Some of us don't feel it's necessary to get a new smartphone every 2 years... this same thing happened with the N810 tablet, and the problem has been reported both on N900 and some other Nokia models more recent than N900.

Maps aren't the problem, the problem is that users are reporting problems using the assisted GPS feature which speeds up getting a GPS fix. Everybody's solution to the problem is to use Google's supl service, and it works somewhat. Fortunately I most of the time have a pretty good idea where I am though, and Nokia's maps are good. I also don't have a hate on Google, but truth is, some of us actually care about our privacy...

Just because you don't know doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist; I did have this problem, and quick research into the matter revealed similar experiences on both the maemo.org users forum and other sites, both by N900 and other model users. And they all sang the same solution to the problem: supl.google.com. If I absolutely need a quick GPS fix I can use that, it's just that the fix doesn't seem quite as exact as that from Nokia's own supl server.

As an N900 owner I've been extremely annoyed that I've had to switch to use Google's AGPS service because Nokia's hasn't been available for N900 for quite some time now... and for someone who needs those maps in an urban setting, just regular GPS won't cut it. And I remember users of other Nokia models complaining about the same problem. Map data alone isn't enough, and I would rather not provide Google with my location every time I need a map.

An ex HP contractor here. I had a good 3.5 years at HP, and even though I got a lot of crap here on Slashdot last time I commented on HP related news regarding how ugly the way they terminated my contract in the end was, I haven't been suggesting everybody I know to avoid HP products like plague; x86 ProLiants are still pretty good hardware, I've always preferred HP displays both at work and at home, and as long as you avoid their consumer models, you'll get yourself a pretty good laptop from them. Those products I can definitely recommend still. However, the company was working against itself already during the time I spent there. Managers were mainly concerned in staying out of the way as long as their performance indicators seemed fine, and while us higher level Unix support folks were seemingly given free hands in solving the customers' problems, that freedom was an illusion, as I learned a couple of years after leaving and hearing all the stuff said about my working methods (example: using SSH tunneling via an SSH proxy dedicated for this purpose by the company) by people incompetent to make such judgements. And that's where I see HP's biggest problem - during the years of growth, so much incompetence has found its way in in that the company has been forced to lay off A LOT of people. Unfortunately for HP, the same incompetence has prevented the company from telling the difference between competent and incompetent workforce. Layoffs are a simple numbers game for them. I feel pride for the way I improved the support process during my stay and how I was part of a highly skilled team, each member with his own strengths that made the team greater than the sum of its parts; I still remember my teammates with warmth. But HP had already grown too big to be efficient by the time I worked there, and this resulted in an organisation that doesn't know where it should and wants to go; and excluding Whitman (of whom I have no experience), the recent CEO's and high level politics definitely haven't made me optimistic about the future of HP.

Breathalyzers are useful as a first indicator that gives the police a reason to have your blood sample. The test is meant to serve as a fast, convenient way to find those who are PROBABLY driving drunk; it is not a conclusive test to define whether you're guilty. Sure, if you produce a false positive, that means you'll have to give the police your blood sample and lose a couple of hours of your time. But that's a small price to pay - the system saves more lives per year than the TSA ever will.

Funnily enough, whoever created the current Slashdot system obviously forgot to test it under the KDE web browser - a screw-up that shouldn't happen on a site full of Linux advocates. While AJAX surely is a good thing, speed is secondary compared to functionality; I'll gladly rather wait 10 seconds for a page to reload than start another browser every time because someone forgot to do testing...