Posts by Windrose

Assange loses High Court appeal against extradition to Sweden

Again with the law.

European Convention on Extradition, Paris, 13.XII.1957, Article 15 – Re-extradition to a third state: "Except as provided for in Article 14, paragraph 1.b, the requesting Party shall not, without the consent of the requested Party, surrender to another Party or to a third State a person surrendered to the requesting Party and sought by the said other Party or third State in respect of offences committed before his surrender"

http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/024.htm

AFAIK this still applies for non-EU nationals, and today. So the US would approach Sweden, and Sweden would have to ask the UK.

It'd be a damned sight easier for the US to just go to the UK and use the speedy approach. Again, IANAL.

Eh. That's how the rules on extradition work in the EU. If the UK hand him over to Sweden, Sweden cannot hand him over to the US without asking the UK first. His nationality doesn't matter; it's a safeguard against, well, bouncing people all over the place.

IANAL. And so forth.

Not a problem.

There's no jury for this type of case in Sweden. Lay judges are used alongside professional ones.

This *again*?

If he gets extradited to Sweden, he'll face a hearing. It is VERY likely the case will then be dismissed because there are very little in the way of physical evidence. At that point he'll be none-too-politely asked to get his silly self out of Sweden.

IF the US asks for extradition there, Sweden will refer the case to the ... UK! They then have to say yes or no. Since the US doesn't have a crime to charge him with - yet - and as he might risk the death penalty IF they use espionage laws, he CAN'T be extradited anyhow.

IF he goes to court, and is - against ALL probability - sentenced, he'll get less than 4 years. During that time he can't be extradited ANYWHERE.

Yes, yes, YES. I HAVE heard it: "they'll just ignore the law!"

They could also kidnap him from where he is right now. It'd be easier, and no less illegal. Try, TRY to read up on the appropriate laws and regulations BEFORE commenting.

Not that I think people will listen any more this time around. "It's not the listening which is the problem, but the hearing" - Vir Cotto.

Oh, and IANAL. But I CAN read.

Blogger freaks after airport lackey fondles checked-in vibrator

Oh, noes!

And then you'd probably also be, for the first time in your life, useful - as fertilizer.

What the hell does "feminist bloggers" have to do with invasion of privacy? Oh, noes! I forgot! Only the boyz can have their privacy invaded.

Here, have a medal.

Facebook's Swedish data centre will be subject to Snoop Law

SSL + some facts

It's a filter on top of cables. Which, given a court-agreed permission and various paperwork, can be used to do a search for keywords (approved keywords, hey-ho). So you're right.

Some days I think El Reg need to stay off news from countries with languages their staff can't read for themselves. Yes, FRA (actually, it's a civilian organisation) ain't a walk in the park, but there are several levels of courts and monitoring agencies that keep one or two eyes on the filters.

So, no, the government can't simply pop in and look at everything. Well. No more so than they can pop in and kill you in your bed. Technically they surely could, but there's a fine line between normal, healthy paranoia and, well, blazing insanity.

PS: Because of human nature, I am reluctantly forced to add: I do not support the Swedish Parliament in enacting this. There. That ought to take out one, or perhaps two, of the screaming hysterics.

Stallman: Jobs exerted 'malign influence' on computing

YMMV

"For a desktop OS I hate Linux and tend to use Windows. I tried using Linux at various points in my life and it didn't work for me"

Excellent - without a trace of sarcasm. If Windows - or, for that matter, Mac - works for you, go for it. Neither give me anything but grief (I plugged a separate monitor into my Windows laptop today. No matter how much I designate the laptop screen the 'primary', and no matter how much Windows actually agree, it STILL opens new windows on the separate monitor. Plus 2-5 empty windows. I have no idea why).

Hence I'm using Linux for my desktop - ctwm, for reference.

What I critique is, as you correctly point out, is the conception of Mac - or Windows - as somehow more "user friendly" than anything else. It all - absolutely all - depends on how you define 'user'; on what you want to do, and how.

Would be nice if we could all agree that one's mileage may vary.

Flame you? Nooo.

Oh, no. Wouldn't dream of it. I WOULD like to point out one, sad, mistake.

