This is why we need to force carriers to unlock phones upon request, once any subsidizing contract is terminated. We need to be able to take our phones to another carrier who's willing to treat us like customers, and not as the enemy.

There really should be enforcable consumer-protection laws against re-defining terms to mean their opposite. Unlimited should mean Unlimited, fine print or not. It should not, under any circumstances, mean "Limited".

Who the f*ck cares if they call it "unlimited"? The 5GB cap is well documented and well-known. Sure you have to read a little fine print (which isn't even all that hidden anymore), but if you're a remotely tech-savvy user, you're probably reading forums like this one and are acutely aware of the 5GB cap anyway. And for 99% of users, 5GB/month on a cell phone may as well be unlimited

Because, pure and simple, it's deceptive. It's a lie.

"Unlimited data" means "Data, without limit". If there's a 5GB limit, calling it "Unlimited" is lying.

Re-defining "Unlimited" to mean something else is deceptive.

Both of these things are wrong, and potentially illegal.

He does seem like a cross between Lost in Space's Dr. Smith and Baltar from the BSG remake, only for some reason less fun to watch.

Same here, although I do use all eight fingers (and two thumbs). If I catch myself not looking at the keyboard, suddenly something "breaks", and I can't do it without looking.

Well, you've got to figure that, at least at first, it'll be hard to create complex devices. "Computer - make me a 1/2 megaton warhead" would be a lot harder than "Computer - make me a 3/4" spanner".

That having been said, there will be folks using them to make *parts* for nefarious devices. And, if the tech makes it far along enough to be able to make complex machinery, I'm sure there will be folks that *do* try to make weapons.

And, I'm sure the folks who make these devices will think of this, and put in some kind of controls to prevent wholesale creation of, for example, machine guns. However, those controls will obviously be in software, and will be able to be circumvented with the right amount of effort. And of course there will be those willing to put in that effort.

Even better - what about a netbook-style "shell" for the iPhone.

Slot it in about where the trackpad is - heck, it could double as a trackpad itself. The shell could have a nice keyboard, display, drives, ports, etc...heck, maybe even some additional RAM if they did it right. The phone (which, as you said, is a computer) would just provide the CPU, radio for wireless/cellular connectivity, and a small amount of storage for the OS and apps.

External ports could allow it to act as a pseudo-desktop (external keyboard/mouse/monitor) - or a separate "shell" (perhaps built into a nice big monitor) could be developed for that.

How exactly was he dishonest? He announced that his doctors thought they'd found a hormonal imbalance causing him some problems. A *week* later, he announced that things seemed more serious than they thought (IE: it wasn't just a hormonal imbalance, as previously thought), and that he'd be taking medical leave to take care of it.

This wasn't an entire quarter between announcements - it was a week. Perhaps some test results came back during that week that contained new information. Maybe they started treatment, only to find the problem went deeper than they thought. Having family with medical issues, this kind of thing isn't out of the ordinary. Sending off for a test "just in case" is common - and occasionally those tests come back with unexpected results.

It looked to me like this is what happened. Rather than being "dishonest" it actually looks (uncharacteristically) like this may have been the complete opposite.

The "pick two" method then? Normally I apply that to Fast, Cheap, Right, but I can see it working for Friendly, Helpful, Responsive as well ;P

As an iPhone user, I've gotten enough free upgrades from Apple, just in terms of firmware alone, to justify giving them another couple hundred bucks.

Problem being, you're not giving that $200 to Apple, you're giving it to AT&T.

Regardless of how I feel about the upgrade price, I'm far less likely to feel inclined to give AT&T more money. Their service has been quite poor over the past year. 3G is spotty at best around here, with frequent outages. Combine that with their lack of support for features Apple has built into their new software, the delay on MMS being brought about by intentionally crippling MMS for 3.0 beta users, and most especially the proposed $70/month additional fee for tethering (once they bother to get around to it), and you might see why giving AT&T more money simply doesn't fly right with me.

