I'd buy it because I pretty much just use it for online gaming. I will admit of the four or five people i've met who aren't into gaming heavily but still own an xbox 360, none of them have connected their xbox to the internet. They just want to play games on it like an atari, nintendo or playstation. They don't care about a new social UI, they don't care about DLC. They just wanted something they can have an hour or two diversion on - they don't live their lives gaming. Something simple that they don't have to think about.

I can see where the always-on side appeals to businesses though. If the xbox 360 required an internet connection to function - i'm sure they would have found out a way to hook it up. Xbox probably would have made money on them too once they realized there was a marketplace with movies, games and other distractions. If the original console had a wireless nic, i'm sure the people I know would have set it up since they all have a wireless network.

This seems directly equivalent to "If your front door is unlocked the police can come in and snoop around without a warrant"

You could say the same thing with several other things like...

"if your car is unlocked they can rummage through it legally without a warrant"

and

"If your fly is down, they can do a cavity search legally without a warrant"

Every day the Nordic countries look more and more appealing.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that since this is bundled with a system update that unless there was disk space available for both the update and the game(s) and bloatware that it just wouldn't update the phone. I'll assume again that this would all be put on internal phone storage as well so that a user couldn't just delete it off the SD card storage.

Still, rooting the phone would allow you to eliminate it and give sprint that much less control :)

what boxed game DOESN'T have a clause in their EULA about "If this software damages your computer it isn't our responsibility"?

I think the whole idea is garbage but feel it still should be mentioned.

I was talking about the original slashdot post that really just says "Google dude spied on minors" which sounds creepy to me. Not any linked articles within the /. post or comments.

If you think of how many worse things that a person that has access to "at the most sensitive information at the most powerful internet-based company in the world" one could see that this is a rather minor offense. He didn't gain anything out of it and in some ways is no more than stupid bullying.

There are plenty of 'what ifs' that you could run this through. I personally don't know what type of auditing Google does of their site reliability engineers - if any. Clearly the best way to be secure is to refrain from using a public email service as your medium for your sensitive data, no?

Very few people could know exactly how much 'snooping' went on. If he was doing this day in and day out for four months i'm sure someone would have noticed. If he did this very rarely over the course of four months it wouldn't necessarily be easy to audit. When it comes to personal violations like this - if the first guy it happened to reported it immediately it wouldn't have taken four months.

Finally: I tend to lean towards the side of criticizing any attempt at fear mongering on any medium, be it a simple post on slashdot or every major news agency saying the H1N1 is coming with the swines to eat you alive!

according to this FA, it wasn't some creepy stalker type deal.

He found a techie group and wanted to impress them with his 'haxor' skills. It probably didn't come out until later that he worked for Google. It was a stupid move and an abuse of power, but it wasn't something as creepy as the original post here makes it sound.

"Barksdale's harassment did not appear to be sexual in nature, although ... [he] demonstrated extraordinarily questionable judgment. ... It seems part of the reason ... was to show off the power he had. ... A self-described "hacker," Barksdale seemed to get a kick out of flaunting his position. ... The parents of the teens whose Google accounts were violated by Barksdale were hardly amused, however."

Doesn't sound newsworthy. Google did what they should have did; They got rid of him. Sounds like "do no evil" to me. He doesn't deserve to be burned at the stake for something like this, as immature and stupid as it may have been.

The only problem I see with this is the fact that xbox live gold cards have gone on sale for 30$ multiple times per month this year through dell or amazon. Why bother locking in at 40 when I could just buy a few at 30 and be set for the forseeable future of xbox360 (and the next generation xbox)

Granted, the price hike might put an end to this... but I will be surprised if they will be very hard to find for 40 or less.

If you think plain USB is bad, try an eSATAp port. I feel like i'm going to break mine every single time I try to use it :\

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

So what hard drive are you using that can store all this data at 5gbps?

Is it made with pixie dust? or does it just cost an arm a leg and half of the oil in the middle east? Oh wait, its just four hundred thousand 5.25" floppy drives in a custom raid solution. Thats nerdcore.

If you RTFA and look at the legal note from the lawyer, you can see what they are talking about, and they're not talking about a 2004 article, they are talking about comments from april 16th 2010 from a guy named "the unchosen one" claiming to have worked for the Jeffery guy.

The comment post the lawsuit threat is basically about: http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20041001/0941211&threaded=true#c1102

There are a couple other posts about the jeffery guy too, but this is the one they are trying to sue for it looks. But heres the paste.

"my name is adam gould son of doctor gould in leeds.
I get bollocked by jeffery everyday. He makes me feel stupid, maybe because i am?? I get paid 30k a year to get slapped about like a whore by jeffery. Who only looks after his own 'jewish' workers. the rest treated like shite.

Jeffery Morris has young people around him, they are so so fooled by his 'brainwashing' ways!! tels them anything to make them sell..many people are educated but caught in a 'dream' that he will make them rich. Hahah what a joke!!

The guy who runs wamey now is Dennis Carr, who owns a bar in manchester. Complete conman, check him out on google, inside track. He tries to get into your head like the demon headmaster, but he is just a working class plasterer who earned a few quid scammin people in property. Jeffery Morris what a wanker, scammer. Dennis is gettin a dose of his own medicine by jeffery..where is your workforce? left because dennis is a conman"

Why not just put the ID in the microwave for a second like my last college professor does his passport?

Granted it could melt... but maybe it wouldn't be visibly damaged if only done for a second.