"Apple produces products that address the actual needs, skills and knowledge of users"

Only if the user is tech-savvy, or have tech-savvy friends/family. Sorry. Giving my mum-in-law an iPhone is pointless since she doesn't have, and wouldn't be able to handle, a Mac/PC on which to ACTIVATE THE BLOODY THING!

Phew. So she got a Nokia. Into which there was a SIM inserted. Which she could use the moment it was powered on. So, please: do not repeat the myth that Apple produce products that address the needs of users UNLESS you also define users as "geeks".

It makes my stomach hurt - with laughter - when I see someone show a pic of their 6-month-old offspring playing with an iPhone, after knowing the things they've already done to make it work ... and then they call ME a zealot for referring to it as an 'iToy'?

ALL you had to do?

"Because I don't have a single purchased piece of media from Apple in my collection, and all I had to do was just what the poster above said"

I've not got any purchased media either. But, honestly, tell me how "all" you had to do was "import", "sync", and play your FLAC files?

Alas, no

Well, not directly. It's a bit tricky, and require a bit of work. I can either jailbreak - which voids warranty and sends my accountants spinning - and use something like ZodPlay.

Alternatively I can convert to ALAC. Noo ... too much work to keep two sets of files. Then there is the purchase-app-to-play-for-me option, with for instance GoldenEar.

And, finally, it appears I can use the iTunes 'file sharing' function to actually add the files. Not tested this yet. With the trickery I need to do it's actually easier just synchronizing the files directly to my Nokia, and play.

What is EASY depends on what you want to DO. The iDevices are easy to use as long as you do only what the engineers behind them think is worth doing.

Fascinating discussion

From what I can read, I'm rather tempted to suggest we team up to un-free, wall in, and charge for BIND - and see how many "OSS doesn't give people what they want!" 'tards stick around.

Might be refreshing.

Please indeed.

"Right. Black is white, and an open standard like HTML5 is somehow evil in comparison to closed, proprietary Flash."

Have you looked at the process with which the 'open standard' HTML5 is developed lately? The WG's leading people don't give a tuppence either - whops, that's Google, Apple, ...

WITHOUT being a computer geek?

"Apple produces computers that people can use without being a computer geek."

Bollocks to that. Apple produce devices which can be used if all you want is what their designers also want.

Give my mother-in-law an easy-to-use iPhone? Not without ALSO giving her a COMPUTER. Play FLAC, 'cause that's what I rip my CDs to for high-quality sound? Oh, heck; it's a damn minefield to get them playing on the iPad.

Have you TRIED installing free apps on your i-Box? I did - it took more geek knowledge that it does to configure Apache ... but, oddly enough, once learned both are easy enough.

My desktop computers have been running Linux since 1993. My window manager is ctwm, and it is much hated by everyone I know. But: there is nothing quite like my setup for the things I WANT TO DO!

IF Apple's devices do what you want, fine. Great. Most bodacious. If, for ANY reason at all, you want to do something OTHER than what they've designed into them - no matter if you are a geek or not (ref. m-i-law above) - it ain't very user friendly any more.

And herein lay the problem: Steve Jobs was an excellent marketeer. He did his job with great competence. He also managed to sell so many people on walled-in devices that it may just have impact OUTSIDE of the people who actually find them useful.

As long as your definition of "user" is the same as Apple's, everything is rosy red. Please try to accept that not everyone agree with that philosophy.

"Open source, while having a sort of 'nerd hip cool' to it, just isn't that useful to the vast majority of people."

Heh. Right. The vast majority of people using the 'net might be inclined to disagree with you.

What Jobs' engineers did ...

"Clear options and ease of use"

Ah, no. Not really. What Jobs - or rather the engineers working for him - did was give users "if you do things our way, they are easy". They did NOT give them "what you want to do? It's easy in our system!"

Flexibility is NOT a buzzword applicable to the iPhone or iPad (yes, yes. I do own both. You don't want to know what I have to do to play my ripped CDs.)

Indeed true - but ...

"We don't get foxes coming along at night and eating the chickens, and there's a nice gazeebo affair in the middle, where you can enjoy a cuppa tea without getting rained on or the wind whipping away your cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches"

Very true. Except you can only get tea from the Dimbula district of Sri Lanka, and people will laugh at you if you meekly ask for a cup of Rooibus or - perish the thought - a Longjing.

