“groovy mother...”

Good breakdown of the FUD involved in the Apple “bricking” “scandal”.

Fake Steve on the iPhone 1.1.1 firmware: “If you always wait for the vendor to actually get everything working right, you’ll never buy any technology product because there is always something that isn’t quite right. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of frustration and anger, plus the envy and admiration of all your friends.”

“Fuck is just a word. I use it liberally when I don’t feel like filtering (and I feel that by not filtering, the post will be better for it). So get over it, you bunch of pansy ass, oversensitive, hypocritical whiners.”

It’s funny because it’s true.

Good Rands post on how to correctly deal with job interviews — as an information-gathering operation. “How… would you… test a soda machine… in the dark… submerged in strawberry jello?”

Good summary of what Apple would be up against even if they *wanted* to let you turn your MP3s into ringtones for free.

Wow — Calculations in Excel 2007 that come to 65,535 get displayed as 100,000. “Oops”

Amazon’s un-DRMed 256kbps MP3 store launches. It’s got the full EMI and indie catalogues that iTunes has DRM-free, plus the Universal catalogue.

There’s an optional downloader for Windows and Mac that allows you to queue up entire albums and import them into iTunes automagically, but you can also download individual tracks without any software.

My only problem with it? The first track I tried buying — “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond — turned out to be a live recording without being marked as such. So now? I get to test Amazon’s refund policy!

Filed away for ammunition the next time someone excuses gov’t massive-database-building with the platitude “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

OLPC will be running a buy-one-donate-one scheme for the XO laptop: Pay $399 and you’ll get a laptop for yourself and pay to send another to the developing world.