This article stinks on so many levels. It is well-known that Nokia had an internal war going on for years around the Symbian platform, resulting in, among other things, the well-designed but effectively DOA Nokia N9 which in effect became the prototype for the Lumia 800. Maybe Meego would have gone on to be a market-leading platform, but it got buried by politics. Clearly this guy was on the losing team and now he's trying to use whatever authority he still thinks he has to trash-talk Nokia.

Yet the very first comment on his blog post is proof that Nokia is far from dead. No, market share for Windows Phone 7 isn't that great, but it's obviously growing at a rapid rate, and even if it never passes Android or iOS - there's plenty of room in the market for a third player. Blackberry was it for years until they shit the bed.

What the world most certainly doesn't need is yet another Android phone manufacturer. We already have more than enough. Microsoft had the cash that Nokia needed and an OS that, while not perfect, is certainly a differentiator. Couple this with Nokia's design sense and you get a phone which stands out in the sea of blandness (and the fact that the Lumia 800 alone now accounts for something like 85% of all WinPhone7 sales in the EU is evidence of this).

I don't want to go too much into subjective opinion here, but my own experiences with the Lumia 800 is that it is a damn good phone and a pleasure to develop for. It performs much better than its meager specs would suggest. It is certainly proving popular in my circle of friends, almost all of which owned high-end Android phones before. Thanks to the apparent ease of porting stuff from Xbox, there is a ton of great games for it. And it's being marketed VERY competently - certainly better than any Android phone I've seen except possibly Samsung's. I have a very hard time believing it will flop.

However - and this is important - even if I'm wrong, Microsoft can easily afford not to have Windows Phone 7 be an instant success. They are swimming in money. And so can Nokia, because they are feeding off Microsoft. It's happened before with the Xbox, the same Xbox that got laughed at and is now making enough money that Microsoft can afford to keep going at the smartphone business until they succeed.

He was gonna answer that question but he took and arrow to the knee.

You meant driving the car with ads, right?

This is google we're talking about.

So so true. There is now a huge section in bookstores (B&N) called "Teen paranormal romance." It's as large as other sections with names like "Fiction", "Reference", and "Non-fiction".

I would love to hear the howling if it was microsoft introducing this sandboxed native client.

Er, we're talking about megabytes.

For the record: I really thought that champagne cooler was empty.

In 1997, right after Chips n' Dips had faded away, to be replaced by the enigmatically named http:///..org, all of us free software nerds hung on its every story, comment and poll like it was carved on tablet and flung from a burning bush. A year later I had started at hardware maker VA Research and /. was falling down for lack of machinery, so we rummaged through our returns piles and sent Rob and Jeff some 2u servers to help out. That was for me the beginning of some of the most important friendships in my adult life.

Its hard to explain how important Slashdot was to all of us 10 years ago. Indeed, without it it would be hard to imagine HN, Reddit, Digg, Fark or any of a thousand lesser sites. The editorial perspective of Rob and the other editors of /. is what kept people coming back and for a long time that perspective was Rob's, then Rob and Jeff and a bunch of us (some, like Timothy and samzenpus, still around!), but then Jeff left, now Rob. In some way I see this as a passing of an era in free software.

Throughout, while some have left for those greener shores, slashdot abided even while buffeted by the markets and the de/evolving internet news world, and it has remained a default tab in my and many others' browsers.

I didn't mean this post to be about Slashdot though, but about my friend Rob. I'll only say that while the site will be the lessor for you leaving, I firmly believe that computer science will gain my. While this note reads like an epitaph or the last pages of a book, it is really no more than a thank you note from me and many I know to your for your decade+ of work on the site. So...

Thanks.

On the other hand, a private mint could notice that proof grade 1909-S-VDB pennies sell for slightly more than pennies from a 2010 proof set, and there is really nothing stopping a private mint from making a new run of "model 1909-S-VDB psuedopennies"

Except that it's counterfeiting and illegal in the US. Law does provide for re-strikes which are stamped with the word "COPY" to be created and distributed, though.

I am told that a large number of "collectable" coins are manufactured/faked in China.

China is churning these out an alarming rate. And they are not stamped with copy. Some of them are very well executed, but an educated collector can generally tell the fake from the real. Additionally, there are a number of 3rd party grading companies and you get authentication along with the grade.

Also, there is no such thing as a 1909-S-VDB proof. Proof is not a grade, it's a method of manufacture. There were no proof coins minted in San Francisco in 1909.

What do you have against irregular verbs?

Cross promotion with Blendtec, I guess.

Listen when he explains the FOUR items that each IED has: 1. Power Source 2. Initiator 3. Explosive Material ... I feel so damn safe.

Pool of Radiance? Shouldn't you be calling yourself an "ancient nerdess"?

I can't speak for all games, but I am very familiar with the save structure of one particular series, and each game in this series stores a backup of the save file and will always revert if one of them is corrupt. I would guess that this is not the only series where the developers take this approach.