Posts by Arc_Light

FBI and MI5 bosses: China cheats and steals at massive scale

My own personal experience...

Hi folks,

While I absolutely agree that the US has done and continues to do lots of questionable things around the world, here I would ask all those inclined to immediately start talking about pots, kettles and moral equivalency to set aside those instincts for a moment, understandable as they may be, and consider the following story.

Some years back, my research group was funded by a large and well-known multinational whose products you have all heard of and purchased because of the work we were doing related to anti-corrosion coatings. My main point of contact was the subject matter expert (SME) on such coatings at said company. We were super excited to be working with them, things started off very well, but after some time, it got a bit...odd.

After months of reporting with no issues, all of a sudden she was super unhappy with our work (though as far as I could tell, we were entirely on track), but could not explain what the specific problem was or why what we were doing wasn't OK. She wanted to talk directly to the technical staff doing the work, get copies of their notebooks, etc. This was an important contract given the stature of the company, but I also knew what my organization would and would not tolerate from a legal standpoint, so I had to explain that we're happy to improve or do things differently and just needed to understand the nature of her concerns better - *but*, sorry, I'm not allows to let anyone outside of my organization interact with or manage my staff or directly access their lab notebooks, the contract is between our organizations, the points of contact are defined as such, etc.

This did *NOT* go over well.

Long story short, I had to escalate this to the leadership of my organization. They knew that I had a lot of experience with such contracts and was not one to cause trouble, so when this contact of mine threatened to cancel our contract because we were not living up to the terms, they fully backed me up in saying that, sorry, we are, and if you don't agree, put your complaints in writing like it says in the contract of p*ss off. Of course, they were much more diplomatic than that, but that was the message. Our head of research admin indicated that she'd never dealt with someone so difficult / nasty in 30+ years of doing the job. The dispute went all the way to the top of the research side of my organization, but they were eventually able to get this very nasty contact of mine replaced on the corporate side. We finished out the contract in peace and delivered what we promised, but it was impossible to raise my new contact on the phone or via e-mail - it became pretty clear after some time that he was dodging me, which was really frustrating, because I felt we had done a good job and had some nice technology to speak about in this context - as effective as existing solutions but addressing a critical issue of consumer concern.

The last contact I had with this very nasty person was a phone call where I first asked (since I knew my legal obligations) if she would be OK with me recording it. She agreed, then proceeded to chew me out for just generally not doing a good job. I challenged her on this point, professionally but firmly, and said, look, we did our job as described, if you have a problem, fine, but tell me what it is or, again, please kindly p*ss off, because I've had enough of your sh*t. OK, again, not the language I've used, I am always professional with clients, but that was the message. She was clearly *not* always professional with clients, because I got an earful of some of the nastiest attitude I've ever had to deal with before she simply hung up on me (in spite of the fact that she had been informed that I was recording the call, OMG :)

I won't bore you with the details of what happened since then, but here's the final result:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chemist-sentenced-stealing-trade-secrets-economic-espionage-and-wire-fraud

My dear friend is going to federal prison for 14 years for corporate espionage on behalf of the Chinese government.

Now, here's the point: Yes, yes, the US does sh*tty things. Nonetheless, I challenge anyone here to find a case like this going in the opposite direction, where some American is caught in China trying to steal secrets from companies over there. In materials research, this simply does not happen, and if it *did*, you can be damn sure that the Chinese government would be raising holy hell about it, the American(s) in question would be all over Chinese state media, there'd be a whole international incident, etc., etc. They would NOT be shy about this, because this would be an absolute wet dream of a PR coup - "Look, the Americans always talk about us, but see what we caught them doing!", etc., etc. The fact that you have never in your life heard such a story tells you what you need to know - this is not a symmetric relationship by any means.

Now, let me be really clear: I have colleagues and friends in the research community who are Chinese and who are working in China. I have advised numerous Chinese PhD students, and while not all of them came to my group with the right safety culture - this is not their fault, they simply were not trained as I was - to be honest, I cannot think of a single truly bad one, and I had plenty of really good ones. I have enjoyed their company, helped them find jobs, and done my best to assist them in kick-starting their careers. I worked for several years to rescue one from an incredibly sh*tty immigration situation that occurred as a direct result of the election of Mayor McTreason (or whatever we're calling him these days) as president and the changes in policy he pushed for at the US State Department that ended up screwing a *ton* of Chinese STEM grad students all over the country (you didn't hear about this nearly as much as all of the racist anti-China sentiment he stirred up in other ways, but it was a total disaster for many, many people). These people were not the problem, and they did not deserve to be treated that way.

The problem is very simple: In China, the underlying social contract is that the Chinese government keeps the economy going like gangbusters and the population puts up with a lot of BS in exchange for improvements in their standard of living (which, let's be fair, have been real and substantial). Labor costs rising and making China less competitive? That's OK, just grab this minority we don't like anyway and force them to make stuff for free. Don't have anything for those folks to make that the world wants to buy? That's OK, just "acquire" the technology by any means necessary and undercut everyone else on the production side until you dominate the market. Look at solar, this is exactly what happened - a good friend no longer works in that industry because of exactly this strategy. Creative trade and monetary policies, well-hidden subsidies, etc., etc. - whatever it takes to realize this outcome, it's been done and is being done as much as possible. In some sense, they have no choice, because the moment the Chinese economy tanks and they have a billion people out of work and seeing their living standard drop, it's "up against the wall, motherf*ckers" time - the people will not stand for it, and that'll be the end of the current system and everyone who runs it. It will NOT be pretty, and they know this. This is going to happen eventually; the sorts of shenanigans we're speaking about are simply delaying the date such that the current leadership "gets theirs" and can kick the can down the road. That's all it is.

Coming back to my own situation, I was pretty angry when I found out - we spent a year and a half with more than one FTE dedicated to that work, and I don't appreciate being lied to or having my ideas stolen. If this person would've been less of a total *sshole about it, they might've actually gotten away with it, but lucky for us, she was absolutely world-class in this regard, and clearly not so careful either. Very, very glad to see that disdain and disrespect get exactly the sort of treatment it deserves. Point is, this happens more often than we hear about, because not everyone tasked with such a mission is so "special".

In any case, just wanted to share that as a reminder - anti-US cynicism develops for legitimate reasons, and I definitely have my share of stones to throw (as an American expat, I am so disappointed with and worried about my country these days), but here I can say from first-hand experience that there really is a difference.

