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The TUAW reader who got his iPhone unbricked? Perl guru Randall Schwartz. He posted the info on his Jaiku microblog.

I also hear through Chicago Sun Times writer Andy Ihnatko that he's been able to unbrick a phone.

Leo Laporte's rant on the latest Macbreak Weekly about how it's some new lock in for non-open standards was very disappointing.

That really bothered me. And he and Andy Ihnatko kept going on and on about until Merlin Mann was basically like "Um, do we have any reason to believe its proprietary?" (links added in case people don't know who they are). Leo's usually not like that, and it surprised me, a lot. I wonder what pushed him in that direction.

Andy Ihnatko also writes the backpage of Macworld (according to his website http://www.cwob.com/ footer) Myself, I love my Zune. (Disclaimer: I am a contributer to zunes.com)

Here's what I know of and/or could find for the ones I didn't.

• Aaron Hillegas
• Adam & Tonya Engst
• Amit Singh
• Andrina Kelly
• Andy Ihnatko
• Ben Wilson
• Brent Simmons
• Dan Frakes
• Danny Goodman
• David Pogue
• Drunkenbatman
• John Gruber
• John Siracusa
• Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch
• Josh Wisenbaker
• Michael Bartosh
• Mike Breeden
• Nigel Kersten
• Ray Barber
• Ric Ford
• Rich Siegel (Bare Bones SW)
• Rob Griffiths
• Rosyna Keller
• Scott Knaster
• Wil Shipley (Delicious Monster)

Unfortunately, it seems that Slashdot has a limitation on the minimum number of characters per line. So I can't just create a nice, simple list, but instead need a significant amount of text to pad out the list, so that I can make it past the filters being used. But I'm still not there yet... sooner or later I will (20.4 is still too few). I'm probably going to have to type a whole lot of crap in here just to deal with the 25 names that are only a few characters each. (and I tried removing returns from the message, but it didn't seem to help at all)

What I want to know is what ever happened to Andy Inkhnato's column? He was the "back page guy" for MacWorld, and I think MacUser before that (and his website still claims that he is), but I haven't seen him anywhere in MacWorld in a long, long time.

Maybe if the mac gets back to 20% market share he'll end whatever hunger strike he's been on and the MW editors will hire him back... probably not, but I can hope. He did invent Web That Smut back in 1996, that ought to be worth something on a guy's resume.

First off, I have 1.5/768 DSL coming into the house from Speakeasy. It goes to a Netopia R910 router, and from there my Ethernet connection goes to a Linksys 16-port 10/100 switch in the basement (I have the DSL splitter outside the house, so it comes in on a separate run). That switch services the basement and 1st floor drops, then I have a cable going up along the vent stack, into the attic, and down to the 2nd floor geek room I use as a home office. In that room is an 8-port switch that I connect a wired run into the master bedroom (for my wife's iMac), and in my room it connects the computers and a Linksys WAP54G that's hooked up to a booster antenna.

Then, for the networked devices themselves, my wife has a work laptop (Win2K) that she keeps in the basement most of the time. My preschooler has an iMac DV (G3, 450 MHz) that he uses to play games - it's wireless. There's also a TiVo Series 2 with a Linksys wireless USB adapter. Upstairs is where most of the gear is - my iMac G4 (1.25), my wife's iMac G4, a Dell Dimension 4600 that's been upgraded and tweaked for gaming and XP MCE, and both a networked laser printer and an Epson inkjet. I've got a small collection of handhelds (Palm Tungsten T, HP iPaq 1930, Zaurus 5500, and a Newton 2100), and there's a Shuttle SFF Celeron box in the basement running ClarkConnect Office Edition as the web and e-mail server for the house. Plus I bring my PowerBook G4 home from the office a lot.

For systems currently not in service, I have a Mini-ITX fanless box that I was running the old Mitel SME Server on at one point, and a Netpliance i-Opener (an obsolete "Internet-in-a-box" machine), that has been hacked into a decent low-end PC, with a small hard drive and a faster processor (and a re-flashed BIOS). That used to be in our living room at one point. I keep a lot of miscellaneous gear in the house, both functional and non-functional - you never know when you might need something and I rent a small office in the next town for my business, so I don't have the storage space there.