If this is fine with you, GOOD! Just don't flood the airwaves with propaganda that it is fine for EVERYONE.

Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray disc set

Optional

... no-one actually CARE.

If having Han calmly blast a bounty-hunter, then stand up and toss payment on the bar with a casual apology for the mess isn't enough to label him, erhm, "TOTALLY BADASS" ... no hope left for those folks.

The rest of us view a movie, a story, in terms of the totality, not one specific frame out of 170,000 odd ones.

No icon, 'cause there's not a single one for "Beam me out of this place, NOW!".

Yeah, it's good.

Can the BS. We *know* the stories. The review of a Blu-ray copy of Star Wars should, and do, focus on the image quality and sound.

The rest is subjective crap. Take it to some obsessed fanboi site with people who actually BELIEVE themselves when they claim they saw who shot first and how it coloured their perception of Han.

P'nally I'm going to *enjoy* my boxed set this weekend. Noone requires YOU to do so. Go frame-step the DVDs and post a long blog entry about how TERRIBLY abused your favourite movies have been. Sheesh.

Google Native Client: The web of the future - or the past?

You mean XHTML, surely

"You just need a different language, or simply get stricter with JavaScript, exactly like HTML5+CSS does to old-style HTML."

HTML 5 has not gotten stricter, no. That's XHTML for you. What HTML5 is, today, is a loose, shaky, half-baked set of specifications that include how to parse CRAP code. No, XHTML as XHTML doesn't do much good for the end user either, but HTML 5 isn't strict in ANY sense of the word.

You want strict? You need to upgrade the so-called "developers".

Samsung says Apple lifted iPad from Kubrick's 2001

No, no, not at all

Wouldn't even THINK of saying that the Nokia 770 looks like an iPad. Good gracious me. The former looks like a professional palmtop computer, after all; the latter looks like, well, it doesn't much look like ANYTHING, to be honest.

And it just wifi connection *again* :( What DO you call hardware that looks posh and can't fulfill its function for love or money? Oh, wait. Has anyone FOUND its function yet?

Here lies /^v.+b$/i

Elegant indeed, but ...

I like it. Short, to the point, and - heh - unrecoverable. Tho I'll go for the more philosophical:

/b{2}|[^b]{2}/

And long may it be in coming so I can refactor ....

If we are being mean ...

... then I would, I admit, prefer:

WE SHALL ALL DIE, MR. RINCEWIND

... tho my name ain't Rincewind.

Got a website? Pay attention, Cookie Law will come

Could we stop redefining 'ugly'?

Let's. An URI isn't "ugly". Your uncle may be ugly; industralization of a pretty forest is ugly, but an URI is simply an address, and beyond the "theregister.co.uk" bit it ain't meant to be human readable.

Just stop setting unnecessary cookies.

Nokia launches new corporate font

Whining.

Ask all those people - tech bloggers in particular - who has been whining for years about how TERRIBLE, just TERRIBLE the "Nokia font" is. World will perish. Kittens will be without cuddles. Universe will freeze over. And so on and so forth.

Now Nokia is going down the fluffy road to satisfy that lot. Well done, says I. Of course, it'd be better if they ignored the whiners (and Endgadget, and The Register, AND Elop) and kept doing what they do best: Symbian (and Maemo).

Counting down to the mandatory bitching about Symbian in 3 ... 2 ...

Sorry to disagree.

"How does a company that has products that aren't attractive to users because they don't have the features that reviewers, and users want ... "

Sorry to disagree, old chap, but you got that half wrong. From the sales numbers USERS want Nokia. Loads and loads and loads of Nokia. Reviewers don't, but then again they are in general too busy cuddling their [insert favourite toy here] .

Why Nokia listen to them and not their users ... I got no idea. Just wish they'd stop dicker, and release a N9[50] along the lines of the E7. And replace Elop.

Extended Lord of the Rings Blu-rays to hit Blighty

Remastering.

From what blu-ray.com can tell us, "The Fellowship of the Ring" has been remastered from original 2k sources.