Ex-NASA bod on Gwyneth Paltrow site's 'healing' stickers: 'Wow. What a load of BS'

Re: Denon audio cables

I'm late to the party, and I'm sure some of you are already aware of this, but for those who are not, the reviews, Q&A and customer images posted here are a shining example of how to handle this sort of thing:

https://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B000I1X6PM/

Next assignment: The items on the "Customers who viewed this item also viewed" list. No energy stickers as of yet, but plenty of other gift ideas for the "Gwyneth" in your life.

PS - For the more scientifically inclined, I recommend books from the Landolt-Börnstein series; sort by "Most reviews" and enjoy.

Why does herbal cough syrup work so well? It may be full of morphine

(Ahem)

...and the best cough suppressant I've ever used is dark chocolate - the higher the cocoa content, the better. This is because cocoa contains theobromine (caffeine minus an N-methyl, kills dogs, etc., etc.), and theobromine has been shown to work as well as or better than codeine when it comes to cough suppression, without the side effects; the study in question is here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15548587

More work has been done since then (search Pubmed and you'll find it), all of which supports its efficacy. In case you're wondering how much theobromine chocolate could possibly have in it, go here:

http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/nutrients/index

...select theobromine as the first nutrient (it's the last one on the drop-down list), sort by nutrient content, measure by 100 g (apples-to-apples and all) and see for yourself. Yes, there is enough for this in dark chocolate to really work; there is a reason the scientific name of the cocoa plant is what it is.

So, if anyone is looking for something natural, effective, and free of nasty side effects, my recommendation is what I refer to as my "medicinal chocolate" (Lindt's 99% cocoa bar or equivalent). It's bitter enough that you avoid the one major side effect, i.e. eating too much chocolate, and it has a much lower vapor pressure than other forms of chocolate, meaning you'll have it when you need it. I've found that sucking on a few squares of that stuff kills my cough for hours. Of course, if you can't stomach this and would instead prefer to go to a lower cocoa content, by all means - just remember, you must eat more of it to get the same effect. This is essential. Essential!

(You're welcome)

Arc_Light

Apple to PROTECT YOU from dreaded TROUSER EXPLOSIONS

Hold on now...

Hi folks,

Here are a few points to keep in mind, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood materials boffin:

* The title of the piece is unfortunate in that it implies that Apple has just recently come up with a way to protect you that did not exist before. This is misleading because I can absolutely guarantee that the plastics used in these devices were flame-retarded prior to the development of this IP. The point is not that there is anything new as far as the fire properties of the plastic are concerned; rather, the point is that they have come up with a different means of getting to the same or similar properties (i.e. without using persistent brominated flame retardants, which is probably what they were using before).

* Given that the application was submitted in 2009 and published in 2011, this is not exactly a recent development; what is recent is that the patent application was converted to a patent, which was then published. I seriously doubt they would've waited until that time to apply the technology, however, so in reality, assuming they had any intention of using the technology at all (not a guaranteed thing - just because it's patented doesn't mean it gets used in practice), this has probably been in use for a couple of years at least ("patent pending", etc.).

* Making most common plastics truly fireproof is quite difficult, and regardless of how fire resistant this renders the outer casing, it will not have any impact on whether the battery of a mobile device can explode or not. Explosions can still happen, and if the case cracks open, the hot, nasty, NSFW innards of the battery can still cause burns, even if the plastic doesn't catch fire. This will always be true simply because we demand greater and greater power densities of our portable power sources. Their physicochemical basis is almost irrelevant, the point is that there is a lot of energy in a small volume - energy that is designed to be readily released. That's fine so long as it doesn't come out all at once; it's when it does that you move from iPhone to iPhlame. Makes me wonder how much more development it'll take before the TSA decides that power sources above a certain energy density could be too easily repurposed as incendiary and / or explosive devices and outlaws them on passenger aircraft (they already regulate batteries and such).

* Another consequence of taking this approach is the amount of flame retardant additive necessary to make this work. The claims of the patent in question (i.e. where you want to go if you want to find out what they really care about) call out compositions that contain 50-70 wt% or so of flame retardant additive (see claim 9, do some math). Since these additives have densities much greater than the plastics themselves, this is not as much as it sounds like, but it's still a lot, and the consequences of putting this much of a dense, brittle inorganic compound into the plastic are typically that it becomes, well, more dense and brittle. In other words, there is a definite trade-off as far as the physical and mechanical properties are concerned. This may turn out to be a real problem depending on how much bending the case needs to withstand.

As a final point, I am a bit surprised that El Reg insists on linking to the USPTO, given the archaic and incredibly crappy looking user interface that website presents. I would strongly recommend using the European Patent Office as the source for all patents from now on. Here is the link to this same IP via the EPO, for comparison purposes (note that I have stripped down the URL to remove some additional lookup terms not necessary to retrieve the patent - your URL will be longer if you search for this):

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=8871843B2&FT=D

All of the bibliographic data is there and hotlinked, and you can download the full document in PDF format via a reasonably modern / usable interface - as opposed to the USPTO site, where a URL a half-mile long links to a site that makes the Windows 3.x UI look flashy and modern that forces the user (because links are for losers!) to perform separate searches for every prior publication. At least they no longer force one to install a TIFF reader plug-in and download individual pages in uncompressed TIFF format - that's how it used to be some years back. Given the great leap forward to PDF technology, I guess they must've finally sprung for that math co-processor...

Arc_Light

'iPhone 6' survives FRENZIED STABBING. Truly, it is the JESUS Phone

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love ceramics...

Ah, got it - thanks for clarifying (sorry, sorry :) Indeed, I'd forgotten about the gemstone grade SiC - cheap only because the crystals are small compared to the semiconductor type, but nicer looking - no doping, so no color at all. Good stuff!

Arc_Light

How I learned to stop worrying and love ceramics...

Hi all,

Thanks for the positive feedback and interesting responses! Very nice to see a healthy interest in materials science.