As was said in an article at ZDNet, AT&T is the anchor weighing Apple down. Not that any of the other US carriers would treat customers better, mind you.

Suggesting one unblock ads is fine. Expecting it to make any difference isn't.

The web is designed fr *user* control, not the other way around. It's up to the user (and the browser) to decide which content to display, and how to display it. The page author can provide *suggestions* on how that content is to be displayed, but the browser is free to ignore it.

In some cases, the browser is simply incapable of showing the content - say, images in lynx running on a text-only terminal, or a browser designed to assist the blind. In others, it may be due to user intervention - blocking images to reduce bandwidth usage, for example, or applying a custom stylesheet to reformat content for a small screen.

Or, it may simply be a case of a user not wishing to expose themselves or their computer to ads. There's enough malicious code out there being propagated by ads that it's probably in the user's best interests to block them (particularly if you're running Windows). Most webmasters aren't serving their own ads - they use an ad network. These networks don't exactly have the best track record in preventing malicious code from making it out to users. They tend to only act reactively to such things - at which point the damage has already been done. This of course isn't the webmaster's fault, but it means a webmaster simply doesn't have the control over the ads necessary to be able to make the judgement that "the ads my site serves aren't annoying/intrusive/malicious". They just don't *know* that, because they aren't the ones serving the ads.

Not to mention the fact that if a tag like this becomes common, *all* webmasters will add it, regardless of content. This will make the "This author says their ads are good, view them?" statement meaningless.

Some others:
Maniacal Macaw
Medicated Moose
Masticating Mole-Rat
Moronic Mouse
Materially-Insignificant Manatee

• The Joel Hodgson Satellite of Love

s/interesting/irritating/

I don't generally find Flash interesting. I either find it entertaining (flash-based games, video sites like Youtube, Hulu, etc...), or irritating (flash-based ads, particularly those with sound or that overlay content, "splash pages", or "sites" that break my browser controls, forcing me into whatever nightmarish non-standard navigation method the designer thought up).

FlashBlock in Firefox and ClickToFlash in Safari (Adblock for both as well) completely fix this. They allow the entertaining content to be reached, while preventing the irritating content from being forced upon me.

This is exactly the path I ended up taking.

I blew my first opportunity at college. I simply wasn't ready for the freedom. I slacked off, and didn't take it seriously. I did "OK" grade-wise, but lost much of my financial aid, and couldn't make it for a second year.

Spent the next few years maturing. Moved out of my folks house after finding that I simply couldn't live with them anymore. Moved in with my then-girlfriend (now wife) in her college dorm for a while. Eventually got our first apartment. Was in shit retail jobs for a few years.

Networking is everything. One of the guys I knew from a retail gig ended up manager of a dial-up tech-support department, and got me a job there. Busted my ass in that tech-support hellhole, sponged every bit of knowledge I could, and eventually moved into Web Design, then Web Development. I kept picking up server admin experience along the way.

Got a job offer on the east coast for more than twice what I was making, doing a webmaster/admin gig. Moved. The bubble burst, the company went under, and I was unemployed for a little more than a year and a half. What sucked was that the jobs I was applying for either rejected me out of hand (no degree), or were just far enough outside my experience that they didn't want to take a chance. I hadn't built up a significant enough volume of experience to open those doors without the degree.

Finally, after more applications and resumes than I can count, I got a sysadmin position at a small company. Intolerable conditions and expectations were the order of the day. After about 3 years of that, I needed to get out.

And that's how I landed my current job, as the second sysadmin at a slightly larger company. I'd finally accumulated a large enough body of experience in my field that my lack of a degree wasn't a concern. I had exceptional references, which I'm sure helped quite a bit. Great people here, and a much better environment. We're understaffed - but then again, who isn't? In this economy, I'd much rather have too much work (and reasonable expectations) than not enough!