If this is true, then there is hope for a good treatment of the others. Whether one want to put down money for higher resolution ... your choice.

App Store not invited to web's date with destiny

Eh, wot?

'HTML is a "presentation" language. A language that had its roots in the text-oriented document creation languages like LaTeX.'

I can only conclude you know neither language. HTML has nothing what so ever to do with LaTeX - it is, if illegitimate, a child of SGML and the generic coding work done way back in the aftermath of WWII.

It has been USED as a presentation language, but a billion flies may eat shit as much as they like without it becoming a good idea.

Personally I find HTML 5 a huge mistake. But at least I know what it is and can tell you one VERY good reason why you might want to create an application using HTML (4 OR 5)+CSS+JS: not everyone has an iOS device. Or an Android device. A majority has Symbian, of course, but that doesn't change the next point.

Most everyone with a mobile device can, today, run 'webapps'. That means it makes quite a lot of sense to people who don't want to work with one single platform.

Julian Assange sets out bid to appeal extradition to Sweden

Minor correction

"It's good to hear the Swedish authorities will be investigating the Swedish solicitor."

So far it is only the Swedish Bar Association who is investigating. The worst they can do is take his license to practice law away - and there are a few who think that ought to be done.

But if he is found to have willfully misled the Court, then - oh, the irony - he could be extradited from Sweden to the UK >:)

Microsoft bans open source license trio from WinPhone

Why not tell us the truth?

"Linux failed to make a decent phone - and I mean Linux all the way up the stack from the kernel to the GUI"

So you never used an N900. Fair enough. Why the run-around tho? Just admit you don't know shit about the topic, and lets get on with life.

Documents in Assange rape probe leak onto the net

This would be rape.

"So the question is would this normally be considered rape in Sweden ? ..."

"I consent to sex given that you use a condom" - "Ok. *proceeds without one*"

Yeah, that'd be sex without consent - aka rape. If it is proven. Which, at this point, looks unlikely. Luckily Sweden has pretty modern laws in this field.

Or do you truly believe that "Just because she didn't WANT to have sex doesn't make it rape!"?

Loads of places have laws like that. Sweden, I'm glad to say, has gotten over THAT old crap.

iPhone crashes car stereos, Toyota warns

Life-altering? Oh. When?

"The same way that taking female hormones is a life-altering experience."

It IS? Oh, wow. When does this start to happen? Produced loads of the stuff for years now, but can't say I've noticed much life-altering.

Looking forward to the life-altering bits. Better hurry up, tho. Suspect I'll start seeing a drop in the levels soon, and that'll certainly be a change ...

Apple clips publishers' wings

Future := new Bleak ; Future.destroy()

"Fanboi or no, you have to give Apple, and SJ, a little bit of credit for pulling everyone else up."

Well. Or down, depending on your point of view. BiP (Before iPhone) you could trust engineers to actually provide touch-screen devices with - for me and quite a few others - highly superior resistive technology.

Post iPhone the buggers are all going fat-finger friendly. From where I'm standin' Apple has done some good, and a damned lot of bad, to the overall smartphone ecosystem.

And don't mention kinetic scrolling. My BP can't take it :(

Lawyers fear Assange faces death penalty in US

Trust the US? No. But there's a but.

"Sending him to Sweden first negates that responsibility legally if not morally."

Incorrect. If we are speaking of legal acts, then Sweden - by its own laws - cannot extradite him to the US if the court here fears he'll be given the death penalty, tortured, or if there is a political component.

Besides, IF the US requested extradiction from Sweden, then (a) a Swedish court would have to judge the case, and (b) the *UK* would have to agree. Them's the laws.

Of course, one could argue that the US wouldn't give a damn, and that Sweden would fall in line, but since every single scrap of documentation in such a case would be, by default, public in Sweden, there'd have to be a hell of a lot of laws broken to achieve it.

More difficult.

Not quite sure what you ask - but since an extradition request from the US to the UK would involve the UK deciding - yes or no - while an extradition request from the US to Sweden would involve BOTH Sweden and the UK to agree ...

Well. Getting him from Sweden is more difficult than directly from the UK, even by legal means.

Assange bailed again

Believe the facts ...

