Gizmodo is broadcasting live from the iPhone line in San Francisco. Here’s the full webcast page.

P.S. This strikes me as rather ridiculous: “AT&T isn’t including access to its own Wi-Fi hotspot network as part of an iPhone plan.” WTF? Not even as a reasonably-priced upgrade, discounted from what the general public pays? C’mon.

UPDATE: Here’s another webcast.

An Arizona Highway Patrol officer pulled over the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile in Tucson yesterday after his computer said its license plate — “YUMMY” — was stolen.

Turns out, the whole thing was a big misunderstanding. But at least everyone involved has a funny memory that I’m sure they’ll all relish.

I’m here all week, folks.

The Apple Store at West Town Mall here in Knoxville has ropes set up, ready for an iPhone line to form tomorrow morning.

UPDATE: According to the Mac Genius I spoke with, the mall isn’t allowing people to line up overnight, but they’ve gotten enough calls from people asking about when the line starts that he expects people will probably start showing up as soon as the mall opens at 7:00 AM. (But will anyone bring a MacBook and use the Apple Store’s Wi-Fi connection to set up a “LineCam”? You know I would, if I had a MacBook and if I was going to be buying an iPhone tomorrow…)

P.S. Why was I speaking with a Mac Genius, you ask? Well, I brought in my broken AirPort Express, and — voila! — my latest Apple saga had a quick, happy ending. Although the AirPort Express itself isn’t under warranty anymore, the Genius said the AppleCare plan for my PowerBook covers one base station, so I can get service under the PowerBook’s plan. I’m not sure if that’s actually true or if he’s stretching the rules for me — I sort of suspect the latter — but either way, I’m certainly not complaining. Anyway, he confirmed that the unit is broken, and he’s going to “swap it out” for a new (or rather, I think, refurbished) one that should arrive in 3-5 days, at no cost to me. Sweet!

P.P.S. You know, I could come to the mall at 7:00 AM (or shortly thereafter) with my BarBri books in tow, get in line, spend the whole day studying for the bar in the mall, and then be one of the first people to get to play with with iPhones — and perhaps become the first blogger in the whole blogosphere to send a photo directly from the iPhone to my blog — even though I’m not going to buy one. Hmm… ;)

Oops:

A 65-year-old St. Louis man is missing after Amtrak personnel, mistaking his diabetic shock for drunk and disorderly behavior, kicked him off a train in the middle of a national forest, according to police in Williams, Ariz. …

Police said there is no train station or running water at the crossing, which is about two miles from the nearest road, at an elevation of about 8,000 feet. …

Williams police told CBS 5 that Amtrak has used the abandoned crossing as a drop-off site in the past. [Lt. Mike] Graham said that whether drunk or not, no one should be dropped off there.

“You don’t put anyone off in an area like that,” Graham said.

Amtrak said the company is looking into the matter.

(Hat tip: Becky.)

UPDATE: This article suggests that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the above report is a bit unfair to Amtrak, and there’s more to this story than meets the eye:

As far as Amtrak, officials tell me they followed the company policy and are not looking into this matter. Amtrak issued this statement late Thursday.

“Amtrak followed company policy Sunday night (6/24) when a passenger was escorted off Amtrak’s Southwest Chief train #3 in Williams Junction, AZ, at a regularly scheduled station stop with a station platform and roadway access. Amtrak would never leave a person alone in a remote location under any circumstances. In this case, the conductor and the passenger waited on the platform with the passenger’s luggage. Upon arrival of authorities, the passenger fled into nearby woods. The investigation is being handled by Williams PD.”

UPDATE: He’s been found.

Connecticut’s own Mika Brzezinski, formerly a news anchor at WTIC and WFSB in the Nutmeg State and now a co-host with Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, made a stand for, well, actual journalism, by refusing to lead off the news with the Paris Hilton story:

Heh. (Hat tip: Becky.)

Heh.

Dunno why that amused me so much, but it did…

In a tight 5-4 decision earlier today the Supreme Court ruled that using race as a criteria in assigning students to public schools was unconstitutional.

We finally bought a stereo — with apologies to the audiophiles, we got an RCA RS2653 from Wal-Mart — and so far, it seems to suit us fine. (We can always return it within 14 days if we don’t like it.) However, in the course of setting it up, I’ve discovered a problem… not with the stereo, but with my Apple AirPort Express, which we use to stream music from our computers via AirTunes.

