I don't have enough data to say whether the iPhone4 is within an acceptable tolerance of reliability (given its possible use as an emergency phone). However, I am convinced that there is a threshold at which an apology is quite appropriate.

Smartphones are certainly a luxury item. However, IIRC, cell-phone penetration worldwide is around 50%, almost as high as the percentage of people who have access to running water. That makes it pretty close to essential in my estimation.

Normally, that's all that would matter. If the customer is happy, everybody's happy. However, I am convinced that a lot of Apple customers have a hard time seeing past the beauty of their products down to the inner flaws. Anyway, enjoy your bumper.

The majority of emergency calls are not being placed from within the apocalypse. I'm going to take a wild guess and say the majority of emergency calls are for health reasons ("I/My-Spouse is having a heart attack and/or can't breathe"). In that situation, roughly one person on average will be calling, and he/she will be neither underground nor under water. Second place is probably car accidents. In a car accident, there will likely be more than one caller, but usually not so many that a tower could fail. And again, it is not likely that any of the callers will be underground or under water (unless the accident took place in a tunnel).

Home land lines are disappearing quickly, as are phone booths (and for that matter, phone booth occupying superheroes). So basically what you're saying is (or will become) semantically identical to "I don't believe it's even recommended to rely on emergency calls". It's a total bummer if you're right.

Funny that you reference something that turned out to be a non-problem to defend the creators of an actual problem.

But they don't market it that way. They claim that the iPhone changes everything. So, their customers believed them and care whether it works properly.

I'm sure you don't. I wouldn't want to lose a debate either. The fact is, the hand with which you hold your phone is probably not the first thing on your mind when you're making a 911 call. Sometimes when there is an emergency, you need to be doing something with your dominant hand (right hand for most people) while you talk.

In reality, there are all kinds of reasons that an unreliable phone is a bad thing, not just edge cases like 911 calls. But hey, at least Apple cared enough to hold a press conference and point their finger at other companies.

Right, those are valid points and worthy of a civil enlightened discussion of the issue. My point is that the great-grandparent's comments were mischaracterizations of the argument, and basically amounted to flamebait.

Perhaps, but this is changing. PewForums (where you got your data) shows a 5% shift towards the democratic side between the Kerry and Obama elections. Regardless, PF doesn't show statistics on the "Christian Right". These are the real people that you should be targeting (as I've said before). They are basically the Christians who believe they have the right to wield their numbers to create a more Christian state, a position I and many other Christians disagree with.

And I don't disagree, but again, you have failed to show how this is different than 95% of the other politicians out there.

Once again, you are completely mischaracterizing the argument. I suspect you are doing so purposefully to get a rise out of people. I know a lot of pro-lifers, and none of them believe this.

This is the real question.

Call it all you want, but drawing a line is exceedingly difficult. I'm not trying to espouse one view over another here, but suffice it to say that the argument doesn't deserve the one-dimensional framing that you give it.

Perhaps, and if the Democratic party really cared about the environment, they wouldn't fly in jets and use so much hair spray. Politicians are almost all liars and hypocrites. So, what's your point? Also, for those who believe that personhood is established just after conception, day after pills won't solve much.

No, Republicans believe that a fetus qualifies for personhood, and thus should be afford the rights of all people (life, liberty, and property). It has nothing to do with federal ownership, and you know it.

I see neither you nor the mods were actually reading the comments - your comment is actually quite off-topic. Neither the grandparent nor the great-grandparent was making a claim about science (read them carefully). The great-grandparent said:

To which the grandparent responded:

Which is exactly right, and one of many reasons why evolution is not fact. It is science, and the two are very different. As I said in the comments below:

I don't know how all the purveyors of flamebait keep getting modded up today, but it's quite disturbing.

I'm a Christian, and I run in a few Christian circles. I'm not sure where you get your information, but most of Christians I know care deeply about every kind of person. Many of them are involved in helping people in prisons, others take their vacations in places like New Orleans, Haiti, and Costa-Rica so they can help people who are suffering. They also contribute to the local community as much as they can, and when somebody dies in their sphere of awareness, they are deeply moved. They have political orientations from hardcore-conservative to ultra-liberal and everything in between, but none of them take others' lives lightly.

