OK, my friend Doug over at Polar Microsystems just let me know about the new Apple news. I haven't really been paying attention this week, because I've been doing other more importnat stuff.

First of all, I was already considering buying a refurb iPhone. I bought a refurb iPod nano 2GB (1st gen) right after the 2G nano was announced, and the experience I've had with it was perfect, so I have no problem buying a refurb iPhone. Second, the remaining stock of 4GB iPhones is selling at $299. Since I really don't forsee using the iPhone as a primary music player, I don't have much problem with a non-upgradeable 4GB of memory, especially since Apple *still* hasn't released an SDK. Besides, at $299, I won't care so much about upgrading in the future. $299 and $399 are the right prices for this phone, considering the lack of insurance available. $599 was just silly, given the problems with the iPhone.

I'm *still* waiting for significant software upgrades, though.

The iPod touch is nice, but with Bluetooth and email, it doesn't make sense for me. The camera I can live without, although it would have been nice.

The iPod classic is something I didn't see coming. I rather thought that Apple would go with an iPod touch with a HDD.

The new iPod nano is cool, but I don't really have any desire to watch video on such a small screen. The only reason I bought the nano in the first place was just to show off pictures and have an auxiliary player for buying adding media while on the road without my primary iTunes library. Plus, at $99 for my refurb, it entirely replaced my 1G iPod shuffle for that purpose.

So, my new lineup will probably be either a 4GB iPhone or 8GB refurb (currently $349), and an 80GB iPod classic, once the refurbs start coming out. My 4G 40GB iPod will be handed off to a family member, and my 1G 2GB nano will remain in service. My 1G 1GB shuffle will be reduced to USB drive status.

I just found out that although Apple will, in fact, be offering an AppleCare program for the iPhone, no standard cell phone insurance coverage is available through AT&T. This is absolutely outrageous! I've always had insurance coverage on my phones, which up to this point have been Palm phones that sell in the area of $500, so I don't buy AT&T lame explanation that the insurance coverage would be "too expensive to be marketable". What do you take me for, a rube? Do you think I just fell off the turnip truck yesterday?

Phones get dropped. Phones mysteriously break. I've used my insurance three times in the last decade or so to get broken phones replaced. The only reason my wife hasn't used hers is because we've been lucky that when I eventually upgraded my phone, I was able to offer her my old one as a back up.

We started out with cheapy Motorola's, and then I upgraded to a Kyocera 6035 Palm phone. My wife's Motorola one day started making alarming noises at her for no apparent reason. Luckily, I was able to give her my old Motorola to replace hers. I used the insurance on my 6035 twice. The first time, I dropped it and broke the glass screen. The second time, the microphone mysteriously quit working. Both times, a $35 fee replaced a $500 phone. Now, we both have Samsung SPH-i500 Palm phones, and word on the street is that these will be replaced with Treo 650's if damaged, because stock of i500's has finally dried up.

I'm careful with my phones. I really am. But, sometimes things happen, and that's why I'm happy to pay for the insurance. If I were using a chepo phone again, I wouldn't bother, but a $500-plus phone that also dictates you buy at least a hundred dollars in accessories means you *need* to have insurance.

I'm going to look into the reports of third-party insurance coverage. Our car insurance is with State Farm, and they supposedly are offering a "personal items" policy that will cover the iPhone. If I can't get insurance for the iPhone at a reasonable price, I won't be buying one. Period.

Well, it's finally here, and the world has had a couple of weeks to prod at the new baby, so I think it's time to come out of the closet. You see, there's a lot to like about the iPhone, but there's also quite a lot to hate about the iPhone. I myself am an avid proponent of Apple products, but I find myself scratching my head as to some of the design, interface, and marketing choices made by Apple and AT&T for the iPhone.

So much more could have been done with this product that it absolutely boggles the mind why so many features are missing! Granted, some are missing by design, because of the limitations imposed upon the device by the bean polishers at The Big "T", but when you look at other missing features, you just have to scratch your head and think, "WTF?" Most of the problems with the iPhone could be solved with software updates, but it remains to be seen whether or not such things will exist, and how frequent they may be if they appear.

1. No USB Disk Mode. It's bad enough that the iPhone doesn't have a memory card slot, even though it does have more internal storage than just about any other phone out there, but iPods have had this functionality since Day One, and it's lack here is truly puzzling. It's hard to imagine, for me anyway, what possible downside there could be to AT&T by including this feature, so why the absence? BTW, don't even get me started on the discontinuation of FireWire support in iPods...but this also means no downloading files on the iPhone, then later transferring them to my desktop.

