There is a case for the 3G that has a sliding lens for just this thing. and it work's GREAT (I've got it on my 3G). It was about the same price as all the other hard cases and it protects the camera's lens when you've got it slid over it.
You can hold the camera about 3" from what you're looking at and it'll take a crisp pic with readable text.
Ok, so I've never been into the ladder/clan scene, but I've always hated being tied down to a company's servers. I MUCH prefer to play with friends and often play Terrorist Hunts, Coop levels, etc., on games like Vegas2 and other Rainbow Six titles (and by often I mean daily). Personally I've found that Consoles are the ones that get into the ladder/clan scene more than PC's, half the point of a PC game is to allow the PC to be a server as well as a game machine, so other people can connect directly to my box and I know that it will work LONG AFTER the company is gone and their servers die or have their funding cut.
Now, I can see where some people would be annoied at this, but I think this basically cuts out the areas of online multiplayer that I don't like. I hate play deathmatches against whiny bastards who just got the OK from their mom to play. I hate being tied to one company's servers who will end up cutting off support long before the game is out of date. I hate being told I have a laggy connection to the one company server when I've got a better connection than half the other people that can join (Battlenet I'm looking at you). In fact, I hate having to involve anything other than my pc and the pc's of my friends joining me.
This update was put on the list as part of the 9.0 iTunes upgrade, I have an iPhone and I knew I didn't want it, as I already configure it through iTunes.
THEN about 5 days later (maybe longer) Quicktime updated and at was part of THAT as well. Which affected not only my PC, but my wife's PC, who uses my install of iTunes for her 2G Shuffle and has nothing but Quicktime, reluctantly installed on her PC. I had to tell her to uncheck the box and skip over that as part of the quicktime update.
But if this wasn't enough, the next day it poped up again as Quicktime detected an available update from Apple (not for Quicktime, that was done, but it listed the apple update's manager along with the iPhone Configuration thing and Safari 4. Luckily it hasn't asked again, but this was multiple questionings over a 2 week period.
I'm glad to hear they pulled it, but unless "Hours after" means "240 hours after" this is a big crock.
I can see being illegal for drunk driving. However, You can technically drink and drive legally, up to 0.8% bac. Likewise, if you turn on your NAV unit and type in "take me to bob's pizza parlor in walla walla washington" while at a stop sign or street light, that seems to me to be below the limit... but it's illegal. You're not screwing around with it while moving, you're not putting other people at risk. There needs to be a hard line where these things apply/don't apply.
Here in VA we have a law against texting while driving however, it's *NOT* a primary offense. Meaning you need to have been pulled over for some other reason (swerving, speeding, running red lights, expired tags, etc...) before they can technically hit you with it.
And if you can't even use hands free devices to control a nav unit (as I'm sure will be next) what's different between this and talking to passengers? Particularly those that are engaging in deep or complex conversations. I know personally, though I can multi-task and talk on a cell phone perfectly fine, if my wife brings up a particularly hard to explain or interesting topic, It's a much larger time slice drain than simply a simple cell phone conversation or interacting with a hands free nav device.
I agree, I'm in the same boat. However, what I will add is this. A game that's 3 years old should NEVER be $50. I remember PS2 used to put things on the "Greatest Hits" list (and Mario Galaxy easily would fit in this category), sometimes quickly based on sales. Usually these games were automatically $20. Now, Personally I think after spending that much for the system, even $20 is sort of stretching it, but it would make me buy a new one for $20 over a used one for $10-15... which is the end goal of the console makers/game makers anyway (for me to buy it new). I'm perfectly happy buying a used game now-days because of places like local used game stores that offer 7 day money back guarantees. The Disc doesn't store data, as long as it works, it's good for me, and someone else was able to buy a new/different game because of trading it in!
I know, I'm probably not the Target Demographic either, but I am a semi-hardcore gamer, I regularly play plenty of PC games, and used to big into console games until the latest generation. I know the hardware costs more to build now, but the cost of entry went up too quick for me. I have an equivalent or better, fairly high end PC already, and it seems to run even Crysis, just fine.
As for cellphone games, they're great for random time wasting moments, but I have yet to actually spend any money on them. There are tons of great ones for free on the App store, and frankly I just don't have enough time where I'm stuck somewhere not in front of a PC, or Console, where I have real buttons, a large screen and surround sound.
