Virginia made texting illegal as well. So I can't text on my iPhone while driving, but I can still update my location with Loopt, send Tweets on whatever comes to mind, update my Facebook status and check on my friends, check the weather, look at Salesforce.com, etc. In other words, specific laws aren't going to solve the problem. And what about all the drivers on the Beltway and surrounding roads in the DC area, for example, who are also applying makeup, reading the newspaper, etc.? If you're going to make a law, you should probably get it right...

If high availability is your concern, then you need redundancy from end-to-end, not just in the servers. A cost-effective way to do that is use Stonesoft's firewall/VPN solution. It can load balance DSL, cable modem and other Internet connections, clusters the devices themselves, and perform back end server load balancing of your Web servers. The centralized management is very powerful as well. 30 day evaluations available off their Web site.

[full disclosure: I own no monkeys, but I do work for Stonesoft]

OK, my first cellphone was a Nokia 210 or something. Ancient brick from around 1993 or so. The only exciting thing about it was that it was like the one Mulder first used on the X-Files. Then a Motorola Startac. Pretty much the first flip phone.

I've had many since then and they all suck in various ways, including many a Nokia (though the 6310i was a damn good phone for basic phone stuff).

Honestly, having the iPhone and now the iPhone 3G I can say that the phone and AT&T are pretty good. I live in the DC area and have my dead spots, but so does every carrier. I had the same thing with T-Mobile and a Nokia E61. The 3G seems (subjectively) no worse for me in DC or Atlanta, or Cleveland (places I've been with it so far) than the original iPhone.

As for the signal bars fluctuating, that's a given. They do that all the time and here on /. they had a post not too long ago about the signal-to-noise ratio issue. The bars tell you how strong the signal is from the towers to you, not the other way around, and don't factor in the noise that can mess it up.

As Marcus Ranum recently said in a SANS NewsBites about people complaining about the iPhone app kill-switch, if you don't like it, "So use another phone" !!

Besides, the games and apps are so much fun and so cool, who cares about phone calls?? :-P