Come now, my beloved brother. Do not fear me, for I am your faithful brother, and lover at times. Only when you tie me up, but still.

Now, insulting people in a forum is not a nice thing to do. Your signal / noise ratio is down to hell again. Dad's going to spank you again on that one!

Love you bro.

My big brother posted something of value? Maybe I should go cower in his shadow !

Sure. Then again, instead fo comparing random prices whose conversion rate is based on pure volatile traders, foreign policies and other things not at all related to the price of an iPhone, you could go directly to the source of the information: apple.com. There you can read:

Granted, it's not for sale right now, but it looks as if the 64GB version is less expensive than the GGP claimed the 16GB version was.

Every quarter for about six years now IIRC.

I bought a 64GB 4GS for less than that. Where did you get that price from?

I hope you're joking. IMHO, the best thing the iPhone brought is Android. Because everybody knows that Android would be far far from where it is today if the iPhone had never existed.

Ah, that and usability. Of course.

On the one hand, being a scientist is being open to new ideas, how silly they may seem. On the other hand, you don't want to waste your time feeding the trolls that crave for attention. Since nowadays attention means money, there are a lot of people out there just looking for that. Do you remember I2BP? Claiming high res video over 1kbps? You cannot claim it is impossible for sure, because who knows? But you can claim that it is so unlikely that you don't want to spend time on that stuff.

6 suns/kWh ? It's a pretty demanding technology after all ;-)

Apple is not gaming the system. Apple is playing by the rules, and the rules are utterly stupid.

This is a problem with all software patents, not just Apple's.

The USPTO is telling Apple they are allowed to do so. The outcome may be bad, but, once again, Apple is playing by the rules here. Plain and simple.

The way I see it is that the patent was filed when the first iPhone was released but was granted only today. AFAIK, this is the first device I've ever seen doing this. And no, the N1m is no prior art at all. There is no unlocking of anything on the video, so how could it be a prior art of "slide to unlock" ?

Blame it on the patent system, but not on apple for playing by the rules of the system.

Hmmm. I don't hink anyone in this thread or anywhere else ever said that. Except Apple haters who keep pretending that Apple claims that tapping an icon is revolutionnary.

The entire device and user experience was a very serious leap forward in terms of usability. That and an OS that doesn't need rebooting every other day. It made the iPhone a revolution. Proof is that they crushed everyone down to bits except those that reacted promptly. And only Google was there.

The only thing I can't explain there is why RIM took so long to go down like the rest of them*. Surely their foothold in almost all companies.

* Talking about smartphone manufacturers here.

I agree there. Until you know what you want to do, there is little point in setting up anything.

In any case, here is my setup at home:
45U in the garage. In the bay:
- 1 server "NAS": Dual core i5, 10TB RAID-5 array. Ubuntu server
- 1 server "Media center": Quand core i5, one old 10GB HDD, 4GB) Windows + Media Portal
- 1 server "production" hosting a mail server and a webserver. Quad core i5, 4GB, 2TB. Ubuntu-Server.

In the attic: An old eeepc901 with a 2TB USB HDD for automated backups. Ubuntu.

In my office: 1 Quad core 8GB dual screen 2TB computer as a desktop. Ubuntu.
In 4 rooms: Low profile (mini-ITX) machines as media center clients.. Windows + Media Portal.

My kids don't have their computers yet. I'm overdue on that one. Still wondering what to get them though.

And there we go. Another post shorter than the summary, with way more details than said summary and more accurate than the summary. I, for one, wish you were a Slashdot editor ;-)

Thanks dad. I'm glad I have someone to count on. You really raise us to be responsible and grown ups.

Life is great. Except when Mike is around.