I'd rather a manufacturer delay a product launch until they get things absolutely right.

HTC rushed the EVO out the door to meet demand, and their early releases had some serious hardware quality problems (light leakage around screen, screen separation, broken housing near power button, display problems, etc.) I'm not making this stuff up. I had to return THREE of my handsets before I got one that was good, and all three of those were Hardware Revision 003. I can't imagine what 001 and 002 were like.

That's the price you pay for being an early adopter.

That's all fine and dandy until some *real* illegal content gets distributed through your node.

I never gave Verizon wireless a dime of my money precisely for that reason. Most carriers are bad enough, but Verizon had some very tight lock-in with no reasonable alternatives, and in some cases even charging extra for features that were a standard part of the phones.

I may not be 100% correct here, but I recall phone shopping about three years ago for a Blackberry and I believe Verizon was charging and extra fee for use of the GPS receiver. I went with Sprint because just about every feature of the phone was available without any extra charges.

Sprint had it's own limitations, specifically not supporting MMS on the Blackberry Curve, however there was a system update not long after I got it that enabled MMS functionality (instead of their silly "picture mail" service that utilized a web server and simply SMSed a link to the website).

I agree with your assessment. Once carriers develop a firmware/platform for a specific phone and it works reasonably well, there's really no reason to fix it unless there are a bunch of complaints about usability, or a bunch of gaping security holes that need to be fixed (which is common on desktop platforms, but isn't discussed much when it comes to mobile platforms).

As a nerd, I like to have the latest and greatest software/firmware, especially if it adds new functionality and runs faster, but most people won't care if they're updated or not as long as their shit "just works."

No worries, the Doomsday Machine will take care of that for us.

Sure, right after the TRON light cycle is released.

Oh, wait a minute!

The only thing in that photo that even vaguely says "Jeep" to me, is the grill.

And THAT was copied from AM General... or was it the other way around?

I love it when I'm out in the woods and my buddies are gathered around an aggressive hill with their trucks and jeeps, crawling up gnarly terrain at a snails pace. Meanwhile, I tear up that same hill in about 1/100th of the time on my KTM 450XC.

Don't get me wrong, offroad trucks are a lot of fun, but more so when you have a friend who owns it (and pays for the cost of maintenance and repairs). My bike is much cheaper to maintain, and if there's a major mechanical failure, I still have a way to get to work at the start of the workweek.

I like the fact that it comes with a USB stick instead of the standard "recovery disc"...good call on that one, Apple.

Don't go giving Apple credit for developing this novel installation method; us hackintosh users have been using this method for almost two years to install OS X onto our (non-Apple) netbooks!

This could give a new definition to the term 'bugged.'

Just imagine the fun you could have with a remotely operated or autonomous flying reconnaissance/surveillance vehicle the size of an insect!

All somebody needs to do is write an iPad app, and polling locations could be fitted with iPads behind the curtain booths. What could possibly go wrong?

Ah, Second Life. I remember that time when Slashdot was batshit insane about it, with a story or two popping up every single day. I though the concept sounded interesting, but never got around to trying it (did I have to install some software on my computer or was it web-based)?

And isn't Minecraft the new Second Life?

Facebook has been around for quite a few years and has a huge user base. The entire MySpace crowd jumped ship and went to Facebook because anybody who is anybody is on Facebook now. If you would have suggested to me five years ago that most myspace users would migrate to Facebook I would have thought you were crazy. It's just a matter of time until something cooler, more hip, and more trendy comes along to steal people away.

Facebook has a much bigger user base than Second Life and a much bigger price tag* so it will take a little longer for the media attention to wear off.

*IMO that's why there's so much attention when it comes to Facebook; they're big time, with an extremely high estimated value

I'm not arguing with your reasoning for FB becoming more popular.

2. So people felt ok using real names and details, and allowing other people to see their profiles (because only people from the same uni could).

Facebook was the pioneer in making people 'open up' and reveal all their personal information, attributing it to their real name.

3. The use of real details made it much more friendly and useful.

Especially for the advertisers.

It has been a great service for keeping track of friends from high school and family on the other side of the country/world. I can share pictures, stories, articles, links, lolcats and memories on one unified platform.

Facebook came out just a short while after I finished college. Back when registrations were restricted to .edu addresses, there was no check for "@alumni.xxxxxx.edu" so I got in early.

Does anyone remember Friendster? Shortly before Facebook and MySpace there was a thing called Friendster that was very similar. It had a plain vanilla template (no myspace style wild and crazy customized css hackery pages), and I found it quite useful for staying in touch with people. For some reason it never caught on like Facebook.

And on the other hand he would be almost merciless in terms of rejecting their work until he felt it had reached the level of perfection that was good enough to go into – in this case, the Macintosh.

So what the hell happened with System 7 and then OS 8? So much for "perfection."