I'm not sure that many other political parties would use the Zune. Seems to me that Democrats, Republicans, and Communists are the only ones who would be okay with the idea of a device that does so much to tell you what you can and can't do with music that you have already paid for.

Of course, in the case of Communists, you wouldn't have paid for the music, it would be State-issued, and thoroughly sanitized.

I also feel no sympathy for these people. They failed to do their homework before they bought music, and now they're going to pay for it. On top of that, they basically supported the DRMed media model, which surely helped convince the RIAA that they were on the right track, and has encouraged them to continue pushing DRM on consumers. Basically, the people who bought DRMed music from Yahoo became part of the problem.

In addition, I'm actually kind of glad that these people are getting burned... the more people who are left with a bad taste in their mouth from the issues inherent with DRMed media, the more people there will be urging others to avoid it.

Angusm: The difference there is that, generally speaking, the accepted spelling of the word for a water-retaining wall is "dike". The only people who confuse the two are those who can't be bothered to check a proper dictionary.

Wow, that's a pretty weak list.

True, the camera is crap and it has no flash. Same is true of my current phone (and of most phones), so I won't be any worse off there for buying one. Besides, who buys a phone for the camera? That's why I own an actual *camera*.

IM is something that, again, most phones don't have, so to crucify the iPhone for lacking it is ridiculous. In addition, this will likely be a non-issue once the first of who-knows-how-many IM apps come from the official app store.

Roaming rates are a problem with the service provider, not the phone.

I generally keep my phones for about 2 years, and I have never, EVER had to replace a battery. I don't imagine that any of that will change with the iPhone.

Who cares about MMS? Tweens? I don't.

My current phone (and even that of the author of this list, I wager) also does not provide turn-by-turn GPS. The difference? It's possible that turn-by-turn GPS will be available on the iPhone eventually.

Really, the only valid gripes here are "crippled Bluetooth" and the lack of cut & paste. And really, both of those are relatively minor, and potentially correctable via a future software upgrade.

Seriously, this list only makes sense if you're holding the iPhone to some mysterious, undisclosed higher standard that no other device is subject to. If you compare it to any other actual phone or smartphone out there, it's not even a fair fight.

I submit that, if Dan Warne is truly smelling "stunning hypocrisy", he is probably just smelling himself.

I wonder how one reconciles this with the fact that the bananas that God has "designed" for humans are now in danger of being wiped out by Panama disease?

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/02/0033211

I mean, really. What kind of God designs a fruit just for humans, gives it to us, and then completely eradicates it?

Either Kirk Cameron is completely wrong about bananas, or his god is a complete dick.

I imagine that the results of this survey probably map pretty closely to the results of the Human Rights Campaign's most recent Corporate Equality Index (http://www.hrc.org/issues/workplace/cei.htm).

I note that Samsung isn't listed on the CEI, so I suppose that this could be something similar to the way that Nintendo was rated so low on the recent Greenpeace report (i.e., "insufficient data" somehow justifies a poor rating, rather than exclusion from the list or a simple statement of fact).

My BS detector went off as soon as I read that the man cut off the fingertip while building a model plane. I've been building models for most of my life, and I'm pretty familiar with the standard tools, and I can't even imagine how, using normal modeling tools, someone could cut off so much of their finger that the entire nail would be missing.

Fredkiesche:

Those activities are all covered under the broader "Don't be an idiot" bill, introduced to the Senate in 1927, but voted down on the grounds that it was unfairly biased against politicians.

Clarice,

I don't like having to hear or see theft, murder, lies, slander, corruption, or violence while I eat my breakfast.

And yet the news continues to be broadcast.

Might I suggest being more mindful of where you click? The word "porn" is present in the title of the article, so you knew what you were getting into when you read the article. Which you didn't have to do. You could have skipped it without missing out on anything else on Boing Boing. But you chose not to. (Or were you merely offended by reading the word "porn"? That would be truly sad.)

You're an adult, right? Act like one. Take responsibility for your own actions. Seriously, how did you end up reading the article if you didn't want to see anything about porn?

I dislike the trend of fortune cookies to stray from what could reasonably be considered "fortunes". Platitudes, generic pleasantries, and pseudo-Confucian quotes have ruined too many a potential fortune.

I mean, come on. "A friend is a gift that you give yourself"? Really?

