Don't go ad hominem, don't go ad hominem. Ok I can't help myself, you are the stupidest person on the internet today, AC.

From the NYT coverage: “You can watch the entire trilogy of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ” on a single charge, Mr. Schiller said.

Two incredibly boring hipster co-opted concepts combined in one sentence.

I recently bought one of these (the $249 version) more out of curiosity than anything. It's a pretty bad experience that has led me to believe that ARM is as much the issue as anything. It is slower than molasses to load even a reasonably complex Web page. Slashdot and even GMail peg the thing... four or five seconds minimum to start reading.

And because it's locked down, Google pre-loads a bunch of obscure Chrome extensions that would otherwise be separate programs. Besides that, the build cheapness makes it a throwaway.

I love my Nexus 7, which is a bargain and constructed properly for the tablet use case. (It's also slow to load pages, leading me to suspect ARM.) Anyway, Chromebook is a netbook without any flexibility.

I've argued for years about the need for a single, free authoritative certificate provider, and the Post Office is the obvious candidate. There's no need to do any deep checks or inspection though... Just make sure that the certificate is the same from use to use. Then let the history of usage improve its quality over time; e.g., certificate reputation. If I have paid utility bills and taxes with a certificate over a period of time, you can be pretty sure it's legitimately me. Yes certs can be stolen/lost, but teaching the importance of good practices places the burden on the user, and in any event it's preferable to expensive verification processes (which as we know can be gamed).

http://www.opaopabrewing.com/

...runs off to check out this excellent offer.

This

Where are my mod points.... Right now even elite colleges are finding it hard to get all the full-tuition students they need. My daughter enrolled at a top school this year which gave us a no-strings-attached discount that dwarfed the cobbled-together combination of (grade-contingent) scholarships, loans, and grants that her other options offered. Now she's getting a household-name education, plus perks like great professors and a single room. Of course she's doing all the work and taking full advantage of everything on offer there. Now's the time to go a little contrarian in your educational choices.

Same deal here. Except for the fact that 3G will *never* be supported on AT&T with this phone (I called and they said "oh you have the T Mobile version"), I love this puppy. But it does seem to be a second class citizen. That said, I've done both the original Froyo and the FRF72 update. Just have to go looking for them and do it manually. The big benefit for me was better landscape handling of applications, especially the phone application in the car dock.

I just got a Nexus One too, and admit that I never used an iPhone to compare it with.... but here's my assessment: You need the fingers of a friggin' safecracker to make this thing work consistently. I don't consider myself graceless*, and with practice it's a bit easier, but all I can say is thank god for the voice recognition -- that works sweet! I can pull up a Web site or call someone with one touch, so it all balances out.

*Those who've seen me golf may disagree.

...because you're even asking the question. This is about people who can't, or don't care, to take any trouble to change defaults -- in other words, the vast majority of computer users. This is exactly the same principle Microsoft has employed over the years: "We'll just do whatever we want and the people who understand it, will find a way to stay out of our clutches. Everyone else we own." Same principle behind Facebook's recent "Privacy enhancements" and all the software that takes over every option of your PC when you install it (Microsoft, Adobe, AOL, Apple, Real....).

As H.L. Mencken pointed out, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public," and that thought extends perfectly to the computing public. Unfortunately the bad guys understand this.

You got very lucky then. Join the UU newcomers mailing list and listen to the stories of all the people who either left or were forced out of the JW church.

What I said had a lot of base in experience working to help these people come to terms with what happened to them. The fact you alone had a decent experience does not make theirs crap.