2. No tethering. Now, this really just pisses me off. I don't ever use a Bluetooth phone as my primary Internet connection, but there are times that I need it. Because of this, I'll have to maintain a second phone just for the occasional, but critical, remote Internet access.

3. No user widgets. I really thought that Apple wasn't serious when they said "Web 2.0". It's quite clear that iPhone widgets are exactly the same as Dashboard widgets, so why can't I sync widgets from my desktop machine? Perhaps this will happen with Mac OS X v10.5?

4. The contract cancellation fee. This is just usurious and insulting. Carriers have always justified their cancellation fees by subsudizing the hardware, but the iPhone has no such subsidy.

5. No Bluetooth synchronization, and no Bluetooth file transfer. Why bother with a Bluetooth radio at all? Just so you can use a headset? Bluetooth headsets are more of a PITA than a help. Somewhere around here, I have a Samsung WEP200. I lost it because I stopped using it because the battery life was pathetic.

6. No Wi-Fi synchronization. Less of a problem then the lack of Bluetooth sync, because the Wi-Fi is otherwise useful.

7. No Infrared. Please, please, please let me do away with every infrared remote in my life, starting with the Apple units included with my iMac and MacBook (and future AppleTV).

8. No HSDPA. I understand Apple's explanation, but I don't buy it. Maybe this can be a firmware upgrade. I read somewhere that Palm was doing this with one of the Treo's, so we can only hope. (Before you get all up in arms about differing radios for EDGE and HSDPA, rest assured I know at least a little bit about software defined radios)

9. No voice dialing. In a phone without physical buttons? Are they insane?

10. No synchronization of text notes. What good is it if I can make notes on the iPhone, but not share them with my desktop?

11. No Flash and No Java. I have hopes that Adobe will eventually offer Flash for the iPhone, but the lack of a J2ME environment is upsetting. Not that I'm the biggest fan of Java in general, or J2ME, specifically, but it works for some things.

12. No RSS feed reader. This really should have been part of the browser, just as it is in the desktop Safari. I use the RSS feed reader on my Nokia 770 all the time, despite its limitations.

13. Only 200 messages per IMAP account. This is patently ridiculous. The whole point of IMAP is that the mail can be stored on the server, and only the headers need come down to the client until a specific message is desired. Of course, this doesn't even begin to address the spam question, which is the biggest problem facing mobile email users. Until somebody gets a decent Bayesian filter setup that will work comfortably on a mobile, mobile email isn't very useful at all.

14. No removable battery. OK, so it has decent battery life, but I've grown accustomed over the years with my Palm phones to keeping a extra battery in the cradle. A low battery means a "swap and go", rather than a wire tether.

15. No voice recorder. I don't even use this often, but it's a really nice feature to have in my Samsung SPH-i500 Palm phone. It should be in the iPhone.

16. Desktop computer required. Come one, guys, it's 2007 already. The iPhone has the power to be a completely stand-alone system. Why isn't it? Why can't I access a Darwin Calendar Server with it directly? Again, when Mac OS X Server v 10.5 comes out, maybe this will change, but I'm not holding my breath.

17. No QuickTime in the browser. And this thing was made by Apple???

18. YouTube. Fsck YouTube. I would have been more impressed with a custom movie trailer client for Apple's trailer site.

19. The camera is on the back. Which is fine for taking pictures (What, you don't already own a digital camera that takes even better pictures?), but rules out videoconferencing, which also means...No iChat AV client. Of course, Apple would really need an iChat AV client for Windows, first. I've asked for it, and I'm still waiting.

20. No 802.11n. This is really going to make people angry in a couple of years, unless a new iPhone model that includes "n" appears and is such a significant upgrade that you'd be silly to stick with Version 1.0.

What really burns my ass about all this is that we can all see the potential of the iPhone, and if we can see it, Apple can see it, too. It's not a phone, it's a handheld computer that happens to have a phone built-in.

Everything else the iPhone does, it does so well that it makes you wonder what the people at Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, and the rest having been doing all these years. So, in the end, I'll probably get one. Right now, I'm sitting on the cash desperately trying not to rush out to the AT&T or Apple store to get one. I think perhaps I'll wait until the appearance of a significant software update, just to reassure myself that Apple will actually produce them.

Another submission...

C|Net is reporting that "Motorola plans to enhance the reliability of its emergency services software applications by integrating them on the Microsoft platform". Fantastic...now we can expect our public service and emergency first responders to expose our public safety to the legendary robustness and security of Microsoft software, not to mention locking our critical public safety services into the infamous Microsoft upgrade lockstep machine. Is it just me, or does this seem like an amazingly Bad Idea?

Update-rejected again. I'm beginning to think that the submission editors have something against me...

