If you are willing to hack your phone, you can install the GPS software from the new Epic 4G, which is a Galaxy S phone. In my experience this substantially improves the function of the GPS receiver on my Captivate (AT&T version of the Galaxy S). So while Samsung made a big mistake shipping a clearly broken product (did they seriously never try out the GPS even once before shipping the phone?), at the very least a fix exists and I feel confident it will make it out officially.

Other than the GPS issues it really is a brilliant piece of hardware. Overall I do not regret my purchase.

A system like this could presumably work through any site that hosts user-generated content. A repressive government would have to ban every service that doesn't allow them to tie each message to a real person. So they would have to block all of the Internet originating in the western world. Even for a place like China that would be pretty untenable.

That's absolutely terrifying.

This also highlights the fact that Verizon can impersonate any site, and that there is little chance they haven't granted a private key to US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies.

I guess the moral of this story is that if you want to communicate securely, without every government under the sun listening, you have to manage the encryption yourself.

Actually, if the load average is greater than the number of cores, you have oversubscription.

Lots of scientists use Macs. They are easy to use, UNIX-like, and don't require antivirus nonsense like Windows does. Apple markets to smug bastards but the products are often actually pretty good.

What a brilliant idea by whoever fired you - producing a disgruntled former employee who knows how to steal money from the company.

If they are told up front their position is temporary, what's the problem?

Does the monthly fee (with its built-in subsidy) become any cheaper if you supply your own phone?

Would that I had mod points today.

The above is a valid English sentence and a poignant example of how difficult it is to parse language without knowledge of semantics.

What you want is Debian, not Ubuntu.

Does this mean there will be a new kernel for the phones, and a POSIX userland API exposed to developers? This announcement, combined with previous noises about Flash on BlackBerry, make me suspect so. RIM's JVM and apps are still cripplingly slow when compared to the pizzazz-filled user experience of the iPhone...

Well, in GTA: Chinatown Wars you had to pay bridge toll. Congestion charge would actually be pretty funny.

It's pretty hard to confuse being inside NYC for being out of town. Given the state of traffic in NYC, it's easy to hit a pedestrian or another car. Do these same drivers have a one in two hundred trips accident rate?

I live in NYC and I am not surprised in the least by this. It's amazing that it's only 75%.

The taxi drivers expended a lot of social capital vigorously opposing and even striking over the GPS units, when everyone (taxi drivers included) knew that the GPS units would help keep the drivers honest. Now that fraud has been exposed, it will be even more difficult for the drivers to gain public support the next time they are angry about something.

I realize I'm nitpicking, but 64-bit support is not required for Snow Leopard. It runs just fine on my 2006-era 32-bit Core Duo MacBook.