Sometimes? In terms of reliability, the relative simplicity of a low-tech "system" makes it almost always more reliable than a high-tech system. That's the whole idea behind a manual fail-safe: a low-tech backup plan which is almost guaranteed not to fail, in case the less reliable high-tech but more powerful and functional plan fails.

The high-tech vs low-tech scenario has always been like that, a trade-off between reliability and simplicity vs sophistication, functionality, and power.

Even if there wasn't an "oh crap!" warning just before impact, the jolt should have made sure people weren't standing by the time the roof on their part of the bus was shaved off.

Now if that was a light saber rather than a bridge, and it had been slightly lower...

Actually I think this is more stupid than the river. You can see the darn bridge looming ahead, whereas under certain circumstances you might not notice the river until it's too late.

'course, that's what the signs are for.

Er, VGA=640x480, not 800x480, so this is actually bigger than VGA.

Therese nothing complex about a "integrated reverse osmosis module." If you have a special piece of paper that lets water through but not salt, and you put salt water on one side and pure water on the other, the salt water will leach pure water over. That tendency (to go from the less salty to the more salty side) is called osmosis. So they first suck water from the air using salt, then use reverse osmisis--leaching pure water from salty water--to extract water from the salt. The can also use the same filter to extract water from salty water without leaching from the air, too.

Well in fact, BREW is very tightly controlled by the carriers, and only very few applications are selected to be downloadable (you see them in the catalog in your phone). But depending on how strict it turns out Apple will restrict third-party programming, I myself may or may not consider iPhone to be a smartphone. If, for example, Apple just makes sure that the programs are secure, can't fault them for that.

Although I haven't actually used it, apparently Opera Mini is pretty good.

Or you could use a Treo... isn't Blazer pretty good too?

Also, I have to ask you, I'm not a corporate user and just want a pocket computer/phone/web browser for a economy pricetag, do you think the Pearl is worth that? I'm considering either getting a Pearl or a Treo (iPhone is WAYYY too expensive, and Cingular?????).

Technically, almost every cell phone on the market is third-party programmable, via either BREW (Binary Runtime Environment something--help, anyone?) or Java. Which means that in general, it seems only phones that run the three primary OS's are considered smartphones (Symbian, Palm OS/Garnet OS, and Windows CE derivatives like Windows Mobile Edition and Windows Smartphone Edition). Using that definition, the iPhone is definitively not a smartphone, because it runs it's own proprietary OS. On the other hand, this definition is too rigid; but it makes sense that BREW and Java are not good enough to be called a smartphone, since their functionality is so limited. Instead, in order for a new entry to be called a smartphone, the OS must be, like the three listed above, more like a desktop OS and less like a proprietary OS for a single device, and the iPhone certainly isn't. The three main Smartphone OS's are, like desktop OS's, built from the ground up with third-party expandability in mind; in other words, the OS wasn't built for five distinct functions, it was built so that anyone could do anything with it. I'm pretty sure that even were Apple to make the widget engine third-party programmable, it would still hardly qualify for the status of smartphone, because it's very proprietary (wrong usage?) and hardly gives any control at all to the programmer.

Just curious, and trying not to offend anyone, but how many of you who say that you can't patent languages are actually Chilean lawyers or paralegals etc, how many of you are basing this on the laws of your native country/state (US,UK, California, etc), and how many of you are just assuming that the lawmakers wouldn't make (what you consider) a ridiculous law?

Are you kidding? Fingerprint scanners are a joke of a security measure; every heard of the gummy bear trick? Somebody touches something, you press your gummy bear (the flat side) against his print, and walla! You're him.

Quite probably, something will happen to the blood in a dead finger (anyone seen that scene in Resident Evil where the guy says, about the zombie's blood: "Her blood was conglobulated! That's impossible! It..it can't do that unless she's dead!"?)and at the very least, the scanner is less likely to accept it.