Overrated.org

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16566968/site/newsweek/page/2/

First off, I think the iPhone looks cool and has some really neat new UI.  However, lets dig a little deeper - here are some quotes from Steve Jobs regarding the iPhone:

“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform” - Can you imagine the flak a Microsoft or Linux rep would get for saying this?
“Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.” - Nothing like a completely false claim to back up your argument.

The article goes on:

But cynics may note that instead of Apple’s instant-messaging program iChat, there is that aforementioned SMS messaging program. On the screen, when you send and receive messages, the display resembles the way you view them on iChat, in colorful text balloons. But because each message is an SMS text message, depending on the billing plan, users may get charged a few cents each time they say “wassup.” (iChat lets you gab all you want for free.) Maybe this won’t be a problem—Jobs hints that Cingular may offer different billing plans for iPhone, though for now he isn’t saying for sure. In any case, Jobs say, “There’s no reason we couldn’t have iChat on here.” So bring it on.Another intriguing possibility not yet exploited in the iPhone is the ability to take a song from one’s iTunes music library and instantly make a ring tone from it. “Wouldn’t that be cool?” says Jobs, after I brought it up. “It could be done.” Then he rubbed his fingers together, the universal symbol for “that would cost us.”

Hmm, my Windows Mobile phone (which also has issues) seems to take any mp3 or wma as a ringtone just fine.  Oh and I got a really nice voice dialing application and one specific for traffic in the Seattle area.

The iPhone looks cool, but I vote it overrated.

Troy Smith wins Heisman than lays an egg in the championship game. Who does he think he is? Jason White?

Florida 41
OSU 14

Ohio State was favored to win by 7.

Chris Leak 25/36 213yrds 5.9/att 1 TD 0 INT
Troy Smith 4/14 35yrds 2.5/att 0 TD 1 INT

http://proxy.espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?gameId=270080194

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/07/tigger.ap/index.html

LOS ANGELES — “The O.C.,” the once-hot teenage soap opera that saw its ratings plummet like a delinquent student’s grades, has been canceled. The final episode of the drama will air 9 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 22, Fox TV and Warner Bros. Television Production Inc. said Wednesday.

The finale “will deliver real closure to the series, to the story we began telling four years ago,” series creator Josh Schwartz said in a statement. “It will be fun and emotional and I think really satisfying. It is the finale we always planned to do.”

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2007/01/03/505320-foxs-once-hot-the-oc-is-canceled

This commercial for a Zune looks a lot more like a commercial for a dildo to me…

Seriously, how come prosecutors can do everything wrong trying to get (possibly) innocent people in jail and only get a stern talking to? Admonishment?! I got a worse punishment than that when I got a B in grade school.

The North Carolina bar filed ethics charges Thursday against the prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case, accusing him of saying misleading or inflammatory things to the news media about the athletes under suspicion.

The punishment for ethics violations can range from admonishment to disbarment.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2710747

This story from funreports.com is hopefully true but probably not…

These days thieves are becoming so sophisticated that their creativity spreads fear. Some of them have already designed special electronic scanners that can break car alarm codes; others have used cranes to drag away vehicles. But the most impressive theft took place in Moscow not very long ago. The crime was performed with such eloquence that even the victims themselves could not help expressing their admiration, Moskovskiy Komsomolets reports.

Here is how the stealing was performed – one hot afternoon the Balashikh beach on the Moscow-River shore received special visitors: three extremely attractive girls in an SUV. They got out of the car, approached the water and… took off all their clothes. Then the hotties began splashing near the shore, laughing and capturing everyone’s attention.

On top of that the witnesses claimed that the girls even gave a minor lesbian show and started playfully washing each other, which was met with high approval and wild excitement by the male observers.

While these naked women with sexy bodies gathered around themselves a crowd of admirers, a group of thieves approached the fans’ abandoned cars. Within some fifteen minutes ten cars were robbed clean and four very expensive ones were stolen! As for the three nymphs, after completing their show they quickly got into their car and disappeared in some unknown direction. Currently both the cars and the performers are being sought by the police. However, the investigators say that it would be very hard to prove the girls’ fault. After all, they were simply bathing…

Slashdot is even more biased than Fox News.  This front-page article describes how Microsoft giving out some laptops to bloggers for review is “bribery” and “immoral”.
http://slashdot.org/articles/06/12/27/1423234.shtml

[Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft.  That doesn’t mean I drink the Koolaid though.]

The choice is clear…