The British courts would be a good place to start - and in this case they agree with CBS:

Julian Assange is not charged with anything here in Sweden. Not yet. The prosecutor wants to hear his side of the story. According to some reports he agreed to come to a hearing, then ignored it; according to some the prosecutor simply didn't call him in before he had already left.

Regardless: the extradition is basically "because we want to talk to him". Depending on the story he gives during that talk, he'll either be charged or not.

References to the case can be found on Swedish government websites, often in English. If not, Swedish isn't a hard language to learn .... in the name of fact checking.

Drupal 7 dives into machine-readable web

Machine readable ... right.

I do hope the author knows what the Drupal developers might have missed: HTML - and XHTML - are ALSO formats for encoding data in a machine-readable way ....

RDFa extends the vocabulary, so to speak, but there's nothing technically new here. The assumption that people will suddenly create semantically rich sites with RDFa, when they never bothered doing so in the much simpler HTML, is naive. Sweet, but naive.

Google 'open' nonsense brainwashes US gov

All mobile systems?

Noo ... not QUITE. Maemo, anyway? Arguably even more open than Android, depending entirely on how you define it.

Don't fall into the snake-oil. Maemo is not larger than Android, but it certainly was first. As for Symbian ... well, it IS the worlds largest and most commonly used mobile operating system now and before - and it was open source.

Just to get your facts straight, y'know.

Worthless iPhone 'Wikileaks App' removed from Apple Store

Lemme see if I get this right ...

... free speech is "surpressed" [sic] when other people use THEIR right to free speech?

Damn interesting definition you got there, grasshopper. Don't think anyone ever said that using your right to speak your opinion would lead to folks NOT laughing at you.

Assange: Text messages show rape allegations were 'set up'

Recognition

Here's the trick. It doesn't MATTER if YOU, personally, recognize the definition. What he is claimed to have done IS rape, by Swedish law, and just as Sweden can't - BY law - extradite someone to the US if the crime isn't a crime in Sweden; Sweden can't NOT ask for extradiction just because the definition of "rape" isn't the same in the country Assange currently reside in.

What he is accused of - and remember: he's not charged - is "having sex without consent". It's not a case of regretting weeks after; read the original documents instead of relying on shoddy reporting on far too many websites.

Suicide? Latest data I can find is from 2008 - Sweden is at 16% (males per 100,000). The UK at 17%; Croatia at 25%. Lithuania is at 52%. So where the hell did you get those ideas from?

Unhappy smiley: why this drive against the alleged victims and Swedish laws? Whatever happens the *United Kingdom* will have to approve the extradition to the US, so why not put the ball in your own court for once?

Understanding rape

"Come back again when you actually know what a "rapist" is. Here's a hint: It's not the guy the woman as some doubts about the morning after."

BS. A rape - as defined in Sweden - is "non-consensual sex", which is what he is accused of. Doesn't matter what it is defined as in the UK. The number of women who go to the police after "regretting" what they consented to is bloody low, but it's a damned convenient way to ignore the problem.

Try to understand that unless the US, the UK and Sweden all agree to break their own laws and those of the European Union, it's not an easy matter to have him extradited anywhere - in which case he'll simply have to answer the accusations against him in Sweden.

Which, presumably, we all agree he has the right to do?

Read the law much?

Did you ever READ the law in question?

IF you want to have sex with someone, AND they agree but ONLY on condition of X, and you don't fulfill X but go ahead anyway, then, yes, it IS non-consensual sex. Aka rape.

There. Not that difficult if you put in the right words. Weird law? Not at all. Humane, perhaps, but hardly weird.

Yes and no.

Complicated. "Rape" is against the law in the UK as well as in Sweden; it's the definition which differ. So yes. He can be extradited from the UK to Sweden based on the accusation of rape, which makes sense.

If they think there is a chance he might have done it, then they'll extradite. If they think there's a political component, then the UK Court is obliged to NOT extradite. There's nothing particular about this case save the venom spewed by Assange fanbois all over.

Perhaps there is a political aspect. Perhaps the US HAS been stupid enough to lean on Sweden. Once here, he'll be harder to get over there than ever before, so it's a tactical boo-boo.

