oj:

You sir are an idiot. Did you not actually read the article? You damn apple fanboys come in and blast without reading; I hate every one of you.

Let me help by giving you an iQuote for your iLazy iAss, since you appear unable to read the entire article:

"and Cisco's 11-year-old trademark sure looks to have the upper hand."

I do not believe that Cisco had the foresight to plan this from 11 years ago. If they did, I want in on Cisco stock for the time machine they are surely working on.

I hope Cisco lays Jobs on a desk, rips his pants off and gives it to him dry for this one. It is exactly what he deserves.

Where is the truth in any of this crap??? Even the NATAS person thought it was for the SIXAXIS controller. Sounds to me like a miscommunication problem and not the devious plot by Sony that everyone accuses them of every time they breathe.

Liqwid:

You are SO right, iFone is just so fun. It is so original and amazingly different. It has loads of "fun factor" in that name. WOW, I am just loving that name. How about iFown, that seems even more fun. Yes, I agree that there is nothing better than a total bastardization of the English language for the sake of sneaking one by the Trademark folks.

So, where are all the ahole idiots who swore they knew someone who told them there would be an Apple iPhone? Come on folks, step forward for the thrashing you all deserve. I am so happy to see that anyone else came out with the iPhone just to prove you were all blowing big clouds of smoke out your ass. Maybe Apple could come out with the vPhone (vaporPhone) to make all you losers happy. The Apple iPhone stood for idiotPhone clearly.

What will be the new rumored named you Apple fanboys are positive will be the phones name when it comes out tomorrow? iSpeak, iWalk&Talk, iMaBell, iPhoneyPieceOfJunk, iCrap, iHorn, iTelephone. Which will it be? I vote for the iCantFartLoudEnoughToConveyHowLittleICare.

jade and the others who think it is wrong to "neglect" the needy of flash drives:

Lets face facts and not fear saying the truth. We are talking about shipping these off to countries well known for running email scams and ebay scams. So, what is to make anyone think they will not spend a bit of time extracting the good bits of "deleted" data from these thumb drives. Yes, yes, I know that they are not all busy trying to run a scam but the fact is that I see no reason to send them our old flash drives just as I see no reason to send our old shredded financial documents. We need to take out personal security seriously and this just seems too easy a method of extracting data.

The "reality check" is this; these drives can be a very big security risk. It is very careless of a group to ask for us to fork over our drives which may or may not contain personal data to send to Africa. Good intentions aside, they do not appear to have thought this through thoroughly. Nothing on their website points to what care they will take with properly handling these drives so as to avoid an information leak.

Also, where has Inveneo spent two seconds telling us what these will actually be used for? Their description is this �They can be used in 100's of useful ways by: Students, Aid Workers & Small Business Entrepreneurs. Uhh, that sounds like marketing speak to me. I would be hard pressed to think of 50 uses for a flash drive let alone 100s of them. They have the burden of showing us what reason they need them for and how they will be handled. It is not enough to tell us �they are for needy people�.

Chris:

Work on the second billion, they say thats easier. The first billion in the tough one so skip that one.

kaztm:

I wish I could agree with you but I can't help but see the meaningless sentence as another stab at Sony. After so many bad articles I cannot help but question the motives of misquoting the article.

I too am a long time fan of Engadget and like to think that eventually they will get back on track.

I, Robot:

My comment was not to suggest that Sony has all the movie companies in their pocket but rather point out that they have a number of companies. If we are going to call Blu-ray a Sony standard (it is not) then we should call HD-DVD a Toshiba standard (also not). How many movie companies does Toshiba own? The idea is that Sony has something that gives Blu-ray an advantage.

Blu-ray isn't THEIR standard; it is the format they have chosen to back. If Sony was releasing both Blu-ray and HD-DVD equipment people would be complaining that Sony can't make a decision. They believe this to be the next big thing and a willing to gamble a lot of money on it. I do not believe they are being "over confident" but rather getting behind an idea and sticking to it. I like that in Sony.

There is no "handwriting on the wall". The formats are too new and no decisions have been made as to which is the winner.

Streaming media and getting content on a cell phone are a cute idea at best. When I want to watch a movie I want it now and don't want to wait. I also don't want to watch it on a 1.5" diagonal screen, rather I would much prefer a 60� diagonal screen. We are far from the days of streaming all our content in real time to our homes. Also, what about those people (read: most) in the U.S. without access to the high speed connections necessary to stream HD content over a wire to their home?

Just because Sony did not come out on top with some of their ideas does not make them wrong. It is innovation like that which makes our products better than ever today. I for one love MD and have four portable players as well as a bookshelf system I just recently purchased in Japan. I also dare any Engadget reader to tell the Japanese people that MiniDisc was a failure and that no products are available for it. I wish Sony continued success in their effort to bring new and exciting things to market and hope they never begin to play follow the leader.

PreGHz:

You were SO right calling it tech blow, Engadget blows quite a bit lately.