When Consumerist reader Scott sent his under-warranty laptop into Office Depot for a repair, he noticed that they'd used glue to fix his power port problem. Okay, that's bad enough, since the glue melted to the power port and caused a serious burn hazard. But when Scott sent his Acer back in for round two, well:

"I detailed the issue to the Office Depot Warranty operator, and he
specifically wrote "Problem: AC port loose. glue melted from last fix.
AC adapter gets extremely hot" on the work order. I again sent the
laptop off hoping the problem would be fixed. My hopes were too high.
Turns out, glue the power port so it is usable is a masterful fix when
compared to the attached photo. As you can see... again the service
people glued the power port back into "place." Though this time it is
glued in off center, and can not be plugged in. Obviously whoever
office depot sends their laptops off to for service does not even
check to see if their "fixes" are functional. An added bonus is that
my expansion slot cover is now missing. So not only do I receive a
broken laptop, it also has a part stolen."

So, in brief: don't try to fix your laptop with glue, definitely don't try to fix it with glue twice, and definitely definitely don't trust Office Depot with your valuables. [Consumerist]

This chart for AT&T U-Verse internet makes no sense whatsoever. For one, what's the difference between "watching TV/video clips" and "streaming video" and why does one need just 12 measly megabits, while the other needs 18? Also, the numbers just don't work. Even full HD 1080p streaming video through Zune on Xbox Live just requires 10Mbps-12Mbps of bandwidth.

If anything, it's the internet gaming that needs 12Mbps, as I was sadly reminded while trying to download the entirety Left 4 Dead 2 over the 6Mbps AT&T DSL I've got in GA—the fastest internet AT&T will give me. I'd console myself with Hulu, but you know, it might not work. [AT&T, Thanks Slacker!]

Update: Our source at AT&T tells us that GSM and EDGE are both running fine, and that the outage was caused by a hardware issue that is rapidly being fixed:

AT&T has fixed the hardware issue and data services are quickly returning to normal. Speeds should be back to normal within about a half hour.

Some of us managed to survive boring high school math lessons by playing Tetris on TI-89 calculators, yet we can't get more than 30 seconds on a Pre for another month? I understand that it's a demo, and that by now everyone and their dog knows how to play Tetris, but this doesn't even qualify as a teaser.

30 seconds is pointless for a demo of any kind, on any platform. What are you supposed to do? Get acquainted with the splash screen? Such a short period of app usage or game play isn't going to going to get anyone who wasn't already interested in the full version any more excited about it.

Dear EA, please give us a demo that actually demonstrates something other than the fact that brevity isn't always wit. Actually, screw the demo. Just give us the game already. [iSmashPhone]

[There I Fixed It]

The product you ordered is no longer available and the order has been
canceled. If you'd like to make another selection, visit a Best Buy
store or BestBuy.com. The credit card (or Gift Card) used for this
order has been credited

It'd be nice if they just admitted it was a screw up. But oh well, the dream was fun while it lasted. Interestingly, though the product page was fixed, with "Price: $1699.99: Sold Out Online" posted in big fat red letters—it now looks to have been taken down completely.

If you successfully bought the TV at $10—and haven't received a cancellation—post a comment below and fill us in.

Sometimes companies honor pricing mistakes to avoid bad PR, but this would have been a pricey mishap. No surprise, though—Best Buy's "Conditions of Use" fine print reads:

Errors on Our Site
Prices and availability of products and services are subject to change without notice. Errors will be corrected where discovered, and Best Buy reserves the right to revoke any stated offer and to correct any errors, inaccuracies or omissions including after an order has been submitted and whether or not the order has been confirmed and your credit card charged. If your credit card has already been charged for the purchase and your order is cancelled, Best Buy will issue a credit to your credit card account in the amount of the charge. Individual bank policies will dictate when this amount is credited to your account. If you are not fully satisfied with your purchase, you may return it in accordance with Best Buy's Return Policy.

What the page had looked like:

Sounds like there was a problem with some nearby flood prevention walls at the Dianpu River, but there's no hard evidence as to why this huge building simply fell over. Anyway, here are some sweet pictures of the architectural carnage. [Cellar.org via Twitter]

But some deeds shouldn't go unnoticed, like this cardboard computer case, or the smelly sock fix to make RockBand drums a little quieter.

There, I Fixed It takes user submissions of the most inspired fixes-and the utter brain farts-and the result is a catalogue of impending disaster that's perfect for a few minutes of cyber-slacking. Get back to work. [There, I Fixed It]

As it's an alpha, we're not too bothered that it's run into some overload problems. Hey, at least people are using it, right? But be warned, Wolfie: A pithy error message can only charm us for so long. [via Twitter]

Secure Computing says that an agent only known as T was responsible for the gaffe, which took place on a Colombian passenger train. Apparently the fallout from the incident resulted in a number of agents having to be relocated for safety purposes. But MI6 assures us all that they now take more secure precautions with sensitive data. [Secure Computing via Wired]

Apparently, someone forgot to do just that for ten miles in Wellington, New Zealand. Or maybe they believed there's nothing to see in 10 miles of road near Wellington. After all, if you saw the Lord of the Rings, you saw all of it, mate.

Hopefully, now that the Conchords are back in New Zealand, they will fix it so we can catch a glimpse of them herding the sheep.

[Google Maps—Thanks Kris]

"OK, my pussy's hanging out!!!"

Oh you classy girl you! Apparently, someone in the control room forgot to turn off her microphone as she was going down to change her clothes. You can leave your Beavis and Butthead comments after the beep. [Britney Spears Blackout]

Oh, the joys of low budget commercials and oblivious ad men! If El Jobso saw this, he would be furious! Plus, they show the iBook running Windows XP. OK, so it's not the end of the world to not know that BSODs only happen on machines that can run Windows (some might even take pride in it). Still, Don Draper would never let this happen.

And if that's not enough for you, there countless other ridiculous parts, such as an angry, snotnosed gamer reminiscent of Angry German Kid, and a middle-aged, corporate suit who speaks about his computer in the same way as his failing marriage. You should really just watch it.

The hotel, called the Harmon, was just essentially "kneecapped." What did they do, take an X-acto knife across the blueprints? You have to wonder what Foster thinks of all this. [LasVegasSun via BLDGBLOG]

The thing, as described by the Times of India:

A storage device containing megabytes of data info which can be accessed by a user by connecting this device to a laptop.

Oh. That description sounds an awful lot like a USB drive, observed through computer-illiterate eyes. However, the only picture available of the device shows a small white box with lots of attached cabling, indicating that there's more happening here than simple storage. You know, something exciting, like networked storage! Either way, FAIL.

This whole fiasco was compounded by a few factors: deliberate misinformation by people close to the project, the complete and utter incompetence of the Indian tech press (we still don't even have a solid idea what this thing is) and the condescending eagerness of Western news outlets to believe that such a product, which would have been dismissed as totally impossible if announced here, was inexplicably plausible because it was coming from the mysterious foreign land of India. Whatever the case, there is no $10 laptop, and there probably never will be—at least not from this project. [Times of India, photo via ITCafe]