The Daily Slash: March 25th 2010

Welcome to another edition of The Daily Slash, ladies and gentlemen. We're glad you could make it. It's just not the same without you, truth be told. We've got a strong batch of stories for you tonight. A bit of flashy gold goodness, some technological ridiculousness, and some deep space science that may just surprise you. And, as always, we've got it all bundled up for you in a nice, gift-wrapped package.BPhone Explains Why Smartphones and Netbooks Shouldn't Be One Device: We're not going to just come right out and say that the BPhone is a bad idea, but we will say that it's not the most attractive piece of technology running around out there. For what it's worth, we're sure that it can get the job done with its unlocked bad-self, but there's just not enough specifications to make us excited about this thing. It's running ARM Linux 2.6, it's powered by a 624MHz Marvell CPU, and it's got a 5-inch touchscreen. It's also got WiFi and GPS, if you're into that kind of thing. The real unfortunate part, is the fact that it costs nearly $600. [via PMP Today]Police in the UK Will be Able to Fingerprint in the Field: One of the more troubling parts of law enforcement, is a police officer that has to be pulled out of the field to take a suspect back and go through the ordeal of fingerprinting them. If there was a way that they could do that out in the field, it would smooth over a lot of speed bumps. Thanks to the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), law enforcement agencies will be receiving MobileID, which provides mobile fingerprinting. The technological side is the fact that when a police officer checks that fingerprint with MobileID, they are checking it against the entire national fingerprint database. It's being tested by 28 police departments right now, so hopefully it goes over well, and it becomes adopted globally. [via ZDNET UK]The Taurus Concept is a Test in Balance, Ridiculousness: Here's the Taurus Concept. It's basically a Segway, but instead of standing up on those two wheels, you get to sit down and try and balance as you mow down pedestrians on the sidewalk. It's an all-electric saddle-driven contraption designed by Erik Lanuza. From the pictures you can tell it doesn't look all that safe. But, what makes it even more unsafe, is the fact that you steer the Taurus Concept by leaning to the right and left, and you brake by leaning backwards. We don't know about you, but we're pretty sure we'd fall off trying any of that. But, hey, at least it's not like another fire-breathing scooter we've seen before. [via Jalopnik]There's a 24-Carat Gold BlackBerry Bold 9700, and It's Real: When we saw the images of this, we thought they were fake. Truth be told, if it weren't for the owner of the device in question, we'd probably still think it was fake. But, a millionaire created it. And, millionaires have a tendency to spend their money on some crazy stuff. Unfortunately, there's no word on how much this cost Kenneth Tong, but we're pretty sure it's more than we'd feel comfortable reporting. So, while you may not be a fan of 24-carat encrusted things, at least you can say it's shiny. And that's really half the battle, isn't it? [via CrackBerry]Qualcomm MSM7x30 Development Unit Goes Hands-On, Makes Current Generation Cellphones Look Old: And by old, we mean ancient. You'll have to go and see this video for yourself to believe it. From what we can see, the Qualcomm MSM7x30 platform is ridiculously fast and fluid. It's running anywhere between 800MHz and 1GHz, but from the looks of the demo, it looks more like 1.3, or even 1.5GHz. Considering the fact that the icons on the screen are moving about over the waves, along with the full-screen bubbles floating around in the background, along with the depth of  the ocean changing, just make it look ridiculous. Oh, and there's a sea monster trying to eat his finger. How awesome is that? It's also got some good gaming capabilities, does 720p HD video out, and it may even cook us breakfast. Or, that could just be our hopes and dreams. [via Engadget]