What with all the talk about dubious methods of increasing fuel-efficiency, I thought Slashdot readers might be interested to know that Volkswagen has announced two new engines that look quite amazing on paper. First up is a 170 horsepower supercharged and turbocharged 1.4 litre petrol engine that is capable of 39 MPG city/48 MPG highway. The other engine is a 170 horsepower 2.0 litre direct-injection turbo diesel that can get 48 MPG (driving type not specified). Both engines will be used in the upcoming Golf GT. The gas engine runs at 2.5 bars of boost on top of a 10:1 compression ratio! Yum!

Well, I spent the day installing Fedora Core 4 on a borrowed IBM ThinkPad T30 (2366-96U). Also managed to update the firmware on a Prism chipset-based Siemens/Speedstream SS1021 card to v1.1.1 primary and v1.8.2 secondary using the Host AP package (which requires later firmware than what I had to run WPA), and got everything connected to my WPA network. Pretty cool. I'm typing this from the ThinkPad right now.

At least I finally found a use for the old Speedstream card which didn't work with WPA under Windows XP...

I still think that the moderation system needs some serious updating...

Just in case it gets rejected, I'm archiving this here in the hopes that it may help to spur further debate.

I have found my self wondering of late whether or not the Moderation system of Slashdot (meaning, this site in particular, as opposed to the underlying implementation in Slashcode) would be more effective if a few changes were made.

For instance, it seems to me from my own experience, that readers are more likely to post in stories that cover a field in which the reader may have a particular expertise, yet the moderation system disallows those same posters from moderating any posts under the same topic. Would it not be more effective to allow moderation to all posts but one's own? Why isn't the moderation system open to all logged in users at all times? Why are we limited to five moderation points at a time? Why is the moderation scale limited to -1 through +5? Why are we limited to single point changes?

Personally, I have my preferences set to display +4 and above, and most of my own moderation tends to be downward, as I personally feel it is of more value to the community for me to down-mod those posts which I feel do not deserve a 4 or 5 rating. I take my moderation very seriously, and I do not mod on a whim. In fact, many times when I am awarded moderation points, I end up allowing them to expire because I do not feel any affinity for the topics currently being discussed, I do not possess enough expertise in the topics being discussed, or I want to particpate in a debate. Again, those discussions I join tend to be those in which I have particular interest or expertise, and I suspect that many posters here would tell similar tales.

I submit that changing the moderation system to -2 to +10 would result in a more accurate characterization of the relative quality level of the posts I see. I also think that we need a "-2, Incorrect" moderation type for posts that contain information that is just downright wrong, and perhaps a "+2, Definitive" moderation type for stellar examples. Perhaps other new moderation types would also help. Could we not open the moderation to all users at all times and do away with the five points at a time limitation by simply not allowing a particular user to moderate a particular post more than once?

I've read the FAQ section on moderation many times, and it still leaves me a bit disappointed. As a 5-digit UID Slashdotter (just a little way over 15 bits at #33785), I've seen Slashdot go through many different phases, and I'm wondering:

Where does the Slashdot community stand on these issues in 2005?

Paul Graham's recent article, "The Return of the Mac", as covered here on Slashdot caused me to ruminate a bit on my own travels in the world of technology. I've been playing with computers ever since the first TRS-80's hit my local Radio Shack back in the 1970's. It was a common occurance for me to ditch my mother during trips to the local shopping mall and head straight to the Shack so I could check out silly bits of primitive software on a 4K TRS-80 Model I.

Of course, my real entry into the world of computing didn't come until 1986, when I matriculated at the esteemed Carnegie-Mellon University, despite my ownership, beginning in 1982, of an Atari 800 with 10K of ROM and 48K of RAM.

What made my experience at CMU interesting was the combination of Macintosh SE computers and the Andrew System, which was in development at the time on a mixture of systems, including the IBM PC RT, which would eventually morph its way into the RS/6000 series of workstation-class machines. Although my budding design skills were nutured by the Macintosh environment, my early exposure to the UNIX-based OS of the Andrew System and the Internet access that came with it left me hungering for much more than the simple Mac could provide at the time.

Over the years, while most of my artistic brethren found themselves captivated by the possibilites of Mac-based Desktop Publishing in the midst of the impending Internet explosion of the mid-90's, I began to immerse myself more and more in the inner workings of the Internet, starting with a simple shell account on a SunOS box at one of the first ISP's that offered accounts to the general public (well, at least those of the general public who gave two beans about the Internet in 1992) accessed via a 1200 baud modem. 9600 baud modems were the thing of the day, but I had gotten my 1200 baud device for free.