(The act of publishing that he is accused of in the US might not even BE a crime in Sweden, which would prevent Sweden from *legally* extraditing him there. And they can't do so without the UK's consent anyway. Let's avoid the discussion of what the US could do ILLegally.)

What? Yeah, well ...

"The setup plot was all about getting him in to Sweden, so they could send him to the US."

Let's assume, for just a moment, that your further comment regarding assassination and "taken out" is reasonably correct. Let us further assume that the US is trying to get him over there so they can shaft the bugger legally.

Then we got the following connundrum:

(a) The UK Court system, when all appeals are done some six months or so from now, will have to agree there is no such plot, nor any political component. They extradite him to Sweden.

(b) The Swedish Court system will have to drop the accusations. If they go ahead with charging him, he can't legally be extradited to the US before the court case is over, and - worst case for Assange - he has served his sentence.

(b.1) It's VERY likely there will be no charges. Despite three character witnesses, there's no hard proof, and if you study Swedish court records - all public domain, btw - you'll see that it is extremely difficult to get charged with, let alone condemned for, rape without MUCH harder evidence than what exist.

(c) The US would have to come up with a charge against him, complete with proof, of a crime which is ALSO a crime in Sweden - that'd get tricky, since Sweden have very good protections for publishers of material. Could be done tho; espionage would be one. But since it's reasonably clear he's NOT a spy (spies don't publish the information online, normally .... ) that's political maneouvering.

(d) The Swedish Court would have to determine whether there was a political component to the *US* request - which, uh, we all agree there would be. If there is one, they can't legally extradite.

(e) The Swedish Government would have to, according to EU law, ask the *UK* Government whether it is ok to extradite him to the US. Then the *UK* needs to say yes - and, presumably, the UK would not do so if THEY thought it had gone political-shaped.

(f) And then the US would need to make a few guarantees, such as "no death penalty", "no excessive punishment" etc before the extradition could go ahead.

So a plot to get him sent to Sweden would be tactically unsound, as the *UK* has a much softer extradition treaty with the US in the first place ....

See why I get a wee bit steamed at all this bickering all over?

But sure. They could all do it illegally. Of course, the Swedish court records would still be available to the public, so that'd get politically ... touchy.

Machiavelli would be embarrassed by this "plot".

Setup plot fail

Exactly. There's no "loose" extradition treaty between Sweden and the US - I posted the relevant link to Swedish law on the matter (in English) in a different message.

It's way easier, legally that is, to extradite him from the UK to the US than from Sweden to the US. So perhaps, PERHAPS, the Swedes want him to answer allegations of rape?

Could be, Doc.

A joke, surely?

You GOT to be kidding? The European Convention on Human Rights (article 6.2)? Binding for all EU members? The Universal Declaratiof of Human Rights (article 11)? Does ANY of these ring a bell?

"Innocent until proven guilty" is set down in enough laws and conventions that all of bloody Europe is well and truly bound by it - including Sweden.

And then there is: http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/2853/a/18096 - in English. Worth a read. Combine it with the current rules and regulation on extraditing to non-EU countries: http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/2710/a/15435 (also in English) for a little more information on what may and may not happen in the future.

The problem REALLY is ...

... the lack of reading. Here, in Sweden, the lawyers and politicians are quite clear: it'd be VERY complicated to get him extradited to the US, and they'd have to ask the *UK* for permission first anyhow.

Crock. Yay, crock.

Clearing a few things up. There's so much BS out there it makes my eyes water.

@skelband: He was never "cleared of guilt" by any prosecutor. The original case was dropped because, as in the UK, it's almost impossible to successfully prosecute sex crimes. The victims LAWYER then appealed the decision, and it was re-opened. That the same lawyer had, once, been a politician is irrelevant to the case.

@Nick Stallman: Since it is far easier to extradite someone, for whatever reason, from the UK to the US than from Sweden to the US, a conspiracy to FIRST get him here would be, uh, pretty dumb, all things considered - in particular since Sweden would need the UK to agree to a US extradiction. Have a look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11949771 for some quite correct details.

