As a quick followup, here are some quotes on 3G call quality from the iphone blog:

A few people post quotes to the effect "quality is so-so but it's good enough for me," but most responses seem pretty negative towards the call quality.

My 3G cell connection has nasty latency (200ish pings generally) and made for a poor skype experience when tethered to my computer. Delays in voice calls are pretty obnoxious when accustomed to cell and landline connections - I don't see this as a viable competitor to cell minute usage even if Verizon allowed skype over 3G to US landlines.

Has anyone else had any contrary experience?

The Palm WebOS multi-tasking UI is pretty rock-solid. I was reconciling numbers between an email and a text memo earlier with both windows open side by side "deck of cards" view. The phone has plenty of quirks - including some OS-level memory issues, but everybody should start copying their multi-tasking UI. It's very easy to switch between apps and close extra open apps.

WebOS from Palm has a very strong multi-tasking UI. I think Maemo from Nokia will as well. I use and love the Palm Pre, and I'm very interested in Maemo - it looks like it will be a fantastic new smartphone platform for Nokia.

I've heard other people echo your point. My experience on the Moto Q (the original) was that the phone was absolutely worthless. I don't know if it was WinMo 5, Motorola, or the combination of the two, but it was by a long shot the worst cell phone experience I've ever had. I've spoken with other Q users who had similar experiences. This might not be the fault of MS, but Apple, controlling their hardware and the interaction between the hardware and OS may have generated a better product than MS because of that control. I'm currently using a Palm Pre, which has some issues, but drastically fewer than what I experienced on the Q. If one company has total responsibility for the customer experience, they probably have more ability and initiative to improve the user experience through the entire product pipeline. Nokia, Palm, Apple, and possibly Google (Nexus One) have this advantage.

T-Mobile just started offering discounts for bringing your own devices. It's pretty compelling from a price perspective, but I'm still not sure if they get decent coverage where I live.

There are some fantastic add-ons that do this, but I agree, it would be great to have this in the core functionality of Firefox.

As an off-again-on-again linux user since the early days of Redhat and Caldera, I would have historically agreed with the need for a relatively long-use release. However, I think Ubuntu has become very easy to use for the installation of new programs. Apt-get is a huge win. This helps eliminate the difficulty of setting up a new environment when you reinstall the OS. For the few applications that aren't available via apt-get, I'm willing to spend some extra time (although installing the latest version of ruby/gems/somewhat rarely used gems/rails on my last ubuntu install was a bit brutal).

That said, I probably will stick with the next long-term release for an extended time period for many of the reasons you mention compounded by my general laziness.

I think the actions of building an atomic bomb or a biological weapon should be illegal for the public good. It's too late to prosecute someone for "blowing something up" with a highly-destructive device. As for possessing explosive material - what about ammonium nitrate? It's a high explosive with legitimate uses as a fertilizer. The "act of fiddling" with it is what makes it dangerous, not the inherently useful materials to begin with.

I understand your argument and where you're trying to go with it, but there are many shades of grey here that aren't handled. I'd tend to argue that the cops may be doing something correct by arresting someone who is modding consoles solely for the purpose of copyright violation (which I'd be shocked if he wasn't), but I'd say the main error here is that the potential penalty is too draconian. Furthermore, if they apply DMCA to more legitimate practices, such as modifying the PS3 to run home-made programs that you couldn't otherwise run, the cops should take it on the nose. I haven't heard of that happening; although as crappy as the DMCA is, I won't be surprised to hear it.

Sorry, apparently I'm completely incompetent at using a browser; here's what I actually meant to say (and this time not anonymously).

I couldn't disagree with this statement more. I spent my school years learning Spanish. I believe I should be treated well even if I go to China or France, places where I have little-to-no language ability. That said, the French people I met in Paris and Nice when I visited seemed quite nice to me. All this is predicated on the traveler treating the locals respectfully

I find this statement to be mis-leading. While locked-down out-of-the-box, t-mobile has far and away the best policy when it comes to unlocking the phone. If you're a customer for over 90 days, in good standing, they'll unlock the phone. At AT&T, you can only get that if you have a nice store rep. At Sprint and Verizon, dream on.

Has Windows Mobile improved dramatically? WinMo 5 is the worst operating system I've ever used:

• Phone locked up
• Needed to go into memory to close open apps on a regular basis - the UI for this was quite poor
• Doesn't update the signal strength properly
• Frequently sends calls to voicemail when clicking the answer key
• Must remove the battery to properly restart the phone
• The interface with my bluetooth randomly decides to disconnect/reconnect

I could go on listing issues all day, but it suffices to say, the OS is terrible. I'm willing to believe that M$ can improve this product, but they have so far to go from my original Moto Q. Also, any copy paste support yet? I don't get why Apple and MS didn't have those working out of the gates.

Several points:

• In a car, road, wind, and other external noises will eliminate any ability to hear the difference between most lossy and lossless formats.
• Many recordings and/or masterings of recordings are not of sufficient quality for anyone to be able to tell the difference between FLAC, MP3, etc.
• High quality recorded and mastered music with a high quality stereo is the only time a consumer would typically be able to discern any difference.
• Professional and semi-professional musicians and recording engineers spend enough time listening to almost indecipherable sound nuances through top notch equipment that they probably do notice and care what formats they listen to in a professional environment.

Well thought out position, but I'd have to give them a more even ranking on most merits.

HL2 Highlights:

• Modified Gravity Gun during the end-game
• Entry into Ravenhome - I'm a sucker for pseudo-horror
• Alyx Vance - better companion than Cortana

Halo Highlights (from 1 and 2, unfortunately don't have a 360):

• Introduction of the Flood in the first game (good foreshadowing)
• Arbiter invisibility - this created some fantastic stealth opportunities
• Covenant sword
• Creative level design - the outdoor environments were very cool

I would tend to give Halo the edge due to multiplayer being so fantastic, but I haven't given the HL2 partner games a fair shake - CS or TF2.

I'm running 8.10 on a Dell Latitude D620, and the default settings already have one of the workarounds implemented. The laptop-mode-tools package workaround mentioned at Ubuntu's wiki has already been implemented. Lower the FUD meters.