Deplorable, yes, but also understandable from a business perspective.

Collagenesis has corpsemeat, and they want to profit from it. They could sell it to hospitals and make some money, or they could sell it to plastic surgeons and make much, much more money. It's not important for the business to care what their product is used for, but rather to maximize profit.

In that respect, they're really no worse than any other business that could be selling it's product for less money to a more noble cause. Couldn't most food producers sell their products to soup kitchens for very meager profit, instead of selling to the highest-paying supermarket chain? Seriously, ask yourself, how much profit did Organic Food Company A make selling their carrots to Whole Foods, and why didn't they sell them at just above cost to a soup kitchen instead?

Just about every business is guilty of this same thing. It absolutely sounds more outrageous and deplorable when we're talking about a business that makes money at the expense of burn victims... but really, who draws the line when it comes to what a business can capitalize on? If Collagenesis can't make money at the expense of burn victims, why can funeral homes and casket makers make money at the expense of grieving families?

If my small amount of exposure to Star Trek conventions is to be trusted, those caskets aren't going to sell well until they start manufacturing them in extra-large sizes.

#18:

You could make one yourself, but be warned, weiner poopie garments generally smell quite foul, and tend to fall apart in the wash.

#7: So Republicans are less deserving of life because they don't agree with you on a number of issues?

I'm no Republican, but seriously, you're an asshole.

mr_tumnus001, to the best of my knowledge, modern sperm banks don't allow anonymous donations. People don't want to leave this sort of thing to chance. Donors typically are on the hook for donations at a regular interval for a certain period of time, until they are matched with the recipient parent(s). They are effectively assigned to one family, and one only. Most sperm banks also keep contact information for all of their donors, in the even that the child needs to contact the biological father later in life (presumably only for questions about family medical history).

@#23:

I don't know how things differ in Canada, but I'm pretty sure that, in the US, using illegal drugs is not in itself illegal, but rather everything else surrounding use (possession, purchasing, selling, public intoxication) is.

If it were illegal simply to use drugs, anyone could be arrested for simply admitting that they had once used an illegal substance (within the statute of limitations, of course).

Seems a little hypocritical for Mr. Lynch to complain about the quality of movies on mobiles when the DVD release of his film "Lost Highway" is quite possibly the worst modern film to DVD transfer in history. Video artifacts abound, sound is inconsistent, and to top it off, it's presented in pan & scan. The version that I recorded off of IFC looks and sounds better than the retail DVD, for crying out loud (and it's widescreen, to boot).

And another promising artist succumbs to egotistical self-righteousness and slowly retreats, kicking and screaming, ranting and raving, wild-eyed with delusions of persecution, becoming mired deeper and deeper in the endless morass of irrelevance and obscurity.

Boo to the inclusion of the "Nargle". They should have tossed this entry to make room for one from a child who can show some actual creativity, who doesn't have to crib from the pages of a Harry Potter book.

Could this law have repercussions for Netflix? Though they do allow you to prevent people from seeing certain movies in your queue and your recently returned/rated lists, the default is to allow all of this information to be viewable to those that you have specified as "friends'.

@#1: I must have missed something. When did tasers become lethal?

My initial reaction upon reading the first paragraph of this post was that, here in Raleigh, NC, we are in the midst of some serious water restrictions due to an extended drought, and even though the tap may be cheaper or more convenient, every little bit helps. If we could cut our office water use by getting water from the air, that would be great. At $15 a day, though? That's a bit much.

On top of that, the collected moisture has to come from somewhere, and I have to imagine that running one of these things would have a dehumidifying effect in an enclosed environment, such as a house or office building. That probably wouldn't sit well with a lot of office workers, especially in parts of the world that are already uncomfortably low-humidity. Seems like this thing would be better off pulling air from outside.

I wonder how such a thing would scale? Might the cost per liter per day decrease if one of these were built on a much larger scale, perhaps to supply water to a community, rather than a single office?

Seriously, why not add a feature that is relevant? Like perhaps making the SmartSpice Rack actually "smart" enough that it will keep track of the age of the spices in the containers? Spices lose their kick as they age, and unless you keep spices in the containers you bought them in (or are anal enough to keep notes elsewhere), you generally have no idea how old the spices are.

"Wacom: we've totally mastered simple gradients, dude."