"Well, that is almost true. With certain Windows exploits, you can be doing perfectly normal things on your PC and still become infected. You can even have a firewall and anti-virus/anti-spam spam filter."
Sure, and that's why the only solution is to boot from the flash drive.
A trojan could of course run the flash drive in a virtual machine, but this is one case where the Trusted Platform Module could be used for good instead of evil (DRM).
Additionally, it gives the bank power to root your machine, but all you have to do is make sure the hard drive activity LED doesn't light up even once, since it doesn't have any business accessing it. The most paranoid users would just use two machines, since even a 10 year old machine would be powerful enough.
Yes, but this isn't some kind of direct, malicious action that treads all over their civil rights. It's an unfortunate consequence of a global phenomenon that isn't completely understood yet.
But let's say it was the direct result of corporate action designed to make a profit. If the problem was, say, toxic waste dumping, environmental protection laws would already help them. If the issue were simply that the corporation can catch fish at a lower cost, then good riddance.
This has to be the only reason, in fact, and not just one of them. Cybercrime can be stopped without any monitoring!
The article talks about hacking into bank accounts and identity theft etc. So if the government wants to crack down on this, why don't they just mandate that banks have to send their customers a bootable read only flash drive that contains a basic operating system, browser, SSL certificates and a one time pad? It wouldn't matter how badly some clueless moron's computer was trojaned to hell, because the bank would only accept connections from the booted flash drive.
You can't get mugged on the internet. You can't be coerced on the internet. Criminals need YOUR COOPERATION.
The U.S. could also stop using checks like every other civilized country, because they're a ridiculously huge security hole and a huge pain in the ass compared to direct bank transfer. But all of this would make too much sense, because none of it involves more government monitoring of its citizens.
The land of the free. Where no laws must ever tell corporations what to do, but citizens must compensate for their ineptness by being spied upon.
"Sure, we all think that OUR culture (the one that puts emphasis on business over humanity, empathy, and reality) is superior, but there is no objective manner to decide this. It is superior to US, just as the Inuit culture is superior to them."
There's no reason to make a value judgment. The world is what it is. I feel some parts of my culture are superior, and that some parts of other cultures are superior. If their culture doesn't promote a competitive economy, it will go away. Putting emphasis on wealth is a human trait that transcends culture. Not to mention that poverty breeds violence and addiction, so that's not entirely a bad thing.
There are cultures on this planet that do manage to survive despite clinging to counterproductive traditions, but they do it mainly through oppression and brainwashing on a massive scale. The one thing they all have in common is that their citizens are much worse off than those in our cold, uncaring business centric culture. The very opposite of humanity, empathy and reality.
I have no allegiance to any particular culture apart from the results it produces. It may have formed my initial identity, but I am now an adult and can think for myself. I only celebrate Christmas because it's a joyful holiday, and is worth something because it brings happiness.
FWIW I'm not an American, and I definitely don't believe that the free market will solve every problem. Just most of them.
Cultures don't have a right to live. People have a right to live.
If your culture becomes unviable, you move on. It's not the rest of the planet's job to help you to live like a carbon copy of your father. We find this self evident with business models, but cultures evoke silly emotional reactions.
"Government is the -last- entity that should oversee any censorship--because it has the most to gain from having such control."
No, the government is exactly the entity that should oversee censorship, because it's the only organization that's accountable to the voters. No corporation should ever have the power to censor anything.
Of course, I don't think even the government should have that power, but voters have always been clueless.
Your analogy is also flawed. It's more like buying the Coke from a store fully knowing that the owner is a fascist bent on world domination. He used your money to finance his mil^H^Harketing campaign and successfully took over your country, but hey, you had to have your Coke.
I don't care if it was chained to the store, because you deserved much worse. Stop supporting oppressive business models. Now.
same with anyone who doubts the value of this auction
i can't see why a monopoly on a prime band of communication spectrum can't be anything but pure gold. there's only so much spectrum, but more and more people and more need for communication tech every day
The auction is a gigantic tax and nothing more. If the markets are efficient, the winning company will be rewarded only related to the risks it is taking. Everything else will be going to the government, and out of the pockets of consumers.
