== iPhone Will Broker World Peace = By Mark Morford

[madokie]

Luscious uber-gizmo also rumored to cure brain cancer, provide oral sex. All true!

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2007/06/08/notes060807.DTL&nl=fix

Baby, the Cold War is so back on.

Did you hear? Dour, pale-as-vodka Russian President Vlad "Cold, Humorless Stare" Putin took one look at the war-hungry Bush-pocked American agenda for building a new missile shield and stockpiling fresh arsenals of WMD in eastern Europe (It's to protect us from those scary Iranian nukes! BushCo stammered, obviously lying like dogs), slammed a shot of frozen Stoli and pounded his tiny white fist on the solid mahogany parliament table and said, "We will bury you," just before spontaneously bursting into a glorious shower of silver confetti, pink flower petals and tiny black sparrows.

Wait, I might have that a little bit wrong. I might have torqued my facts a little, my vision slightly askew, though surely you can understand given how right now it's just so easy to become, you know, distracted, just slightly sidetracked, what with so many brutally numbing war stories and then this loud divine humming noise coming from Cupertino and what with this entirely enthralling quadruplet of dangerously beautiful new iPhone commercials now available to the world like sultry Siamese cats wearing shiny necklaces made of chocolate and Ecstasy and porn.

Wait, I might be exaggerating that just a little, too. What can you do? ...

[Atman]

1. K&R...because Morford takes a good shot at the obligatory Apple haters

<snip>

Hey, I know how it is. There you are, trying like any good American to be all wary and jaded and depressed for the thousandth time as you read about, say, the bloodiest month on record in Iraq for U.S. war casualties or how Bush has nominated yet another absolutely awful candidate for a high-ranking judicial slot or even the one about Scooter Libby taking the 2.5-years-in-prison bullet for Dick "Waking Nightmare" Cheney, when boom, you see the ad about how the iPhone senses which way it's rotated and the screen adjusts accordingly, and suddenly you're whipped out of your torpid lethargy and spanked back into some sort of shallow but delightful oh-my-God-it's-so-cool happiness.

Really, why not just give in? Why not, in this case, just enjoy it? Yes, the thing's wildly overhyped. Yes, it's just a glorified telephone and, yes, the army of Apple haters is right this minute sharpening their knives in anticipation of slamming every tiny flaw they can find in the iPhone, right along with how much they hate anything Apple does because, you know, who cares about simplicity and grace and thoughtful functionality in modern technology? Right.

It's OK. Let 'em rage. I say let the iPhone divert our collective attention, just for a few precious, suspended moments. Why not? After all, with the iPod as its stunning, groundbreaking predecessor, it's one of the few things -- unlike Putin or Lindsay or even our wayward and war-weary national agenda -- that seems to actually have earned it.

<snip>

.

[frylock]

2. ther are just as many windoze haters on this board as there are mac haters..

just pop into a thread somebody posted soliciting help with their PC. There's at least one, if not several, helpful "get a Mac" replies, followed by the inevetible posts explaining how shitty Windoze is.

[Swamp Rat]

3. Windoze IS shitty.

Mac OSX is much more stable and not wracked by so many viruses and Trojan Horses. That said, I have an iMac sitting next to a new PC I recently built (Windows XP). :)

My PC can handle 16 gigs of RAM! :bounce:

[frylock]

5. i'm a windoze admin..

so I don't have any probs maintaining my babies. I never have had a virus and all my hand-built machines have mad uptime. You have to care and maintain for your computers just like you would your car.

[Swamp Rat]

6. That is true

I have my PC well-protected and do like some features of Windoze, but if my GIS software (non-server edition) becomes available for UNIX/LINUX, I'll get rid of Windoze all together.

[TommyO]

7. How very true!

When I was building and using Windows PCs, I never had a single virus or spyware situation on my machines. It did take some effort though. Now that I'm using Macs, I still haven't yet had a single virus or piece of spyware on my computers, but it takes little to no effort.

My car is another story, just had some valve damage due to a timing jump caused by a part on the timing belt tensioner breaking.

[TommyO]

8. I can also squeeze 16GB of RAM into my PowerMac (I have only 2.5GB)

[Swamp Rat]

9. I would love one of those machines

but I was able to build (my first) PC for 1/4 the price, and I need Windoze for my GIS software, which is the reason I built the computer in the first place.

I hope to buy a Macbook Pro one of these days... after I finish school.

[TommyO]

10. The updated Macbook Pros are sweet machines

I was playing with one at the Apple store on Wednesday, finally convincing my brother to go for a Mac the next time around.

If you don't need a notebook, the iMacs are definitely snappier machines (and will probably be updated relatively soon).


added: note, I have a PowerMac G5, not an intel-based Mac Pro. I suspect I won't be upgrading anytime soon.

[DrDebug]

4. Never mind the iPod and the War on Coltan in Congo

Maybe Apple won't put Coltan capicators from Congo in their iPhone like they did in the iPod.

So why have things ended up like this? Why does this war that officially ended in 2003, with the Lusaka peace accords, continue to destroy so many lives? The answer is probably sitting right in front of you, in your computer, in your iPod and in your mobile phone. All of these electronic devices contain a metal called coltan, 80% of known supplies of which lie under Congo.

The official story of how the war started centres around the tiny mountain state of Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide, many of its perpetrators it fled across the border into Congo. What is said to have happened is the Rwandan forces then went across the border to capture them. Other countries then invaded as a countervailing force resulting in what former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called Africa’s first world war.

The UN panel of experts set up to look into the causes of the war discovered a more sinister story. What it found was that Rwanda did not invade to go after the perpetrators of the genocide, but to seize the mineral resources of Congo and sell them on to us in the West. Due to the increasing popularity of mobile phones and PlayStations, the price of coltan has boomed This made it much more attractive for Rwanda and the other international armies and militias to go into Congo and take it. “As Oona King puts it, kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living room.”
Hari and King visited an orphanage just outside the capital, Kinshasa; “we were told this was one of the best orphanages in Congo. When we arrived, the first room we went into, the children were just lying on the gloor covered in s***, and flies and vomit. They said this was where the Aids babies go.”

http://www.nouse.co.uk/2006/05/26/rape-of-the-congo-the-war-against-women-and-children/

Then again it is no more than fair because iPods were involved in one war which caused at least 3,500,000 deaths that iPhone is going to bring peace.