I agree.

But then again, had /. existed in the 1930's, we would likely have been commenting on the crazy stories about 'Atomic' power being possible. Almost certainly, there would be comments that it's simply a fantasy that won't work. A work of fiction. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was just a book. Just as we'd now maybe say, "Hey, didn't they do that in the Matrix|Star Wars|Star Trek?"

Within 10 years of that fictional /. article, we had figured out how to make an atomic bomb, and 10 years after that the USS Nautilus was built - the first nuclear powered ship. And just a couple of years later, the first public-power-generating nuclear plants came online. If you take all of that, and wrote a story published in the early 30's claiming that this would happen in the next 20-25 years, it would have been as fantastic as anything we can dream up here regarding electricity-producing algae or flying cars or living on the moon.

I totally agree that there's probably no way we're going to get any significant amount of our energy needs from electricity-producing microbes. Just as we probably won't from solar, wind, or waves alone. But it's just another piece of the puzzle for the future. Oil & coal aren't going away anytime soon, but it is important that we explore other options to push the frontier of what is possible. You never know, there's always a chance that this will be "the next big thing". It's worth at least reading about.

How short our collective geek memories are. This same phenomenon occurred last year when Apple released 2.0.

Around August of '08 there was an outcry of users complaining about diminished battery life + hot iPhones. Both on the then-new 3G, and on the original. I had this problem with my iPhone 2G (the original) after installing iPhone 2.0. My battery life went from lasting several days to barely making it through one, with the phone getting quite warm if I used it for more than a few minutes straight. It would even stay warmer than ambient when I wasn't using it. A sure sign that *something* was awry. In September of '08, Apple released 2.1 and that completely solved the problem for me and many other users. Battery life + heat levels returned to pre-2.0 levels. Problem solved.

So it's entirely possible that this is some sort of software/power management issue. And if that's the case, Apple will (ok, should) be able to fix it. And if that *is* the case, then Apple really needs to take another look at their iPhone power management coding/testing procedures. ;-)

Pink Floyd would disagree. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwTpZpwjtIE

My guess is that AT&T won't charge for MMS messages. With every other phone that has MMS messaging, an MMS message is treated like a text message. Each is deducted from your bucket of monthly messages. It's that way for both 'dumb' phones and other PDA-phones. They used to charge separately for text and MMS messages (i.e., 200 text + 20 MMS /month for $5), but they stopped doing that and lumped them together several years ago. Charging more for iPhone users to MMS would be pretty harsh. Not that they wouldn't or couldn't do it, but it would be a step back for them in terms of plans and billing.

Tethering, on the other hand, they absolutely *will* charge for. You can opt for the "official" tethering ability on the Blackberry and other PDA data plans. It costs and additional $30 month (for 5GB of data) on top of the $30/month data plan. Considering that many of these phones have 3G, I see no reason why they'd charge differently for iPhone 3G tethering. Unless, of course, they want to.

I'm not saying that I think it's ok to charge another $30 for "more-unlimited" data. It's asinine. Unlimited data should be unlimited data. And it clearly isn't. But anyway, those "in the know" understand that it's trivial to tether _right now_ with a stock iPhone. Just pick up a Samsung Sync for $25 off eBay. Use it + your iPhone SIM + bluetooth/USB cable to connect to your favorite PC/Mac/Linux machine. Poof. 3G tethering. Yes, it's against the TOS but AT&T historically hasn't cared so long as you don't abuse it. Of course, they could crack down on this if they wanted to.... YMMV + use at your own risk.

Sure, when you compare light pollution to 'real' pollution, it seems like a trivial issue. Who cares that you can't see the stars? It's not like someone's going to get cancer or have mutant children because the sky is orange at night.

But there is a meaningful environmental side to it - all of that light that's directed into the atmosphere is completely wasted energy. Even the dark-sky crazies agree that night-time illumination is important, and that we can't have a world without streetlights and security lights. But the point is that those lights should be designed to focus their lumens at their intended targets, not up into the air. Think of billboards that have lights at the bottom pointing up to illuminate the sign. Total waste of energy. Lights directed properly will still light up that McDonalds billboard just as effectively, but use less power to do it and not spill so much light into the surrounding skies. A win/win.

I live in the rural midwest, so I guess I'm just a dumb redneck. But honestly, I feel quite sorry for those that live in places where they can't see the stars. I'm sure that to those that don't know what the Milky Way looks like, they just don't understand why those of us that *do* know what it looks like speak so highly of being able to see the stars. Cities are great. Full of options, people, and civilization. But I wouldn't trade it for the ability to sneak out to the countryside on a cool, clear summer night with a blanket, a bottle of wine, and my significant other, to just lie back and just watch the universe march by. If you've never experienced that, you have my sympathy.

Smug anti-iPhoners can point and laugh at iPhone owners all they want. Par for the course around here.

The *point* of this mess is that AT&T allowed original iPhone owners to upgrade to a 3G iPhone at any point in the contract. So if you bought an original iPhone in July of '07, you agreed to a 2-year contract. Fine. But if you decided in August of '08 that you wanted a new 3G iPhone, AT&T would sell you one at the DISCOUNTED, new-customer price. Yes, that's contrary to the way every other phone upgrade works, and part of how iPhones were sold. And yes, you got to keep the original iPhone.

AT&T/Apple changed their mind on the 3GS upgrade policy, and *that's* what has iPhone owners ticked off. Give it a couple of weeks. My bet is that they'll change their mind on it and go back to the original policy. Especially when they see that 3GS sales aren't taking off the way they expect them to.

