They could but an iPhone is very heavy so it would add something like $20,000 to the cost of the launch.

Every gram is critical.

My Leopold keyboard was pretty cheap (~$100), has hard PBT plastic key caps (which are a widely used standard design and replacable), the switches are guaranteed to last at least 50 million presses *for each key* and are mounted to a thick steel plate that feels stronger than the desk it sits on top of. The switches are also commonly available and can also be replaced with a bit of soldering, but i've never heard of them failing (monitor falling on them might do it). I dunno about cat piss but liquid generally only harms low voltage electronics when it is corrosive (eg coke) so I think it would be fine - especially if you clean it quickly.

There are perfectly good keyboards available today, if you bother to look.

Landlines also get swamped during emergencies. Been there, done that. Mobile phones have proven themselves more reliable in my experience.

Cordless phones are a pain in the ass, I want to be able to walk around on the phone, and I mean walk around outside or down the street, not just inside the house. Having two phone numbers also sucks, I want to have one number... and I want it to work whether I'm at home or at work or out for dinner or visiting my dad for three weeks. I also want it to be *my* phone number, not shared between me and whoever else lives in my house or apartment.

Could be true for the guy you're talking about, but I've got a cordless phone that's bundled with my broadband. I only use it three or four times a year.

And I've been through two category 5 cyclones (hurricanes) in the last three years. When the landline phone and tv and dsl dropped out, my 3G kept on working and was a lot more interesting than the radio (which is packed with even more ads when there's a cyclone...). Once the mobile did drop out, but only because a major datacentre got flooded *by ocean water* and the diesel generators ran out of fuel. They had to wait for the sea level to drop before they could refuel them... this took out both cell phones and landlines by the way.

In the following two weeks without electricity, I didn't have any problems keeping my mobile phone charged. The landline and adsl were constantly dropping in and out as they did repair work, but cell phones had priority because they are used by emergency services. So my phone and 3G always worked.

OK so lets say you're browsing the web, and you get a text message.

So you go into the text messaging app, read the message, and then go back to the browser. What happens if you press the button now? Does it take you back to the messaging app, or go back in the browser history? The answer to that is different in every app on android.

On iOS, it will always go back in the browser history, or take you to the previous screen *in that app*.

What are you talking about? I run my own software all the time by clicking "build and run" in Xcode. It's a piece of cake!

Or perhaps you mean it's a pain to run *other people's* software on an iPhone? That just depends how they choose to deploy it. If they were "open" and gave you the code, it'd be as easy as clicking build and run.

The locked down app store isn't perfect, but I really do like the security. I like knowing that an app being able to read my address book is a huge scandal, unlike on PC's where it's just assumed everything can do that. The benefits of iOS are more than worth the drawbacks I think.

The difference is, the water company is profitable no matter how much water they sell to you. If you use far more water than any of your neighbours they will charge you a lot more.

But if you use a far more 3G data than almost anyone else (2GB would classify as doing that), then you still pay the exact same amount as they do. If they were to charge everyone by the bit, then "normal" usage of around 100MB would cost what you're paying right now for 2GB.

It doesn't directly cost more or less. Whether you use 1KB or all 2GB, they still need to spend millions of dollars on infrastructure, and then after that there are no costs.

What costs them money, is if there are so many people using their network that they have to upgrade the infrastructure. So the point of the 2GB cap is to discourage you from using it much.

But due to competition, 2GB is still too high for the amount of money you're paying, if many of their customers use that much they'd still be overloaded. By blocking your laptop they reduce the chance you will actually use all 2GB. That's why many carriers charge extra for this feature, especially carriers with competitive data plans.

Like it or not, that's the reality.

Go pay cash for a smartphone (an older model, but still brand new, iPhone is about $400) and you can use whatever plan you want.

The GPS works perfectly fine without any plan at all, you can use it without even installing a SIM card.

If $400 is too much money up front, get it on finance. That's what your phone company is doing on the $70/month plan.

I'm the project lead for a GPL product that started out as a fork of someone else's GPL'd project. It had about 50,000 lines but is now over 300,000 lines. Almost every line of original code has been completely re-written, because it was either using long outdated API's (even when we started the project) or just plain buggy.

Even though we wrote virtually every line of code that exists today, it is still a "derivative" and we are bound to follow GPL to the letter. This means, for example, no port of our app to the iPad (despite many requests) because unless we do a complete re-write we are not allowed to distribute it on the App Store.

If that was his goal, he failed miserably.

In all my years working with GPL'd code, complying with the license has been a huge headache even for projects that have every intention of keeping the code open.

I've sworn off GPL now. I won't get involved in any more projects that use the license.

Myself, I like it when the dams built for flood control are kept empty all the time, except when the rainfall is actually heavy enough to cause floods.

Last year a flood control protecting Brisbane went over capacity, and they were forced to do controlled releases to prevent the dam wall from collapsing under the weight of the water. These controlled releases created over 4 meter deep flood waters in the inner city. Nobody died, the whole thing was controlled. But it still flooded some of the most prime real estate in the country, including high-rise apartment buildings, destroyed critical public transport networks, etc.

That dam was originally designed to be empty all year, and only fill when there is actually flooding going on, but for unknown reasons (government inquiry in progress) it was being kept at 75% full, and 25% wasn't anywhere near enough to adequately protect the city from flooding.

There are no windows in my room.

What do I need them for anyway, I have Google Earth -> View -> Explore -> Sky.

So you prefer the opposite, where the somebody simply chooses not to use your code at all and you still don't get access to any improvements?

I've written a lot of GPL'd code. These days, I prefer public domain (or as close as I can get). I like it when other people get benefit from my work, whether they choose to share it or not. Often they do choose to share it.

PS: Why do you focus so much on companies? GPL applies to everyone, whether they work for a company or not. I'm not a company, and several times GPL has prevented me from doing things I wanted to do.

There have been others. Up was also a very nice 3D movie. And I've seen a few where you'd barely even notice they were 3D until there's a flying scene.

In my mind, Avatar isn't a story, it's a work of art.

I watched avatar the first time in 3D, and some of the scenes took my breath away. I nearly walked out of the cinema while watching it a second time in 2D.

As an experiment, I went back and watched it again in 3D a few days later and once again the movie was stunning.

So, in my opinion, you are wrong. It's not as important as sound, but I'd rather watch a colour movie in black and white than a good 3D movie in 2D.