* cray74 - Sounds like we may be up to the same sorts of things from time to time! Totally agree, it's the non-oxide ceramics that win when it comes to ballistic protection, assuming transparency is not a requirement. It's amazing how tough and light the new ballistic protection is, even if the soldiers will always want it lighter (can't say I blame them given how much they lug around). That said, two small corrections:

- Commercial sapphire glass is actually monocrystalline - since the usual crystal structure of alumina is not sufficiently isotropic, it almost has to be to meet the optical requirements (well, barring trickery such as grain orientation in magnetic fields, doping to stabilize more isotropic crystal structures, etc.). Anyway, back to the screens, what we're looking at are single crystals, grown from seeds, then cut down and polished using some very expensive polishing media. This is why you see it used in smartphones but not, say, single-pane windows on the White House or what have you - they can only go so big. For vehicles they have to use multiple panels of the stuff with some binder in between. Frankly, it's amazing that it works at all to grow sapphire glass as they do - some serious engineering, that!

- Concerning the idea that non-oxide ceramics are by definition opaque, this is true sometimes, but not always. In other instances it's more that we suck at making single crystals of sufficient purity. Case in point, silicon carbide. We know it as a darkly colored or black material primarily because the stuff we see contains excess carbon. This is not a problem for sandpaper, but if you want to use it as a wide band-gap semiconductor in power electronics and the like, extra carbon is right out. Among the many different polytypes of SiC out there, you can easily get band gaps large enough to preclude significant absorption of visible light - meaning transparency becomes a possibility so long as you take microstructure into account (for some polytypes you'd need single crystals to get it, for others you might be able to get away with polycrystalline materials). That said, no need to take my word for it - see here:

http://resilienttechnology.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/why-silicon-carbide/

This is from 2010, so definitely not current, but even then you can see the progress they were making as far as both size and purity were concerned. Here's a nice picture of what you can buy these days:

http://www.semiconductorwafers.net/Transparent-SiC.html

The problem is simple - if you think melt-growth of alumina single crystals (Tm ~ 2072°C) is hard, just try it out with SiC (Tm ~ 2730°C) some time :) That said, who knows - in some decades, maybe we'll be talking about silicon carbide "glass" for the iPhone 42... The same folks who make the sapphire glass for Apple also make furnaces for growing high purity SiC, after all:

http://www.gtat.com/Products-and-services-PowerElectronics-SiClone.htm

* Arnaut the less - Well, first, see above - if Venus is where you're headed, I recommend waiting for the iPhone 42. With its beautiful silicon carbide glass shell, the iPhone 42 is the choice of extremophiles across the galaxy! Tired of other manufactureres' cheap diamond screens bursting into flames at the first hint of liquid oxygen? With its superior fire resistance, the silicon carbide casing of the iPhone 42 will stop fire in its tracks. Visiting Venus? Don't be caught with your pants down when the HF starts to fall - just grab your iPhone 42 and call for help! With luck, someone will find your corpse before it fully dissolves. The iPhone 42! It's the answer.

But seriously, SiC really will take that sort of abuse. The resistance of that stuff is insane; it's damn near impossible to etch (another reason it's taken so long to develop as a semiconductor).

Beyond that, you've reminded me of one of my favorite demos concerning microcracking and glass toughness. Take two well-used rods (settle down) of the same diameter based on pretty much any silicate glass you like. Cantilever one off the edge of a table. Have your densest coworker sit on the other end so it won't move (might want to offer them eye protection, a snack, and / or an iPhone 6 to make sure they won't either), and hang a bucket on the free end. Start filling with metal shot; eventually, of course, it will break. Now, take the other rod and give it a quick dip in HF - this eats the glass, the rod gets thinner, and of course, when you repeat the same experiment, the load at break is much higher.

The moral of this story, then, is very simple: For those concerned about the durability and appearance of their new iPhones, simply take them for a quick dunk in some HF from time to time to keep them looking their best. Of course, protecting your health is paramount when doing this, which is why you must always remember to turn the phone off before attempting such a thing. Believe me, you don't want to listen to Siri's reaction to The Process. There are certain things you can't un-hear.

* Lis 0r - Absolutely correct - blenders are funny that way, far more often it's about bashing, broadsword-style, than slicing, in spite of how we call the pointy bits "blades" and shape them accordingly - at least, superficially anyway... I expect that whatever is in the blender will experience higher localized stresses when bashed by a dull blade than by a really dull blade due to the increase in contact area as the dulling process continues, but the mode of action is definitely not obvious at first glance. I forget whether it was on Mythbusters or somewhere else, but I recall seeing some slow-mo video of a blender in action that proved the point - very cool.

* JLV - It'll take more than a grain of salt to do it, but have no fear, you'll still be able to break the iPhone 6 screen, if that's your thing - and yes, the replacements will not be cheap. This is why I must reiterate the importance of dipping your iPhone 6 in HF on a regular basis; it's the only way to be sure.

PS - As another example of insane and unexpected flexibility in materials we would normally refer to as rigid and brittle, check this out:

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120319005667/en/Silicon-Genesis-Announces-Generation-Polymax%E2%84%A2-Production-Equipment

That's a 20 µm thick polycrystalline silicon wafer. For the record, silicon has a stiffness ~2x that of glass and maybe a half to two-thirds of that of sapphire.

PPS - There are two kinds of people in the world with access to HF - those who know to treat it with respect and those who soon will. Would strongly suggest not going for a Darwin Award based on anything I've said here.

Arc_Light

On sapphire...

As someone who deals with this sort of thing professionally, I'd like to address some of the issues raised here:

* Re: DougS - Indeed, sapphire glass (a.k.a. corundum, alumina, etc.) is exceptionally hard. Scratching it would require something of the order of silicon carbide, boron carbide or diamond. As such, we agree that its ability to handle this abuse is not at all surprising. If you want to challenge the stuff, silicon carbide sandpaper is easy enough to come by, not to mention diamond rings. That said, please note that this may provoke an additional reaction from those to which said rings are attached, especially if they also happen to own the object of your amateur sclerometry.

* Re: DougS, various ACs - Concerning the flexibility, similar things have been accomplished with Gorilla Glass - and we all know how flexible glass optical fibers and fiberglass are. While this sort of thing is always a bit of a shock to see at least initially, given how much stronger sapphire is than glass, this is also not surprising. In fact, you can buy Schott glass screen protectors for digital cameras (Giotto's Aegis product line, for instance) that are of similar thickness and flexible. Bottom line, I can assure everyone here that this is not faked, plastic, etc. For anyone who needs more proof, this video is a lot of fun to watch (though to be fair, just looking at the bend they get in a sheet of glass that size makes me very, very nervous):

http://www.corninggorillaglass.com/gorilla-channel/How-Corning-Tests-Gorilla%C2%AE-Glass

More fun videos like that here:

http://www.corninggorillaglass.com/gorilla-channel

* Re: Admiral Grace Hopper, DougS - Yes, it will blend; a sharp enough impact and this, like all brittle materials, will shatter. A blender should work just fine, though it will dull the hell out of the blades in the process, and make an ungodly racket (iRacket?) as well.

