And when you say something positive about microsoft, people accuse you of being 'paid' by them to say something nice. I've been on here before, simply stated I "like my windows phone" and I get trashed for saying it. Why are /. folks often so anti-microsoft? Businesses do 'shady' things all the time - all businesses suck. that's the world we live in - why single out MS when others are just or more deserving of that negative attention. If /. readers wouldn't be so close minded, your message should be scored no less than 3 out of 5 in my opinion. I'm a little disappointed with tech as a whole - Apple has won, Linux isn't installed in as many places as it could be - and the masses INCLUDING IT pros have bought into the cloud too much. Microsoft to me is still somewhat partner friendly, giving IT pros more opportunity for revenue potential by deploying solutions. "OLD IT" is on it's way out. Our jobs are being turned into cable tv repairman type of jobs as all the computing is done in closed data centers.

I had the same problem. Intentionally left a ShopVac outside, worked perfectly, cosmetic condition was A+ (sign said, 'works').... Just (maybe) needed a filter (Home Depot). They took the copper coils out of the motor, left the unit behind - useless unit now. That is why I did the 24 pair Cat 3 copper on top of the fiber... hopefully they broke their backs loading the spool on to the pick up truck.

I had a giant spool of fiber cable in my garage (about 1/2" thick cable, 12 strand burial 62.5 multimode) - 62.5 is pretty obsolete. Guys come around garbage night picking up scrap metal from homes on the street.... I tried leaving the giant spool of fiber out before and they knew it was fiber so they didn't take it. I waited a few months, I wrap a little bit of 24 pair cat 3 telephone cable on the very outer layer, BAM! entire 180lbs fiber spool gone by the metal guys! They got a few feet of copper, and a whole bunch of useless fiber, I was so happy! Remember, spool was heavy, took up too much space, I don't feel like having Kijiji/Craigslist people come to my home - I just wanted it gone. Cat 3 24pair?... no tears shed over that either.

Not paid at all. Think it's a great device. I'm defending the device I like. that simple.

Buy a notebook computer.

This simply isn't newsworthy.

I really don't understand why people are even discussing this anymore. I have this game, it sucked, it was 20 something years ago - no one should care. Moon Patrol was the shit.

Sounds like Bell was liquored up when he recorded that. Barely make anything out. I appreciate the effort that went into recovering that sound bite, but let's be honest - it's pretty disappointing.

I know it's common to bash MS on slashdot. I tried out a Windows Phone recently... Before grasping it I had a cocky smirk on my face thinking the phone would be complete trash. (I owned two windows CE phones before - hating them and getting rid of them quickly). I was pleasantly surprised using the phone and think it could be a real winner in my honest opinion. I have used Android/BlackBerry and iPhone and although the iPhone is a bunch of fun - I think the Windows Phone gets straight to the point and it's very (very!) responsive. I think Microsoft has a pretty good product here. Try one out before you bash. It may not be 'the best' but it's pretty respectable.

Taking bets on how long before a USB powered vacuum cleaner comes out of Asia!

What Google 900Mhz announcement? Please, don't tell me to 'Google it' ....

feeling is mutual

Just me, or is Google getting some (somewhat deserving) bad press lately on a number of things? I try and use Bing quite often (just to be different - same reason I won't buy an iPhone, but do own several Macs), but I find I get the results I'm after with Google more so. I find everyday search results with Bing to be meaningful and useful. I find I have a better time with Google when I'm searching for technical things. Considering Microsoft was very late to the game by taking web search seriously, I don't think they are doing too bad. Their map system/satellite view seems to be nicer than Googles - but slower. I doubt they will ever be the number one search engine, however it's nice to see someone else building a powerful system. Yahoo lost their touch years ago in my opinion.

I agree - however Bell did come back with 25Mbit pricing for the wholesalers recently (only 4 years later!!). Normally Bell sells wholesalers services at about 50% of what Bell retails a service for. The higher speed stuff has been priced at about 95% of what Bell's retail rate is. A wholesaler can't run a business with such limited margin. Pricing still hasn't been approved yet and I think the follow up meeting with the CRTC is scheduled for sometime this summer. Things move very slow with the CRTC. The only reason there are such long delays for this is (my opinion) is to get the Bell legal team time to come up with a plan to counter the wholesaler argument. I also agree that UBB is not such a bad thing generally speaking. The CAP has been set far too low and the cost going over the cap is set far to high per gigabyte. Something like $1-2 per gig :(

In Canada another issue at the moment affecting the 3rd party/wholesale ISP's (small guys & gals) is the speed (megabits per second). Bell sells speeds 6 meg and below to the wholesalers at roughly 50% of cost of Bells lowest retail rate (at least they are suppose to do that). For about 3-4 years now there has been a battle with the CRTC/Bell/Small ISP's regarding access to higher speeds (25Mbit/etc) - Bell recently came back and proposed a rate of about 95% of resale value for wholesalers. A wholesaler cannot run a business with such a thin margin - it's impossible. Sadly, I do not believe the small ISP is going to get as much public support as the bandwidth cap issue has affected EVERYONE including Bell/Rogers/Wholesale subscribers. The speed (not cap) issue is now only going to affect the Small ISP/Wholesale market - not enough people subscribe to wholesale/3rd party ISPs. Sad really.