Actually most stores in this area (Virginia) ban the wearing of any hood/head concealing garment while in the premises. It goes along with them banning scarves/baklavas/3 hole head covering masks/cotton hats/ski-masks/etc that hide the face and or other discernible personal features. Especially places like 711 and gas stations.
I can see both sides of the argument, but why not just allow them in if they drop the hood? that's usually the way it works. stores don't have a problem with a hooded jacket, as long as the hood is not in use while in the store (you can carry a ski-mask with you too if you want, as long as you don't put it on, no one can say anything, just put it back up/on when you leave.
Really I think stories like this do a lot more harm than good for their cause. Sure they think they've been caused an injustice, but most of the time it's better for both parties if you just go along with it. Not that I don't think oppression is wrong, but trying to make a ruckus by going against a policy like this is just stupid. It's not like anything is going to happen by taking the hood down for a few minutes while you shop. And if you don't like it, just go somewhere else, no harm no foul. I tell people to take their shoes off when they come in my house, if they don't want to, they can sit on the deck, thems the rules.
Wow... that's a lot considering it just came into full mainstream a few years ago. 1/3rd of homes in the US is a LOT of people, especially considering we're in a recession and people "aren't buying luxury items", and HDTV's fit squarely in that category.
Your teacher must have sucked or maybe you were uninterested then.
I had a typing class in 6th grade, it wasn't mandatory, I'll have to agree with the article, it was one of the best classes I had. During that class I was able to type over 110wpm consistently... on a Mac Classic. It's helped me quite a bit through the years and if my kids don't have access to the class, I'll teach them myself.
I can't stress enough how learning to type correctly at an early age is important. It's very hard to unlearn bad habits.
In Virginia in a number of locations (Including Norfolk) they've now made the meters reset if a delay of more than 60 seconds was between the last quarter and the next one. This is to deter that sort of thing. You cannot 'feed the meters'. So yeah, if someone had 10 min left and were only going to be less than that, then they're ok, but if they say "well, let me bump it to 15 to be sure" then it resets and they get to pay for all 15 min.
Unless she brought it up with them and they said "it's no big deal" or "get over it" or even "We'll fix it next time we get out there" (meaning they're not in a hurry to fix it) in which case, it seems to me that they DO seem to think it's ok to sleep in a moldy apartment. In which case, it's not a lie and her reasoning for saying it, other than simply venting, may be to dig up public outcry over her situation to help her side.
I don't really see how this statement is libel, nor even suit worthy. I mean, sure it's not exactly positive against the company, but the company could just say something like "we don't yet have evidence of mold in your apartment, but will do everything in our power to check for and eradicate any found asap" A well written response (one better than mine) could really turn this into a positive for the company showing that they're going the extra mile for their customers. But instead they sue. I mean, if you go off of this as a libel suit, there are literally thousands that could be fired against anyone who said "Cons" on Newegg reviews not because the product sucked, but because they were personally unable to get it to work or because it was busted in shipping causing it not to perform as the manufacturer intended. Accidents happen, and many times have I noticed that "The Company" does not respond with the correct urgency for certain problems, either because they don't care, or, and more often, because the end user (in this case the tweeter) hasn't quite portrayed the situation quite as dire as it is.
IMHO, Any company that jumps from a tweet straight to a libel suit really seems like they're begging for bad publicity.
Facebook and Myspace are both good examples in how an idea really doesn't mean much compared to how it's carried out.
Take myspace for example. It's an idea I had a long time ago, but then Geocities came out and I thought 'eh, that's pretty much it (I wasn't anywhere near an age I could really get capital to do anything like that). The fad came, and it went. Then Myspace comes along. It's the same thing. People have personal webpages andthey can put links to other sites and friends. Pages are easy to create and space is free. But Myspace took that idea and put some polish on it and a little more social twist (though not enough polish in most cases).
Facebook takes the same "Social Networking" idea and puts a different spin on the same idea. Adds more polish, some extras, a bit more structure and takes off again. I'm sure we'll not see the end of this social networking idea, it'll keep being brought up again and again in different lights.
