At first, we figured our Instinct here at Engadget HQ had just woken up on the wrong side of the bed, but we’re now receiving a flood of tips from individuals nationwide having the same issues. Put simply, it seems that certain data services are thoroughly borked, with our Weather app being unable to refresh for at least the past 18 hours (some are reporting even longer). Additionally, we’re hearing that folks are having to manually refresh their email and deal with all sorts of error messages when attempting to use any of the data services. So, what gives? Are you having data-related issues with your Instinct? C’mon Sprint, this is your best-selling EV-DO device of all time — it’d be nice to have it working for the weekend. Oh, and great job showing all those angered iPhone 3G users that your network doesn’t have issues, too.
Of course it’s a refurb, but it’s tough to pass up an Xbox 360 Premium (non-HDMI, wireless controller, 20GB hard drive) for $200. With free shipping and a 60-Day limited warranty, it’s certainly a tempting way to take your chances with a formerly red-ringed system. Then again, $100 more will probably get you a more recent (cooler) chipset and full-out Microsoft support. Seeing as I don’t know anyone who owns a 360 that HASN’T broken in some way, a newer system might actually be worth the price. [Buy via CrunchGear]
Being a Star Wars die-hard from back in the day, everything I’ve seen or heard about the new Clone Wars series and film has made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I guess this Clone Trooper “laptop” is no exception—sweet case, QWERTY keyboard, but all junior will be doing is playing educational games on its monochrome calculator-LCD screen, which looks like it could have been around for the release of A New Hope. Decent framework for an Eee PC casemod, though. [Product Page via Shiny Shiny]
Created for this year’s Burning Man festival, the Flamethrower Shooting Gallery looks like one hell of a stress-relieving sideshow amusement. It was created by Matisse and Roxie and recently debuted at the Oakland The Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival… presumably to a warm reception. Check out the short video to see it in action—though you might want to turn the volume down, the happy screams are a little loud.
Apparently it was designed to poke fun at the US obsession with firearms, and it’s supposed to tie in with Burning Man’s fascination with fire and “radical self expression.”
Whatever: launching a jet of luminous flames ten feet to incinerate a target sounds waaaay more fun than firing a BB-gun on your more “normal” fairground show. You agree, guys, don’t you?… or am I just a pyromaniac? [Laughing Squid] Photo credit: Scott Ashkenaz.
After spending $5 million of the city’s tax dollars on high-tech, self-cleaning public toilets and then watching them quickly devolve into disgusting havens for just about every urban deviance imaginable, the city of Seattle is trying to cut their losses by vending all five of them on eBay where they can be yours for $89,000 each, discarded crack pipes not included.
In theory, the toilets’ self-cleaning mechanism is capable of spraying down the whole interior with water jets and detergent every day, but the drainage systems quickly became clogged with trash, rendering them completely useless. Drug fiends and prostitutes were also fond of the 20-minute auto-locking doors, but the depravity quickly became too much for everyone, says the NYTimes:
“I’m not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there,” said one homeless woman, Veronyka Cordner, nodding toward the toilet behind Pike Place Market. “But I won’t even go inside that thing now. It’s disgusting.”
Heavily featured in the news leading up to the iPhone 3G launch, the Who Farm campers — who hunkered down a full week early at the Fifth Avenue Apple store in Manhattan to promote organic farming or something silly like that — seem to have fallen off the face of the earth after the Cube’s doors were opened. None of the five hippies were seen emerging from the store with iPhones, and their leader’s little apple-dropping “accident” (video is after the break) might have something to do with it. He was later seen being taken into the store with a police escort, according to David Jr., but wasn’t seen from again. We’re not trying to imply that these five organic farming nuts are currently tied up in a dark store room miles below the Fifth Ave. store, awaiting Steve Jobs’ wrath, but we would like to know what happened to them, and if they ever got iPhones, so if you have any idea please let us know.
After six long days, Apple has issued an official statement on the debacle that was / is the MobileMe transition, and has offered a 30-day extension to contracts as an olive branch to disgruntled users. According to a form letter being sent to subscribers, the company openly admits that the switch to MobileMe was “a lot rockier than hoped,” and claims that the service is now running smoothly. Additionally (and somewhat surprisingly) Apple rescinded its use of the word “push” to cover all of its services, conceding that while there is indeed push to-and-from iPhones and the “cloud,” computers are still being polled every 15 minutes… which is the same as .Mac (and honestly Apple, you didn’t know that wasn’t technically push?). We suppose this would be all well and good provided that MobileMe was actually functioning as advertised, but indications from readers — and our own testing — suggest otherwise. Customers are still having difficulties with email and syncing between iPhones and the cloud (duplicate messages, deleted messages that don’t leave the inbox, etc.), the advertised “auto-complete” on mail addressing doesn’t function at all, and calendars are plagued with small moving / deletion problems, as well as being unable to sync subscriptions… and that’s just off the top of our head (see the company’s support forums for more). The 30-day extension is a nice gesture Apple, but we’re thinking customers would prefer a service that works as advertised.
Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator in Pittsburgh, is in the midst of a legendary computer hack that has denied administrator access to San Francisco’s new multimillion-dollar network. Apparently, Childs was recently disciplined at his job for poor performance and his supervisors unsuccessfully attempted to fire him. So, as an “insurance policy,” he hacked San Fran’s new Fiber Wan (Wide Area Network), “where records such as officials’ emails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail inmates’ bookings are stored.” Childs has refused to divulge the real passcodes to the system even when faced with arrest and a whopping $5 million bond.
Despite being in jail, the authorities are worried that he may have enabled a third party to access the system and destroy sensitive information. Administrators still do not have access themselves, but they maintain that the system is up and running and that no serious data problems have come up thus far. The exact motives behind Child’s crimes have not been determined, although his frustrations at work seem to be a likely culprit. Still, why someone would commit a crime and throw away a $150,000-a-year job after “almost” being fired is a mystery to me. And I highly doubt that using the true passcodes as a bargaining chip is going to earn him any leverage. [SFGate]
The Phoenix lander has already proven its mettle by finding ice on Mars, and now it’s gone and shown off its quick-thinking skills by shutting down its robotic arm after receiving a command that could have permanently damaged it. The lander apparently did it’s best to find a workaround first, however, but ultimately determined that any further movement would have bent its wrist out of shape. That left NASA engineers scrambling yesterday to come up with some new instructions to send to the lander, and they’re now simply waiting to see if they meet with the robot’s approval.
Like we mentioned in our hands-on impressions, the new Z-series laptops from Sony are in many ways impressive, but in ultimate thinness they leave a bit to be desired. This is perhaps best demonstrated best by Journal du Geek’s comparison shots here with the MacBook Air. Sure, the Z wins all over the place on specs, with Centrino 2, discreet graphics, a full-size laptop hard drive bay, and what was that? Oh yeah, a Blu-ray drive. The Z also manages a smaller footprint, thanks in part to a smaller 13.1-inch screen in that shorter 16:9 aspect ratio, but also due to its slim bezels surrounding the screen and keyboard — something the Air could do well to take note of — but the actual 1-inch thickness seems dramatically fat compared to its ultrathin competition. Overall, it’s all about what kind of laptop you’re really gunning for, but if thin is the ultimate goal, you’re going to be much better off with the X300, X200 or Envy 133 on the PC side.
Of course it’s a refurb, but it’s tough to pass up an Xbox 360 Premium (non-HDMI, wireless controller, 20GB hard drive) for $200. With free shipping and a 60-Day limited warranty, it’s certainly a tempting way to take your chances with a formerly red-ringed system. Then again, $100 more will probably get you a more recent (cooler) chipset and full-out Microsoft support. Seeing as I don’t know anyone who owns a 360 that HASN’T broken in some way, a newer system might actually be worth the price. [
Being a Star Wars die-hard from back in the day, everything I’ve seen or heard about the new Clone Wars series and film has made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I guess this Clone Trooper “laptop” is no exception—sweet case, QWERTY keyboard, but all junior will be doing is playing educational games on its monochrome calculator-LCD screen, which looks like it could have been around for the release of A New Hope. Decent framework for an Eee PC 
Created for this year’s Burning Man festival, the Flamethrower Shooting Gallery looks like one hell of a stress-relieving sideshow amusement. It was created by Matisse and Roxie and recently debuted at the Oakland The Crucible’s Fire Arts Festival… presumably to a warm reception. Check out the short video to see it in action—though you might want to turn the volume down, the happy screams are a little loud.
After spending $5 million of the city’s tax dollars on high-tech, self-cleaning public toilets and then watching them quickly devolve into disgusting havens for just about every urban deviance imaginable, the city of Seattle is trying to cut their losses by vending all five of them on eBay where they can be yours for $89,000 each, discarded crack pipes not included.
Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator in Pittsburgh, is in the midst of a legendary computer hack that has denied administrator access to San Francisco’s new multimillion-dollar network. Apparently, Childs was recently disciplined at his job for poor performance and his supervisors unsuccessfully attempted to fire him. So, as an “insurance policy,” he hacked San Fran’s new Fiber Wan (Wide Area Network), “where records such as officials’ emails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail inmates’ bookings are stored.” Childs has refused to divulge the real passcodes to the system even when faced with arrest and a whopping $5 million bond.
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