Quickly getting OT here, and it's 'just a movie', but...

Cochrane's ship (the Phoenix) was a leftover ICBM. So it wasn't like it put it together with wood and vines knitted from the forest. It was designed to be a space-traveling vehicle already.

I thought they did a good job with the character. Not every genius has to be the perfect 'Einstein' model of goodness and light.

I always kind of thought that the Borg picked the point they did because it was a logical point to disrupt the current timeline. Destroy the Phoenix, and you take out the inventor of warp drive. And the Vulcan scout ship never sees the warp trail. Thus changing the whole 'First Contact' moment (and possibly warp drive), forever, with one shot. Easy, clean, and logical. Sure, they could go back to the 20th century (or earlier) - but it would just be a lot more work to assimilate the planet. Not that 'work' has much of a meaning to the Borg, but when you're just one 'escape vessel' ship, perhaps they lacked the resources to assimilate a whole planet? Who knows. It's just a movie. ;-)

Is that you?

Exactly.

And with Windows it's Right-click on 'My Network Places' -> Properties. Then pick the connection ->Properties. Pick the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) option ->Properties. All mouse-driven, all GUI, all easy. Adjust away.

That's the difference. With Ubuntu|Linux, you've got to *know* how to get to the Terminal, then you've got to type stuff, then you've got to edit config files. Then restart things. Then something else breaks, which requires not the usual 'Add/Remove' program function to fix it, but a trip into 'sudo aptitude blah-blah-blah'. Then maybe that works, maybe it doesn't. Of course, it's trivially easy to find umpteen tutorials on *how* to do this stuff. Linux-lovers get excited over that. And that's totally cool. And I'll buy the argument that it is "better" to actually learn how your O/S works. But casual users, mainstream users, money-spending users, no way. They just want it to work.

I have three notebooks; one running Vista, one running Ubuntu 9.04, and a Macbook. I use them interchangeably, depending on what I'm doing. Ubuntu 9.04 is the best release of Ubuntu yet, but it's still kludgy compared to Vista or Mac. And when things break in Ubuntu (like when my WiFi simply stopped working after a recommended update & reboot) it required quite a bit of troubleshooting and 'tinkering' to get it working again. After a half-hour, I was back in business. But it required a half-hour of work to fix. Enjoyable fun for the computer nerd. But not for Grandma. People want apps that are easily installed, easily removed, and consistent in their method of installation.

And until some Linux distro figures that out (Ubuntu 9.04 is *damn* close) they'll never capture enough market share to hit critical mass. Based on the improvements I've witnessed from Ubuntu 6.xxx through today's 9.04, they may be there by Ubuntu 10 or 11. Here's to hoping. :-)

It's all just a matter of priorities. Some folks think spending over $10,000 on a car is dumb, others see spending more than $500 on a computer, or more than $50 on a video card is stupid. For anyone who thinks that spending $1,500 on a pair of headphones is crazy, the simple fact is that you're not the intended audience.

I don't necessarily trust what I read from so-called 'audiophiles'. Being an 'audiophile' is a little bit like being a 'photographer'. Just because you took one good picture of your dog doesn't mean you're now an expert on all things photographic. The audiophile world is, IMHO, similar. The only way to *know* what "good" stuff sounds like is to listen to the "good" stuff for yourself. You can read hundreds of reviews that describe 'veiled soundstage', or 'low-oxygen connectors', or 'velvet midrange', etc. But it doesn't mean a whole lot if you can't put it into context. The only way to do it is to listen and decide for yourself!

About a year ago, I decided that I wanted a *good* pair of headphones for my office. I exchanged several emails with the folks at headphone.com about this, and with their blessing I ordered about $1,500 worth of headphones and amps from them, knowing that $1,000+ of it would be returned.

I spent several weeks comparing and contrasting a half-dozen of their 'best' headphones. The result? There is a big difference between $100 cans and $500 cans. Try it for yourself. Some people might not be able to tell the difference. And that's cool, buy the $100 pair and be happy. But just as some people enjoy wine, cars, cigars, cheeses, types of underwear, video cards, {whatever!} more than others is why the market supports so many varieties of, well, everything. And at different price points.

FWIW, I ended up keeping a pair of Sennheiser HD-650's because their sound was simply incredible and they were comfortable for long periods of time.

Someone needs to learn a bit more about their cell phone technologies. The guy *was* using a GSM network, AT&T.

Of the major carriers in the U.S., AT&T and T-Mobile are GSM carriers. Sprint & Verizon are CDMA carriers. AFAIK, South Korea is the only other place in the world that uses CDMA phones. The rest of the world uses GSM phones.

If the cruise ship were using a CDMA repeater network, the exact same problem could have happened to someone using using Sprint or Verizon data card.

The problem here really isn't in the billing system that AT&T uses. The problem is that either A) the ship's network didn't identify itself as being a 'Roaming' network. Or B), the user didn't understand how to check to see which network his wireless broadband card was using. In the case of A, the user has a real complaint against the cruise line. If it's B, he has no one to blame but himself.

Yes, and in May of 2009, Congress will realize that there are still 4.3 million people who aren't prepared. So they'll push it back to December of 2009. In November, due to 'economic hardship', we'll still have 3.8 million unprepared. So it'll get pushed back to May of 2010. In April of 2010, there will still be 2.9 million unprepared....

If the 6.5 million unprepared haven't figured out how to scrape together the $40 to buy a box by now, they're not ever going to do it. Not by now, not by June, not ever.