Thank you! I don't see how this is any different than what I've been paying/signed up for for the last 10 years or more. In College, I only drove the car like once a week, I reported my total miles as like 3k a year and got charged a heck of a lot less than when I started a job and that became 30k a year. Now I only drive 10k a year and it's in the middle. (then I got married and both my wife and my insurance total is half as much as the cheapest of either... however that works. I suppose I'm so much less likely to get hit by an idiot now that I'm married...). The premiums have always been calculated loosely from this sort of mileage per year estimate. at least as far as I remember back, 10-15 years or so. I'd be annoied if they stopped the practice knowing that it is one of the few things that makes sense. You're basically charged both upon your history and the amount of time that you'll be out on the roads causing/being part of havoc.
Wow, I've never met/heard anyone say they like that trackpoint thing. Everyone I know, along with myself, think that thing has to be one of the worst computer inventions of all time. It's HORRIBLE for accuracy, efficiency and ergonomics, both while using it and while typing around it. My hand gets tired of using it within a minute of use and I just give up and plug in a mouse, but I still end up taping it with my fingers when I'm typing quickly (the huge mushroom top doesn't help when you have a tiny keyboard like the x40 does) Seriously, I still to this day LOVE my x40 but I'd probably have never bought it if I realized how much of a pain in the hand that thing would be.
But doesn't that leave you open to crisis when one dies?
Or is TFA not talking about backup so much?
Personaly, though I have different uses for various systems, often find that I want to access the same data and having it in a central location is the best way to store it. So I have a central Gentoo install on a low power Geode board (runs at about 5 watts, up to 15 watts with drives spinning), with mirrored and regularly backed up storage (to tape and exchanged with a remote location's tape set when possible (like xmas time when I go to my parents who are 300 miles away, don't really care enough for it to be more frequent than that)). Each server connects to this central location with nfs or samba/cifs and all 'serious work' is done on those shares.
I've been looking into svn to help manage the various changes to files I make over time, but I haven't really migrated things to it yet.
I've also stored some important things in 'the cloud' on sites like google docs with much success.
Maybe I'm weird, but I use my iPhone for business. After looking into and working with other's blackberries, I can honestly say that I want none of that Kool-Aid. the iPhone Just Works(tm). I not only get a full featured "I'm not stuck with mobile sites" browser, but RDP which is extremely useful, Fully Encrypted Cisco VPN, AIM/ICQ Which we use all day at work, IRC which the dev team uses, SSH and VNC which come in quite handy being that I'm a linux admin, as well as many other network tools, including built in access to the company's WPA2 protected Wi-Fi and VPN over the 3G when I'm on the beach. All for $50 less than the cheapest WiFi enabled Blackberry on any carrier in the area.
I'd also point out that I'm not alone. In my division, well over half of the smart phone users are running with iPhones. RIM/Palm needs to really step up their game if they don't want to continue to loose market share. I will say the Pre looks fairly good, but it needs a lot of polish, something the iPhone has had a few years for. I'm by no means an Apple fanboy, but you gotta give props where props are due. They made a great platform, and people made some handy apps (IRC/AIM/ICQ/RDP/VNC/SSH/Telnet/etc...), most of which are free, or at most $1.99.
Just gonna go out on a limb here... but you do know that not having sex with people that have AIDS also lowers the risk quite a bit... Same with Genital Herpes and a load of other diseases and problems associated with sexual contact.
At the risk of sounding like a jerk, let me point out the obvious again... clip it and feel better knowing that it might lower your risk... not to zero. Or just skip out on the AIDS Orgy and know that you lowered it all the way to zero. I mean, was (s)he THAT Hot? Really?
What Really lowers the risk is THINKING BEFORE having sex. It's not really that hard, but skipping the 'get to know the person' stage seems to be a prevalent theme lately.
It sounds funny, but I had a few friends that did this on our campus. The LAN wasn't quite as draconian as what you describe, but it did have limits/blocks on certian P2P, A really weird and sometimes non-functional routing setup, and bandwidth caps (whether inter- or intra-net). We were already signed up for Cable TV with the local cable company (the campus was fully wired for cable, but it was run by one of the local cable providers. Sort of a monopoly as in the dorms you could ONLY get their cable, but it wasn't bad and split up 4 ways was fine.) In any case, we didn't like the crappy local access, so we bought a cable modem and split the 15/5 internet fee. Had to go through some odd, duct-tape and wall-scaling involved methods for running the wires, but it worked perfectly, let us do everything we wanted, was faster and less crazy than the college LAN. I highly recommend it. Sure the money you'd be 'wasting' from not using the university's lan sucks, but whatever. And if you want, you can have a computer setup to boot from USB for when you need to access the local lan.
