Facebook has a real name policy as well. It hasn't hindered their growth. The problem is that Google+ has a real name policy, but doesn't require mutual friendship. This leads to a duplicate one way friendship problem.

Here is the use case: you want to add a friend who isn't on the network but you have their email address.
Facebook: You add the user by email. It goes to "friendship requested" status.
Google: You add the user by email. That email address is added to your circles
Then later, the user signs up for the social network, but not using the email address you supplied then friends you.
Facebook: You are friends!
Google: You are friends, plus you have a zombie email address friend in your circles. FAIL!

That and Google+ is full of bugs. For example you open a Google+ account at your own email address. Then you sign up for gmail. This changes the email address of your Google account to your new gmail address with NO WAY TO CHANGE IT BACK. The people in your circles are associated with your old email address. Google has DELETED all the friends from your circles. You then have to re-add all of them.

The OEMs should be profiting from their own app stores .. profits being driven from their customers. That they don't get this yet is hugely disappointing .. appstores - and naturally, software updates - are of huge interest to "next-gen" cell users .. but the carriers just don't want to get into it.

I suppose its because of the draconian US laws about content delivery over telephone networks, in the end, though ..

The IT department here used on of those "perpetual motion" drinking birds to test the video conference system. A week before the big meeting, they set up the link between our Boston office and our London office, put a drinking bird in front of the camera, and made sure that the connection remained stable enough that it wasn't going to drop during the three hours that we really needed it.

That's a great compilation, thanks for sharing!

I love Robotron, play it regularly, Defender too .. In fact this is a list of games on my WIZ console, which is running pretty much MAME exclusively these days:

Robotron
Defender
Scramble
Moon Buggy
Crazy Climber
Crazy Climber 2
Juno First
Pleiades
Pisces
Exerion

Currently, I just can't stop playing Juno First .. love it so much, I'm considering doing a 'tribute/remake' for iPhone ..

I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the SmartQ7 .. the OS pretty much blows, and there are power-management issues .. the device is rather prone to suddenly shutting down if you don't play with the right buttons for a while (15 minutes), and really .. the OS is pretty bad. It'll be much more ready for prime-time when a full Android or Mer port is completed .. in the meantime, if you get one, be prepared to put up with a very weird, Chinese, Ubuntu hack ..

-- Hey, he can keep his blackberry, but only use it in the Oval office.

-- He keeps his blackberry, takes it with him, but it is open and public and well-maintained, and he shares it a lot with whoever he's with .. while also having his Sectera along for the ride, too.

Hey, come to think of it, he's the President now. Why doesn't he just get someone to **make** him the perfect wirehead rig, eh ..

.. this will be my *last* MacBook.

I wish someone else from the 90's would make laptops as cool as Apple though ..

Something that people overlook is that there are liquids that can be used to bring down a plane which are *not* explosive, but in fact CORROSIVE. Just a few drops in the right place and wham! the wings are off their hinges, so to speak ..

I always get jealous of IT folks when I see that they get to work with racks of equipment. It seems to me like it is building with Lego blocks for a living.

In addition to software installation and security, our IT folks plan out the hardware with the power and cooling requirements. I would have been fascinated by this stuff as a kid (and I still am).