If you search Github for "iphone sms" or "iphone messages", you can find lots of projects that will export your iPhone messages. So, if perl isn't your preferred language, there are plenty of other choices besides jwz's script.
I found it surprising too, but your impression is wrong.
When you query the Foursquare API for a user, Foursquare returns the user's Facebook and Twitter names in their response (if the user has provided them to Foursquare):
Better yet, use Fluid[1] and create a single site browser for Facebook. Make sure you use the paid version of Fluid App, so you get separate cookie storage for each SSB you set up.
Back in February, Jim Bumgardner wrote up his experiments with gaming Foursquare:
"Eventually I amassed a huge number of mayorships, spread among multiple accounts, including the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial, Stonehenge and the Taj Mahal"
If anyone is interested in learning more about Andy Beal's million-dollar poker games with the best players in the world in 2001, you should check out this book: "The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time", by Michael Craig. It's got a pretty complete profile of Beal, and tells all about the games.
Buffett thinks the Black-Scholes formula produces "absurd results" when applied to long-dated options (see page 19).
"Though historical volatility is a useful – but far from foolproof – concept in valuing short-term options,
its utility diminishes rapidly as the duration of the option lengthens."
Berkshire Hathaway has sold equity put options that require payment if various stock market indexes (S&P 500, the FTSE 100, the Euro Stoxx 50, and the Nikkei 225) have gone down after 15 or 20 years from the inception of the contracts.
Buffett think that the likelihood of these indexes going down over such an extended period is extremely unlikely, due to inflation and an increase in corporate retained earnings. But, even if the indexes do decline, he has already received the option premium up front and is able to invest that money for 15-20 years, before having to pay out anything.
"Clearly, either my assumptions are crazy or the formula is inappropriate."
Question for everyone who binds the Caps Lock key to CTRL:
If you use the Caps Lock key as CTRL, then it feels pretty awkward for me to type some key combinations (like ctrl-x or ctrl-c) and still keep my fingers on the "home row".
Do you just get used to this? Do you type ctrl-x with your pinky and ring finger? Or, do you shift your hand away from the home row and type ctrl-x with your pinky and middle finger?
I've been in Buenos Aires for about 2 months now, and it's still hard for me to believe how ridiculous this situation is. Two examples from my daily life:
1) I take the bus every day, which only accepts coins. So, everyday I have to figure out how to get more coins. One strategy I tried was to forgo the convenient subway card and actually stand on line to pay for a single fare card every time I happened to take the subway. A huge pain, but in exchange for a 2 peso bill, I would get a subway ticket and a precious $1.10 in coins.
Only the ticket clerk at the subway stop I most often frequent stopped selling me single tickets. I would show my 2 peso bill and ask for 1 ticket, and he would say "No monedas" and wave me through the gate for free. Every day, the same thing would happen. Same clerk. Same 2 peso bill. No coins, and he would wave me through for free. This went on for 2 weeks.
You would think that I'd be pretty happy about this, but actually, it infuriated me. I really want the coins instead! Sure, I get a free ride, but now I've got to go buy a bottle of water and tangle with a kiosk owner to try and get change.
2) Paying cash at the supermarket can be glacial. They keep very few coins in the cash registers, so every time they run out of coins, the checkout clerk has to call for a manager, who has to go to the safe to get more coins, who then exchanges 2 pesos worth of coins for a 2 peso bill. Yes, that's right...they restock the coins in the register the equivalent of 60 US cents at a time!
Greg Linden used to work at Amazon. From an older blog post of his:
"In A/B tests, we tried delaying the page in increments of 100 milliseconds and found that even very small delays would result in substantial and costly drops in revenue."
What I thought was most interesting about the linked article was the charge that Apple has been misleading it's developers, not whether Apple's iPhone strategy is right or wrong from a business or technical perspective. At what point does putting the best possible spin on things cross over into outright lying?
Is it fair to characterize Apple's guidance to developers as misleading?
If so, will Apple's behavior eventually drive away developers, or can they always count on developers sticking around, so long as they continue to produce hot products like the iPhone?
One minor correction to your very helpful post: the scalability book you are referring to is "Building Scalable Web Sites" by Cal Henderson (not Clay Shirky).
If you use the Caps Lock key as CTRL, then it feels pretty awkward for me to type some key combinations (like ctrl-x or ctrl-c) and still keep my fingers on the "home row".
Do you just get used to this? Do you type ctrl-x with your pinky and ring finger? Or, do you shift your hand away from the home row and type ctrl-x with your pinky and middle finger?
I wrote an export script in Python that's fairly popular (200+ stars on Github): https://github.com/toffer/iphone-sms-backup
Unfortunately, I never did get around to exporting photos and videos.