* Re: Mr. Hamill / all other interested parties - If the wish is to know whether sapphire glass will stop an American assault rifle, on this point I can only speculate, but I suppose it would depend on how hard you threw it. As to the bullets coming out of said rifle, since this sort of materials is already in play in the transparent armor market, and has been shown to stop 7.62mm AP rounds - see here:

http://www.crystals.saint-gobain.com/uploadedFiles/SG-Crystals/Documents/SAFirE.pdf

...I would say that the answer is a qualified yes - though I would further speculate that an iPhone 6 is *probably* not an optimal ballistic protection system and that clearly you would need a bit more than a single unit to do it. Now, a *suit* of iPhones, overlapped in the form of scale-mail, with some phonebooks behind to catch the resultant iSpall, that could work, assuming you had the strength to wade through the human swarm that would surely form around you ("How shall we f*** off, oh Lord?", etc., etc.). On the positive side, they too would offer significant ballistic protection, so perhaps this isn't so bad.

* Re: The Man Himself - It is absolutely correct that toughened glass and sapphire have been around for years. Of course, they have gotten better at making these materials over time, but one of the early applications of sapphire glass (which is not really a glass but a single crystal of high purity aluminum oxide) was in bar code scanners at the grocer's - because it's both incredibly resistant to scratching and abrasion (which would otherwise disable the scanner over time). It's also IR-transparent, though as far as I know those scanners generally rely on red lasers, not IR sources.

* Re: DaLo, DougS: The idea that this synthetic sapphire is not "true" sapphire is only accurate in the sense that these do not come from pieces of great big blue stones dug out of the ground. We could just as easily call it ruby glass, since sapphire and ruby are both alumina crystals with minor impurities to give color (you can get other colors besides with the right doping). The difference in the case of the synthetic stuff is that it is entirely free of such impurities - hence no color. As far as I know, adding something would only compromise the properties, so we're talking pure alumina, as pure as you can get.

* One caveat concerning sapphire is that, while its initial fracture toughness is ~4x that of Gorilla Glass, it is not possible to prepare single crystal sapphire sheets with the sorts of built-in compressive stresses that glass manufacturers can build into their materials thanks to their truly glassy (amorphous) nature. As such, the argument goes, the initially high toughness of the sapphire will be reduced in practice because of the generation of microcracks in its surface over time. Once formed, if the material is bent and if there are no built-in compressive stresses to counteract the tensile stresses imposed on the outside of the bend, these microcracks will propagate rapidly, resulting in failure. Corning purports to show this here:

http://www.corninggorillaglass.com/news-events/Corning-Gorilla-Glass-vs.-Sapphire

They're rather down on sapphire more generally here:

http://www.corning.com/news_center/features/gorillaglasssuccess.aspx

Of course, since they sell Gorilla Glass, it behooves them to make the argument. I suspect that those who use sapphire are attempting to address the issues of scratch and abrasion resistance that many complain about with glass screens, and relying on this high level of durability to suppress microcrack formation for a reasonable amount of time. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the real world.

PS - To be clear, I do not work for any of the companies referred to here (nor have I in the past), and to date I have not been involved in any research efforts specifically related to the sapphire, glass or Gorilla Glass materials discussed.

Arc_Light

The Reg's desert XP-ocalypse aversion plan revealed

My long list...

Some suggestions for useful utilities are as follows (some are repeats, some not - am just running down a selection of files in my utilities folder):

* 7-Zip

* Audacity

* Bitvise SSH Server (if you want to do SSH-tunneled RDP securely later on - I remote administer a bunch of PCs this way, it's very handy and very easy to install / configure / use - Bitvise SSH Client being the connection tool of course - supports terminal, SFTP, RDP, etc.)

* CCleaner, Defraggler and Recuva (all Piriform)

* CDBurnerXP or ImgBurn (the latter I like better these days)

* Passmark Disk Checkup (or some other free SMART monitor, in case a drive starts to fail - only annoying thing is it sometimes locks USB keys such that Windows will refuse to eject them)

* DNSCrypt Windows Service Manager Package (makes DNSCrypt / OpenDNS setup that much easier - see http://simonclausen.dk/projects/dnscrypt-winservicemgr/)

* DoPDF (nice free print-to-PDF driver)

* Exact Audio Copy + LAME (+ RazorLAME if you want a nice frontend) + MP3Tag (if they'll be into CD ripping)

* GIMP + InkScape (though I may have to check out Paint.net given the posts here)

* LibreOffice

* Locate32 (a million times better than any Microsoft search utility - turn off indexing / disable and use this instead)

* VLC Player or Media Player Classic Home Cinema + CCCP (I prefer the latter, YMMV)

* Notepad++ *or* Metapad (I like both - the latter seems faster / lighter weight to me actually, even if - or maybe because - it's rather old)

* PDF-XChange Viewer (I like it because it's the only free viewer I found with an equivalent of Acrobat's typewrite function, which for me is critical)

* Pidgin + Skype (if you're in to that sort of thing)

* Process Explorer, Process Monitor, TCPView, WireShark and RegSeeker (more for you than users though)

* PuTTY, or even better, KiTTY, and WinSCP (again, a bit advanced / redundant with Bitvise SSH client to some extent, but if you want)

* Traffic Shaper XP (excellent for, well, traffic shaping :) - seems potentially useful in a bandwidth-limited environment)

* XMedia Recode (*awesome* transcoder, tons of easy to understand presets) and maybe VirtualDub

* VirusTotal Uploader (always a nice thing to have, especially since it hashes the file first to confirm whether upload is necessary - good with limited bandwidth)

* VMWare Player (in case they want to eventually try out Linux without the commitment of nuking their Windows install in the process or the trouble of setting up dual boot after the fact - superior to VirtualBox in terms of compatibility as far as I've seen, I love that I can run a 64-bit Ubuntu guest in a 32-bit Windows host :)

* Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics (if you have any WD drives installed, anyway - simple utility for SMART / disk testing)

* WinDirStat (excellent for answering that nagging question of "where did all my space go?")

