This jives with the experiences of my co-workers who've bought the phone. Overall impression of the iPhone 4 is that it looks and feels great, has an amazing screen, so-so battery life, but reception problems that drive every one of them bonkers.

It's enough to make me want to stick with my iPhone original release -- aluminum case and all -- just a little longer. From where I sit, unless you really want the forward-facing & higher-res camera and higher-resolution screen, stick with the 3GS. It does everything else pretty well. The main things I need from my phone are the same things I needed ten years ago:

* Contact list
* Calendar
* Email
* Light web browsing
* Good phone service

After having Palm devices alongside a mobile phone for years and years to suit, and wading through several years of crap-tastic Windows Mobile phones, the iPhone original release fit the bill perfectly for me. The real compelling thing the 3GS has over the original for me is a real GPS so that I can geocache without using a dedicated GPS unit. And maybe the extra RAM so that I don't have to clear memory to start certain apps.

Nice to see Consumer Reports calling Apple on their crap this time. Just like when they blamed short battery life in the 3GS on over-usage and push settings... what a load of CYA corporate malarkey! They gotta get the lead out on this one, if the several people I know -- admittedly, all tech geeks so it's a very small sample size -- who own the phone are any indicator, they're really unhappy about this.

Sure, on the side of the people doing the security stuff. But audits for compliance with regulations is really the minimal standard applied at my work -- a VERY large software company -- and little else. If there's no financial repercussion for lack of a security implementation, that thing is never, ever put in. Not even if it's "best practice". If we have to have it, good, put it in, but if we don't absolutely have to, the security request rots forever in the hell of a planned upgrade some day.

We recently had a project that was like that. Five planned phases. Phases three and four had a major focus on security implementations. Well, they did Phase 1, the rollout, and Phase 2, the integration with other apps, then the next thing everybody heard we were at Phase 5, showing this off as a showpiece of integration. When I called the vice-president to complain about this, his response was basically "we'll get around to it, it's not a problem."

Welcome to modern large-scale software design. If you aren't legally required to have some certain bit of security in place, with financial repercussions for violation, it isn't happening. And it's not the software company that suffers in the case of a breach; it's the privacy and security of the innocent people USING that service.

I think this is a step in the right direction. In the US, we've long faced problems with trying to figure out how to incentivize good behavior, rather than simply discouraging the bad. Yet one of the largest problems facing down the threat of hacking and corporate espionage is acknowledging when there's been a breach. Nobody wants to admit it!

My dad used to call an approach of rewarding appropriate behavior and non-rewarding inappropriate behavior as the "carrot and stick" approach: dangle the carrot, if they don't go along, whack 'em with the stick!

My thoughts on a few carrots we could use at the federal level:
1. Certification process for government contractors. A security-certified contractor can get preferential placement on government contracts on the point scale already in place.
2. Exploit awareness networking. Implement a real-time scorecard for corporations that report attacks against them, both those foiled and those in which there was a breach. Once again, apply good behavior credits toward the contract bidding process.

Sticks:
A. Mandatory public service for convicted attackers. And I'm not talking about cleaning up the garbage in Central Park. I'm talking about the sentence for hacking a company is mandatory time spent serving that company. I mean, if I hacked the Wendy's network and had to spend a few months dumping out their grease-buckets, I might think twice next time.
B. Incentivize whistleblowing with rewards for people who turn their companies in. Now, this might sound a little bit 1984-esque, but if there were a tangible reward and promised anonymity, I think we'd find employees and competitors working very hard to learn if the target company was hacked or not.

Just a couple of random musings. What other carrots & sticks could we use?

If you, or I, or Joe Sixpack accessed those records, we would be facing a prison sentence. So, what you're asking is, "Had he been properly convicted, and served his time, would he be fit for the job today?"

Clarification: the offense in question is a misdemeanor with a $5,000 fine. It's the equivalent of an expensive traffic ticket, not a mandatory prison sentence.

"sync; sync; halt" works for immediate stoppage at minimal risk to your filesystem compared to many other options.

Or just "stop-A", "sync", and leave it hanging at the OK prompt forever :) This has the benefit of a subsequent tech being able to power up again remotely, which just pulling the power cord wouldn't...

My two cents: It doesn't suck to work at Oracle. Pay is fair and above market, benefits are good, employees are treated fairly, and there are a lot of exciting projects going on to choose from as a techie. If you don't like what you're doing for a living, there are numerous opportunities always available in something more suited to your interest, and telecommuting is encouraged in most "talent" positions, so relocation is largely a non-issue. The employees I work with (admittedly, we're a rack-monkey and operating system nerd crowd) are generally optimistic and excited about the merger.

Yes, as part of the M&A process there have been layoffs from time to time. With the exception of hostile takeovers, they are fairly predictable in advance, severance is decent and fair, the door remains open if you decide to rejoin the company later, and as far as a huge Fortune 500 company goes, it's a really decent place to work. If you work in some of the larger locations there are nice benefits on-site for free or at really reduced prices (gyms, cafeterias, massages, to name a few), and there is a lot of employment flexibility.

Of course there are annoyances like paperwork, lengthy project approval processes, ITIL compliance, SOX compliance, and so forth. Welcome to working for any large company. But to say "People do not want to work for Oracle, fast merge or slow merge" is simply false. By and large, it's a good company to work for, and the low turnover rate and lengthy average employment time amongst extremely talented and well-educated people speaks to overall job satisfaction.

The core of your marriage is the same regardless of whether you're a geek, jock, cheerleader, doctor, unemployed, or whatever. Every person has some core emotional needs; if you meet at least the top three to five of these consistently over the years, you'll be happily married for many years to come. If you don't fill them, someone else will. And it's left to chance whether that person has your marriage's interests at heart or not.

Recommended reading: Anything by Dr. Willard Harley. The keys to affair-proofing your marriage are also the keys to having a happy marriage. Identify your spouse's key emotional needs, fill them consistently, and you're on your way to living a long and happy life together.

It's possible that you may have needs that don't fit into the standard template (Affection, Sexual Fulfillment, Recreational Companionship, Honesty & Openness, Physical Attractiveness, Financial Support, Domestic Support, Family Commitment, Admiration). If you do, identify what those are. Dr. Harley publishes an "Emotional Needs Questionnaire" that's really helpful when doing an inventory of what your principal needs are. You need to have your own met, and meet those of your spouse, to make it successfully.

Qualifications: I'm a geek-guy married to jock-girl, 15 years and counting so far.

--Matt B.

Then add to that the fact that you need to be God to fully understand the ecosystem of the planet and you you can throw out people really believing in AGW.

You're begging the question on two fronts:
1. That such beings as gods exists.
2. That a full understanding of the ecosystem is necessary to make effective, positive changes.

Humans don't have a full understanding of aerodynamics, though our models are getting better. But we know enough to get going with, hurl aircraft skyward, and operate them safely.

Ditto for climate change. We obviously don't know everything, but we know enough to know that what we're doing right now may be the cause of current global warming; if not the cause, it certainly is exacerbating the issue.

--Matt B.