"In 2291, in an attempt to control violence among deep space miners, the New Earth Government legalized no-holds-bared fighting. Liandri Mining Corporation, working with the NEG, established a series of leagues and bloody public exhibitions. The fights' popularity grew with their brutality. Soon, Liandri discovered that the public matches were their most profitable enterprise. The professional league was formed; a cabal of the most violent and skilled warriors in known space, selected to fight in a Grand Tournament. Now it is 2341. 50 years have passed since founding of DeathMatch. Profits from the Tournament number in the hundreds of billions. You have been selected to fight in the professional league by the Liandri Rules Board. Your strength and brutality are legendary. The time has come to prove you are the best. To crush your enemies; to win the Tournament." (video here)

To be fair the mod system is already doing its thing and the OP was modded down into oblivion. In fact, for example, I wouldn't have even known the comment existed were it not for your post, and my browse threshold is lower than most visitors to the site are at.

As far as I can tell because people dont actually obey the law, they try to hide the phone instead, which makes it *worse*. In other words, one good reason not to ban them is that people seem to use them regardless, at least we can not force them to try and hide it!

'cause i'm not sure how I fall on the issue of banning phone use entirely at the moment (particularly since I use the tom tom app on my phone as my gps) but..

Because using cellphones statistically seems to downgrade everyone a bit, so an excellent driver becomes a good driver, a good driver an ok driver, an ok driver a bad driver, and... a bad "barely got my license" driver a motor powered angry bird

I'm tempted to go out to the gas station down the block and take a picture of their sign about holds on debit cards, but I'll settle for a link to This article instead, 'cause I'm lazy, my tea will get cold, and I'm replying to an AC anyway. My bet is either you're paying inside, you're lucky that the gas stations you use don't do the holds that many do, you don't check your account's balance often enough to notice, or you're putting enough in that the difference between the hold and the amount you're *actually* paying doesn't exist.

I've been burned by the above issue though personally, so I can definitely vouch for it, and since I haven't seen a gas station in a long time that has a difference in price between debit and credit at the pump I either pay in cash or use my credit card for gas these days.

You're post made me laugh, went to mod it funny, hit redundant... commenting to fix the modding mistake :-/

That's not HP's fault, that's the fault of how holds on credit cards work (really want to get angry about such things? buy gas with a debit card!). She authorized them to put a $150 hold on her card when she bought the device, it wasn't permanent until the device was ready though. Also I can BS on every Friday, I had the same thing, they did it once every 3 weeks or so, and the Slickdeals and Palmcentral threads about the touchpad are full of people asking about and explaining the recurring the charge.

For the record, I got my touchpad when they made the second batch, and while I wish I had instant gratification it's not like HP didn't send it to me once they made the second batch, and I'm happy to have it!

The alpha 3 release is pretty stable, just a few small kinks. I don't use it that often though, really like webOS :-)

Bought by Onex is what happened to it.

Seems to be the life cycle of many a tech company. I've been wondering if the path Kodak is on now is the same that HP is starting to tread. Even the spinoff of Eastman Chemical reminds me of HP's Agilent spinoff

Agreed. /. still has, hands down, the best threaded discussion and moderation system of any site which I frequent, which I think helps keeps all the knowledgeable people around, both of which end up keeping me around :-).

I'll reiterate something I've posted and seen posted here by others before: I don't come here for the news, I come here for the comments