* XnView (very nice picture viewer, also handles simple resizing / batch conversion, can play some media files as well)

Now, if we're talking web browsers, for security it's Comodo Dragon or IceDragon I would say, but if you want speed and like a FireFox type environment, I currently favor Pale Moon. Between that and Thunderbird, recommendations for plugins are as follows:

Firefox / related:

* AdBlock Plus

* BetterPrivacy (good / unobtrusive)

* Calomel SSL Validation (not essential but handy)

* DoNotTrackMe (pretty friendly in that it explains itself)

* DownThemAll! (nice downloader that I can see as being particularly useful in a bandwidth-limited environment, between throttling and restart capabilities)

* Flashblock (*highly* recommended - will save on bandwidth and improve security too)

* Forecastfox (who doesn't like to talk about the weather...)

* Ghostery (also pretty user-friendly)

* HTTPS-Everywhere (good / highly unobtrusive)

* NoScript (less sure about this - maybe too intrusive?)

Thunderbird related:

* Awesome Auto Archive (OMG, how did I live without this - really *is* awesome)

* Extra Folder Columns (minor improvement but handy for tracking message count / size)

* Mail Summaries (not essential but cool)

* Manually Sort Folders (not essential but might relieve some user frustration?)

* MinimizeToTray Revived (well, *I* think it's essential :) - works for FF too)

* Simple HT Jumper (very handy for occasionally switching to HTML messages if you need to)

* SortPref (as above, not essential but might relieve some user frustration?)

PS - In addition to my faves above, I've picked up some new and useful tools to try, so thanks to everyone for the posts!

Enjoy,

Arc_Light

ROBO-SNOWDEN: Iraq, the internet – two places the US govt invaded that weren't a threat

Re: Stay tuned...

Why don't you just spit it all out and be done with it? It's getting tedious.

So the attention-deficient world in which we live gets regular reminders of how out of control our governments have become - and maybe, just maybe, people become sufficiently motivated to do something about it.

It makes a lot of sense if you think about it, but as you've clearly demonstrated, this is not obligatory.

Arc_Light

Help a hack: What's in your ultimate Windows XP migration toolkit?

Other thoughts...

Some other thoughts:

* If the user-base is naive, solid AV / anti-malware / ad-blocking software will be critical. I like Avast! Free / Malwarebytes Pro (not free, sorry) / AdBlock Plus, but YMMV. NoScript is probably a bit excessive / liable to cause confusion, but there may be other steps that one can take along these lines as well. As a bonus, blocking such crap cuts down on bandwidth usage. Consider avoiding Java / Flash / Shockwave / Silverlight as well for the same reasons.

* Mercilessly disable all forms and flavors of autorun. Sorry, but users will have to learn how to find their drives; this is a security necessity from where I sit. You can accomplish all sorts of useful things via Group Policy Editor, but Ultimate Windows Tweaker is useful too:

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-a-tweak-ui-for-windows-7-vista

* Use Piriform CCleaner to clean up temporary files / the registry once all is said and done - of all the software that does this sort of thing, this one has never cause me issues in many years of use:

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

* Make sure to very carefully control any auto-update features of anything installed - in bandwidth-limited situations this will be essential to usability.

* In addition to using QoS if possible, consider some traffic shaping software; it's freeware, and in spite of the name, Traffic Shaper XP works just fine in a Windows 7 environment:

http://bandwidthcontroller.com/trafficShaperXp.html

* Bring a copy of the latest version of Hiren's BootCD (or your preferred equivalent) on a USB key, just in case.

Arc_Light

TCPOptimizer

There's only so much one can do about a lack of bandwidth, but, having said that, whenever I'm looking to maximize network speeds on a Windows box, I use TCPOptimizer:

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

I first have it perform an MTU check, then optimize all parameters associated with the relevant adapters - this is assuming you know the (actual) connection speed. If not, there are a number of "speed test" websites that should enable you to determine what it is. It might not hurt to have a look at the "Advanced" tab in Device Properties for the network hardware as well, just to see if there are any settings in there that might help, but that's very much hardware-dependent.

Nothing amazing, but hopefully it helps a little...

Arc_Light

Smut-spreading copyright trolls told to return cash extracted from victims

Alternate explanation

All this lawyer-bashing is premature. Isn't it possible that the actions of Prenda Law's lead attorney, the one spreading porn on BitTorrent, were an innocent attempt to drum up interest in his "other" job? His name *is* John Steele, after all, and his ability to grip a shaft has already been documented (SFW until someone "brings out the GIMP"):

http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2012/05/25/who-and-where-is-prenda-law-what-happened-to-john-steele/

Seriously, look at his face! What's going on there? I'm just sayin'...

Arc_Light

Now Spanish sperm takes a kick to the cojones

Really? Plasticised water bottles + no skepticism?

Folks,

In all seriousness, I have to say, I'm really disappointed in the comments here so far. If this article had been on global warming, I'd be wading through a sea of skeptical voices. Most other studies that get coverage here provoke at least some questioning. Here, we're at 30+ comments and (with apologies if this gives anyone indigestion), everyone seems to have swallowed this whole. One of the reasons I really appreciate the readers here is your intelligence, skepticism and sense of humor - but here's the thing, the BBC itself put out an excellent article just recently on the whole "sperm counts are dropping OMG OMG OMG" headline we see every few months under the subheading "Medical Myths" - see here:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120515-are-sperm-counts-dropping

Skepticism should be applied liberally regardless of the subject matter. If you've not read "It's not News, it's FARK", it's worth a look.

Also, if you're going to make technical comments, please make sure you know what you're talking about (I'm looking at you, "an it guy"). To whit, this:

"Unfortunately tap water has lots of oestrogen because of all the women on the pill which adds oestrogen."

...is false. See here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208125813.htm

Birth control pills account for less than 1% of the estrogenic activity of tap water (though I do agree that it's not easy to get everything out via filtration).

"Don't think that bottled water helps. Being on the shelf for a while before you get it, the plasticisers (phthalates and others) which make plastic easy to shape/bend tend to leach into the bottled water."

