There comes a point where consumers need to tell the company, No thanks, keep your fancy toys. Until we all have the ability to do this we will continue to be enslaved by them.

No, phones in the air do not "confuse" the networks. Do you know how I know? I'm not an expert. I wrote and asked them.

Apologies for injecting some facts into the debate.

do not want

wow - here's a neat gadget I want but will never buy, own, or use. Have I finally reached the end of the Internet?

You can run Office on Mac? Who knew? Ok, I knew, but why would you?

The Head of Privacy at Google leaves...

and there was much rejoicing. yea....

A full Linux install notebook was available years ago through a major distributor, who gave end users the option of Linux or Windows. Microsoft lawyers descended and threatened them until they stopped offering it.

I found the alternate universe. It's in New Jersey.

This is why we can't have nice things!

People have way too much faith in electronic devices. My GPS once told me to make a right turn off a highway overpass and drive into a river. I decided not to do that. See how easy that was?

You can't pay me enough money to install a wireless charging pad anywhere in my home which is an EMI and AC electrical field generator.

What killed Motorola was incompetent management, lack of vision, greed, while pissing on Engineers and worshiping their CEO like he was a god.

(former Motorola employee)

You were in great peril

We were in the nick of time. You were in great peril.

I don't think I was.

Yes, you were. You were in terrible peril.

Look, let me go back in there and face the peril.

No, it's too perilous.

Look, it's my duty as a knight to sample as much peril as I can.

No, we've got to find the Holy Grail. Come on.

Oh, let me have just a little bit of peril?

No. It's unhealthy.

I bet you're gay.

Am not.

Sandy

I went through some of the worst with Sandy. First the landline phone went dead. Next, cell phones could no longer make calls. Then text messaging became slower and slower. I could only send one SMS text message per hour. 4G/3G began to fail. The most reliable communications was Twitter for a couple of days until even that began to go quiet. I was reduced to listening to a battery powered AM radio and lost all other contact with the outside world for several days.

Yea, we really need disaster proof communications.

The dark side

You never get something for nothing. Several malls in the U.S. tried tracking customer's shopping habits by snooping their phone data. Consumers didn't like the idea. Ah, but now you can have maps while Google spies on you. There was much rejoicing.

It works for automobile traffic data. Everyone loves the fact you can view traffic conditions on Google Maps. Few realize that the data comes from Google sniffing your position and speed from your cell phones.

Personally, I love the idea. I have already spied on my girlfriend's GPS data to determine which shops she spends the most time in. Shockingly, the answer is "shoe stores."

Republican...

Republican... more than a philosophy, less than a religion.

Tip of the iceberg

Google.... I attempted to install an Adobe Flash Reader update. It tried to install Flash, Google Chrome, and Google Toolbar. I killed the task and purged my temp directory.

Google... you suck.

> However, considering what happened the last time states decided to secede from the Union, we doubt the response will be an accomodating one

This would assume, of course, that the people residing in those states have gone to skool and reed a history book.

I learned this lesson early in life when I went to court to fight a speeding ticket. Never piss off a judge. It's an act of blatant stupidity.

Our military defends democracy with their lives.

Our politicians keep finding ways to stop people from voting.

Does anyone else see a huge disconnect?

I found a solution to these low life's - simply install a small phone system on my home phone line. I set up an auto attendant with a long list of options, "Press 1 for this, press 2 for that, ..." Few "marketers" sit through the whole message. Robo-calls are captured like flies on fly paper. I turn off the ringer and watch quietly as the annoying robots talk to my annoying robot.

Then, I give out instructions to my friends on how to navigate the twisting, turning passages, all different.

Go ahead - just TRY to make my phone ring. Nobody gets through the labyrinth alive.

Siri is a thin client. Every time you ask it where's the nearest prostitute, where can I buy drugs, etc - even if you're joking these queries are sent and stored on Apple's servers. They collect marketing data on you such as what music you listen to, which restaurants you frequent, and which prostitutes have the best "bang for the buck."

Are you really sure you want to let Siri (aka Apple) know THAT much about you?!

yea, so as the religious right-wing nuts attempt to take control of the most powerful office on the planet we replace it all with pictures of cats. Sounds reasonable to me.

Anyone who calls me at home to sell me something should get 5 years behind bars, 10 years for 2nd offense.

I have a question

Why does Microsoft feel the need to spend $1,500,000,000 on Win8 marketing when they use their usual tactics to insure that Win8 will be THEE ONLY operating system available bundled with a new PC?

Great. How many applications and hardware drivers will this latest release break?

Not surprising as Siemen's vision for the future is "Make more money this year than we did last year." One of the worst, evil, greedy companies on the planet.

yea right

The iPhone 5 is the first iPhone which really lives up to the hype. I still wouldn't stand in line for one, but FedEx was nice enough to hand me one on Friday afternoon. It's fast, amazing, better everything. The power connector is a scam, tho.

It's just software

WinXP is software, not a banana. If it were a banana it would get old, rot, and die. It's software. There's nothing wrong with "old" software.

I just don't get it

I visited AT/T's website, clicked pre-order, now I'm waiting patiently for the phone to be delivered in a week or two. Why do people still find it necessary to camp outside the stores? On slim chance they'll get one in their hands a few days earlier, they'll have to deal with the server crashes, network outages, and have no phone coverage for hours or days while millions of people grab the latest Apple Gizmo. It's just waaaay too much drama.

To all of you, thank-you so much for beta-testing the phones and working out the ios bugs before mine arrives.

No customer support whatsoever

I once had problems with Google Wallet. I searched for a phone number or email to contact Google about the problem. They have zilch, nadda, nothing. They can't be bothered to talk to "little people" who have problems 'cause customer service support costs time and money.

I deleted my Google Wallet account and removed my credit card information. I say, Good luck with dat.