The fact that the A5 processor incorporates some fancy noise cancellation technology goes beyond enhancing Siri voice recognition, and explains the startling difference in speakerphone and handset call quality I have noticed after upgrading from the iPhone 4. The 4S is easily one of the best sounding smartphones I have used in recent memory.

Not that iPhone 4 call quality is terrible, it's just that the 4S is that much better.

Now if Facebook could only get posters to actually post in some sort of readable "natural language."

How can Blizzard force you to provide your real first and last name? I mean, I could use any name other than my own so long as it appears to be a legitimate name and not some moniker or nickname.

Watching the announcement live I was struck with just how absorbent the crowd was regarding iPad presentation. It's like this product has wings. I wonder how well the iPad will handle those heavy work flow days.

It seems to me that Apple's legal threat is tacit admission that the iTablet (or whatever such a product would be called) exists. I mean, how can you sue for inducing someone to violate the trade secret that a particular product does not exist? Is that even a trade secret?

You mean "atavism" not "avatar". An avatar is something you masturbate to in Second Life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism

Except on a Mac.

On the bright side, the 5200 joysticks included the world's first on-controller pause button.

Er, the Intellivision had a system-wide pause function that would pause any game when you held the "1" and "9" keys (I believe "3" and "7" also worked) on the keypad simultaneously.

If you want to get picky there was not exactly a button marked "PAUSE", but it served the same function.

If I was a student at Carleton I would file a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, if for nothing but the delicious irony.

As much as I hate human rights commissions, this is a perfect opportunity to throw some of the same destructive invective back at those so eager to label any and all things as racist and sexist.

I agree with your argument that casting votes for multiple offices and legislative initiatives lends itself to electronic tabulation. Your argument that population is prohibitive to paper based voting is not, however, considering that the vote tallies from the major population centers of Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, etc. are available around the same time as the tallies from lesser populated areas in the same time zone.