The AirPort Express is no longer producing any right-side audio output — only left-side. I did some testing and determined that the problem is definitely not with the speakers or the cable or our computers or the songs being played, but with the AirPort Express. Unfortunately, it’s no longer under warranty (I bought it in summer 2004), so while I can take it into the Apple Store, I doubt there will be a cheap solution. And a new one costs $99, perhaps a little less from a reseller or eBay, but still a good bit of change that I wasn’t planning on spending.

One interesting thing, though, is that the failure of the right-side audio seems to have coincided with the appearance of a red light constantly glowing out of the audio output jack, which is a problem that I also experienced on my PowerBook last year — although in that case, it caused my laptop speakers to stop working entirely, but both left and right audio worked fine when I plugged in earphones. Anyway, the red light supposedly means that something has kicked the audio into “optical” mode. I wonder if that could account for the right-side audio not working, and I wonder if there’s any home remedy to such a problem?

UPDATE: As noted in a later post, I brought the AirPort Express to the Genius Bar at the Knoxville Apple Store, and:

[V]oila! — my latest Apple saga had a quick, happy ending. Although the AirPort Express itself isn’t under warranty anymore, the Genius said the AppleCare plan for my PowerBook covers one base station, so I can get service under the PowerBook’s plan. I’m not sure if that’s actually true or if he’s stretching the rules for me — I sort of suspect the latter — but either way, I’m certainly not complaining. Anyway, he confirmed that the unit is broken, and he’s going to “swap it out” for a new (or rather, I think, refurbished) one that should arrive in 3-5 days, at no cost to me. Sweet!

That was the evening of Thursday, June 28, and it actually arrived on Sunday, July 1. Nice.

According to leaks from an internal talk given today by Steve Jobs, all full-time Apple employees, and part-timers who have been with the company for at least one year, will recieve a free iPhone at the end of July.

The talk also included some hype for upcoming Macs, a comment about OS X on an iPod (perhaps a phoneless version of the iPhone?) and a few other things, such as the reason for the 6pm launch of the phone — click the link for the answer to that one. :)

The NBA Draft is tonight, starting at 7pm EDT. Greg Oden is expected to go #1, Kevin Durant #2. USC’s Nick Young is projected #14 by ESPN.com, which would keep him in L.A. with the Clippers. Gabe Pruitt is expected to go late in the first round or early in the second round.

A pediatrician from Waveland, Mississippi has finally given up hope and left town. His farewell blog post is a stinging indictment of the failures of our current “leadership” and a gut-wrenching reality check for those who may think the Katrina recovery effort is coming along swimmingly. Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Patrick Cullen.)

The immigration reform bill is dead. Again. Probably for good this time. Mickey Kaus says “this seems like a humiliating defeat for Bush and the self-styled, MSM-idolized Grand Bargainers.” All the moreso, in the president’s case, because of his intensive eleventh-hour lobbying efforts:

Bush, making a last-ditch bid to salvage the bill, called senators early Thursday morning to urge their support. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez approached senators as they entered and left the chamber shortly before the vote.

For those keeping score at home, Genarlow Wilson is still in prison.

A police officer in Little Rock, Arkansas is in hot water for using a ridiculous degree of force against teenagers over a very minor infraction — skateboarding in violation of a city ordinance — and then pulling out every overzealous cop’s favorite catch-all accusations, “resisting arrest” and “disorderly conduct,” to intimidate those who dared question his actions. None of which would be news, except that it was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube:

This is one thing that’s really great about “Web 2.0″ and Glenn Reynolds’s “Army of Davids“: it gives average people much more of an ability to actually fight back against petty abuses of authority like this (and the UCLA tazer incident, among others). Police officers have an enormous amount of authority in the moment as they’re conducting an arrest, and necessarily so, but when they use that authority to intimidate innocent people (or people who are only guilty of something very minor), it’s a serious problem.

In this case, the Little Rock police officer — to his credit, and also probably everlasting regret — didn’t try to stop the cameras from rolling. But often times the police will do just that, and so when I ponder questions of police abuse of authority, I inevitably think about them in the context of cops demanding that I not take pictures, which has happened on several occasions. They have no right to do that, yet pointing that out and refusing to comply with their commands is likely to engender immediate hostility and possibly result in the same sort of b.s. accusations (interfering with police business, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, etc.) that got thrown around in this case. The end result is that officers can claim more authority than they actually have, and most people will go along with it. The prevalence of digital cameras, blogs, YouTube, etc. alters that balance, if only slightly, and that’s a good thing.