As far as abortion goes, it is a little odd that Christians do tend to come out on one side of the issue. It is an interesting issue to say the least, and in my mind, rests on the person-hood of the fetus. This distinction is something about which the Bible doesn't say too much.

I don't fault you for your viewpoint (though it is absolutely flamebait). People get a lot of their information and experience with Christians from the worst of us (bigoted televangelists, lying politicians, etc). Just don't generalize about a social group until you've really bothered to understand them at a personal level.

I honestly can't believe this got modded up. This is flamebait at its worst. Not only is your post needlessly combative, but you got most of your facts wrong.

Not all Republicans are evangelicals, and not all evangelicals are Republicans. The actual people group that you are thinking of is the Christian Right. Also, they aren't delusional, they are religious. To claiming that they're delusional is insulting and unnecessary. For the record, I am a Christian but I am not a member of the Christian Right.

It's science, not a "fact". It is currently the best, most elegant theory that we have to explain our data that meets scientific criteria. In the unlikely event that another theory comes along that better explains the data (by either using fewer actors or by explaining more of the data), than that theory will probably become more prevalent in the scientific community. This is how science works. This is why, for instance, luminiferous aether was considered a theory not a fact. When a better theory came along, it was replaced.

The abortion issue is hard, and you do it a grave injustice. Nobody believes that a woman's body is the property of the government. However, some people are convinced that fetus has the necessary properties of person-hood, and as such, should be extended the basic rights afforded all people in the US (life, liberty, property). Only an idiot would consider the issue so black and white.

Wow, way to link to a biased source for your information. Do you honestly believe that conservatives are the only politicians who flip-flop or vote for popular issues with which they secretly disagree?

Republicans run on a platform of fiscal and social conservatism. This is no more delusional than Democrats who run on a platform of fiscal and social liberalism.

First of all, mods have now "rectified" what you consider unfair moderation, so be at peace.

Now, let me tell you what I consider unfair. In general, I find a slightly larger left crowd on Slashdot than right (probably more endemic of the internet than Slashdot itself). This is a subjective assessment for which I have no data... but I would guess that most people here would agree with that statement. This usually doesn't cause much of a problem, and for the most part, things stay somewhat impartial. However, there is a definite trend in the comments for articles like this. Blatantly anti-right comments like yours and the great-grandparent's can be modded up without real information or evidence. In contrast, anti-left comments require intelligence, evidence, and a great deal of tact to be modded up. Consider as an example your comment (modded 5):

and your first-child's comment (modded 1):

In the end, I would mod both of those comments down. The article is *political party neutral*, much to its credit. The ideas there apply equally well to *any* political idealism, not just the "American Right" or "American Left". Yet both you and the great-grandparent brazenly use the opportunity to proclaim your distaste for a particular political party and its media supporters, and then have the temerity to complain when people correctly mod you down! So get off your high horse, and discuss the article instead of defending a partisan troll who derailed us from the topic at hand.

Disclaimer: I am neither right nor left politically, and I have no invested interest either way.

Hah, you sir are truly delusional. *Every* political party has its share of disinformation and lies. To single out a specific party as being the culprit of misinformation only serves to show just how ignorant and naive you are.

Obviously, is isn't identical now, though it is possible that the Red Hat copy (right side) started out as the UNIX copy (left side). Clearly, the Red Hat version has additional features (additional translation types, c++ defines, function prototypes, commenting, etc). Then again, maybe they were both implementing from some shared prototypical document.

For a moment, I thought you wrote "Lego factory", and I was dreaming about how cool that would be.

Obviously, there's a huge government conspiracy to make us think that people want "family cars". Heck, Wikipedia is claiming that a compact family sedan called the "Corolla" is the best selling car of all time.

Sucker - I'm not interested unless it only has one functional seat and zero doors.

I read some articles that claimed they won't stop producing Roadsters until 2011 - are those articles out of date?