Slashdot Mirror

Even though the iPhone has already been released into the wild, the amount of excitement surrounding this device doesn't seem to be subsiding by any measurable degree. Many readers have submitted their favorite reactions to the shiny new gizmo including a BusinessWeek report that suggests the iPhone only costs around $220 to make, a user review from MacScoop, one user's top 10 interface mistakes, a roundup of early security concerns, and details on the hardware behind the phone. Read on for more details.

Only $220 to Make an iPhone. Bomarc writes to tell us BuinessWeek is reporting that according to a recent analysis the new iPhone only costs Apple in the neighborhood of $200 ($220 for the 8-gigabyte model) to manufacture.

iPhone User Review. Alexandros Roussos writes "It has been an unforgettable week-end for the first iPhone buyers and MacScoop will now put the focus on one of them who provided to a complete review of Apple's very anticipated gizmo."

Mistakes in the iPhone Interface. Rakesh writes "I love the iPhone. It 's here to stay as my primary cell phone. But I've come across a bunch of things that make me think Apple rushed at the end to get this thing out there. Here's my list of the top 10 mistakes Apple made with the iPhone interface."

iPhone Security Roundup. An anonymous reader writes "Although some security researchers noted problems getting their iPhone activated, others wasted no time tearing the new device apart. Seth Fogie, from Airscanner, reported passwords can be found for the device from running strings obtained from the backup images through a password cracker. Robert Graham, from Errata Security, writes about Safari and Bluetooth bugs on their blog."

iPhone Hardware Details. abdulzis writes "Engadget has the scoop on the iPhone's hardware specs through a leaked firmware. 'Sascha at Gear Log seems to think given the recently discovered Samsung chip in the iPhone, perhaps the processor in question is a Samsung S3C6400, a recently-produced 667MHz ARM1176JZF-based CPU that seems to fit the bill.'"

madman writes "In the light of the recent changes in the search war, like the Google/Dell partnership and eBay/Yahoo! alliance, Microsoft is facing a complicated question: Who are they going to ally with? Will they try to face the competition alone?"

Goeland86 asks: "Has OCR (Optical Character Recognition) died down? Where have all the magical programs that translate your handwriting to office compatible files gone? Most of the windows programs nowadays are either expensive (ReadIris Pro 9 about $400) and not that many OSS projects for OCR have released a recent update (Kognition was last updated on July 17th 2003 according to Freshmeat). Has everyone already scanned/translated all of their paper files? Has OCR outlived its use, or is it just a fancy technology that hit a dead end in terms of the market? Have Slashdot readers used it? If so, are you still using it? If not, why?"

davejhiggins writes: "In this ruling a French judge has upheld an earlier ruling ordering Yahoo! to ban French users from buying Nazi memorabilia from its auction site. Even though the content is not accessible from www.yahoo.fr/ the ruling insists that even "the visualization in France of these objects" on the www.yahoo.com auction site constitutes a breach of French law and orders Yahoo to bar all French IPs from accessing it despite Yahoo's assertions that this would not guarantee that nobody in France would be able to see it." This kind of stuff annoys the hell out of me.

Imagine a novelist, trapped in a nightmarish world of credit cards and micropayments, facing devilish odds and the belligerent stares of publishers everywhere ... picture a team of hackers brazen enough to break into dozens of secure government sites without incurring a single lawsuit ... scream in terror at the thought of mutant penguin-kangaroo hybrids swimming deviously onto our shores ...

Revenge of the naysayers' naysayers: Just yesterday, jamie sallied forth with the theory that Stephen King was setting himself up for disappointment by expecting enough paying customers for his new online book to justify the experiment.

jheinen writes, though, "According to MSNBC, of the 41,000 downloads for the first installment so far, 32,000 (~78%) have already paid via credit card. Kinda shoots to hell the theory that people won't pay."

[Jamie adds: I stand by my prediction that "Stephen King is never going to have to publish the end of his novel." I'd love to see him succeed, but I just don't think so this time around. We'll see in September!]

Red Five, I'm going in. You may recall the story a little while ago about a distributed anti-cracking bot at Sandia National Laboratory. Rest assured, those clever folks don't confine themselves to practicing only one side of the ol' thrust-and-feint.

In fact, leb writes: "Over the past two years, a group at Sandia National Laboratories known informally as the Red Team has, at customer invitation, either successfully invaded or devised successful mock attacks on 35 out of 35 information systems at various sites, along with their associated security technologies. Their work - challenged only by a new style of defense, also developed at Sandia, called an "intelligent agent" - demonstrates that competent outsiders can hack into almost all networked computers as presently conformed no matter how well guarded, say spokespeople for the group, formally known as the Information Design Assurance Red Team or IDART. Check out their site here."

Stir, leave plot overnight to thicken. vjlen writes: "Now it sounds like corinthians.com is just another cybersquatting case. From an article in USA Today: 'But the case is not as black-and-white as it seems, says Dave Fogelson, a spokesman for the team, which recently put up its own site in Brazil. Fogelson says the arbitrator had to consider several factors, including the fact that Sallen did not use the site for Bible quotes until after he contacted the team to talk about selling the name, which suggests his main motive was profit.'"

Or ... or ... or ... we'll strike! stattouk writes "The BBC has a story on a court case currently happening in France over whether Yahoo France can be held responsible for people being able to access auctions of Nazi memorabilia. The courts say that even though fr.yahoo.com has blocked access, the fact that www.yahoo.com can still be used to get them amounts to no action by Yahoo." Asking Yahoo! to block Internet auctions in the first place seemed rather stretchy; now it seems that Yahoo! is supposed to police the entire world.

Penguins do come from that hemisphere, after all ... Tsujigiri writes "To follow up a previous story on Slashdot about the Australian InstallFest 2000, Fairfax IT is running this story about the recently held (well, July the 15th) Adelaide InstallFest 2000 and its "unexpected surge in interest". Quite successfull all round. Congratulations to all involved, and good luck to the rest of the Australian Install Season. (For anyone who'd like to see some pictures, go here)"

If there's an "install season" down there, one questions leaps to mind: Is there a limit on those things?