Wrong again. There are no plasticisers in plastic water bottles. Disposable plastic water bottles are made out of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). Yes, the word "phthalate" appears in them both. No, they are not the same thing. Besides the fact that some companies just sell you tap water in a bottle, what you actually have to worry about leaching from PET bottles is antimony, if you let them get really hot a while - see here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17707454

Still, the conditions under which this happens are fairly extreme. Now, if you mean reusable plastic water bottles, ten years ago they would've been BPA polycarbonate, but since bisphenol A (BPA) has been implicated for its estrogenicity, polycarbonate has been replaced by a BPA-free copolyester. You can also find polyethylene used in some cases, and probably a few other materials in niche markets besides. If you though you were clever by going for a metal bottle, what you almost certainly got was a bottle whose interior is coated with a BPA-based epoxy that *does* leach BPA into water (in small quantities). If you're really worried about BPA and phthalates in your diet, stop eating so much packaged food and cook something with fresh ingredients:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21450549

That said, if you find yourself on a steady diet of Ramen, Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew (yes, I *did* have some CS training, thank you very much), guess what, BPA and phthalates may not be the greatest hazards you face. Case in point, we now sit on our *sses far more these days than we used to, and between that and the "Breakfast of Champions" described above, we're getting a lot fatter as a result. Studies have linked obesity and lack of physical activity (as well as overly strenuous workouts) to lower sperm counts. Be skeptical of those studies too, but be aware of their existence.

Finally, if you need an IT angle, consider the rise of internet pr0n (I know, "we have, we have"). Perhaps the poor wankers recruited for more recent studies in countries with more "freedom" (wink wink nudge nudge) were unable to wank as productively as a consequence. It is for this reason that we must ban all internet pr0n - think of the children(!!) that we're not having as a result.

PS - Actually, I think I've just made a case for distributing more internet pr0n to countries with too many people and not enough freedom. Apologies, that was an accident.

Your friendly neighborhood boffin,

Arc_Light

TSA to pull backscatter perv scanners from US airports

Re: The sad thing is...

Hi cortland,

You've hit the nail on the head. The units I use run software that, depending on your hardware configuration, could control the x-ray generator as well. That always made me quite nervous, because in my experience the software is notoriously buggy and prone to crash at random on occasion. For us it isn't a safety issue because our units are properly shielded and hardware-interlocked (as opposed to the Therac 25 and Rapiscan systems), meaning my biggest worry is blowing out an x-ray tube (or worse, melting the tube tower) and running up some serious repair / replacement bills - but that's still very bad for us here, so I am very happy to inform those I train that the one and only thing that controls the generator is the illuminated panel with the pretty buttons and knobs on it - nothing else. There are literally no connections between the data collection and x-ray generation systems, so the computer could explode and (barring shrapnel damage) the generator wouldn't skip a beat - and much better this way. This gets to the definition of the word "failsafe" - when a critical system fails, it must do so gracefully. Sloppy code may be overlooked on trifling matters like office suites and operating systems, but if you're going to write code of the sort that results in major damage, injury or death when it doesn't run correctly, there is no "try". If that's not comfortable, admit you're human and throw in a few well-designed hardware interlocks to be sure; end of story.

As to why people were up in arms in the first place, indeed, this is a rather sad comment on where we are. It's not the fact of being microwaved / x-rayed for no good reason that upsets most folks, it's that "they can see me nekkid, ZOMG!!!". Yes, I agree, it's an invasion of privacy that we shouldn't have to tolerate (though I feel sorry for anyone who gets aroused by the grayscale topographic maps these things produce) - but that could describe so many things the government does, especially in airports, and neglects the fact that there are more important things wrong here. In particular, it A.) doesn't accomplish its stated purpose of making us safer and B.) represents a health hazard for TSA agents, flight crew and passengers (unjustifiably so because of A).

PS - For the record, while x-rays are right out, I don't mind being microwaved a bit - my feet get cold followed the government mandated de-shoeing (it's like de-planing, look it up), so to be honest I would welcome the ability to up the podiatric dose in particular. I do mind the fact that it's a pointless, distracting and burdensome exercise that tax dollars are being spent to perpetuate, however. I've done my fair share of travel, and as a prior poster said, the Israelis do it right; why we refuse to learn from them is beyond me.

PPS - OK, no it isn't. There's good money to be made in security theatre. It does, nevertheless, piss me off.

Arc_Light

Re: The sad thing is...

Malcolm,

Sad but true :( While I've seen both the ups and downs of unions, it's clear that these folks needed a voice. I presume said politicians used an argument similar to the one Reagan applied to air traffic controllers to justify such a move... Well, since they're getting rid of these devices anyway, the only fitting thing to do would be to install them in the offices of the congressmen responsible for this - just as a precaution, of course.

Arc_Light

The sad thing is...

...that the folks who should have been more worried than the passengers about the backscatter units - possibly even more worried than the flight crew - were the TSA employees themselves Don't get me wrong, the policies they are made to follow are ludicrous and their attitude can too often leave something to be desired. At the same time, in spite of the fact that it is indeed security theatre and a huge waste of taxpayers' money, I have nevertheless come across TSA personnel who were polite, respectful, and made the best of a stupid situation. Even that weren't the case, though, that doesn't mean it's OK to require anyone to work for hours and hours and hours right next to full-body x-ray scanners with man-sized opening on both sides and without even the most basic of dosimetry equipment - seriously, WTF??

Full disclosure - I am a boffin. I have worked with research equipment generating potentially dangerous amounts of x-rays for over a decade. The only reason I don't wear a badge when operating the unit I run the most these days is because it's fully enclosed, shielded, and as close to idiot-proof as you can get - you would have to be trying to get an exposure (and understand exactly where the multiple safety interlocks are and how to disable them) for anything bad to happen - that, or literally start destroying the shielding with power tools and a blowtorch. That said, I didn't take anyone's word for that, not even my own, and not even after I was done helping assemble the thing - we did a radiation survey, one that gets repeated on a regular basis.

Across the hall, there's another lab with x-ray equipment that is open - and you better believe they have dosimetry badges. For that matter, only the elder boffin who cobbled the equipment together from bits and pieces of other units gets to use it, and that thing still makes me nervous when I see the big red "X-RAY ON" light lit. Every institution I've worked at, you see dosimetry equipment, there are regular surveys, things are shielded and people's exposures are monitored. When you go for a radiological procedure at a hospital or doctor's office, you're always given shielding and the tech always steps being a shield as well, at which point they apply exactly the dose they mean to apply - no mystery about the amount of radiation.

