I hate using a keyboard and mouse. Its the only thing that has prevented me from every really picking up PC gaming. I know people who get used to it claim better accuracy (and tests seem to back that up), but as someone else here mentioned, if everyone is on a controller, its still even. And I love the Xbox 360 controller.
-Taylor

But he's not a troll, he was spot on and still modded down. I was pointing that out.

Unless you meant Slashdot is the troll, in which case, we're all feeding it.

Or if are *you* the troll, and you're pulling a Matrix like "don't worry about the vase" trick on me, because you knew I'd feed you for saying that...

Oh god, you're the oracle! And worse, I'm Keanu Reeves!

You have a negative one score, but there is nothing wrong with what you said. This summary is complete crap. Slashdot chose to publish it. So Slashdot is publishing crap. This happens often. It is then not unreasonable to say the site has stagnated. I sure am sick of all this bottom of the barrel content myself.

The submitted did not read the article, or was an idiot. The approver(s?) did not read the article or are idiots. Everyone involved in posts like this are doing a bad job or are an idiot. Why does slashdot keep doing this? I see extremely poorly written content all the time here. Its just dumb.

*ALSO*, most blogs nowadays read their own comments and post updates like "many people in the comments have pointed out...". I don't think I have ever seen this happen on Slashdot, or if I have, it does not happen often enough. You'll see times where 80% of the comments are rightfully pointing out that the story is BS, but it still does not get updated. Posting bad content and then not fixing it when it is clearly shown to be BS just shows that the people running the site do not care about the quality of the content, or at the least are very bad at showing it. You just see false stories hang out on the front page all day long. Its ridiculous.

Shape up slashdot!
-Taylor

Honestly I'm a little surprised it wasn't obvious. Why would android be any different than other software? The android fanboy in me immediately noticed that it was probably unnecessary to single out that one OS. The article is now dead, but from what you say it sounds like I had the right idea.
-Taylor

Unless your data includes "How to build a new Earth." Then you'd want it!

Umm, isn't this the same tired argument people use *every* time someone does something other than cure cancer?

"OMG, why are you playing baseball, there's cancer to be cured!"

"Why are you playing guitar, there are starving people in Africa!'

"Why are you studying journalism, you should be studying engineering and solving the energy crisis!"

No matter what you are doing, there is always something more noble to be done, but we can't all be doing noble things. There's nothing wrong with brewing beer for consumption in space, or making Justin Bieber lunchboxes for kids or making yet another iPad case. People should do whatever they're best at, or whatever makes them happy.
-Taylor

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/01/nexus-one-android-2-3-3-update-arrives-ota-breaks-google-voice/
Confirmed.

Jesus christ man, chill the fuck out. I'm not some religious lunatic with a gun fetish. I'm not even religious. And I didn't mean its our destiny like "God has willed it unto us" or some shit. I just meant that it is the most likely outcome of the progression of human society. If I had to place a bet, I'd bet humans end up populating the solar system and beyond. I'm not here to debate the meaning of the word "destiny" as anything other than how things end up (regardless of how or why).

You've drunk your own kool-aid here, believing that you can simply assume people who suggest things you don't believe in are lunatics. But I'm not crazy. I mad a simple statement on where I believe we will end up, and you take me to be a gun waving lunatic. You can't look at everything like "You versus the crazies". There exist people with opinions that oppose yours who are in no way crazy. In fact, I suspect its a lot of people.
-Taylor

As naive as, say, Carl Sagan? Who made that exact comparison in Pale Blue Dot?

It has always been our destiny to cover this earth, and it is certainly also our destiny to explore the cosmos. Compared to the skills and resources of their time, crossing the vast Atlantic ocean really isn't much different than modern humans landing on Mars. I understand the immense difficulties in doing so, but there were immense difficulties in crossing the Atlantic back then. And there were many deaths, as there well may be when we begin to send humans far from Earth. Space is vast and inhospitable, but to a shipwrecked sailor, so is the ocean. They may live a little longer before the sea takes them, but if a storm sunk their ship, they had nearly as little chance of surviving as a human in a damaged Space Ship. There's nothing to drink, nowhere to take refuge, and generally nothing to eat.

Space now and the oceans of our past are not nearly as different as you may think.

-Taylor

Reminds me of when I call places like my ISP and other companies. I always get the message "We're experiencing an unusually high volume of calls at the moment, please bear with us."

Really, unusually high? Why does it *always* seem to be "unusually" high? I would love to set up some automated system to call these companies and see how often I get that message. I bet that even if you called every hour for weeks, you would always get that message. Seems to me that you can't call something unusual if its always the case.

As far as bandwidth - yeah, its normally a crock of shit. Though currently I've gotten a great connection. I think my plan is only 20 or 25 Mb/s but I usually get over 30 on speed tests. This is Comcast in Silicon Valley (Campbell).
-Taylor

Well, the Xoom has two cameras, a bunch more RAM, a dual core processor, will get a free upgrade to 4G "when its ready", and is only $70 more than the equivalent iPad. Plus Android Honeycomb looks like a solid OS, so that should be fine.

Where that reasoning falls apart though is that Apple isn't going to sell the same iPad forever. They have got to have a new one coming out soon, and they will certainly either keep pricing the same or lower it.

Also, as you stated, Motorola is not Apple, and no matter how good your product is, you cannot compete on features alone with Apple. Most people don't care if they get something "better" than an iPad or iPhone. If they have the money for the apple product, they'll be totally happy with it. They'll only look at something else if its cheaper. Then they might be very happy with the purchase if its good. But I just think regular people don't bother trying to absolutely maximize their purchase. They go for good enough, which apple tends to satisfy safely. (note that i don't expect you all to be these "regular" people i speak of)

So I guess I agree with you. I think their pricing is dumb as hell. But I also think it makes sense from a value perspective. Its just that the market isn't operating on a pure value perspective (or they put lots of value in the "Apple" name).

-Taylor

I dunno, for me the killer app has always been the browser. I just want something thin and light and easy that I can browse the web on. My laptop is a big fast beast for CAD, and is pretty heavy. It also rests in my workshop downstairs most of the time. I do a *lot* of browsing on my phone, so I wish I just had a "bigger phone" more or less. Tablets seem to fill that niche.

I haven't got an iPad though. I've been waiting for Android tablet as that is my OS of choice. Luckily between LG, Moto and Samsung (with Honeycomb looking awesome), I have some good options. I'm not happy about Motorola's pricing, but I might go for the wifi model (my Nexus One has wifi tethering builtin for free). They haven't said when the wifi model comes out though, sadly.

They're all expensive and I'd much rather have them be $200-300, but they still satisfy a need (or want, whatever) that I have, so I might put up the money when the right one comes along.
-Taylor

This just in: this morning a FLAMING BALL OF GAS OVER 1 MILLION TIMES THE SIZE OF THE EARTH APPEARED OVER THE HORIZON! IT IS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT IT WILL ENGULF THE EARTH IN FLAMES AND DESTROY THE ENTIRE PLANET.*

*this is technically true.

Better still might be to build flash memory chips with a built-in fuse that cannot be reset. Wipe the data (just in case) and then have some command that physically blows the fuse on every actual flash memory chip onboard. Then someone would have to dissolve the chip and somehow repair the fuse just to get to the data, which would have been erased anyway.

That could make one hell of a virus though if expensive SSD's could be destroyed from software alone. Maybe have it be a (clearly labeled!) jumper on the drive that does the fuse blowing.
-Taylor

Actually as someone pointed out above, the wear leveling algorithms in SSD's can cause problems for effective encryption.

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=wear-leveling

So as always, the answer is "Physically completely destroy the drive".
-Taylor