You can get an almost identically-specified Windows 8.1 Nokia Lumia 520 for $59.99, no contract. The only thing it's missing is a camera flash and a front-facing camera for video chats (Skype still works, it just points the wrong way.)

The latest developer rev of Windows Phone has word flow keyboard, which turns touch-screen typing from painfully intolerable to pretty cool.

Even Blackberry, giving it's Playbooks away to developers, couldn't get the adoption jump-started, so I don't know how an overpriced Firefox phone will succeed, although I would hope it would. Every other smartphone except for Blackberry wants to own your personal data and your life in their cloud and profit from everything sold in their store.

I have a Logitech Cyberman II controller still (can be seen here). It has a true six-axis knob and eight buttons - you never have to touch the keyboard. Twist the knob right to look right, twist down to look down; push forward to move forward, pull knob up to move up - revolutionary. I don't think most understand how awesome these controllers are, or how disappointing it is that game port support was completely removed by Windows 7 (and previously took a hack to add back into Vista) and that these controllers disappeared from Logitech joystick software updates before that.

Descent had several direct-to-metal ports, pre-directx or OpenGL, for video cards such as the Rendition Verite and S3 Virge. I tossed all my CDs of games unplayable without the old hardware a while ago. None of these cards won though, as the 3dfx Voodoo stomped them all for Quake.

The main reason so much needs to be rewritten and the reason that new drivers were required on Windows Vista (making it's initial release a fustercluck) is that big media got to Microsoft.

Vista, 7, and 8 have end-to-end DRM encryption support, required for logo compliance with Blu-ray, where the data comes out of the disc encrypted, and goes to the monitor encrypted. The DRM audio comes from Microsoft encrypted, and only comes out of your Zune's headphone jack unencrypted. This fundamentally broke the audio framework, digital audio workstations, video card drivers, imaging devices, etc, because none of these drivers or applications were previously written to prevent users from using data on their own computers.

Most don't change your IP address capriciously, but some do. Some ISPs, such as Centurylink DSL (Qwest) aggressively change IP with every DHCP renew or PPPoE session, specifically to frustrate users into paying more for a static IP address to run any kind of service that expects that a response should return to the same IP address a few minutes later.

This particular scumbag company has also tried to ace out other DSL Internet providers by limiting them to 7mbps while selling their own ISP service at 20mbps+.

sing along..."Spam Spam Spam Spam"

Expect to be defrauded buying anything that can be faked. 16GB SD cards that are 256MB of looping flash, hard drives filled with bolts, walnuts filled with concrete, food made out of rats and glue and sewer scrapings. This is a place where the goal of any business transaction is to swindle to the maximum extent possible.

Solitaire was initially included with Windows to train people how to use a mouse, now it's not included to train people how to use the Microsoft store and get them to enter their trackable credentials.

Please attempt to use the Beta site. Try using it as your only view of Slashdot. You will then realize is an abomination, a huffington-post web 1.9 where a big picture is plopped on a windows 8 tile, with a comment section that looks like a discus outsourcing.

When Slashdot is NO comments on the posted news stories, and ALL comments on the death of slashdot by evil committee, maybe then the idea will be abandoned - Dice should know that we will not use the new site, and we are willing to not use the current site to prove it.