There’s a simple solution to this. Why not sell the iPhone unlocked?
This is a great example of taking words out of context. If you first look at it, it seems like Apple would make $300 million selling unlocked phones. The problem is that Apple already makes all the hardware sales money, unlocked or not. The unlocked iPhones were manufactured by Apple and somebody at some point purchased it locked. I believe the money Apple is losing is from the cell phone companies paying Apple for people signing up their iPhones for cell service. The cell phone provider is basically paying Apple to exclusively sell the iPhone. Unlocked phones, used on another network or just signed up under a different plan don’t deserve this kickback. So selling iPhone unlocked would actually cost Apple more than the $300 million. It would cost them ALL the kickbacks.
Of course, if I’m wrong about this, it is an example of those who know nothing about iPhones talking about iPhones.
My backup system is pretty important to me. After the great MP3 loss of 2003, I’ve been consistent in backing up my data. The good thing about that hard drive failure was that it was only music. Music can be recovered because I did not create the music. My pictures however can never be replaced.
I use a freeware program called SyncBack. It uses windows task scheduler to automate backups. Backup isn’t really all that complicated, copy from here to there. I like to constantly backup my pictures to my external drive (from Sunny) and daily backup my school notes from my laptop to my desktop. All of these run while I sleep.
The program also allows sync. I have my music and picture collection on both my desktop and my laptop. Sometimes I will get new music or edit pictures in both locations so I need to sync my laptop and desktop. I’m anal so I run the sync myself so I can overview the conflict resolutions the program does.
The ultimate thing I do revolves around Quakecon. Since traveling is always a danger to hard drives, I backup everything to DVD. It takes time but I don’t want to lose any data in the move and provides a set yearly schedule for my backup to media. I usually try and store these discs at my parents house in PL. This keeps my backups safe from a lightning strike or fire that would take out both my computer AND my external HDD.
Flickr also serves as a last resort version of backing up my pictures. Since most of my pictures are uploaded to Flickr, I hope to never lose them, even if my computer blew up.
On a different note, Apple’s Time Machine sounds like Windows System Restore. Someone enlighten me about the difference.
Assassin’s Creed has really great commercials and if it is anything like a combination of Hitman + Thief it will be awesome.
Anyways, the system requirements came out and seem a little harsh. Who the heck has 3 GB of RAM anyways. Usually you go 2 or 4, I guess 2 wasn’t enough and 4 would scare people away.
The Game-O-Meter says my computer can handle it. Which is all I need to know.
Today, I attended my first Rockets win this season. KD wasn’t all that impressive. He did hit some amazing jump shots in Battier’s face, but I guess they did a good job on him.
As a Rockets fan, we could be worse off at point guard.
Aaron Brooks, my facebook buddy, has the quicks and sadly the size to be the PG of the future, but he naturally looks like a two guard. I’m not saying that is a bad thing, but TMac kind of plays that role already. He still brings great energy off the bench and I have no problem we drafted him. Carl Landry seems to be doing great too. The future looks great. I’m not bailing on this season yet, but I’m losing hope that TMac can do anything worthwhile. He just doesn’t FIT. Yao is having a great season.
Besides the 4th quarter meltdowns, I’m at least having more fun watching this years team. We had the same 4th quarter meltdown issues last year.
I didn’t know sea salt is different from table salt. To me it was all just sodium chloride, so why would sea salt be better for you? Apparently the iodine is probably the main difference, but the salt is still salt and too much salt is bad for you no matter what. The iodine isn’t going to kill you, the salt will, not matter what form you use.
Apparently at UH you purchase Spring/Summer health insurance separately from Fall. I thought I paid for insurance for the whole year. Today I went to refill my prescription and found I did not have health insurance. Luckily I could sign up on the spot. So now I have health insurance. It was a good thing I went today.
We went to Colorado to snowboard. The crew was Sunny, Helen, Cory, Gina, Jenny, Vanhdy, Annie, Annette, Liem, David, Cary, Simon, and myself. It wasn’t as funny as the last crew I went snowboarding with, but this was fun.
We flew into Denver, rented two minivans, and had lunch at a breakfast place called Hot Cakes. We went to the Denver Museum of Art, but nobody really wanted to pay to see it. So we took some pictures and went to REI Flagship. After some difficulty finding the place, it was pretty amazing. It was huge, multiple floors, and had its own Starbucks.
We stopped by Sam’s to pickup some food and water for the lodge and caught a snack there before heading to the Nuggets v Spurs game at the Pepsi Center.
The game was sparks of excitement when the Nuggets ran the break and AI was being amazing. The game was boring because of the Spurs slow pace. Marcus Camby was also pretty amazing with his blocks. We then made the drive out to Breckenridge.
Day one was most of the people getting lessons. Annie, Annette, Liem, Sunny, and I skipped the lessons and braved the mountains. I don’t really board, I just plow down like a leaf on my heels. Annie basically does the same except not as well and backwards on her toes. It’s hard to explain so just watch the videos.
Night boarding was a blast. Keystone’s green was so much more challenging than Breckenridge’s greens. I fell getting off of every lift (after getting far enough to be safe) except once. That one time, I sacrificed Cary Lai cause he was veering toward me. I just love tapped him to my own safety. Day two, I could only muster day skiing. It was fun the second day because we were all together on the slopes. Even Chih came into town. The lodge was an excellent two floor two bedroom place with a huge living room right on the main street in Breckenridge. I did however have to take a freezing cold shower the first day. We split it up better the second day.
Sunday we got up at 2am and drove in ice and snow back to Denver to catch a 7am flight back to Houston. It was pretty bad, but since I drove in the blizzard of Tahoe with snow chains on the tires, this wasn’t all that bad.
I tried to make a video of everybody that went. It was hard to catch everybody doing stuff since we didn’t all stick together the whole time. Either way, watch your favorite people on my YouTube page. http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=quad4x
My favorites are Liem’s, Cary’s, and mine. Liem runs into a tree, Cary eats it hard, and I have a first person view of a wipeout.
I have no clue when I last updated. So lets pick it up from after finals. I did ‘medium’ in school. It could have been better, but it could have been worse. I’m glad I’m sticking in there.
I played for a few days in Houston and went to PL for Christmas. I immediately went back to Houston for a reunion with some Austin friends. I spent a rather LONG time in college and stayed in Austin after graduation. So I have different segment of people I played basketball with. This group made up the final years of my time in Austin. Of course we do what we always do, played basketball.
Then it was Christmas in Port Lavaca. I got to play ball with all the kids and PL crew. I even got to play ball with a couple celebrities. Gina’s boyfriend Cory and his twin brother were on the last episode of Friday Night Lights. You can tell which on is Cory because of his crazy hair, which he released in the last few games of bball. I hung out with my brother and played video games pretty much non-stop. I finished Call of Duty 4 (great game), Bioshock (great game), Guitar Hero III on Medium (good game), and played a little S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but it was too slow for me. I also fished a few times, but caught no fish. I also spent time with my family, which included a trip to Moody Gardens.
I came back to Houston for New Years. It was another great time at Chih’s place, though I don’t think he should be hosting drunken parties any more.
Then it was off to Colorado for our big snowboarding trip. That will be a separate post all together. I’m still chilling until school starts again. I’ll post about semester 1 eventually. Right now I don’t want to think about school or anything important. I’m just unwinding.