It's laughable how the auctions are being sold as a good way to raise funds for the government without impacting the taxpayer. Who doesn't use communications technology if not the taxpayer? This is the perfect way to cripple a single industry, because a) the winning company will have less immediate funding available for infrastructure b) consumer prices will be much higher, lowering the adoption rate significantly.
Just look at what happened in Europe. A lot of countries did the smart thing and gave the spectrum to the companies that were willing to guarantee the best service levels for the cheapest consumer prices, but then a few large countries ruined it for everyone by suckering companies into auctions. (To be viewed as a serious competitor, you had to take part in the largest markets.) The end result was what I described above, and we are only now starting to recover.
If you think that the beauty contest model will result in excessive profits for the winner, keep in mind the guarantees, and the fact that one winner wasn't awarded all the spectrum.
The problem with convergence and open standards is that even with your example a lot of people wouldn't end up using them. Let's say that the operator will even send the configuration message automatically, but what will happen then? The user would have to configure their own computer to interface with the open protocol. Meanwhile, an Apple phone would just go "Mac OS detected. Press OK to pair."
Doesn't sound that different at first, but consider that we have people who would rather use cumbersome webmail for their entire lives rather than configure IMAP once. These people probably think that even learning the word is too hard.
I hope you're right, but I still think open standards will need a completely integrated environment to become popular. Then we can start thinking about porting the libraries to our favor platforms.
And if you really think this isn't about marketing, just look at the site you're posting at. We're supposed to be a group of nerds, but until the iPhone the most popular comment for cellphone articles was that the poster just wants to make calls. Now people are ignoring features that it doesn't offer, and pretending like every new phone is simply a response. If we can't escape that here, it's pretty much all about the marketing. Meanwhile, I've been using my Nokia as a browser and Ogg Vorbis player for years.
Even that experience is pretty lacking though. Your quote proves that Sun is just about the only company that truly gets it. Too bad they don't make cell phones.
I agree with everything you said. I think you misunderstood me a bit.
What I predict is that more and more people will be swayed by Apple's marketing if Nokia doesn't do something*. This especially in the U.S. The average user isn't going to know anything about what you said, unfortunately. Nokia needs to control** its own software environment much more than it does now. And better ads. And a user interface that a monkey can mash successfully. Just being quick to use isn't good enough anymore.
I do my best to avoid being tied to one platform, but the average user seems to do everything in their power to accomplish the opposite. We can only hope Nokia/Qt will be the winner.
* just look at the next article I've commented on. A new smartphone is being referred to as an iPhone rival. Ridiculous.
**by control I don't mean closed source, but rather the freedom to know that they can implement new features quickly. This isn't going to happen by relying on platform specific programs by Apple and Microsoft or third party web sites.
"Right now Apple needs a rival. If they sit at the top alone with the iPhone, it won't have any incentive to get better."
What?
Nokia? Sony Ericsson? Samsung?
I know this site is supposed to be U.S. centric, but have we now regressed to ignoring companies that aren't American? Hell, even the title says that Google and Dell are releasing an iPhone rival instead of a smartphone. Please stop this already. We don't have to kleenex every single product Apple decides to market.
Nokia may make operating systems, but he was correct in the sense that they don't sell them as such. They don't have any reason to lock their users into one operating system if they can find another that's better at running their devices. It's entirely plausible that they want to switch their phones to running Linux and Qt.
I think this move is a response to Apple's success in entering the market. Nokia still has the better hardware and value for money, but Apple's sleek design and marketing prowess are proving tough to beat. Microsoft can integrate with Windows, and Apple can integrate with Mac OS. What's left for Nokia? If they can integrate with Qt, and perhaps Kontact, their phones will integrate perfectly with all major platforms. By having positive influence over KDE by developing Qt and contributing in other ways, they can make sure their devices are always supported first and best.
