in the history of big, dumb companies being big
and dumb, i think the

t-mobile/sidekick debacle

will be an amusing, if somewhat sad, footnote:

“Who owns your Sidekick? T-Mobile does, apparently,
even if you spent full retail on it (I dropped $250 on mine). You
need T-Mobile’s permission to install software on their device.
T-Mobile will, from time to time, decide to erase software from
your device. And when you stop subscribing to their service,
T-Mobile will delete all your data forever, without giving you any
mechanism for moving it off the device (and without giving you the
ability to design a tool that would let you do this).

I apologize, then, to all the people I’ve recommended Sidekicks
to.”