Everyone and there mother has been blogging about the new iPhone 3G. I must say that I’m not immune from the to and as an iPhone (2G?) user I am thrilled at the idea of having a faster version of the wonderful product I already own.

However, AT&T is going to screw me (and the other several million users) out of one. Because the discount price of $200 is only available for new users or those who are eligible for an upgrade (every 2 years), anyone who bought a first gen iPhone (at most about a year ago) can’t get the discount rate and has to shell out $400 for the 3G version.

This sucks for me because I’m not willing to spend $400 just for a boost in speed, but it sucks for Apple/AT&T because at $200 I’m willing to bet that many current iPhone users would upgrade to the new version. Now, not so much.

…I’m leaving for a 2-week work/vacation to Germany tonight so my posting will be limited.

I ran across this beautiful video on Flowing Data and think it is absolutely correct. I’ve always said that the only way to save the world is to empower women. This organization, Girl Effect, focuses mostly on young women in developing countries, but I think the problem is much bigger.

Women everywhere need to be treated as equals. Imagine increasing the work force of this world by nearly 100%. Imagine a world where education is pervasive and disease is ancient history. I’m convinced, as are the folks over at Girl Effect, that this will only occur if/when women (all women) are genuinely integrated into main stream society.

There’s also a wonderful TED talk by Isabel Allende on the same topic. I recommend taking the 18 minutes to watch it and be inspired:

I received a rather annoying email today informing me that my office computer had been compromised by a virus and has been sending out elicit packets. Damn.

I’m not sure how I got the virus, but clearly it is a security threat to me and my school. I appreciate that removing it is not an option, but is re-imaging my machine really the best way to go? That’s right, the default response to this type of situation for our IT department is to re-image the infected machine.

Of course they will help back-up my data, but what about all my settings and all the programs that I have personally (legally) installed? I’m pretty anal when it comes to how my computer is configured and it will take me several hours to get things back to the way I like them. So I ask again, is this the right move? I’m not a security expert but it seems like there are several other steps that can be taken first: virus scan, firewall, etc… Why must they wipe everything as a first move?

Anyone have any experience with this and know how I can convince my IT folks that there is a better way? I really don’t have the time/energy to deal with re-installing my entire machine.

Help!?

Clearly any time you have to travel you fall behind in a slew a different arenas: work, friends, family, etc… One area that particularly gets to me is my blog reading.

I read something like 40 different blogs on a regular basis. Most of them only post something 2-3 times / week so it’s easy to keep up. But some, like Digg, Engadget, and Gizmodo have hundreds of posts per day. This means that when I get back home (as I just did), my RSS reader ( google reader) has more than 1,000 posts to go through.

The decision I am presented with is: do I a) read them all, b) read some of them, or c) mark them all as read and move on with my life. Option (a) is clearly out of the question. (B) seems appealing, but then I always feel like I’m missing something. (C) is what I usually wind up doing, but then I worry that I will be left out of the loop.

What do you guys do? Is there a strategy for catching up on 100s or 1,000s of posts? Help!?!

As you probably already know, I’m not a big fan of religion. In my mind, blind obedience usually leads to mayhem and oppression. In any case, my “favorite” religion, Catholicism, has just made it that much more apparent that it is still in the dark ages.

Apparently, the Pope recently ruled that any woman who becomes a priest, or any bishop who ordains a woman is to be immediately excommunicated from the church. For religious Catholics, that’s almost worse than death.

Really, what are they thinking? With more and more people leaving religion (and especially Catholicism), is the alienation of an entire gender the right move?

Then again, if the end state is that fewer people become sucked into a mythical dogma which discriminates against 1/2 the people in the world, then maybe this will end well after all.