Oops, I forgot to say that your pickpocket example could be taken care of by not having the antenna activated if the user hasn't touched the portable device for a couple of seconds.
No, 3cm does offer security, because at that range you can assume to be free of interference from other *licensed* devices.
What does that mean then? First of all, if the devices were to use public key encryption, simple snooping wouldn't be enough. You'd have to be able to perform a man in the middle attack, and that means sending signals of your own. Now, because of the assumption above, either device could simply terminate the connection if it were to receive multiple transmissions, timing errors or a key broadcast at the same time as it was its own turn to send. At worst, one device would end up connected to the attacker with the other one warning you of what has happened. With, say, a five second handshake, that would leave the user time to cancel the connection manually on the other side.
Technically, you could have one attacker exactly behind one device and another behind the other while somehow blocking the signals in between, but I think this is enough security for vacation photos. I'd love a system like this. Everything else is so easy nowadays that connecting cables or setting up passwords is the biggest hassle.
I'm not a security researcher, though, so correct me if I've missed something.
"Anonymous accusations have no credibility, it would show some maturity in society to just ignore them instead of suing their anonymous authors."
Come on. The whole problem is that society isn't mature. Would you really trust any future employer or potential girlfriend to look up your name and not even think "what if"? If someone did that to me, you bet I'd want to sue them.
While I don't necessarily support this particular legislation, I wouldn't have any problem with the government tracking down users that a judge think might be guilty of slander.
While I'm not a neurologist, I do think that I could have predicted the results.
I'm sorry if this was already mentioned, but my problem with the study is that it relied on the visual subsystem. Even if your brain were able to speed up, how can you assume that all parts are capable of it? Even the fact that it takes several minutes for your rods and cones to adjust to darkness suggests that the eye shouldn't be capable of adapting to fear that quickly.
The other flaw is that the subject couldn't do anything to change the situation. When I'm in danger of getting hurt, I know that my perception of time slows down, but it has never had anything to do with receiving faster input from the eyes. The only benefit is that I'm, at least from my perspective, able to make decisions much more quickly.
For example, I was once falling down an incline in the sense that I was on my feet but trying to slow down would have pointed me face down. My brain instantaneously plotted a path to a safe stop, which was then executed flawlessly by my reflexes. Every computational resource was mercilessly dedicated to SOLVING the problem of painful things approaching rapidly. How the hell does helplessly flailing about in mid air while executing a trivial counter loop compare?
What they did is equivalent to benchmarking a floating point unit during an interrupt storm. IANAN.
People also used to care about Ogg Vorbis support, which is another thing that Nokia devices have had for years. It was depressing to see how people claiming that they only want to make calls kept getting modded up until the completely closed iPhone was released. Now a phone with a music player and web browser is suddenly cool.
Too much of the user base has the completely wrong focus nowadays.
"What's been lost is trivial to what's been gained."
To this I'd like to add that it's more than just music that's at stake here. What's being destroyed is the environment, and it's people like Elton John who are doing it. I will never buy or put music on a plastic disc again, and it's about time governments start applying their environmental laws to tax these people who insist on using yesterday's polluting technology.
Hydrogen cars may be out of our reach for now, but we sure as hell have a solution for this.
And in addition to that, would even the laws themselves ever be approved if they weren't enforced selectively? If developing file sharing apps is now criminal, they should start their lawsuits here.
I wonder what they'll try to pull when everyone switches to encrypted and friend-routed sharing...
I thought iPods can charge over USB? If another company doesn't support USB at all, they're dead anyway.
As for video, any portable video player worth buying should support TV:s or monitors, so USB power + composite video or preferably VGA would solve all problems.
I'm sure usability is a big selling point, but I'm not sure the difference is that great. Perhaps someone can post about their experiences?
