Are they still available at that price, and is it possible to get them in the USA? I just checked ebay and they're around USD $300.

Nah, it's not so much "handwriting" - more like graffiti.

I thought it was common knowledge that a bolt of lightning provides 1.21 Gigawatts.

All you need to do is capture that lightning and instantaneously use it to charge the battery bank. You'll have plenty of power to charge, and all you need is a large liquid cooled resistor bank to take care of the excess energy. Simple, right? Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?

I'll echo what everyone else said in their replies - bypassing the security is a fun thing to do.

I went to a private high school (where 90% of the students go on to be lawyers or doctors, NOT engineers) right around the time when *real* computers were starting to be widely used in classrooms. A few geeky friends and I had so much fun playing all sorts of innocent pranks, staying three steps ahead of the faculty responsible for fixing them.

I haven't ever played FarmVille, but did try CafeWorld on a friend's account and couldn't figure out what the objective of the game was. I also recently experimented with a social/interactive game on Android/iPhone called World War by Storm8.

It was interesting at first - do missions, collect money, buy equipment to fight (ships/aircraft/vehicles/troops), then battle others, all gaining skill points and advancing to the next level. Then after a week or two of casually playing (more like button pressing) I realized it's a giant waste of time. There's no real action or skill involved and no specific strategy.

When I feel the need to play games, I either pull out the NES/SNES/MAME emulator or bust out original Half-Life/CS from 12 years ago.

The light leakage on the HTC EVO appears in two separate places. In some of the early models and even some current models, the adhesive holding the glass to the rest of the phone fails and the screen lifts up, causing light to bleed through around the edge that lifted. A simple fix would be to lift the screen and reapply some new adhesive, but on a brand new phone covered under warranty, this isn't something a user should have to do.

The other issue persists on all HTC EVOs, even the newest HW revision. There are LED backlights for the four buttons on the bottom of the phone and if tip the top of the phone toward you, you can see the individual LEDs shining brightly. I've seen other manufacturers handle this by placing a thin strip of adhesive foam across the glass, but for some reason HTC didn't bother.

Aside from these issues, it's a pretty good phone that I'm happy with. I love the design, especially the fact that there are no physical buttons other than power and volume up/down. The screen is perhaps a bit massive for a phone, but it does make it easier to view web pages and read email.

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!