Sorry to report, Nick Denton _started_ Lifehacker. It was always a Gawker property. Kind of tainted it for me.

Well, it's at an obscure path, rather than being at lite.slashdot.org or slashdot.org/mobile, it's at /palm. What the hell is a palm?

"hey, credit bureaus, guess what? You know how you were too fucking lazy to change your forms/software to account for these other countries and SSNs? Well, now you get to eat those debts, in your profits. And we'll let the IRS know, too, so you can't try some rotten underhanded tax tricks. And if we catch you wrongly harassing innocent civilians again, we'll rip out your balls and ship them to Jupiter. Clear?"

It frustrates me - the government is supposed to be here to serve the interests of private citizens and protect us from big corporations trying to rip us off (among other things), but somewhere along the line, they teamed up with big business and pinned down the American consumer while big business just kept swinging.

I'm not wishing I had a Blackberry or Android, at all. Never will. Their UI and experience are shit in comparison. And something useless like Latitude won't make me switch platforms. That author was making some pretty stupid generalizations. People aren't switching platforms due to apps on the iPhone (or not on the iPhone), but they *do* want to switch carriers in the US. Many will tell you - the moment Apple drops AT&T and goes Verizon, you're going to see a HUGE migration. Some people will be giving AT&T the ol' "fuck you and your mother" while Steve Jobs is still on stage. They're here for the iPhone, and aren't about to change phones.

The professor was playing the game correctly. It's the other tools who weren't... if you want to dick around, just try Second Life. If you're on a game where you're supposed to battle someone else, expect a battle.

Is it possible they're merely testing to see if they can pull a full-scale blockade of Internet communications, if they ever have the need? I know if I was running a tyrannical government, I'd be looking to avoid the problems that Iran's government is having. You can't block them after things go bad, but if you do it *quietly* shortly before, you might have a better chance. Possibly.

the quality will be laughable. Like I always say: cheap, quality, expandable: pick two.

Why does AT&T feel the need to do this? Everybody knows that Apple was more than confident that they didn't need to compete in features, because they have a great UI.

Just so it's clear, this is never something I would have countenanced when I was managing editor of The Screen Savers. And I know that my successor, Patrick Norton, would have brained anyone who suggested such a thing.

We did sometimes pre-book calls - and I do it now on the Canadian version of Call for Help - for production reasons. But I always hated even doing that. I never do it on my radio show. But far worse is using "actors" to ask canned questions. That's just plain lying.

Unfortunately, it doesn't surprise me.