The article could actually have done just that. It did have one paragraph that mentioned competitors: "In fact, Jones says he has spent the winter demo-ing a portable media player by Archos, with a 4½-inch screen and greater file compatibility." Too bad it left it at that level, though. Unfortunately most people aren't going to read that far and never understand the implications of compatibility. It's like having completely biased questions for a survey and then including one neutral one to claim you tried to be fair.
Articles like these are starting to bother me. This is nothing that you couldn't do with any portable media player, yet all we hear from the media is "iPod iPod iPod iPod". It wouldn't matter to me otherwise, but I don't want to see a future where we're fighting both MS and Apple. Airplane seats are already getting iPod connectors instead of generic connectors, and soon Apple is going to release a crippled smartphone that won't run your own software, but is already being hailed in the media as a Nokia killer.
We should be worried - very worried. Either Apple starts sticking to industry standards or this has to stop.
You can right now go out and buy a Nokia s60 phone, put in the largest memory card you can afford, connect it to your Linux PC as a USB hard drive, and install a GPL Ogg Vorbis player.
True smart phones make all of our interoperability concerns unnecessary, even if you only care about portable music players. Do you think you'll ever be able to do that on a closed Apple platform, even if they might graciously accept your money for a third party signed binary? It doesn't even seem to come with SSH!
All they can really sell right now is a supposedly better user interface - all the other features, including the browser, are already matched by other firms. Especially since no one will want to browse on EDGE speeds. Not allowing arbitrary applications just cripples their one real benefit. Don't believe the user experience argument: I'm running unstable beta software on my phone and not once has an application crash affected the operating system. This doesn't mean I believe it's bulletproof, but at least it doesn't immediately diverge from a normal desktop experience.
Unfortunately I'm still not sure the iPhone won't be a raging success. I'm sure hordes of idiots will suddenly go "you can have the Internet on phones now? Apple is so inventive!" when faced with the marketing. I just don't think it deserves any respect at all from us apart from the user interface, if it actually works for typing too, which remains to be seen.
Slashdot Mirror
"Well, that is almost true. With certain Windows exploits, you can be doing perfectly normal things on your PC and still become infected. You can even have a firewall and anti-virus/anti-spam spam filter."
Sure, and that's why the only solution is to boot from the flash drive.
A trojan could of course run the flash drive in a virtual machine, but this is one case where the Trusted Platform Module could be used for good instead of evil (DRM).
Additionally, it gives the bank power to root your machine, but all you have to do is make sure the hard drive activity LED doesn't light up even once, since it doesn't have any business accessing it. The most paranoid users would just use two machines, since even a 10 year old machine would be powerful enough.
Yes, but this isn't some kind of direct, malicious action that treads all over their civil rights. It's an unfortunate consequence of a global phenomenon that isn't completely understood yet.
But let's say it was the direct result of corporate action designed to make a profit. If the problem was, say, toxic waste dumping, environmental protection laws would already help them. If the issue were simply that the corporation can catch fish at a lower cost, then good riddance.
No reason to bring culture into it.
This has to be the only reason, in fact, and not just one of them. Cybercrime can be stopped without any monitoring!
The article talks about hacking into bank accounts and identity theft etc. So if the government wants to crack down on this, why don't they just mandate that banks have to send their customers a bootable read only flash drive that contains a basic operating system, browser, SSL certificates and a one time pad? It wouldn't matter how badly some clueless moron's computer was trojaned to hell, because the bank would only accept connections from the booted flash drive.
You can't get mugged on the internet. You can't be coerced on the internet. Criminals need YOUR COOPERATION.
The U.S. could also stop using checks like every other civilized country, because they're a ridiculously huge security hole and a huge pain in the ass compared to direct bank transfer. But all of this would make too much sense, because none of it involves more government monitoring of its citizens.
The land of the free. Where no laws must ever tell corporations what to do, but citizens must compensate for their ineptness by being spied upon.
"Sure, we all think that OUR culture (the one that puts emphasis on business over humanity, empathy, and reality) is superior, but there is no objective manner to decide this. It is superior to US, just as the Inuit culture is superior to them."