Now, let's go back to the airport. Not once did I ever submit to the backscatter units. I remember one time a pretty reasonable TSA officer was doing the pat-down (which, in my view, was at least as embarrassing for him), and as he was working, I explained to him that I worked with x-rays professionally and that I had concerns about the safety of these units (some skin cancer in my family, the backscatter dose is concentrated in the skin so this idea that "the dose is insignificant" is bullsh*t - only true if you distribute it over the entire body, at which point they should be seeing my skeleton in their scanners). I then indicated that, in my view, he should be at least as worried, given that he's with the thing all day, and asked if they gave him anything to check his dose. "No," was his reply, and my shock and incredulity got him pretty quiet, I have to say. I told him I thought they should really do something about that to make sure he and his colleagues were safe, and wished him luck. I think I scared him a bit, and with good reason - I would not want to be in that position.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they've shown that the radiation leakage from a brand new, fully functional machine isn't much. How long does that unit stay brand new and fully functional in an airport environment, when operated by people without the foggiest idea of how it works and with very little concern for its well-being? How would these folks ever know if the thing started leaking harmful amounts of x-rays if there's not even a film badge around that gets sent for monthly analysis? I can't believe that's even legal. The TSA agents themselves should've been the loudest voices against this next to the pilots and flight crew. Nowhere else on the planet will you see x-ray generating equipment handle so stupidly. Why not get the fluoroscopes back out to look for shoe bombers, while we're at it...

Bottom line, X-rays are not to be trifled with, or projected about with wild abandon. You use them when you have a good reason, and when lower frequency radiation just won't do. At this rate, I get the feeling that the only reason we've not seen neutron backscatter (or better yet neutron activation) on passengers is due to difficulties in finding sufficiently portable neutron sources. In any event, I am happy to hear that we are getting back to the business of simply microwaving passengers instead.

Arc_Light

Help-desk hell

Not quite IT, but...

...same vein for certain.

So, here I am, one of the few engineers in a graduate dormitory at a prestigious university. It gets out I know something about computers, and so I help a few people here and there, as I've done all my life for friends and family. I'm not too bad about fixing things more generally, so eventually folks start coming to me with various problems.

One day, I'm sitting in my room, when an (East) Indian girl (not FOB by the way, well-Westernized and with significant experience living in Japan as well, and pursuing an advanced degree in international relations or language studies or somesuch) who lives around the way stops by with her lamp, tells me it doesn't work and asks if I can have a look just to see if something can be done before she throws it away. Nice girl, no problem, how hard can this be, so I say yes.

Take a look - no obvious damage to any wiring. open things up to where I can get at the switch - looks fine as well. Check with my multimeter - great. What could be wrong? Weirdest thing I'd ever seen.

Then, I think to myself, "wait a minute, really?", and I check the bulb.

I call the owner of the lamp to my room, indicate that I've looked it over and have an idea of what's wrong, and ask her what exactly happened to the lamp that caused it to break in the first place. She indicates that she accidentally knocked it off her desk, and after that, "it just stopped working". Indeed. I explain that, if anything like that should happen again, it's probably a good idea to try a new bulb before pitching the lamp.

"I don't understand it - the car just stopped, and I'd not even driven it 500 km. Time to get a new car, I guess..."

Arc_Light

SHOCK: Poll shows Americans think TSA is highly effective

Hold on...

While I tend to agree with the various comments expressed above, I think we also have to remember how this poll was conducted. If you follow the link, the question asked was as follows:

"Thinking now about the TSA, the government agency that handles security screening at U.S. airports, do you think the TSA is doing an excellent, good, only fair or poor job?"

There are multiple ways to interpret that question, and if one interprets it as "how well are they doing the job they've been told to do?", the answer I myself would give would tend to be positive - that is, I believe they are, on balance, doing a good job at following the policies they've been told to follow. I also happen to think that those policies are by and large idiotic, unnecessary, and far more about the appearance of security than actually making us safe (all the while eroding our privacy, wasting our time, exposing us to unnecessary radiation and generally making the whole process far more unpleasant than it needs to be), but they are effectively executing those idiotic policies most of the time, are they not? What they should've done was to ask a question concerning the TSA's policies themselves, not their ability to execute on them.

As to the follow-up:

"How effective do you think the TSA’s screening procedures are at preventing acts of terrorism on U.S. airplanes – extremely effective, very effective, somewhat effective, not too effective or not effective at all?"

...the response you see is a direct result of the lack of any successful terrorist attacks via *US* airplane - that's in the question - in the last 11 years. Of course, if you put things in perspective:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001454.html

...up to that point we had never had a single terrorist attack via US airplane at all; the closest we came were the Lockerbie bombings, since the flight was headed to the US, and we went for 13 years after that (without total panic, I might add) with nothing, in spite of all sorts of bad people being quite unhappy with us all over the world even then. This confirms that we are really, really bad at working out cause and effect - by far the more dismaying answer in my view than the one about whether the TSA is doing a "heckuva job" or not.

Last point, while as I say I agree with the points being made here, I will also say that, having lived in Europe and in the US and traveling internationally quite a lot over the last decade plus, airport security in the UK is even worse than in the US, in my experience. One carry on / no personal item, screened over and over and over again and on and on - ugh. I didn't think that was possible until I experienced it, but I can say now that it is. Not sure why you folks put up with that either, honestly, if we're going to be even-handed here...

Perhaps we should try airport security the French way (at least where CDG is concerned) by making our airports impossible to navigate, doing more to encourage missed connections and losing every third bag - at least 33% less likely to have a bomb on the plane that way, in addition to which the way they handle the bags that do make it at CDG makes me 100% certain that anything even remotely shock sensitive will be detonated well before it gets loaded. I have never seen such violence, such anger, such passion directed towards luggage as the French are able to summon at CDG. It is really quite something, and has made me an expert at repairing luggage.

As a friend said about my hard-sided Samsonite bag - the all plastic clamshell kind and the only thing that's survive the entire period in question (IT angle, I not once but *twice *brought a desktop tower trans-Atlantic inside it - pulled the HDs and put them in my carry-on, then stuffed the inside with packing material - no damage, still using the case) - I've replaced so many of the plastic fittings they've beaten the sh*t out of - stuff that it shouldn't be possible to break (but they did) - with over-engineered metal replacements that it's getting to the point where they are going to have to cut it in half to break it the next time around.