If the 18 wheeler next to you starts to come over into your lane and you're rear quarter is about to be smashed by him (i.e. you are near the front of his rig) the distance to pull your car clear is faster reached by slamming the gas than by slamming the brakes.
Also, in many emergency situations, it may be necessary (in front wheel cars at least) to pull through the turn with extra power, rather than hit the brakes too hard, have them lock and spin out.
...that this is yet another opportunity to come up with a way of making a distributed lookup system part of the bit torrent spec. Sure, it wouldn't be as quick, but if your client can listen for other nearby clients and query them for a list of files that they've accessed (not just ones being seeded by them, but ones they've connected to recently or are currently connected to). I'm sure this would greatly limit the number of seeds you find, but with a proper system of distributed "well, I've heard this guy has this" and "I'm seeding this right now and I've transfered it to this guy who might also be seeding" and such would give you a fairly decent list of seeds that you can probably get a good speed to (since they're somewhat 'local'). This would have the benefit of not needing a search site, nor needing any centralized repository.
On the other hand if this worked and was really successful, the RIAA would just try to ban the protocol from ISP's.
OS 3.0 has already been announced and will be available for the first and second gen iPhones (Second gen upgrade for free, first gen costs $10 I believe). However, the 3rd Generation iPhone is slated to include support for 7.2Mbit 3G speeds (2x the current one) along with a number of other upgrades (that they haven't officially announced, but there are leaks on url:http://macrumors.com and other such sites.
So no, it's not completely software. Because if it was, no one would buy a new phone they'd just get the upgrade from iTunes and move on... it being free and all.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a case for the 3G that has a sliding lens for just this thing. and it work's GREAT (I've got it on my 3G). It was about the same price as all the other hard cases and it protects the camera's lens when you've got it slid over it.
You can hold the camera about 3" from what you're looking at and it'll take a crisp pic with readable text.
Ok, so I've never been into the ladder/clan scene, but I've always hated being tied down to a company's servers. I MUCH prefer to play with friends and often play Terrorist Hunts, Coop levels, etc., on games like Vegas2 and other Rainbow Six titles (and by often I mean daily). Personally I've found that Consoles are the ones that get into the ladder/clan scene more than PC's, half the point of a PC game is to allow the PC to be a server as well as a game machine, so other people can connect directly to my box and I know that it will work LONG AFTER the company is gone and their servers die or have their funding cut.
Now, I can see where some people would be annoied at this, but I think this basically cuts out the areas of online multiplayer that I don't like. I hate play deathmatches against whiny bastards who just got the OK from their mom to play. I hate being tied to one company's servers who will end up cutting off support long before the game is out of date. I hate being told I have a laggy connection to the one company server when I've got a better connection than half the other people that can join (Battlenet I'm looking at you). In fact, I hate having to involve anything other than my pc and the pc's of my friends joining me.
So you want SNMP monitoring for your heart?
Nothing like getting a page about your heart malfunctioning...
This update was put on the list as part of the 9.0 iTunes upgrade, I have an iPhone and I knew I didn't want it, as I already configure it through iTunes.
THEN about 5 days later (maybe longer) Quicktime updated and at was part of THAT as well. Which affected not only my PC, but my wife's PC, who uses my install of iTunes for her 2G Shuffle and has nothing but Quicktime, reluctantly installed on her PC. I had to tell her to uncheck the box and skip over that as part of the quicktime update.
But if this wasn't enough, the next day it poped up again as Quicktime detected an available update from Apple (not for Quicktime, that was done, but it listed the apple update's manager along with the iPhone Configuration thing and Safari 4. Luckily it hasn't asked again, but this was multiple questionings over a 2 week period.
I'm glad to hear they pulled it, but unless "Hours after" means "240 hours after" this is a big crock.
This is the US... Can we get this in Libraries of Congress/mile?