There's no reason to make a value judgment. The world is what it is. I feel some parts of my culture are superior, and that some parts of other cultures are superior. If their culture doesn't promote a competitive economy, it will go away. Putting emphasis on wealth is a human trait that transcends culture. Not to mention that poverty breeds violence and addiction, so that's not entirely a bad thing.
There are cultures on this planet that do manage to survive despite clinging to counterproductive traditions, but they do it mainly through oppression and brainwashing on a massive scale. The one thing they all have in common is that their citizens are much worse off than those in our cold, uncaring business centric culture. The very opposite of humanity, empathy and reality.
I have no allegiance to any particular culture apart from the results it produces. It may have formed my initial identity, but I am now an adult and can think for myself. I only celebrate Christmas because it's a joyful holiday, and is worth something because it brings happiness.
FWIW I'm not an American, and I definitely don't believe that the free market will solve every problem. Just most of them.
Cultures don't have a right to live. People have a right to live.
If your culture becomes unviable, you move on. It's not the rest of the planet's job to help you to live like a carbon copy of your father. We find this self evident with business models, but cultures evoke silly emotional reactions.
"Government is the -last- entity that should oversee any censorship--because it has the most to gain from having such control."
No, the government is exactly the entity that should oversee censorship, because it's the only organization that's accountable to the voters. No corporation should ever have the power to censor anything.
Of course, I don't think even the government should have that power, but voters have always been clueless.
Your analogy is also flawed. It's more like buying the Coke from a store fully knowing that the owner is a fascist bent on world domination. He used your money to finance his mil^H^Harketing campaign and successfully took over your country, but hey, you had to have your Coke.
I don't care if it was chained to the store, because you deserved much worse. Stop supporting oppressive business models. Now.
i can't see why a monopoly on a prime band of communication spectrum can't be anything but pure gold. there's only so much spectrum, but more and more people and more need for communication tech every day
The auction is a gigantic tax and nothing more. If the markets are efficient, the winning company will be rewarded only related to the risks it is taking. Everything else will be going to the government, and out of the pockets of consumers.
It's laughable how the auctions are being sold as a good way to raise funds for the government without impacting the taxpayer. Who doesn't use communications technology if not the taxpayer? This is the perfect way to cripple a single industry, because a) the winning company will have less immediate funding available for infrastructure b) consumer prices will be much higher, lowering the adoption rate significantly.
Just look at what happened in Europe. A lot of countries did the smart thing and gave the spectrum to the companies that were willing to guarantee the best service levels for the cheapest consumer prices, but then a few large countries ruined it for everyone by suckering companies into auctions. (To be viewed as a serious competitor, you had to take part in the largest markets.) The end result was what I described above, and we are only now starting to recover.
If you think that the beauty contest model will result in excessive profits for the winner, keep in mind the guarantees, and the fact that one winner wasn't awarded all the spectrum.
The problem with convergence and open standards is that even with your example a lot of people wouldn't end up using them. Let's say that the operator will even send the configuration message automatically, but what will happen then? The user would have to configure their own computer to interface with the open protocol. Meanwhile, an Apple phone would just go "Mac OS detected. Press OK to pair."
Doesn't sound that different at first, but consider that we have people who would rather use cumbersome webmail for their entire lives rather than configure IMAP once. These people probably think that even learning the word is too hard.
I hope you're right, but I still think open standards will need a completely integrated environment to become popular. Then we can start thinking about porting the libraries to our favor platforms.
And if you really think this isn't about marketing, just look at the site you're posting at. We're supposed to be a group of nerds, but until the iPhone the most popular comment for cellphone articles was that the poster just wants to make calls. Now people are ignoring features that it doesn't offer, and pretending like every new phone is simply a response. If we can't escape that here, it's pretty much all about the marketing. Meanwhile, I've been using my Nokia as a browser and Ogg Vorbis player for years.
Even that experience is pretty lacking though. Your quote proves that Sun is just about the only company that truly gets it. Too bad they don't make cell phones.
