I feel as if a million T-Mobile customers screamed out in agony and are snuffed once they have read this article...

So, even though the account holder can disable the censoring, would it be an accurate guess that quite a few slashdotters with T-Mobile here are now considering leaving to a different telecom?

I think Huawei was also left out of consideration when AT&T and Verizon were looking to build more LTE towers in the US. Or was that the federal government didn't want their equipment out of this fear?

Would love if someone clarified this.

Alright. Got it. Thank you for helping me to understand.

Alright, so these apps would only help if the perp intended on using the device themselves and had no intention of reselling.

But, yeah, by taking it up to the next level with IMEI cracking... That kind of nullifies any sense of security on the phone. :-/

Ah, I see...

Although, isn't "locking" the phone about as good as bricking? Or can that be disabled by connecting it to any computer with iTunes? Yes, the data would be erased, as far as I know, but would this still work?

If your *smartphone* (not feature phone) is stolen, in particular if it's Android or iOS, there are a number of solutions one could use without having to resort to calling police to "brick" your phone, other than retrieving it.

Apple has the "Find My iPhone" service and you are able to locate your phone (if it's still on), able to lock it, send a message, and wipe your device.

Android has, I don't know, 10+ different apps that can do that available on the Android Market. This is not including some manufacturers' own services natively installed onto their devices, like Motorola's MotoBlur service, that does all of the above.

Perhaps the kids find it a complete escape into another world, like many of those that play MMORPGs and Action RPGs like Mass Effect and Fallout.

I recently had to swear off of RPGs because of how deeply immersive they got for me. It got hard to tell what was real in the game and what wasn't. I was extremely absorbed in the story.

And I could say that I also reacted negatively when my parents told me to turn off the games back then. I became very frustrated and anxious for a few hours. Not necessarily violent, but the fact I got taken away from my story unwillingly did not help at all.

It's worse now, for story-driven people like me, with un-pauseable cutscenes and checkpoints that you must reach instead of saving whenever you want in some of these kinds of games.

Even when I turned off a game like these voluntarily I still get a bit anxious and find it a bit difficult to "get my head back in the game", usually because I found something within a story a bit disturbing (Mass Effect written all over this point) or just needed to go somewhere for a meeting or something in reality.

I would not be surprised to see reports from China that Foxconn workers are being treated a bit better over the next year... Thus eventually making Apple the most "labor-friendly".

Although, Foxconn manufactures devices for multiple companies, I believe. Doesn't Motorola also have their devices made there?

Thank you for finding a source. Amazing to know what Sony's position is...

There are many ways a founding document can be interpreted. It can be to the letter, or it can be flexible. Or it can be someplace in between.

That's what makes the US constitution so cool. We left it open to interpretation by future citizens! The United States would have fallen long ago if it weren't for the ability to add amendments.

Is this true? Man, console games aren't going to leap into better graphics until 2015???

I'd love to see some sort of sort of source from 2005 about that...

...to get free stuff.

(TL;DR: If you don't have the cash, you can't buy it. Period.)

Alright, what follows this sentence will probably get me modded into the negatives, but I have the right to free speech, so I'm going type out my opinion and leave it be...

*sigh* Here it goes... rant/

According to my personal ethics (which I realize is not shared with others), if you can't pay for it, you CANNOT own/use/view/listen/read (to) the content.

I know there are those like me out there that will buy the real thing and not make excuses such as "try before you buy" (which is reasonable, but not always practical for content creators), "DRM sucks" (It does work, it may annoy the hell out of you, but I've personally never had problems with DRM), "It costs too much", etc.

But there are several out there that use all of the above excuses to cover their true intentions for pirating: They don't want to pay for it. Or they do it because they can.

If you find some paid content on the internet that's easily downloaded that's not done through some semi-obscure or really obscure method (torrenting is not mainstream, no matter how you spin it. I doubt those using Limewire years ago knew it was P2P and legally dubious...), do yourself a favor and don't download it. Support the official release, even if there is no "demo" available. Sometimes you just gotta swallow the content and the fact that your money is gone and either like it or don't. That's how reality works most of the time. Support even the big Hollywood releases!........../rant

Alright, thanks for your time in reading my opinion. Commence downmodding.

(Disclaimer: I live near Dallas, Texas. AT&T's HQ is located here.) I'm going to go against the "geek grain" here at the risk of mod points (like I have any...) and say that AT&T IS actually good in some places but has some weak points. Verizon, believe it or not, isn't perfect and has weak points and does have bad customer service in some regions of the country (away from "geek havens" like California and New York). If you plan on visiting the southern or southwestern U.S., AT&T will tend to be your better bet. In my experience, ATT has given me customer service ABOVE AND BEYOND Verizon and T-Mobile. Second in line is Sprint. This may be due to my location since AT&T's current incarnation used to be Southwestern Bell Corporation (SBC), hence the better coverage/customer service. If you want to go to places like Cali or NY, Verizon or T-Mobile will probably be better in terms of 3G/4G LTE coverage. Although AT&T is slowly improving, it's not as good as Verizon or T-Mo in those locations.

Perhaps some feel this way... I feel it is social. I usually go with friends to the theater. Perhaps I should not have assumed that most everyone would go the the theaters with friends/family.