As the reality distortion field begins to fade, people are starting to wake up to the iPhone’s shortcomings. I’ve been assembling a list of issues I’ve seen mentioned: No SDK. No Flash. No Java. No Bluetooth file transfer. No DIY MP3 or AAC ringtones. Although the camera takes 2 megapixel photos, the only way to get them out is to e-mail them, which resizes them to 640×480. No Bluetooth keyboard support.
[For more cases of LiveJournal Abuse Team behaving abusively, check out http://ljabuse.blogspot.com/.]
For several years I was a paying user of LiveJournal. Now I pay for web hosting and run my own content management system. It’s not by choice; this is the story.
In a nutshell, following an altercation with a racist troll, LiveJournal suspended my account without warning, even though I had not breached their Terms Of Service. They didn’t suspend the troll’s account–instead, they announced that (contrary to their written terms of service) racist comments were in fact perfectly acceptable on LiveJournal.
Attempts at compromise to resolve the issue were ignored and rejected, even when I offered to delete offending comments. The money I had paid for the service they were refusing to provide was not refunded.
Google have launched Google Talk. It uses the Jabber protocol. Unlike MSN, AIM and the like, Jabber is an open standard, a series of RFCs that anyone is free to implement. If you are running OS X Tiger, iChat is a Jabber client. There’s also the open source OS X instant messenger Adium. Linux users have Kopete and Gaim. Windows users have Miranda, Exodus, Psi, Trillian Pro, and many more.
AOL patented Instant Messaging. In 1997. It is hence painfully obvious that the US Patent Office either isn’t concerned with prior art, or lacks anybody with any knowledge of computer systems before 1997. I’m not sure which is more depressing.
Windows 2000 is a piece of shit. I now have a new(er) ThinkPad at work, which will run Windows 2000. People have often said to me “Yes, Windows 95 was awful, and Windows 98 was bad, and Windows ME was flaky, and Windows XP isn’t very good… but Windows 2000 is great. Stable, fast, reliable.” I took their word for it. Yes, I know, paint the word “SUCKER” on my forehead.
Today I was told that I can instant-message Al Zollar, the senior vice president at IBM who’s in charge of the Lotus software division. To me, this is almost as bizarre as if someone were to tell me that Lou Gerstner wants a game of Hearts. Maybe it’s leftover Harlequin angst, but I generally feel comfortable when kept as far away from CEOs as possible. Just put me in a back room and let me build stuff quietly.