Ah, but there's the evil metamoderation. I've had my own comments come up when metamoderating!

Muahahahaha!!!

You capitalized "Without," you didn't misspell any words, you didn't mistake loose for lose or there for their... grammar fail big time, dude. All you did was use grocer's apostrophes. You didn't even use an apostropheless "aint".

You're not even trying! Real retarded aliterates do a lot better.

I only paid $125 for my Kyocera (full price, no contract or subsidy). The manual says it will withstand 30 minutes in 3 feet (that's a meter, folks) of water. iPhone won't do that! In fact, I doubt there's anything an $800 phone will do that mine won't... except give you a heart attack when it breaks.

I ruined my old Razr by dropping it in the water. I ruined my old LG by getting caught in a rain storm. Meanwhile, the screen on my daughter's $600 iPhone is cracked, she's thinking of moving to my carrier and getting a Kyocera.

Face it, people buy iPhones for the same reason they buy those ugly Escalades: it's s stupid status symbol.

Impart wisdom or an understanding of human nature...? Religion does no such thing.

Says the man who has never read the bible and is probably way too young to have gathered much of his own wisdom. Here's a taste, son.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Pete Seeger put that to music, the Byrds made it popular. And that's just a snippet. I suppose you disagree with this?

45Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto him, Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also. 46And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. 47Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.

Mock what you don't understand and you prove yourself a fool.

Wrong. The goal is to spread intelligence beyond this rock. I don't care if that intelligence is human, cyborg, android, or a sentient starship, so long as it is intelligent enough not to want the total extinction of other species.

You read too much science fiction and not enough science, and even ignore some science in science fiction. "Space is big. Really big. You think it's a long way to the chemist..." Voyager has been travelling for 36 years and is only now leaving the solar system. It's .001 light year away, the nearest star is 4 light years away. There's nowhere to go until we break that pesky lightspeed barrier.

As to androids, cyborgs, and sentient starships, there may be cyborgs in space right now -- a cyborg is a human (or other animal) with non-himan machinery taking the place of natural functions. I'm a cyborg, but I can't live on any planet in our solar system except this one. As to "intelligent computers" that's just stupid. Sentience is chemical, what's more we know nothing about how it comes about or what it even is. Good luck building a radio if you have no idea how one operates.

Sorry, but we're stuck here for the forseeable future. Star Trek fantasies are no more real than Terry Pratchett or JRR Tolkien fantasies. And yes, I'm a science fiction fan (I even write SF, check my journal: right now it's space whores). Remember, the operative word in science fiction is fiction.

From quality assurance perspective, Ubuntu has a long way to go to even touch Windows or Mac.

This means:
1) high performance
2) applications which do not crash
3) features which are fully functional
4) consistent and stable APIs

I have a kubuntu tower, an XP tower, a Win 7 notebook and an android phone.
1. The notebook is a lot newer than the kubuntu tower and has more memory and a faster processor, but the tower is faster. High performance? You realize that the ten fastest computers in the world run Linux?

2. Crashy apps have nothing to do with the OS they're running on, shitty progremmers write crashy apps. The only thing I've seen crash on any of the computers in years is Adobe Flash, and it crashes regularly no matter what OS it's running on. Adobe just writes shitty programs.

3. Are you kidding? Windows doesn't have a single feature that KDE lacks, but lacks many features KDE sports.

4. Again, are you kidding? A modern Linux distro will run an old Linux program just fine, try running Microsoft FoxPro 6 on anything newer than Win 98 (It wouldn't even open in XP).

Did Stallman scare you as a child?

And if police officers were investigating police officers for a crime that had been committed without a civilian SIU

I went to college at SIU. So WTF are you talking about? Southern Illinois University is the only SIU I've ever heard of, and googling your acronym brought up nothing but my alma matter. So what is your SIU? We're nerds, not cops.

Thanks. I've been doing mostly fiction in my /. JEs.

Yea, I agree with the policy' smoking around fuels is stupid.

Testing, smeshting, light the damned thing up. What is this, science or somethin'?

Pedantically! My hat's off to you, sir.