But that's terrifically stupid, because the 3G has copy/paste now too. Heck - the original iPhone even has copy/paste. Ugh. Software, not hardware.

Stupid AAPL

I'm all for giving people a chance to explain a new discovery, but all this juxtaposed showmanship doesn't inspire a lick of confidence. Oh - and if you're trying to develop alternate energy sources, let's not start by attacking conservation of energy. Start small (you know, like exceeding the speed of light or modifying Newtonian dynamics), then work your way up. Or just go ahead and invent time travel - that would be a FANTASTIC way to "Upset Science" if you think about it. Either way is better than this.

Claiming that you can violate conservation of energy is almost as ridiculous as claiming that a self-replicating, information-based lifeform can arise spontaneously from non-replicating, non-information-based nonliving matter.

@Flashpoint

"I think the only thing worse [...] is having your intellectual property [...] improved with features consumers actually want:

[...]
3.5mm Headphone jacks...."

Because the iPhone 3G...doesn't have 3.5mm headphone jacks? LOL.

Honestly that's a pretty flippin' awesome form factor; let's see it done up like this: http://www.phonemag.com/apple-transparent-trackpad-patent-suggests-clamshell-iphone-031749.php and I'll buy it. Actually, I'll find a problem with my present phone and get Apple to upgrade me, but....

They've used that image before - talking about AT&T price gouging, I think.

How much of an internet outage would there be if all the cables were cut? I mean, how much ISP traffic can be routed via satellite, and how "much" of the internet is "located" within the continental US anyway?

You can turn thermal entropy (heat) into electrical entropy (using electricity) without violating the second law.

If it's within two weeks of your Apple purchase, you can usually take it back for a full refund (less a 10-15% restocking fee).

Dude, if you bothered to read this stuff you would know the difference between directed audio and microwave-induced audio.

Dude, that's ultrasonic sound not microwave sound. Nice try though.

You can send a narrow beam of inaudible ultrasonic sound waves that agitate the surrounding air to produce audible noises within their path. Or you can pulse microwaves over a large area that, if tuned appropriately, heat up tissue and produce vague noise coming from inside your skull. Big difference.

And I'm rather p.o.'d that my avatar STILL won't work.

Oy vey.

Omg omg the evil Republican government has elliptical sonic reflective dishes!! If they point them at me and put a loudspeaker in the middle, they'll be beaming noises into my head!

Uh, yep.

Even if these microwave intra-cerebral noisemakers could actually generate meaningful sounds (highly doubtful) it would just be a slightly more effective version of an elliptocally-reflected loudspeaker. It's not like they can point it at one specific person in a huge crowd - not without the people around him hearing the same thing. It's just that you wouldn't be able to pick it up without a special microphone.

And seriously, come on. The differences in cranial volume and structure are so vast over any segment of the population that you could never have a single microwave system that would produce intelligible sounds for more than a tiny percentage that the operators wouldn't be able to predict. And that would be if everything is perfect.

Think physics, people.

This will be used for crowd control, hostage situations, and potentially battlefield shock-and-awe. It's almost certain that you could never have consistent information being transferred. Gosh, if you even turned your head slightly the reflective/refractive indices would change and you'd have a totally different sound.

Why don't you want less-than-lethal weapons??!! Oh, yeah - they look like giant phalli. Good point. We don't want to turn the Muslims gay, after all.