I get this type of comment from some media sources, but confused how someone on Slashdot overlooks the Nook Color. It was $50 more, but it was available about a year ago... hopefully B&N will counter with a price drop/hardware refresh.

That said, I think Amazon did a good job with the launch, and the better streaming media offering of Amazon will make this a huge success over the Nook.

And, to answer the question in the summary. I don't want one. e-reader + full featured tablet is my preference. Hoping the Xoom 2 is what I'm looking for.

I am never going to be able to unthink this post... you may have just ruined this movie for me.

Meh... because on this issue I don't care? I actually kind of like that Verizon and Motorola are managing the OS on my phone because I want it to just work. I am a little bummed that in 2 years when I want to upgrade the OS and they want me to upgrade the handset I'll have to upgrade the handset... but I'll get over it because it's a $200 device that I just want to work.

If I wanted an Android phone I could put custom OS's on, I would've bought a Nexus One. But I don't.

The thing you have to remember is that it's a balance of features, cost, usability, openness, etc. Virtually every purchase you'll have make has pros and cons, you determine what is precisely important to you and then make your choice. For the people who are buying the DroidX, an open bootloader is not one of them.

The portion that makes it tricky is those who don't know what a bootloader is... fact is they're a much larger market force than you or I. That's when regulators step in and decide what should be done for the sake of the consumer. You can argue that regulators should step in here, signed ROMs only circumvent the consumer's right to own their own property or some such, but I personally think you'd be stretching it. But asking why consumers would ever support a company that does this is willfully ignoring that a) most people don't know what you're talking about and b) many of us who do know what you're talking about just don't care.

My car also has a governor that keeps me from going over 120mph. But I still bought it as well, speeds over 120mph aren't something I'm too concerned with.

And you know, the menus on my TV are locked. Sony didn't give me the options to flash the OS on my TV, very upsetting... still bought it, which open TV did you buy?

Yes, irreducible complexity is irreducible. But C++ has plenty of reducible complexity.

Adjusting code for multi-threading or moving from 32 to 64bit are two simple examples. It's reasonable to consider a compiler having the smarts to do that. Garbage collection is another obvious example that many languages have dealt with. Memory protection.

I dunno, that's what comes to mind immediately. C++ let's you handle virtually every registry action and memory copy. That's not a bad thing, but it's probably not necessary for a lot of the programs it's used for. More to the point, it likely costs many of those programs a lot of developer/testing/user time because they're putting a lot of time into resolving the same issues again and again that the compiler is perfectly capable of handling.

I think the article pretty succinctly draws the ends of the spectrum between assembler and non-typed interpreted languages. The real question is where does the best compromise lie on that spectrum. It's going to be different for every product, but the supposition in the article is that C++ is way too far towards assembler.

Personally, I can agree with that.

Unless you were already a t-mobile customer. Then you had to cancel your t-mobile contract, and sign back up because the full discount was only available to new customers.

I called and told them I wasn't happy about that, they said that they understood and the policy was under review but there was nothing they could do. Then they offered me discounts on a 3G Slide instead.

Personally, I think a big part of the problem with the Nexus One pricing was that it wasn't simple enough, depending on how you bought it I believe there were 4 different prices available. Most phones there are two, with contract and without contract.

Well then we're in violent agreement!