I agree, in fact there was a blog article written by an android game developer that kinda mock'ed this notion of fragmentation.

Quote from the blog: "I'm lucky enough to have occasional access to lots of different Android devices via my work. The whole point of the Android approach to apps is that you can write an app on one device (or even an emulator) and deploy it across everything. In my case, that's been pretty true."

Forbes later published an article calling the guy out. The whole incident was just a hoax, and there's more holes in his story than cheese (he was able to reach down and pull on the pedal for instance, but didn't want to turn the car off for fear of taking his hands off the wheel). Sikes was more than 700k in debt, 20k of which was for said Prius. http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/12/toyota-autos-hoax-media-opinions-contributors-michael-fumento_2.html

I'm not sure you're using the same Google I am. Predictive searching NEVER gets in the way and can be helpful from time to time.

And android only requires a gmail login for market/google checkout. You don't have to keep your contacts in gmail, (you can import them from your SD card or sim), you don't have to use the google cal, you don't have to use any google app on android. I just so happens that its the main point of the phone, as they're highly integrated and work fantastic together. At one point I wiped my phone and re-flashed once a day for a couple of weeks. I never once had to worry about my contacts, they were there after syncing, and as of 2.1 android now syncs the rest of your settings including your installed apps.

I think you missed the key term "upgrade" in his statement.

On the contrary, I've worked in support (networking) for over 10 years. The situation you describe can and does happen, but we're talking about an integrated phone here. HTC works directly with this software, heavily modifying it in some cases (SenceUI) and built the hardware, any and all phone questions should be able to be answered, especially on a usage question's to be asked by an end user. T-Mobil likewise should be able to answer any plan and upgrade questions to its subscriber base independent of the hardware the customer wishes to use. The article never gives examples, only that they're getting bounced between. Google itself does need to improve its support structure, even for its partners communication is mostly via email and that doesn't work well for those types of users upgrading from their jitterbug. I just think the article itself is artificially inflating numbers to make this appear to be a larger problem with the phone and launch itself.

One customer going by the name Roland78 said he was transferred between T-Mobile and HTC four times, spending a total of one-and-a-half hours on the phone with customer service. "T-Mobile also said Google hasn't provided them with any support documents for the phone. Welcome to direct sales Google!" he wrote.

This guy is just being asinine, someone sitting there with a stop watch, and writing the things the reps say down just so he can contact some news organization with it or works for them already. Honestly, if you have plan questions T-Mobile won't be referring you to HTC, and if you have phone questions HTC won't be referring you to T-Mobile. You'll notice how the article never refers to the information their quoted 'users' were seeking.

Honestly the phone's step by step walk through setup is so easy that if you don't understand it, then see this flowchart.

OH-EM-GEE! they also have my FULL NAME and my CREDIT CARD INFORMATION! What was I thinking giving a company this information! (And they only thing they ask for is birthYEAR not birthdate. I'd rather get recommendation's for twenty-something male's then the chick flick crap a 30 something female would receive.. but hey.. to each their own.)

I double checked my account profile and the only thing it has is birth year, which is used for age group movie recommendations. There is also a pull down menu for the account owner and any sub users on the account as to what movies they are allowed to rent/watch (instantly) Highest is R but there is also 'unrated family'. No where did I enter my full birth date, only year and gender. But this also looks partly removable (or you could lie), but I don't have anything to hide so I don't care and I will enjoy proper recommendations.

I've been trying a few ad blockers, such as AdBlock+ and AdThwart, both use EasyList, but neither block the most annoying ad's to me and that is 'smart text' ad's. Forums that highlight key words that when you happen to mouse over them, they pop up some video nonsense. ABP blocks such ad's in firefox and its one of the biggest things keeping me from liking chrome currently. (the other being this bug: Issue 11700)

I'm holding out for the full review, but I can't see this game going very far. They have a lot to live up to if they're going to compare it to Doom!

I had no such experience. I was presented with the new security menu, but all the options were defaulted to 'use previous settings'. I have had my privacy settings pretty fine tunned to separate work and outside work friends, so I can still post crazy weekend shenanigans without having to hear about it from co workers. And further, I enjoy that you can individually hide status and updates from select users or groups of users.

I'm for the most part satisfied and welcome the privacy additions (especially since I can now prevent my friends from sharing my data with their applications). If you want more privacy, then don't have an online profile, its as simple as that. With logic like that however you have to decide where to draw the line, the only secure computer is the one not even connected and has no physical access, but thats also not very useful.

Android Tether can be done on any rooted android device. Though you still have a cap with this "unlimited" plan, and someone at VZ may or may not notice the fact that you're tethering without a tether plan. But there are ways! I've used the phone and I think its awesome, but VZ is going to kill it with this. Anyone with a blackberry data plan care to comment, is this the same deal you guy's get or new for android?

False, my ISP runs NXDOMAIN redirection (roadrunner), as does the company I work for (different from what I use at home). DNS is not intercepted at the protocol/port level (udp 53), only if you utilize the providers DNS servers do you become subject to nxdomain redirection.

I run my own DNS server, and this is not intercepted by my ISP. All recursion done by my server for unknown and un-cached domains its discovered from the root servers down, and the root servers IP are known from the root.hints zone loaded in my bind config. Therefor when I query for fwvogahds.com I will receive a proper nxdomain in response.

The issue at had here though is root level servers not providing proper nxdomain responses, and thus the problem. All executives see is $ sign's in this though, and not the harm that its doing.

Just adding to this, as I've thought this for years!

Manual drivers also are much more well aware of their speeds, they understand, road speed, transmission speed and motor/flywheel speed or RPM. Today's auto drivers more so don't even care, there's no ambition to learn, they just want to get from A to B.

On the other topic, Both my car and my truck have throttle by wire, but they are tuned VASTLY different from each other. The car still has all the fail safes, etc, and can 'fuel' cut more safely at the rev limiter, and 'boost' cut safely if over boosted, but its incredibly responsive (sports car) you put your foot down, and it opens the throttle body. My truck however, I could floor it on the high way and not always get WOT in return. Sadly in the truck the programmers thought it better to not provide responsiveness but instead rate fuel economy and emissions over my inputs. I just don't understand why I would need fuel economy when I'm attempting to go WOT, I fully understand what that means in terms of fuel consumption. Then again, I'm a driver, and not a sheep.