electron zoo

For those of us who aren’t sitting in rain waiting outside the Apple store — or even those who are — here are five timekillers. (Also, here are my pics of the DC area Apple store.)

The iPhone is the business media’s Paris Hilton. Because combining the words “iPhone” with “Paris Hilton” into one headline is pure genius.

Steven Colbert’s iPhone Review. I actually have the same iPhone model as he does. The limited Imaginary Edition.

The iPhone plays voicemail in whatever order you want, which is a great feature to use while your world is crumbling around you.

iLines across USA. Soon, these will be just about the only people in the country who can personally attest to how much the iPhone actually sucks. But they won’t admit it — well, not for a week or two, anyway.

Build your own iPhone in 3 easy steps. As long as you don’t care whether it’s small, black, shiny, or even an iPhone.

The biggest recent story in the crossover news category of celebrity gadgets is Paris Hilton’s hacked Sidekick 2. I know, this is so a couple of weeks ago, but hey, I’ve been busy.

First off, as a gadget fan, I think it’s sorta cool that she has a Sidekick. It makes me think she’s a bit of a gadget affectionado when, according to a New York City blogger who chatted with her on the street, she tells strangers all about her (diamond-encrusted) Sidekick 2, saying “it’s way better than a Blackberry”. I can relate. (Although part of me wonders if that’s because you can’t get a diamond-encrusted Blackberry. Or perhaps because advertisements for Blackberrys don’t heavily use bright magenta like T-Mobile’s Sidekick ads do. But I will give her the benefit of the doubt — for now.)

But what actually interests me about the story isn’t Paris Hilton’s rich-party-girl star appeal or the Sidekick 2, it’s actually the lamest bit, being these lame, lame, lame “secret” questions that are supposed to keep our highly sensitive information secure. In the case of Paris Hilton’s supposedly secret answer that she kept with T-Mobile, the answer was Tinkerbell. For all you Celebrity Jeopardy fans, please answer in the form a question. “What’s the name of your favorite pet?” Ding.

What’s next? How many ID theives are trying to get into Chelsea Clinton’s personal accounts with her mother’s maiden name (Rodham, as in Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton) or wait a minute, don’t around five hundred people your age know exactly where you went a elementary school — because they were there too?

Next time someone gets “hacked” because a stranger guessed that their favorite color was purple, maybe they should point a finger at the telecom companies for allowing such insecure information to govern our privacy.

Well, I posted about bionics/cybernetics yesterday, and today the Washington Post website features a front page article about radio-emitting ID chips being implanted into Mexican police officers. Now, this isn’t such a bad thing on it’s own — being able to find and identify cops can be very important — but companies that make these things are talking about a day when everyone will have one. They anticipate that these surgically implanted microchips will become a person’s driver’s license, credit card, ATM card, AAA card, etc. all in one.

Have these people never seen a dystopian, Orwellian-style science fiction film? No, I don’t base my entire world view and concepts of the future on science fiction, but I am imagining where in Minority Report, the biometrics of a person’s retina was used for complete identification. And if you haven’t seen that movie, I won’t be spoiling it by pointing out the gritty effect this had on street crime: people were mugged for their eyeballs.

Of course no one wants some mugger in a dark alley running off with their arm, but further, I don’t want to be identified without identifying myself. I don’t want a microchip to constantly project my whereabouts and identification any more than I want my face to be scanned and identified when I’m walking down the street. Just because I don’t have anything to hide does not mean I don’t want to hide it.

Maybe privacy is just becoming old fashioned. What a shame.

Uh oh. More evidence that the robots are taking over. (Okay, not really.)

We are engaged in an epic battle between genetic engineering and cybernetics — that is, which will become the standard for tampering with human potential? (Well, if Microsoft gets involved, I guess we can just let them decide.)

I like to refer to this epic struggle which will determine the fate of mankind as … MONKEY VERSUS ROBOT!!

But maybe that’s just me.

For your listening enjoyment: a little ditty about the FCC by Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame).