of its packaging, I have no idea where the product has been. Sure, it could have been safely stowed in drawer, but seeing the assholes who work at my local gamestop, I can only assume the game has been used as a coaster for a cigarette stuffed bottle of stale miller light. How am I to know otherwise?

Because, if it's not sealed in its original case, you can look at it, you know, with your eyes, and then choose not to buy it if it's scratched or if there are tracces of cigarette ash or beer stains on it. Or you can tell the manager that you want one that wasn't a "display copy" and if they only have "display copies", then you can either buy it, or not buy it, or try to Intimidate the manager, or just wander around and level up for a while and collect more gil, or whatever. It's really up to you. But let's dispense with the drama. It's not like the store is replacing the sticker on the top of the case (that's such a pain to remove) and then re-plastic wrapping it and pretending that it's never been opened. Sheesh.

Just in case anyone is wondering, I finally broke down and bought one of those CD/DVD buffing/repair kits (with the hand crank, haven't tried the automatic things) and it works great. I got a lot of games and DVD's that my kids had scratched working again with it.

sounds good

Take this with a grain of salt (possibly lithium salt), but I have found the following technique to work for returning the occasional horrible game (Spore? anyone?):

Go to the store and tell them that you had "problems with the game" and would like to exchange it for an new copy. In most cases, they will give you an unopened copy which you can then return for a credit. If you buy from a chain that there are multiple of in your area this works a little bit better. (Get the new copy at Target A, return it at Target B)

As I understand it, the system is set up so that stores can return what they call "defective copies" for almost nothing. This allows the store to not lose money and for you to return the game.

I really wish this comment could be at the top of every political discussion to come up on Slashdot. Losing the representation of state's as entities cost this nation a great deal.