I think you mean a cashier. The cashier is the person who rings up the purchase. The sales person is the one to tell you which phones are good and which ones are rubbish.

Don't feel embarrassed, it's an easy mistake to make.

Only idiots made fun of the Xbox. Windows has always been the best platform for games.

Also Nokia is not getting enough money from Microsoft to collapse the way that they have. Nokia is a publicly traded company so if Microsoft was paying them for all the customers they are lost, that would show up in their financials.

You would think if the human body can block the radiation from the scanners then the fuselage would block it as well. One theory that I've heard is that radiation that goes through you is potentially less dangerous than radiation that doesn't. I'm not an expert so I can't say if it's an apples to apples comparison or not.

It's interesting to think about people starting to caring about their country's online reputation. The article is right as well that the internet has created classes of online vigilantes.

I don't think it's going to change policy at all. America has the most defense of any country and doesn't worry about vigilantes. Also America has a sense of self rightness as well. Americans believe that the wars are God's work so practical considerations come second.

But your approach would bankrupt the company.

It would be hard to hurt the company more than Elop has. He has set a historic world record for destroying market share. RIM would have set the record by just muddling along without a good strategy but Elop managed to outdo them. They deliberately didn't sell the n9. How stupid is that?

Actually it's pretty common that governments liberalize a little and the standard of life improves and then people overthrow the government. The collapse of the USSR is an example. There are tens of thousands of large scale protests in China every year and the number is rising.

We're entering an interesting period of history. The US is on the brink of a new great depression. The EU is about to collapse. China is about to experience a revolution. Fascinating stuff.

(To let you know up front: I was a beta tester on this project, but I have no financial stake in its success.)

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon is a party based dungeon crawler worth looking at. It feels a lot like Wizardy 8 in gameplay, and the writing reminds me of the kind of psuedo-in character talk around a tabletop RPG session: really fun, light-hearted, and a little self-aware of the ridiculousness of the proceedings. Frayed Knights also has a clever endurance mechanic for fighters and casters alike. The leveling system offers solid alternatives for the player to explore.

Frayed Knights went gold a few weeks ago after a *lot* of rigorous testing, feedback, and RCs. Indie developer Jay Barnson of Rampart Games really did a labor of love here. I can recommend the to anyone who enjoyed the Wizardry series, Might and Magic, or classic Bard's Tale.

Frayed Knights Website

People default to the iPhone because it is the best phone available.

Before the iPhone came out Nokia used to sell the best phone available and it cost twice as much as the iPhone. When the iPhone came out, Nokia freaked out and killed their high end products. Now their best phone costs the same as an iPhone and has roughly the same hardware as the iPhone, although Symbian sucks so it's not as good over all.

If the password is a four to six digit number that is not 1234 then it's probably an ATM card number as well. Actually if it's 1234 then it's still probably an ATM card.

All the money is really at the high end. Nokia went from owning 29% to owning 24% of the smart phone market. Everyone predicted that they would lose a lot of the market, but I don't think anyone predicted it would be that bad, that quickly.

When Nokia decided to switch to Windows, they knew that they would have to limp along selling their old phones this year. People were obviously going to buy fewer phones and they were going to want them at a cheaper price because they're EOL. Hopefully next year when the first Windows phones came out, they'd be able to make money again.

It was a huge gamble to throw away a year for something that wasn't tested. It seems like customers aren't willing to wait a year for a Windows phone.