I've had all texts blocked for years, and you're damn right I'll ignore any text that does get through. Never used them, don't see the point. I don't want pay-per-use, I want blocked 3G/4G data, just like I have blocked text messages. No incoming, no outgoing, no surcharges. Plain and simple.

Thanks for being a dick about it, and completely missing the point of what the customer (me) wants.

Also, please remember that I've never agreed to any changes in the contract. Just because I pay month-to-month now, doesn't give AT&T any legal right to change the terms of the contract. Same as renting a house or apartment. They can't change the terms of your rent without you signing a form to agree to it. I also never agree to any change when I pay my bill, so I'm pretty sure I could fight and win in court to not have a data plan. Not that it would help random other consumers or people changing from one provider to another though, so why bother. The first provider who DOES let me sign up with no data plan, will be the one I switch to.

What about if you had a 1-year contract so many years ago, that you could have probably upgraded to 2-3 few phones over the years, but never did. I can't really be under any contract anymore. How could they force me to sign up for a package I don't want just by putting my SIM card in another (second hand) phone? Doesn't even seem like that would be legal at that point.

How is this even legal, if I'm not under any current contract with AT&T?

So can I get somebody's old unlocked iPhone and put my SIM card in it, without being forced to buy a data plan yet? Wifi-only would be just fine, and I see no reason to pay exorbitant fees for tiny amounts of bandwidth on 3G or 4G data.

Filters have gotten so good, they now block most legitimate email too!

Seriously. I'm getting sick of AOL, Earthlink, and MSN just deleting order receipt emails I send out to people when they buy my software. (Gmail and a million others don't have this problem).

The best part is when the customer emails to complain, I reply with their order details, then a few days later they forward the same complaint email with "2nd notice" added to the subject line. If I do reach the customer, not once has the deleted order receipt email been in their spam/junk/bulk email folders. ISPs just accept email for delivery and delete it it seems.

http://www.softlayer.com/ - their base dedicated servers for $159/month come with 3000GB/month of bandwidth, exactly what you need. They've been around forever and a ton of other VPS people basically just resell their stuff anyway.

So it sounds like Windows Media Player, except it's not modular and easy for end users to add new codecs? And it's just now getting Blu-Ray support?

Not that I've ever really had a problem with codecs. Videos just seem to work on WMP and MPC just fine every time I try, and I never install any "codec pack" or anything other than XviD perhaps.

Honestly I can't figure out why I'd want this still. "Self contained" seems like a big downside to me. It doesn't even compete with VNC or RDP?? The name is pretty misleading as well.

So what is VideoLAN anyway? Seems like something to stream video, over a LAN, based on the name at least?

Doesn't DLNA pretty much obsolete that? DLNA seems to be built into all my devices (tv, xbox, squeezebox) and Windows by default now, and works just fine.

I'm confused as to what this software is for, and why I should care about it.

AT&T **always** has removed text charges I complain about. And I call and complain about a 9 cent charge I didn't want. I don't even have a text plan, and don't text anybody. I keep telling them to block all texts always no matter what, but whenever one shows up on my phone, I get charged for it. Again, it has, fortunately, been super easy to call AT&T and complain, every single time.
Pretty sure they're paying the support staff a lot more money for the time spent on the call to reverse a 9 cent charge. If everybody did this, I'm sure cell companies would lose enough money to get their act together.

I can't think of a single site that does this. And I forget my passwords all the time. Every single site seems to generate a new 8 character random password, and email *that* to you, or a link where you can click and enter a new password.

I guess I figured smartphones might have a bigger battery than my RAZR's 3.7v 900mAh.

1200-2400mAh for something that does all kinds of applications and web access seems pretty small if 900mAh is what they give phones to people who don't even care about texting.

I think batteries are rated in mAh, not mWh. For example, my Netbook has a 6600mAh battery that outputs 11.1v. I think that's basically 73.26Wh, or 36 hours of idle time at 2W. I don't have any smartphone to compare, nor do I know the actual idle usage of the Atom CPU in my netbook, or the other components in it.

I think the fact that almost nothing I watch on Netflix is even available in HD makes the Wii a fine choice. That, and I'm not about to pay any amount of money for a "gold" account to use my Xbox 360 for the same function. What a frickin rip-off! Not sure where Microsoft gets off thinking that's a good idea.
Anyway, 480p is DVD quality, and while it's not HD, I'm perfectly fine with it, even on my 60".

Glad I removed all my downloads from cnet a few years back. I was really getting pissed at them for hosting my files, after explicitly telling them they were not authorized to, and could only link to the download on my website. Yet they kept changing the links back and distributing my software with no rights to do so.

They're largely irrelevant now thanks to Google, so I didn't miss much. They like to think they're important and matter, but they're really no different than any other PAD-file-generated spam site that auto-awards 5 stars to everything you submit.

Fyi, duck is always delicious.