I agree with everything you said. I think you misunderstood me a bit.
What I predict is that more and more people will be swayed by Apple's marketing if Nokia doesn't do something*. This especially in the U.S. The average user isn't going to know anything about what you said, unfortunately. Nokia needs to control** its own software environment much more than it does now. And better ads. And a user interface that a monkey can mash successfully. Just being quick to use isn't good enough anymore.
I do my best to avoid being tied to one platform, but the average user seems to do everything in their power to accomplish the opposite. We can only hope Nokia/Qt will be the winner.
* just look at the next article I've commented on. A new smartphone is being referred to as an iPhone rival. Ridiculous.
**by control I don't mean closed source, but rather the freedom to know that they can implement new features quickly. This isn't going to happen by relying on platform specific programs by Apple and Microsoft or third party web sites.
"Right now Apple needs a rival. If they sit at the top alone with the iPhone, it won't have any incentive to get better."
What?
Nokia? Sony Ericsson? Samsung?
I know this site is supposed to be U.S. centric, but have we now regressed to ignoring companies that aren't American? Hell, even the title says that Google and Dell are releasing an iPhone rival instead of a smartphone. Please stop this already. We don't have to kleenex every single product Apple decides to market.
Nokia may make operating systems, but he was correct in the sense that they don't sell them as such. They don't have any reason to lock their users into one operating system if they can find another that's better at running their devices. It's entirely plausible that they want to switch their phones to running Linux and Qt.
I think this move is a response to Apple's success in entering the market. Nokia still has the better hardware and value for money, but Apple's sleek design and marketing prowess are proving tough to beat. Microsoft can integrate with Windows, and Apple can integrate with Mac OS. What's left for Nokia? If they can integrate with Qt, and perhaps Kontact, their phones will integrate perfectly with all major platforms. By having positive influence over KDE by developing Qt and contributing in other ways, they can make sure their devices are always supported first and best.
Oops, I forgot to say that your pickpocket example could be taken care of by not having the antenna activated if the user hasn't touched the portable device for a couple of seconds.
No, 3cm does offer security, because at that range you can assume to be free of interference from other *licensed* devices.
What does that mean then? First of all, if the devices were to use public key encryption, simple snooping wouldn't be enough. You'd have to be able to perform a man in the middle attack, and that means sending signals of your own. Now, because of the assumption above, either device could simply terminate the connection if it were to receive multiple transmissions, timing errors or a key broadcast at the same time as it was its own turn to send. At worst, one device would end up connected to the attacker with the other one warning you of what has happened. With, say, a five second handshake, that would leave the user time to cancel the connection manually on the other side.
Technically, you could have one attacker exactly behind one device and another behind the other while somehow blocking the signals in between, but I think this is enough security for vacation photos. I'd love a system like this. Everything else is so easy nowadays that connecting cables or setting up passwords is the biggest hassle.
I'm not a security researcher, though, so correct me if I've missed something.
"I guess the Wars Against Drugs, Terror, Iraq etc are not enough, have to start a War Against Sex Offenders too."
Nope, that's just the War Against Sex. It's been going on for a long time.
"Anonymous accusations have no credibility, it would show some maturity in society to just ignore them instead of suing their anonymous authors."
Come on. The whole problem is that society isn't mature. Would you really trust any future employer or potential girlfriend to look up your name and not even think "what if"? If someone did that to me, you bet I'd want to sue them.
While I don't necessarily support this particular legislation, I wouldn't have any problem with the government tracking down users that a judge think might be guilty of slander.
While I'm not a neurologist, I do think that I could have predicted the results.
I'm sorry if this was already mentioned, but my problem with the study is that it relied on the visual subsystem. Even if your brain were able to speed up, how can you assume that all parts are capable of it? Even the fact that it takes several minutes for your rods and cones to adjust to darkness suggests that the eye shouldn't be capable of adapting to fear that quickly.
