Spot on, well put. Of course, the tragic thing is that people still go crazy over megapixels, even though they became largely irrelevant years and years ago. This marketing trick is only young and has many years left to infuriate those of us who know better...

You, Sir, just made my day! :-D

I think an analogy is useful here: Waves approach a beach at a particular speed, which is more-or-less fixed. However, consider where the waves are currently crashing onto the beach. If the waves are coming in almost parallel to the beach, the wave crashes everywhere on the beach almost simultaneously — indeed, if…

No, that's not what this means. Not even theoretically. The group velocity is the only thing that matters to electronics, computation and communication. The phase velocity is a ridiculously contrived concept, unfortunately.

Yeah, it's a cool photo. Shame that they had to over-reach on the title...

Oh, the poetic justice!

Call me pedantic, but the guys in the ISS are in free-fall for months at a time!

That's just what it looks like at sea level — as it ascends, air pressure will decrease, and the helium in the balloon will expand & expand until it reaches the huge size shown in the statue of liberty picture. After Felix has jumped, it'll eventually burst.

Replace 'Google pretty much dictates what the Internet is' with 'The internet pretty much dictates what Google is'?

Mmm, bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, isn't it.

I try to keep myself under control most of the time, but I see:

We're hypothetically making a decision that has real consequences here, like filling dumps with tons and tons of chargers that never see use. Making decisions based on a fear of "being tricked" is not really the way to go, IMHO.

So buy medium-price-o third party ones?

Interesting... I hadn't thought about it that way around. I guess it's a difficult choice for PR to choose between disappointing, underwhelming and pointless :-)

Why do you care what the manufacturer's *intention* is? The consequences are the same either way. Do you really want to scatter crappy chargers all over the planet just *in case* the manufacturer saves some money?

Yeah, because the iPhone 5 was such a well-kept secret...

These are both good points. On the first point, there is no need for USB chargers to be unreliable — they have a very simple job to do, and it's only extreme cost-cutting that leads to the crappy chargers that we end up with. If there was a market for quality (we're talking, say, an extra 50% in cost) USB chargers,…

??? Where do you buy your chargers from / what do you *do* to them?

Well said, Casey. USB chargers are a dime a dozen (and are conveniently built into most computers; I haven't actually used a stand-alone charger for months and months) and Micro-USB cables are cheap. It's the height of laziness, selfishness, and wastefulness to demand that a company give every single customer a part…

Many people wouldn't need them —> There would be less demand —> Factories manufacture less —> Environment and common sense win.