This all ended up with my heading up a new ISP that was one of the first to offer exclusively broadband service, through a combination of ISDN and T1 accounts. DSL was an up and coming technology at the time, but it would seem that Bell Atlantic was catching on pretty quickly to the use of "alarm circuits", over which it was at one time possible to provision 768Kbps circuits for the measly price of about $40 a year, plus the cost of two DSL modems.

By the time Steve Jobs completed his return to Apple Computer and installed my old schoolmate Avi Tevanian and his Mach Kernel in the role of Mac OS X, I had been successfully running Linux, MkLinux, Darwin, and OpenBSD on various machines, not to mention running the ISP almost exclusively on Windows NT (no mean feat in the mid-90's, but also helped by the existance of Netscape's server applications). Not that NT was my choice--the ISP was part of a systems integration house, and the suits wanted to prove it could be done. I think the most valuable experience I got out of it was learning to run a multi-hosting LDAP server.

Anyway, it makes me smile to see all these *nix hackers coming over to the Mac side of things, since I spent so much time using Macs as my workhorses, but secretly wishing for the power of UNIX that I had been exposed to at college. Through my association with a graphic arts service bureau that used Canon products heavily, I had also been exposed to NeXTSTEP, which made the Windows 3.11 of the time look extremely primitive, and rightly so. Too bad my Canon rep was never able to swing me a copy of OpenSTEP...not that I could have afforded a 486, though.

The first Mac I ever owned was a IIsi, which I bought for $900 the week after it was discontinued. I really wanted it loaded with A/UX, but that was quite expensive in those days--much more than I could afford on my pathetic salary of the time. 9MB of RAM and a 127MB Quantum LPS HDD went a long way in those days!

I miss the old days of Apple. Someplace around here, I have a copy on a SyQuest cart of a fantastic little Lisp multi-media development environment that never made it out of Apple's Development Labs. That was the thing that got me hooked on Paul Graham's Lisp books. Tonight, I ordered his "Hackers and Painters" from Amazon in tribute to his new essay. I never did pick up a copy of Macintosh Common Lisp (again, the lack of funds rears its ugly head).

I fear I may never fully understand the various uses of car, cdr, or the CLOS, but it could be worse...I could still be stuck on Dylan, right?

Re: 100,000 Civilians Dead in Iraq

I wanted to post this, but I'd already modded a couple of morons down and some other people up who obviously understand the difference between opinion/wishing and independently verifiable facts...

And what about when objectivity comes down on the side of "Bush is an evil fuck", hmm? Going by how the Republicans whine, objectivity is about making sure the GOP comes out smelling like roses, even when the facts are against them...

I am honestly amazed to see that there is somebody around here who can see through this "media objectivity" bullshit.

Facts are facts. Invading Iraq was an unbelievable display of utter incompetence on the part of the Bush Administration that will likely go down in history as one of the worst mistakes in the history of the United States.

While I do think that at some point the US would have needed to take a more aggressive stance toward Hussein (I refuse to call a head of state simply by his given name, unlike most of the ill-mannered politicians and media wonks, who can't even be bothered to consult an Arab on how to pronounce his given name, anyway)--pressuring Iraq in 2002 and invading Iraq in 2003 was certainly *not* the time to do it! Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Fucking Everything

Source after source after source has documented that the Bush Administration planned to invade Iraq from the day Our Inestimable Leader was sworn into office, if not well before that time. Hussein was a threat, yes--but a contained threat that posed no immediate, clear, or present danger to the security of the United States.

It was clear even to people like myself (with no access to classified materials) that the case the administration was trying to build was entirely groundless. I was highly embarrassed as a citizen of the US watching the broadcasts of Mr. Powell's presentation to the UN. There was simply no convincing evidence that Hussein was acting in the manner Powell was describing--in fact, there was significant evidence to the contrary.

Now, before you Bush apologists start trying to pass the buck around to the hard-working men and women in our intelligence services, you might want to take a second and think about the fact that the President of our country is personally responsible for the Executive branch of our government. It was Bush's job to verify that the information we had available was as accurate as possible.

What the Bush Administration did instead was to selectively ignore any evidence collected by our intelligence services that would in any way cast doubt on the administration's pre-conceived beliefs.

We should be demanding the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, as well as national and international criminal proceedings against both them and any in their administration who are found to have willingly misrepresented these facts.

There is no doubt in my mind the George W. Bush will go down in history as the absolute worst president in the history of our great nation--and I certainly hope that he loses next week decisively so that he and his incompetent and malicious administration do not get the chance to spend another four years putting the freedom, peace, and security of not only the United States, but entire world at greater risk.

Do your part.