Social and Mobile gaming appeals to a very small overlap of EA's traditional core audience: invested gamers. Moreover, EA has its own mobile gaming arm.

EA is tanking because it has tried to cover ALL the bases (Xbox, Playstation, PC/Mac, iPhone, Android, Kindle, Facebook...) and has thus lost the ability to accurately and reliably cater to a single audience. EA has become so big that, like an octopus that has too many arms, can't manage to feed itself.

If they want to survive and be genuinely profitable, they need to Ma' Bell it up, divide their separate divisions up into actual self-sufficient companies and see who sinks and who swims. Focus on your audience, not the entirety of the Earth's population.

Ya. I work in transportation and LPR is a growing successful way to capture a massive amount of data while not doing much. You can send enforcement officers out to check for permits, or you can use permitless LPR systems with which people register their plates. If someone isn't on the list, ticket! If they are, keep on driving.

In the parking world, the list of read plates are expunged nightly or at LEAST weekly.

I'm too big for a pony. But, hey, I'm pretty sure I could resell it for more than the phone... so sure!

I don't think I ever, in any of my posts in regards to this article, suggested that anyone else should be limited by my preferences. There are plenty of people like me, but I never suggested that everyone was.

I never said YOU shouldn't have access to a smarphone or cellular internet access.

*I* just don't want my multifunction device to be a source of accidental charges ("To use this function, you will have to connect to internet..."), have the batter drained by functions that I find unnecessary, and to still have sub-par function for touted features (like media players).

Twice as many of any other president. But doubling a small number is not particularly notable.

Going from 1 to 3 is a 300% increase, but a difference of two.
Obama went from 3 to 6, a 200% increase, but a differernce of three.

What should be focused on are the cases, not the statistics of very small numbers.

Moreover, the president is *accountable* for the actions of those below him. His validity as a president can be jeopardized for their actions (accountability), but since he doesn't directly control them, he cannot be responsible for all their actions.

I don't think racking up a total count of SIX is sufficient to refer to him as a "radical authoritarian". Also, was it OBAMA who initiated the proceedings or, say, the DOD and CIA?

But there's cost to the user. Modern feature phones are made to do whatever they can to get you to either buy a data plan you will not be able to use well enough or to get you to transfer data without a data plan and thus pay out the nose for 600KB of transfer.

I, too, would like a phone like the one you describe. It would be the only one I would give a child. ;)

I actually like the tactile response of buttons. I almost put on the list that I want a button-based system (not touchscreen). Buttons allow me to do stuff on a phone without having to look at the phone (such as speed dialing or changing MP3 tracks).

I think my taste (and others of similar taste) is as such because we've had certain life experiences to make us more cautious about adopting certain kinds of technology. I, for one, don't want to pay for a data plan that I would do my damnedest not to use.

I actually like using paper maps on the road (not GPS).

I don't want to read email when I should be spending time paying attention to the people and places around me.

I don't care if someone gave the eatery a 1-star rating on Yelp because the waitress only gave him one refill of coffee, I want to try their waffles.

I don't want to "check-in", tweet, read others' tweets, or anything of the sort.

And I still have 4 computers rigged to 2 monitors and a projector on a home network an an NAS. I still troubleshoot computers *for fun*. I just know that unplugging is good for me.

I agree completely. I was holding onto a feature phone that was 3.5 years old because it was no longer available and everything else either requires a data plan or is touchscreen (which means I can't change tracks with the device in my pockets). I ended up "upgrading" to the touchscreen dumbphone. I'm not particularly happy with it, but that's what you have to do when you drop the phone down concrete stairs. =\

And that's a damn fine point about the kilobyte-temptation.

Thanks for the phone reference. In regards to the iPhone (or any smartphone), the saying goes, "I couldn't find a purpose for the iPhone until I had one. Now I can't live without it."

That's not something I want. I don't want to VPN to work or check work emails when I'm out of the office. When I'm not at work, it's my time. I simply want a phone with communication with the people I choose to put in my circle with the bonus of not having to carry an MP3 player or camera with me. (Those things fold very easily into the same device.)

Smartphones are really cool and sometimes I ask people to do things on their smartphones (like look up restaurant reviews), but I feel that having SO MUCH information at my fingers would just reduce the amount of actual life I'm living. They're distractions from the people and places around their users and help to prevent people from using some very useful simple skills... like wayfinding.

"I was just doing my job." -- Some guy who bagged onions in the same bag as bananas to the customer's dismay.

That's right... that's an un-Godwin. Your move, Captain hyperbole.

I've made a couple posts in the past regarding how I don't think anyone has ever spent sufficient effort to make a genuinely good feature/dumb phone. Too much effort is put on super-monetization-- from proprietary versions of internet connectivity to downloading Java games, there's just too much bloat in even the simplest of modern phones.

Here's what I would want from a proper modern feature phone:
Hardware:
**A telephone with a particularly good speaker and receiver, speaker phone
**A slideout QWERTY keyboard
**An MP3/Ogg/etc. player with equalizer and 3.5mm jack
**A camera that focuses on image quality, not color mods
**Bluetooth
**micro-SD card slot
**Alarm clock with calendar
**Some standard ringers with the functionality to play a ringer from micro-SD
**Chargeable by micro-USB cord
**With all the weight saved, get a better/larger battery
**Minimal animation/graphics. No need to burn battery on things NO ONE cares about.

No web access, no pic sending, no games, no playing or recording video. Just Phone, text, camera, music, alarm, and long battery life. Something that just works and works for a long time.

I only JUST started flying in August of last year. Flying was never an option growing up, but I'm a career where I'm sent to various places of the country a few times a year.

I've been through SNA, LAX, DFW, SAV, ORD, SFO, OAK, and DCA. I've had a pocket patted once and had the full search because I forgot a flash drive in a leg pocket in my cargo shorts. In both circumstances, I made light of the situation joked profusely with the investigating TSA agent, and went on my way with a smile.

Does that mean I like it? No. Would I prefer not being approached by two men with the assumption that I'm a criminal or terrorist? Yes. (But I do have experience growing up brown in Southern California.)

However, I understand that those "TSA Agents" are literally just local people with no particularly strong commitment to the TSA beyond doing their job sufficiently well so that they keep their jobs. The vast majority of them are just normal people doing the same tedious task over and over, not the jack-booted thugs many make them out to be.

Summary: The workers are just fine. The process seems unnecessary.

What in the world did they expect? iDevices give access to the internet. People FREAKIN' LOVE the internet! Thus, with iDevices, people will use the internet!

What did they expect people to do with an iPhone? Talk to people? Hell no! We had that capability for years! iDevices are for surfin' the webz and consuming high-bandwidth digital content and, sometimes, being interrupted by taking a phone call.