@ElReg!comments!Pierre: Bullshit. There is no "Sex by surprise" involved in this. One accusation is that the woman agreed to sex PROVIDED a condom was used, and that Assange proceeded without one. The law in Sweden is pretty clear - if one party doesn't consent, then it's rape. Try reading http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11949341 for some less misogynistic details.

It's bloody scary to read some of these comments. Why is it so difficult to tell the difference between what he HAS done (been a part of Wikileaks) and what he is accused of doing (rape, assault), and actually accept that despite the former he might be called on to answer for the latter?

Your hero MAY be a rapist. Right NOW he's an innocent man who is accused, but not charged. Don't read Swedish? Suggest you think before commenting.

Apple as a religion: How the iPhone became divine

Almost ... almost

Quoth: "It was easy to use, had a responsive interface, and a wide array of cheap or even free apps. It quite simple blew it's competitors away."

Yes - and no. This doesn't really answer the question, since far from everyone found the UI responsive OR even useable, not everyone found it easy, and quite a few people found that the apps available didn't cover their needs.

No device fits everyone - but THIS device, for some reason, has been hyped up to do so - and people, including those who ought to know better, was and is falling for it ... so yes. Somehow the iPhone became a fetish.

I still wonder why ...

iPhone 4 developers get software update, but will it fix death grip?

Bullshit Redux

Let me see if I get this right: you are making the claim that the Nokia 2630 has the antenna on the OUTSIDE? That, in fact, the silver-coloured area around the device is, in fact, a metal antenna? No, I see you don't. You claim that you can bridge two internal antennas!

The Nokia user guide for the 2630 confirm that (a) the antenna is INTERNAL, not EXTERNAL, and (b) you should avoid touching it unnecessarily. Specifically, you should avoid holding two fingers up to the top of the backside of the device. This will reduce the signal strength ... as expected.

And that, again, is NOT the problem with the iPhone 4. The PROBLEM is that two different antennas are EXTERNAL, and you can BRIDGE them by holding the phone in what is for many people a normal position.

If you look at the N900 schematics, you'll notice that it has its two antennas in a similar position to the iPhone 4, but *inside*. That, AGAIN, means that if you place a 75kg bag of water between the antenna and the cell tower, you WILL experience signal reduction, but you CAN'T BRIDGE THEM USING YOUR FINGER!

Of course it's expected behaviour. The more stuff - regardless of what the 'stuff' is - the signal has to punch through to reach the antenna, the less signal strength. Why we're not ranting about it? Because it is EXPECTED BEHAVIOUR.

You're not alone in being in the backwoods of Whatever Country. All mobile phones lose signal strength, but only ONE, at the moment, can have the two antennas bloody well short-circuited by holding it. (Short-circuit used imprecisely).

Sheesh. You'd think I murdered your mum or something.

Could we possibly get real?

Yes. IF you place something that dampens a radio signal in front of an antenna, you will get a slightly reduced signal strength.

No. That's not the iPhone 4 problem. This one has two exposed antennas and you can bridge them. There's no other phone on the market (DO tell me which one, specifically, if you believe otherwise) today which has the same construction, since it's known to be problematic.

Other phones have their antennas insulated, normally in plastic. The N900 antenna assembly is actually quite similar to the iPhone 4, but - yes - *inside* the case. No signal drop. No magic, just a "why the heck didn't they put insulation on there?"

Yes, you did read it on the Internet. The physics remain the same. Someone dropped the ball, and since our friends at Apple and their more rabid fans have, for the last few years, spun such a lovely - and arrogant - tale regarding the iPhone, the rest of us - with working phones - get a chuckle.

Apple's iOS 4 beams into unprepared world

Getting the rants right.

RichyS ... whenever you go overboard with the anti-anti-fanboi ranting, try, TRY, to at least getting it right.

The iPad WiFi+3G model, according to Apple, weigh 730g. The N900 (with WiFi and 3G) comes in at 181g.

And yes. It IS a point to many that in 2010 a NEW "smart" phone can't multi-task equally well as devices some eight years old. Please don't start in with the battery time. To some it IS actually worth being able to run half a dozen applications at the same time - without any of them being "paused" or requiring a rewrite - for eight hours, instead of one application for sixteen. Yes, those are example numbers.

If you don't like people telling you that, stop reading the comments. It's that easy.