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Apple’s holding a press conference tomorrow regarding the iPhone 4. Everyone expects it to be about the antenna flaws recently detailed by Consumer Reports. Though some expect freebie cases or even a recall, Gruber submits that Apple’s never held a press conference except to announce new products. This can only mean one thing.

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On a serious note, I wanted to draw your attention to the news today about Dick Cheney’s latest heart setback. The reports have, on their face, been fairly upbeat, with Cheney himself issuing a statement about the surgery he had last week to implant a pump to help his heart overcome his congestive heart failure. The surgery was a success, Cheney is resting comfortably, etc.

But reading between the lines, you’re left with the distinct impression that Cheney, 69, is entering the late stages of congestive heart failure, that his prognosis is not very good, and that the available treatment options are very limited. That’s my lay person rendering after a close read of this afternoon’s reports. Here’s a more informed read from TPM Reader JK:

I’m a surgeon and just read your wire story about Dick Cheney getting a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) placed. The story downplays the seriousness of that procedures…once you’ve got an LVAD in place, it means your heart is essentially incapable of working on its own and has no potential to improve. While LVAD outcomes have been improving, and some patients live months or even years with one of these devices in place, this is a HUGE operation with MAJOR associated morbidity and mortality. If he’s not listed for a heart transplant, his days are seriously numbered. Life on an LVAD isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy…an axiom that this situation really tests. He’s in for a rough time.

To further complicate Cheney’s surgery, a sulphuric stench arose in the OR as the first incisions were made, incapacitating two nurses and setting off the OR’s sprinkler system.

And, after the operation was completed, he shouted “NOOOO” from beneath his dark black mask, causing the room to shake and the medical droids to explode.

No news on the location of the final horcrux.

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Software licensing in the National Health Service is about to get a lot more complicated, and a lot more expensive.

Back in 2004 the Office of Government Commerce signed a massive deal with Microsoft to provide all desktop software within the NHS. This followed some very high-level lobbying from both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer when it looked like the health service might ditch Microsoft from desktop PCs.

But the NHS enterprise agreement has now been scrapped. A message on the relevant page of the Microsoft website says: "We are currently updating these pages to reflect new licensing information as of May 2010. Please check back shortly."

[..]

Without a new agreement every NHS organisations will be looking at expensive hardware audits of all their various offices, labs and surgeries. The original deal was good for up to 900,000 desktop machines, at the time the NHS had approximately 500,000 machines.

From the comments on that story:

The smart move is to actually take control of your own infrastructure, not to let some vendor dictate what you use and how much tax they will be extracting from you for the privilege of using it, all while you don’t have any option of walking away from their little “deal”.

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MORE than 13,000 videos have been seized from an adult store in Sydney and will undergo examination to determine their classification.

Examine and determine their classification… is that what kids call it these days?

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Coffee spit warning! Put down your drinks.

This was a great Twitter exchange between Sarah Palin and Linda Kellen Biegel. Sarah and family are going to do a little mountain climbing on the highest pieak in North America, it seems.

Not sure where Palin actually meant because “Sweettooth” does not come up on any searches of Denali, and climbers in the know shrug their shoulders. Surely she can’t mean Sweet Tooth Spire? That’s not its official name, but its basically an unclimbable sheer rock face.

And the better known and officially named Sugartooth is… how shall I say… a bit of a challenge, and takes more than one day, unless of course you just fly there.

Lots of people claim Android is better because it’s easier to “hack”.

Well, forget about the Droid then.

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Look, if you had told me that we had just arrested 11 Finns who were spying on our schools, then I’d really have felt good — since Finland’s public schools always score at the top of the world education tables. If you had told me that 11 Singaporeans were arrested spying on how our government works, then I’d really have felt good — since Singapore has one of the cleanest, well-run bureaucracies in the world and pays its cabinet ministers $1 million-plus a year. If you had told me that 11 Hong Kong Chinese had been arrested studying how we regulate our financial markets, then I’d really have felt good — since that is something Hong Kong excels at. And if you had told me that 11 South Koreans were arrested studying our high-speed bandwidth penetration, then I’d really have felt good — because we’ve been lagging them for a long time.

But the Russians? Who wants to be spied on by them?

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Kids around the country are getting high on the internet, thanks to MP3s that induce a state of ecstasy. And it could be a gateway drug leading teens to real-world narcotics.

At least, that’s what Kansas News 9 is reporting about a phenomenon called “i-dosing,” which involves finding an online dealer who can hook you up with “digital drugs” that get you high through your headphones.

And officials are taking it seriously.

Parents are fucking retarded if they believe this shit.

It’s just a setup to establish a “reason” to further limit and monitor internet access.

Piracy, drugs, pornography, etc… We must ban the internet!

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The head of the nation’s most fee-happy airline told Congress today that bringing luggage on vacation was “not essential” to travel and his airline was actually helping the poor fly by charging up to $45 to place a carry-on bag in the overhead bin.

I wonder… has he ever changed his shorts?

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In the largest fine ever levied under a U.S. pesticides law, Monsanto agreed to pay the Environmental Protection Agency $2.5 million.

The agricultural giant was found to have been selling genetically modified cotton seeds without labeling them as such. Between 2002 and 2007, Monsanto’s seeds were illegally sold in several Texas counties where the seeds are explicitly banned.

The seeds — known as Bollgard and Bollgard II — were genetically engineered to produce the insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), and Texas officials were concerned that using the seeds would lead to pest resistance.

But that didn’t stop Monsanto from bamboozling buyers into purchasing the illegal seeds.

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One set of numbers jumps out from Sarah Palin’s campaign finance reports, filed with the FEC last night, and that’s some $22,000 paid by Sarah PAC over the last three months to the firm Aries Petra Consulting.

Why that’s relevant: Aries Petra is helmed by Rebecca Mansour, described by Politico’s Ken Vogel as "a Los Angeles screenwriter and political neophyte whose creation of the popular cheerleading blog Conservatives4Palin endeared her to Palin’s inner circle and led to her being hired to help manage Palin’s Internet presence, including her closely watched Facebook page."

$22,000 to maintain a facebook page – yep, she’s a typical hockey mom alright!

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What’s more, at this point Apple’s sold well over two million iPhone 4s, and we simply haven’t heard the sort of outcry from users that we’d normally hear if a product this high-profile and this popular had a showstopping defect. Honestly, it’s puzzling — we know that the phone has an antenna-related problem, but we’re simply not able to say what that issue actually means for everyday users.

So we’re doing what we can do: we’ve collected reports from every member of the Engadget staff who’s using the phone, as well as reached out to a variety of tech industry colleagues for their experiences. As you’ll see, most of our peers seem to be doing perfectly fine with their iPhone 4s, but the people who are having problems are having maddening issues in an inconsistent way. We’d say it all comes down to the network — particularly in New York City, where AT&T just completed a major upgrade — but even that isn’t a consistent factor in predicting experience. Ultimately, we just won’t know what’s really going on until Apple comes clean and addresses this issue (and the growing PR nightmare it’s become), but for now we can say with some certainty that not everyone is affected, and those that are seem to be in the minority.

Well, we’ll know more on friday