I can see being illegal for drunk driving. However, You can technically drink and drive legally, up to 0.8% bac. Likewise, if you turn on your NAV unit and type in "take me to bob's pizza parlor in walla walla washington" while at a stop sign or street light, that seems to me to be below the limit... but it's illegal. You're not screwing around with it while moving, you're not putting other people at risk. There needs to be a hard line where these things apply/don't apply.
Here in VA we have a law against texting while driving however, it's *NOT* a primary offense. Meaning you need to have been pulled over for some other reason (swerving, speeding, running red lights, expired tags, etc...) before they can technically hit you with it.
And if you can't even use hands free devices to control a nav unit (as I'm sure will be next) what's different between this and talking to passengers? Particularly those that are engaging in deep or complex conversations. I know personally, though I can multi-task and talk on a cell phone perfectly fine, if my wife brings up a particularly hard to explain or interesting topic, It's a much larger time slice drain than simply a simple cell phone conversation or interacting with a hands free nav device.
I agree, I'm in the same boat. However, what I will add is this. A game that's 3 years old should NEVER be $50. I remember PS2 used to put things on the "Greatest Hits" list (and Mario Galaxy easily would fit in this category), sometimes quickly based on sales. Usually these games were automatically $20. Now, Personally I think after spending that much for the system, even $20 is sort of stretching it, but it would make me buy a new one for $20 over a used one for $10-15... which is the end goal of the console makers/game makers anyway (for me to buy it new). I'm perfectly happy buying a used game now-days because of places like local used game stores that offer 7 day money back guarantees. The Disc doesn't store data, as long as it works, it's good for me, and someone else was able to buy a new/different game because of trading it in!
I know, I'm probably not the Target Demographic either, but I am a semi-hardcore gamer, I regularly play plenty of PC games, and used to big into console games until the latest generation. I know the hardware costs more to build now, but the cost of entry went up too quick for me. I have an equivalent or better, fairly high end PC already, and it seems to run even Crysis, just fine.
As for cellphone games, they're great for random time wasting moments, but I have yet to actually spend any money on them. There are tons of great ones for free on the App store, and frankly I just don't have enough time where I'm stuck somewhere not in front of a PC, or Console, where I have real buttons, a large screen and surround sound.
Actually most stores in this area (Virginia) ban the wearing of any hood/head concealing garment while in the premises. It goes along with them banning scarves/baklavas/3 hole head covering masks/cotton hats/ski-masks/etc that hide the face and or other discernible personal features. Especially places like 711 and gas stations.
I can see both sides of the argument, but why not just allow them in if they drop the hood? that's usually the way it works. stores don't have a problem with a hooded jacket, as long as the hood is not in use while in the store (you can carry a ski-mask with you too if you want, as long as you don't put it on, no one can say anything, just put it back up/on when you leave.
Really I think stories like this do a lot more harm than good for their cause. Sure they think they've been caused an injustice, but most of the time it's better for both parties if you just go along with it. Not that I don't think oppression is wrong, but trying to make a ruckus by going against a policy like this is just stupid. It's not like anything is going to happen by taking the hood down for a few minutes while you shop. And if you don't like it, just go somewhere else, no harm no foul. I tell people to take their shoes off when they come in my house, if they don't want to, they can sit on the deck, thems the rules.
Wow... that's a lot considering it just came into full mainstream a few years ago. 1/3rd of homes in the US is a LOT of people, especially considering we're in a recession and people "aren't buying luxury items", and HDTV's fit squarely in that category.
Your teacher must have sucked or maybe you were uninterested then.
I had a typing class in 6th grade, it wasn't mandatory, I'll have to agree with the article, it was one of the best classes I had. During that class I was able to type over 110wpm consistently... on a Mac Classic. It's helped me quite a bit through the years and if my kids don't have access to the class, I'll teach them myself.
I can't stress enough how learning to type correctly at an early age is important. It's very hard to unlearn bad habits.
In Virginia in a number of locations (Including Norfolk) they've now made the meters reset if a delay of more than 60 seconds was between the last quarter and the next one. This is to deter that sort of thing. You cannot 'feed the meters'. So yeah, if someone had 10 min left and were only going to be less than that, then they're ok, but if they say "well, let me bump it to 15 to be sure" then it resets and they get to pay for all 15 min.