About once a year, I pile all the stuff that's been untouched for a year into the van and head down for the MIT flea, hoping to sell off some of it to free up space and recover a little cash. My most entertaining sale I ever made at one of them? Andy Ihnatko bought my spare java Ring at a flea a couple of years ago. They'd sent me two when I ordered the eval kit back then. I still wear mine on occasion, and it's the geekiest thing I own, bar none.

The basement where my server lives is also the home of my workshop - I do occasional electronics stuff down there and bicycle repair work - I own two bikes (a road bike and a mountain bike) and ride a few times a week. That, golf, and my family are the token non-geek things in my world.

I suppose there are some good points in it, but the fact that it's almost entirely fiction really puts me off.

I agree with some of the larger opinions Moore expresses, but the fact that he's a toss and the facts are very unreliable kills any credibility for me. The ending made me physically cringe.

quoting Andy Ihnatko: (answering complaints about his XM preference)

1) I didn't mention that Sirius, unlike XM, has sixty channels of commercial-free programming. True. That's because Sirius' marketing claim doesn't tell the whole story: that leaves (if I remember correctly) forty channels with commercials. And it's not like the commercial-free ones are without interruptions. You still have to listen to promos and teasers. XM doesn't make any commercial-free claims, though this seems to be more of a practical decision. Some channels have ads, some don't. In the past three hours, I haven't heard a single ad. Plus, this isn't like traditional radio, in which you'll hear one cut off of "Lose Your Illusion" and then twenty minutes of ads for tires and part-time vocational classes.

I was just about to try to start a post on this very topic.

With all the "buzz" surrounding WWDC it seems MacHack 18 is getting the
short end of the stick news wise. I was hoping you all could come up
with more news/blogs/snippets whatever on the goings on in Dearborn
than I have. I have googled, netnewswired and macsurfered till my eyes
hurt , and these stories are all I can come up with, any help, or
discussion?

PS: Any links to MacMania II blogs score bonus points.

MacHack
18: Experiencing the Unstoppable

by Shawn Platkus MacHack is a conference for professional developers
who make their living developing for the Macintosh platform. The
conference, now in its eighteenth year, has obviously had to deal with
many changes throughout its history.

MacHack
18 Opens with a Keynote Address from Ken Arnold

by Shawn Platkus As is traditional, MacHack 18 opened first
thing Thursday morning at 12:00 am with its keynote address. This
year the opening keynote speaker was Ken Arnold who is currently the
Chief Architect of EventMonitor, In

A Really Long Portage in the
Digital River : AI's Yellow Text : Well, here's one for the record
books: I'm at MacHack , and my access to the 'net is even worse than it
is at home.

MacHack
Report

Macmegasite : I'm now at MacHack with a usable network connection. The
show is a lot smaller than previous years, but still lots of fun.

More to the point of the topic... I remember reading an article by Andy Ihnatko a while back, wherein he described a home-automation project using X10, AppleScript, a Mac and a series of cheap microphones scattered throughout the house.

See, the big problem with most speech recognition systems is the problem of speaking within earshot. A mic up close to you will do a pretty good job of pickup obviously, and make the computer's job much faster and more accurate. But if you're already sitting in front of the computer, the speech recognition isn't much good for things other than the supplemental ("Insert Time and Date"). You already have the keyboard and mouse in front of you, which are much faster than many speech commands.

If you want to walk around your house and issue spoken commands, it's much more feasible to just buy a bunch of cheap PZM and omni microphones from Radio Scrap and put them everywhere. You don't even need that many; just think of the places you tend to 'park' (couch, standing by sink in kitchen, front hall, etc.) and aim appropriately. Doesn't take a lot of bleeding-edge stuff, but the design of how it works is much, much tricker, as one other poster pointed out.