The other flaw is that the subject couldn't do anything to change the situation. When I'm in danger of getting hurt, I know that my perception of time slows down, but it has never had anything to do with receiving faster input from the eyes. The only benefit is that I'm, at least from my perspective, able to make decisions much more quickly.
For example, I was once falling down an incline in the sense that I was on my feet but trying to slow down would have pointed me face down. My brain instantaneously plotted a path to a safe stop, which was then executed flawlessly by my reflexes. Every computational resource was mercilessly dedicated to SOLVING the problem of painful things approaching rapidly. How the hell does helplessly flailing about in mid air while executing a trivial counter loop compare?
What they did is equivalent to benchmarking a floating point unit during an interrupt storm. IANAN.
You had me until X11.
People also used to care about Ogg Vorbis support, which is another thing that Nokia devices have had for years. It was depressing to see how people claiming that they only want to make calls kept getting modded up until the completely closed iPhone was released. Now a phone with a music player and web browser is suddenly cool.
Too much of the user base has the completely wrong focus nowadays.
"What's been lost is trivial to what's been gained."
To this I'd like to add that it's more than just music that's at stake here. What's being destroyed is the environment, and it's people like Elton John who are doing it. I will never buy or put music on a plastic disc again, and it's about time governments start applying their environmental laws to tax these people who insist on using yesterday's polluting technology.
Hydrogen cars may be out of our reach for now, but we sure as hell have a solution for this.
And in addition to that, would even the laws themselves ever be approved if they weren't enforced selectively? If developing file sharing apps is now criminal, they should start their lawsuits here.
I wonder what they'll try to pull when everyone switches to encrypted and friend-routed sharing...
I thought iPods can charge over USB? If another company doesn't support USB at all, they're dead anyway. As for video, any portable video player worth buying should support TV:s or monitors, so USB power + composite video or preferably VGA would solve all problems.
I'm sure usability is a big selling point, but I'm not sure the difference is that great. Perhaps someone can post about their experiences?
The article could actually have done just that. It did have one paragraph that mentioned competitors: "In fact, Jones says he has spent the winter demo-ing a portable media player by Archos, with a 4½-inch screen and greater file compatibility." Too bad it left it at that level, though. Unfortunately most people aren't going to read that far and never understand the implications of compatibility. It's like having completely biased questions for a survey and then including one neutral one to claim you tried to be fair.
Articles like these are starting to bother me. This is nothing that you couldn't do with any portable media player, yet all we hear from the media is "iPod iPod iPod iPod". It wouldn't matter to me otherwise, but I don't want to see a future where we're fighting both MS and Apple. Airplane seats are already getting iPod connectors instead of generic connectors, and soon Apple is going to release a crippled smartphone that won't run your own software, but is already being hailed in the media as a Nokia killer.
We should be worried - very worried. Either Apple starts sticking to industry standards or this has to stop.
Maybe this example will work best on slashdot:
You can right now go out and buy a Nokia s60 phone, put in the largest memory card you can afford, connect it to your Linux PC as a USB hard drive, and install a GPL Ogg Vorbis player.
True smart phones make all of our interoperability concerns unnecessary, even if you only care about portable music players. Do you think you'll ever be able to do that on a closed Apple platform, even if they might graciously accept your money for a third party signed binary? It doesn't even seem to come with SSH!
All they can really sell right now is a supposedly better user interface - all the other features, including the browser, are already matched by other firms. Especially since no one will want to browse on EDGE speeds. Not allowing arbitrary applications just cripples their one real benefit. Don't believe the user experience argument: I'm running unstable beta software on my phone and not once has an application crash affected the operating system. This doesn't mean I believe it's bulletproof, but at least it doesn't immediately diverge from a normal desktop experience.
Unfortunately I'm still not sure the iPhone won't be a raging success. I'm sure hordes of idiots will suddenly go "you can have the Internet on phones now? Apple is so inventive!" when faced with the marketing. I just don't think it deserves any respect at all from us apart from the user interface, if it actually works for typing too, which remains to be seen.