The report says the shop that performed the repair was not an authorized Apple repair shop, and shows the device as having the old, dangerous standard Philips screws. Now we know why Apple has been so adamant about switching from regular Philips screws to five-sided screws--with the five sided, tamper-resistant screws, there is no chance that an unauthorized repair facility would be able to create an explosive condition by leaving a screw inside the iPhone.

"There was something on Slashdot a few years ago about people buying a service, then having to pay more to disable advertising."

Kind of like the new Garmin GPS I got for Christmas with free lifetime maps and traffic. The free traffic service has ads that appear when you reach your destination. You can disable the traffic function and remove the ads, but is it only a matter of time until the free map updates include ads? This limitation was not well disclosed.

I've had an AT&T iPhone since the beginning, and have lived through their dicking around with their data plans. I was fine with the 200 MB plan and switching to the 2 GB plan when I go on vacation and consume a lot of data. With their latest data plan revisions, I will be locked out of my current 200 MB plan if I ever try to temporarily switch to a plan with increased capacity, and would have to switch back to the 300 MB plan which is $5 per month higher.

I live in a rural area that is slowly being upgraded to 3G. I propose the following: AT&T's data limits should only apply to 3G service. Anything downloaded over EDGE should be free. If you run out of your limited data plan, you should be able to switch to EDGE and download as much as you want. Texts should be free or something reasonable like $5 per month for 1,000 messages, not $20 per month for an unlimited plan. I'm tired of paying $80 per month for a phone I seldom talk on in order to get a limited data plan and texting capabilities.

Since I know they won't do this, I'm planning to switch to one of the MVNOs once my contract is up. Either Republic Wireless if they open their beta again, or TracFone's "bring your own phone" program which recently launched (yes, it uses AT&T's network, but at a lower cost to the consumer).

^-- Raises hand. I pay close to $100 per month for my iPhone, and rarely talk on it. I use it for web surfing, but sometimes am not near reliable wifi. I would be very interested in Republic Wireless if they offered the iPhone.

The no-ip.com client has worked well for me for remote access purposes (haven't tried it for hosting), and the premium service is reasonably priced (about $10-15 per year).

"Data is not like water or gas where you can save it by not using it."

Exactly, they are creating an artificial scarcity just like the cell phone providers who charge exorbitant rates for data and especially text messaging.

I'd install it if they had named it "Octopussy Grid Delivery Enhancement to Flash."

"...I had assumed that Netflix would slowly raised prices on the DVD-by-mail service before finally killing it."

Me too, but he's laid down the gauntlet that they're "done" with price increases, which will only make people more outraged when the next price hike comes, whether it's across the board or they begin offering "premium" streaming with new releases at a higher cost.

My Canon multifunction printer/fax/copier/scanner has an auto sheet feeder, and it cost me $120. Unlike inexpensive multifunction machines of yore, this one is good at printing, scanning, and copying (I've used it for scanning photos and it's far superior to the standalone scanner it replaced). So I'm not sure how a sheetfed scanner is ridiculously expensive.

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