..."Dennis! There's some Lovely Filth down here!"...
Well, that rug did really tie the room together.
Unless she brought it up with them and they said "it's no big deal" or "get over it" or even "We'll fix it next time we get out there" (meaning they're not in a hurry to fix it) in which case, it seems to me that they DO seem to think it's ok to sleep in a moldy apartment. In which case, it's not a lie and her reasoning for saying it, other than simply venting, may be to dig up public outcry over her situation to help her side.
I don't really see how this statement is libel, nor even suit worthy. I mean, sure it's not exactly positive against the company, but the company could just say something like "we don't yet have evidence of mold in your apartment, but will do everything in our power to check for and eradicate any found asap" A well written response (one better than mine) could really turn this into a positive for the company showing that they're going the extra mile for their customers. But instead they sue. I mean, if you go off of this as a libel suit, there are literally thousands that could be fired against anyone who said "Cons" on Newegg reviews not because the product sucked, but because they were personally unable to get it to work or because it was busted in shipping causing it not to perform as the manufacturer intended. Accidents happen, and many times have I noticed that "The Company" does not respond with the correct urgency for certain problems, either because they don't care, or, and more often, because the end user (in this case the tweeter) hasn't quite portrayed the situation quite as dire as it is.
IMHO, Any company that jumps from a tweet straight to a libel suit really seems like they're begging for bad publicity.
Facebook and Myspace are both good examples in how an idea really doesn't mean much compared to how it's carried out.
Take myspace for example. It's an idea I had a long time ago, but then Geocities came out and I thought 'eh, that's pretty much it (I wasn't anywhere near an age I could really get capital to do anything like that). The fad came, and it went. Then Myspace comes along. It's the same thing. People have personal webpages andthey can put links to other sites and friends. Pages are easy to create and space is free. But Myspace took that idea and put some polish on it and a little more social twist (though not enough polish in most cases).
Facebook takes the same "Social Networking" idea and puts a different spin on the same idea. Adds more polish, some extras, a bit more structure and takes off again. I'm sure we'll not see the end of this social networking idea, it'll keep being brought up again and again in different lights.
Thank you! I don't see how this is any different than what I've been paying/signed up for for the last 10 years or more. In College, I only drove the car like once a week, I reported my total miles as like 3k a year and got charged a heck of a lot less than when I started a job and that became 30k a year. Now I only drive 10k a year and it's in the middle. (then I got married and both my wife and my insurance total is half as much as the cheapest of either... however that works. I suppose I'm so much less likely to get hit by an idiot now that I'm married...). The premiums have always been calculated loosely from this sort of mileage per year estimate. at least as far as I remember back, 10-15 years or so. I'd be annoied if they stopped the practice knowing that it is one of the few things that makes sense. You're basically charged both upon your history and the amount of time that you'll be out on the roads causing/being part of havoc.
Wow, I've never met/heard anyone say they like that trackpoint thing. Everyone I know, along with myself, think that thing has to be one of the worst computer inventions of all time. It's HORRIBLE for accuracy, efficiency and ergonomics, both while using it and while typing around it. My hand gets tired of using it within a minute of use and I just give up and plug in a mouse, but I still end up taping it with my fingers when I'm typing quickly (the huge mushroom top doesn't help when you have a tiny keyboard like the x40 does) Seriously, I still to this day LOVE my x40 but I'd probably have never bought it if I realized how much of a pain in the hand that thing would be.
But doesn't that leave you open to crisis when one dies?
Or is TFA not talking about backup so much?
Personaly, though I have different uses for various systems, often find that I want to access the same data and having it in a central location is the best way to store it. So I have a central Gentoo install on a low power Geode board (runs at about 5 watts, up to 15 watts with drives spinning), with mirrored and regularly backed up storage (to tape and exchanged with a remote location's tape set when possible (like xmas time when I go to my parents who are 300 miles away, don't really care enough for it to be more frequent than that)). Each server connects to this central location with nfs or samba/cifs and all 'serious work' is done on those shares.
I've been looking into svn to help manage the various changes to files I make over time, but I haven't really migrated things to it yet.
I've also stored some important things in 'the cloud' on sites like google docs with much success.
