The Student Loans Company’s website sucks so goddamn hard. You’d think a site responsible for processing the finances of hundreds of thousands of students, which has been doing so for four years now, would be beyond temperamental internal errors. You know, stress-testing and refinement, rinse and repeat? Alas, half-way through my application, this is what I am confronted with.

Why the sudden rush to acquire a student loan? Oh, nothing in particular, unless you count spending £460 on a new bed today as something in particular.

Oh man, you should see it. It’s a dark pine sleigh style thing, all elegant curves and whatnot, with a goddamn memory foam mattress. Oh yeah baby, memory foam. It is coming on Monday, and not a moment too soon.

So, the iPhone has been unlocked. Not once, not twice, but thrice. As I write this, all iPhones up to the current 1.0.2 firmware can be unlocked from the AT&T network with a simple GUI app.

This solution is open-source, as are the tools which convince the phone that it has been activated: they are in a state of constant refinement at the hands of dedicated geeks and nerds. As such I fully expect a refined one-click solution to emerge in a matter of days that takes you from a shrink-wrapped box to an unlocked and operational phone on the GSM network of your choice.

Of course, what really makes the thing so attractive now is the growing stable of 3rd party native apps, enough so to make me overlook one or two glaring omissions in the thing’s construction. You see, even a relative novice can download a couple of files and bestow upon their iPhone Installer.app. This application will then venture forth, once tapped, and provide the user with a list of all current iPhone applications. It will also provide a list of the ones installed already, and alert where required if one has been updated. A simple touch of the package’s name will suck it down from the heavens and assert it in its proper place on your device, without any need for a computer. And all of this without Apple’s support.

The question now is “do I get one?” or more accurately “do I import one, or do I wait for an official UK release?”
See, the unlock might be broken by subsequent firmware updates, forcing me into the middle of a mad software race between hackers and Apple, perhaps even forcing me to hold back on upgrading my firmware, or my copy of iTunes, regardless of what tasty treats accompany the latest offerings.

Not to mention the faint, yet audible rumblings of a 3G iPhone for Europe. How stupid would I look, with my imported EDGE device, while my countrymen sailed through the intertubes on shining wings of HSDPA?

Mostly I think I am just yearning for a handset with a decent bloody web browser on it, since I have been without broadband for the last week. Be assure me we’re on track for activation tomorrow though, so perhaps this strange desire will wane.