The roads and streets of the metropolis turn into a deadly network of backstreets roamed by drivers with maniacal urge for speed. Whether you are a bus-riding commuter or a car-driving private citizen, you are most likely familiar with those killers on wheels.

Sometimes, I cannot help but agree with some people's assertion that a great portion of our public use vehicles are driven by people who are ingesting something they are not supposed to. Something that keeps them going as that bunny on that TV commercial, except that in this case, these drivers are powered by something PDEA is mandated to go after.

And if this jives with reality, then we indeed are in for trouble. I remember when I was in college, some columnists and radio commentators had dubbed some buses plying EDSA as flying coffins. Some critics focused their ire particularly to those white-and-blue buses whose company name I can no longer recall.

Those flying coffins of old, however, they look tame compared with our present gangs and herds of smoke-spewing buses.

iPhone Virus

I guess one of my favorite veteran actors would love this. A worm virus has hit iPhone users in Australia. The virus replaces the smartphone’s default wallpaper with a photo of British singer Rick Astley who was famous during the 1980s.

First to be identified to target Apple’s iPhone, the virus affects only users who have “jailbroken” their smartphones to allow them to run unauthorized software.

Analysts have reported that the virus spreads by searching an infected iPhone’s contact list for other modified iPhones and whose users have installed the Unix utility SSH or secure shell without changing the default root password.

Apparently, this incident might have been like a Rorschach test for people who have heard of it. Ultraloyalist fanboys would readily use the virus infestation as a warning against jailbreaking the iPhone — it does not pay to lose full communion with Rome, er, Apple.

Consumers, who have been waiting for quite some time now for a promised iPhone killer, would view the incident as signs of weakness in the growing Apple homogeny in the smartphone scene. The iPhone is not invincible, and if it could fall prey to a virus, it could be vulnerable to a well designed and capable smartphone in the future.

By the way, former Motorola engineer Martin Cooper, acknowledged as the inventor of the mobile phone, reportedly said that today’s handsets have become too complex and loaded with too many features.

He seems to have a valid point.