Don't you see? You're already indoctrinated. The reapers are controlling your every thought! That said, science fiction is at least cautious. For what reason would a machine intelligence seek peaceful interactions with organic life? Do you see bacteria as something worth communicating with?

Out in the boonies, you're most likely connected to a GSM transceiver. 2G. EDGE. Wide coverage, punches through walls like the Hulk. AT&T really only puts up 3G towers in population centers, and outside of Colorado, you're likely to get poor reception if anything more dense than a single human is between you and the tower you're on. Why? Signal frequency. Colorado just got switched over to a lower frequency to prevent the ridiculous signal attenuation from the EVERYTHING that blocks line-of-sight from where people are, to the tops of the towers.

And the last time I dropped a call on AT&T was when I was calling from inside of an aluminum-sided house, on county-owned land (not even in an actual town). I tend to drive hundreds of miles on my days off. The only real coverage deadzones I've found are radio deadzones near military facilities, or the usual "30 miles between gas stations" areas. But then, my chosen phones have removable batteries, and nobody ever calls in to complain about dropped calls with them.

That said, avoid every LG phone made since Spring of 2009.

I'd say a good 97% of all dropped call complaints on AT&T come from iPhone users. Not that I keep score, but every time I hear "customer is getting poor signal, dropped calls", I immediately think "another damn iPhone call". I'd assume unlocked iPhones work well, because odds are, they're not connected to UMTS towers much of the time. It's the phone. It's been trash since day zero, when Apple didn't supply AT&T with any documentation on the original iPhone until five minutes before launch, making for a lot of fun for everybody trying to activate the hockey pucks. Did you know that all the Visual Voicemail breakdown crap this past summer was from Apple pooping out repeated failed updates, jamming up iPhones that hadn't even been updated? Check Settings, General. If you have "Profile" listed there, surprise! Delete the corrupted AT&T profile and watch your messages roll in after two minutes. Also, anybody who knows how cell phones work knows better than to expect uninterrupted calls while driving. You're playing tarzan between towers. There isn't always a long vine in reach. Unless you're doing 120.

So, you should be required to have internet access to purchase and play a singleplayer game that you purchased in a brick and mortar store? In ten years, every version of Quake and Doom that I own will still work. I won't be able to play Portal.

...then why does it still work?

It's in print in the contract as well as the Customer Service Summary you get with the start of service. ALL billing disputes are to be submitted in writing to a provided address within 90 days, or 100... But anyway, customer support fields billing issues because NOBODY reads the terms of service. Hey, just like EULAs.

AT&T doesn't bother enforcing much of what they have in the terms of service unless the customer is being a collossal asshole. Seriously. I've seen thousands of dollars in charges forgiven in one instance, mainly because it was a simple case of the customer not being aware that using an iPhone without the mandatory data bundle would result in utter financial ruin.

I'd be more than happy to directly quote the sections of the ToS that I referred to, but alas, I'm posting this from an AT&T BlackBerry, from within the belly of the beast. I'm certain all of this information is available on the public website, but my lunch is almost over.

The problem is, the morons who are only going with AT&T because they simply MUST have an iPhone are the same type of idiots who won't read their bills, much less the contract before signing it. Did you know that if you call AT&T to complain about minute overages and data use charges, your service can be terminated without notice, immediately? I can assure you that it won't unless you start making threats over the phone, but it's in the damn contract, in which the only fine print is the names of the cities on the coverage map.

It's called "text messaging is for people too stupid to email". You can get a BlackBerry, data only, use VOIP software, and pay a lower monthly bill than anybody else, but again, people just want to piss and moan about how their cell provider is ripping them off, because they're too stupid to read their contract or do some investigation on what they NEED.

This is 100% Apple. AT&T's official line with Google Voice since at least last year has been "we don't care what you do with data as long as you aren't using more than 5GB in a month". If Google Voice isn't working, customer support is not obligated to help you beyond ensuring your voice, data, and SMS services are functional.

There is NO policy at AT&T that opposes the use of VOIP services.

Oh criminy. I have two VCRs, two DVD players, about a dozen game systems, a laserdisc player, and a stereo/turntable set... all connected together, all connected to my computer, which is packed full of expansion cards, each with their own sets of wires connected to other external devices.

Needless to say, if I power everything up at the same time, I'll magnetize all of the silverware in the neighborhood, and erase all the magnetic media for a mile.

...and wait eleven months to receive it. Oh Live Search Club, your spirit will haunt us forever.

That said, Google Image Labeler has already proven the viability of this method of tagging and indexing. I think. Has anything really come of the GIL project?