Maybe I'm weird, but I use my iPhone for business. After looking into and working with other's blackberries, I can honestly say that I want none of that Kool-Aid. the iPhone Just Works(tm). I not only get a full featured "I'm not stuck with mobile sites" browser, but RDP which is extremely useful, Fully Encrypted Cisco VPN, AIM/ICQ Which we use all day at work, IRC which the dev team uses, SSH and VNC which come in quite handy being that I'm a linux admin, as well as many other network tools, including built in access to the company's WPA2 protected Wi-Fi and VPN over the 3G when I'm on the beach. All for $50 less than the cheapest WiFi enabled Blackberry on any carrier in the area.
I'd also point out that I'm not alone. In my division, well over half of the smart phone users are running with iPhones. RIM/Palm needs to really step up their game if they don't want to continue to loose market share. I will say the Pre looks fairly good, but it needs a lot of polish, something the iPhone has had a few years for. I'm by no means an Apple fanboy, but you gotta give props where props are due. They made a great platform, and people made some handy apps (IRC/AIM/ICQ/RDP/VNC/SSH/Telnet/etc...), most of which are free, or at most $1.99.
Just gonna go out on a limb here... but you do know that not having sex with people that have AIDS also lowers the risk quite a bit... Same with Genital Herpes and a load of other diseases and problems associated with sexual contact.
At the risk of sounding like a jerk, let me point out the obvious again... clip it and feel better knowing that it might lower your risk... not to zero. Or just skip out on the AIDS Orgy and know that you lowered it all the way to zero. I mean, was (s)he THAT Hot? Really?
What Really lowers the risk is THINKING BEFORE having sex. It's not really that hard, but skipping the 'get to know the person' stage seems to be a prevalent theme lately.
It sounds funny, but I had a few friends that did this on our campus. The LAN wasn't quite as draconian as what you describe, but it did have limits/blocks on certian P2P, A really weird and sometimes non-functional routing setup, and bandwidth caps (whether inter- or intra-net). We were already signed up for Cable TV with the local cable company (the campus was fully wired for cable, but it was run by one of the local cable providers. Sort of a monopoly as in the dorms you could ONLY get their cable, but it wasn't bad and split up 4 ways was fine.) In any case, we didn't like the crappy local access, so we bought a cable modem and split the 15/5 internet fee. Had to go through some odd, duct-tape and wall-scaling involved methods for running the wires, but it worked perfectly, let us do everything we wanted, was faster and less crazy than the college LAN. I highly recommend it. Sure the money you'd be 'wasting' from not using the university's lan sucks, but whatever. And if you want, you can have a computer setup to boot from USB for when you need to access the local lan.
If the 18 wheeler next to you starts to come over into your lane and you're rear quarter is about to be smashed by him (i.e. you are near the front of his rig) the distance to pull your car clear is faster reached by slamming the gas than by slamming the brakes.
Also, in many emergency situations, it may be necessary (in front wheel cars at least) to pull through the turn with extra power, rather than hit the brakes too hard, have them lock and spin out.
...that this is yet another opportunity to come up with a way of making a distributed lookup system part of the bit torrent spec. Sure, it wouldn't be as quick, but if your client can listen for other nearby clients and query them for a list of files that they've accessed (not just ones being seeded by them, but ones they've connected to recently or are currently connected to). I'm sure this would greatly limit the number of seeds you find, but with a proper system of distributed "well, I've heard this guy has this" and "I'm seeding this right now and I've transfered it to this guy who might also be seeding" and such would give you a fairly decent list of seeds that you can probably get a good speed to (since they're somewhat 'local'). This would have the benefit of not needing a search site, nor needing any centralized repository.
On the other hand if this worked and was really successful, the RIAA would just try to ban the protocol from ISP's.
Well then, you'll be "Sayin' WOW Every Time!"
OS 3.0 has already been announced and will be available for the first and second gen iPhones (Second gen upgrade for free, first gen costs $10 I believe). However, the 3rd Generation iPhone is slated to include support for 7.2Mbit 3G speeds (2x the current one) along with a number of other upgrades (that they haven't officially announced, but there are leaks on url:http://macrumors.com and other such sites.
So no, it's not completely software. Because if it was, no one would buy a new phone they'd just get the upgrade from iTunes and move on... it being free and all.