You must be new to smuggling.

I'm not saying the poster is right on his claims, but the basic principle is that:
1. Take cheap diamonds from conflicted African country
2. Put them in a bag
3. Go to Canada
4. Open the bag in the bottom of a Canadian mine on a Monday night during the hockey game
5. Tuesday morning: Wow! We've just found an assload of diamonds! Let's go laser etch them for authenticity right away!

It's not like that's such a complicated plan. Are they doing it? I have no idea and frankly, I can't decide which sounds more plausible. a) A giant multinational acting kindly? or b) A giant multinational bending the laws for profit.

Tough choice!

One million points and some robot parts for having summed up the whole public-smoking debacle in a nice to comprehend paragraph.

That's exactly why I support banning of smoking everywhere in the entire world with the exception of a smoker's own house and possibly car as long as no passengers are in it.

You can shoot your heroin all you want, as long as your needle isn't accidentally reaching my arm. Second hand heroin!

Congratulations on being born from a family tree of geniuses.

What the author of the post means is that for every mom and pop out there except yours, they will find a device such as this to be their main choice of "computerinternetthing".

The fact that your grandpa can use Excel to make a spreadsheet is pointless to the fact that old people of any generation have a hard time dealing with the top technology of the same time. So this device is the WebTV that Microsoft knew was a good idea ten years ago, but in a working condition.

Damn straight! Grado headphones are the second best headphones I have ever heard.

A few years ago I bought (impulsively I might add) what I think is the best sounding headphones: Stax headphones, or rather, earspeakers as they say. http://www.stax.co.jp/Export/SRS2050II.html Not exactly this one, as the one I had has been discontinued, but pretty much the same. At 1000$ for the set (earphones and mandatory amplifier), it's a bit insanely expensive. But the sound that came out of that was sublime, as true experience to be lived.

You see, the road system is not something you can just dump cars on. It's not a big hard drive. It's a series of interconnected data cables.

Agfain nintendo is finding a truly innovative idea in order to stay dominant.

They found a niche with the Wii for the casual gamers, now they'll find another niche with people on the move (but with limited budgets) for casual on the go gaming purchases.

Go nintendo!

Also, First.

I've been using my laptop for a few years at university classes, and always found that the Formula object in Openoffice Writer is perfect for my needs.

The downside is you have a learn the names for your most popular symbols or operators in your equations, but learning it is quick and once you know it, it's possible to type in formulas about as fast as the teacher writes them on the whiteboard.

Perhaps your courses require so MUCH equations that this will not be a practical solution, but for the few mathematics classes i've had, it was fine. I could keep up, and they look gorgeous.

That's what my bank does (desjardins). They never send an email to me for any reason whatsoever.

They do, however, contact me via regular postal mail, or they rather send me an internal message from within their online banking system. Therefore, I have to logon to my bank in order to receive messages from that bank.

Anything preventing me from logging on will have to be resolved the old fashion way, phone or in person.

Banks should just all together, and at once, tell all of their customers "We will never email you. Ever. For any reason." and instead rely on regular mail or internal mail to contact the user.

This only makes sense.

That's a port worth a billion mod points.

I've always wondered why I am so reluctant to enter a Staples store. You've just told me why: the intimidating pillars at the entrance, the metal grids in the windows, I almost feel like entering a prison! Now an apple store, in contrast, is friendly, inviting, open.

Same goes for "trying products". At every store I went to, Costco, Futureshop, Bestbuy, all computers are always locked down to the screen saver or the logon screen. How am I supposed to buy a COMPUTER if I cannot use it? That'd be like buying a car without driving it. Makes no sense. Just walk into any Apple store and you can sit down with any computer you wish, and browse away to you heart's content. This is brilliant.

No wonder Apple is making billions. They hire people with brains.

With their iPhone plans, Rogers now has an automatic upper limit to data charges on an account, which I beleive is set at 100$. So if you bust your, say, 30$ a month data plan, you can not bring it above 100$ no matter what you actually used.

Not sure if that applies to roaming, which I've just posted my story about below...

I'm a Canadian client of Rogers, and while we were on vacation in Mexico a few months ago, we decided to use the Palm Treo we brought for some basic web surfing and email checking (swine flu panic, get some information for airports and whatnot).

So I call their handy and free 611 customer service, and ask for roaming charges. "What phone do you have?" she asks. "Palm Treo 650." She then tells me the charges for data are "Three cents per kilobyte." - "Sure?" - "Yes."

It sounded cheap, but not too cheap to be impossible. To be sure, I went to an internet cafe at the corner, and checked Rogers website. Impossible to know for sure, but I could find two information: 3 cents per MEGAbyte, applied to ordinary phones, and 3 cents per KILObyte applied to smartphones, especially the iPhone.

So we used it, thinking it would be 3/KB, but reasonably because, afterall, it's only a Treo and there's not much you can do on the web with it.

Upon my return, I got a bill for 80$ in data roaming charges. I fought it, had the issue escalated, I even DARED them to "Go listen to the recorded conversation" that they keep on file for "training and enhancement purposes". They finally caved in and removed all the charges from my bill, except 10$, which was satisfactory.

It's really bad when you are considered guilty until you can prove innocence.

Rogers do that kind of stuff frequently. I just upgraded to an iPhone and had to call them because each and every rebate/discount I previously had, and each bargain/rebate I managed to negociate on my new contract, they all disappeared mysteriously from the new invoice. Of coures it's a mistake. Of course the system had a hiccup and my order was not processed fully. Riiight.

But all in all, because I'm quite vocal about my consumer rights and will gladly voice them to the companies I deal with, I end up with a pretty interesting contract, and the services are good, so I'm, afterall, a happy customer.