Arc_Light

VW STUNS WORLD+DOG WITH REAL HOVER-CAR!

Re: aluminium is paramagnetic

Careful where you point that science! Aluminium *is* paramagnetic, yes, which means it's weakly *attracted* by a magnetic field. It's *diamagnetic* items that are weakly repelled. What sorts of items are diamagnetic? You know, the usual - water, organic compounds, frogs (the non-robotic kind that is)...see for yourself:

http://www.ru.nl/hfml/research/levitation/diamagnetic/

A mag-lev bed would be great, but good luck keeping the sheets tucked in ;)

America abandoning DSL in favour of faster cable

Re: France Telecom's monopoly

AC said:

"BTW, you should really re-visit your notion of a free market.... The reality is that France Telecom owns ALL the land line infrastructure in France. Other providers like Free just piggyback on that infrastructure - it's not a true 'free market', it's pretty much the same thing we have in the US (aka open access).

The difference is that the courts broke up ATT's monopoly in the early 1980s whereas France Telcom was, until very recently, just a branch of the government. And when it became independent, it inherited a very, very expensive land line infrastructure build by taxpayer dollars."

No, the difference is that seven years ago, the majority of the French population had higher speeds and more ISPs to choose from than we do in the US *right now*.

To put it another way, the French accomplished in a little over five years (following the privatization of France Telecom in 1998) what the US has been unable to accomplish in nearly twenty (following the break-up of AT&T in 1983). Indeed, BRAVO.

I revisited my notion of a free market, just as you suggested, and it turns out you're wrong - having a dozen ISPs competing for my business isn't "pretty much the same" as having one or two - having experienced both, it's not even close.

Very expensive taxpayer funded infrastructure? At least the French taxpayers got their money's worth! Anyone who'd bothered to click on the link in my original message would know that Americans gave out $200 billion for fiber-optic infrastructure that was never actually built. We're still paying for it to this day when we get fiber optic broadband installed.

When the article I linked was written (2006), the US was 16th as far as broadband internet was concerned. It's now 26th. It's not just France that's beating us here, it's the rest of the industrialized world. Failing to appreciate this fact will not make it go away.

Arc_Light

Re: France SUCKS

Hi Chris,

I will grant you that telecom and ISP customer service in France can be exceptionally poor - I had some extremely unpleasant experiences with France Telecom as well - those people suck, and you're right, they really don't care - certainly a hold-over from being a government-run monopoly for so long. Having said that, my experience with Free's customer service the one time I had issues with my DSL (for the record, BTW, I was quite a ways from Paris) was very good, in spite of my poor language skills at the time. I challenge you to get a friendly, helpful Verizon or Comcast support tech on the phone in the US who is ready and willing to speak French if English fails...

Second point, and here I think you answered your own argument, is that your mom lives in a rural area. In France, as in the US, about three quarters of the population is urban; for the other quarter in rural areas, internet access blows in either country. Your mom's very bad experience aside, the US isn't any better in this regard - in fact, bringing me back to the internet rankings, on average it's substantially worse, and falling further and further behind every year. France may suck in various ways, then, but not compared to the US as far as internet access is concerned.

Bottom line, then, while I'm sorry to hear about your mom's very bad experience, the fact remains that in France seven years ago the majority of the population had higher speeds and more ISPs available to them than people in the US do TODAY. That level of choice ALSO means that if the customer service sucks, the average Jacques has a much better chance of finding an alternative ISP to his liking than the average Joe. That's strong incentive to improve customer service, I would add. This is as compared to the situation in the US, where if your local monopolists / duopolists are terrible (which is a reality more often than it should be, even in urban areas), your only choice is to move.

Arc_Light

We're #26! USA! USA!

The sad thing is just how pathetically bass-ackwards we are in the US when it comes to high speed internet. All of these technical arguments pale in comparison to the real issue, which is the near-total lack of competition! At BEST, you have either the local phone monopoly or the local cable monopoly to choose from. When I was younger, I lived and worked in France. There, thanks to the presence of an actual free market when it came to ISPs, I had a dozen different providers to choose from. Here's the comparison, then and now (both in major metropolitan areas):

USA, 2012: Verizon DSL, ~$35/month, 3 MBps / 0.5 MBps

France, 2005: FreeDSL, 20 euros/month, 6 MBps / 1 MBps

In other words, in France I got twice the speed, for less money, SEVEN YEARS AGO. This has NOTHING to do with technology, people.

When I lived in France I saw ads for 20-40 MBps connections on a regular basis, without any requirement to come in and rip up your lines installing the connection or to obligate you to never downgrade (hello, FIOS). In the US, we could only dream of such things until recently.

For those who have not read this already, here's the real story of all of the service charges and tax breaks US telcos were given access to in exchange for failure to deliver the high-speed network they are now creating piecemeal through FIOS installation fees and the like:

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=186

Here we are, folks - France, a country many "real Merikans" consider to be the epitome of socialism, has been beating our pants off for the last DECADE as far as creating a free market for broadband internet access is concerned - them and pretty much every other country in the industrialized world.

I'll say it again: Pathetic.

Arc_Light

Apple ditches video evidence

Oh, FFS...

Consumer Reports - non-profit, unbiased, well-respected - had this to say:

"The iPhone scored high, in part because it sports the sharpest display and best video camera we've seen on any phone, and even outshines its high-scoring predecessors with improved battery life and such new features as a front-facing camera for video chats and a built-in gyroscope that turns the phone into a super-responsive game controller. But Apple needs to come up with a permanent—and free—fix for the antenna problem before we can recommend the iPhone 4." - July 12

"Consumer Reports believes Apple's offer of free cases is a good first step. However, Apple has indicated that this is not a long-term solution, it has guaranteed the offer only through September 30th, and has not extended it unequivocally to customers who bought cases from third-party vendors. We look forward to a long-term fix from Apple. As things currently stand, the iPhone 4 is still not one of our Recommended models." - July 16

In short: it's a very nice phone with an antenna design that is significantly more crapulent than the competition's. These points are not debatable, no matter how many others prefer alternative smart phones OR how many iPhone 4 users have never had a problem.

Now then - if competitors take advantage of a situation Apple was wholly responsible for creating and has repeatedly failed to fully and completely address, who, again, should be taken to task?

[Paris, 'cause she's the only one still thinking about the answer...]