Every-so-often there’s a new story that makes me hang my head in shame with regard to my fellow countrymen. These are usually stories of mass-idiocy, rather than a single person who isn’t really representative of the majority.
This week there have been 2 such stories.
First of all, timber from a cargo ship has been washed up to shore. Although not belonging to them, it’s been scavenged by people.
“The timber is not suitable for building material, it is saturated with salt water…. it is not a case of finders keepers. The timber does have an owner and that is not likely to be the person picking it up off the beach.”
It’s obviously not as bad as last years incident, when people were walking off with others people property, including motorbikes and toys, but still…
Except, it’s always been like that. It’s part of the Geneva convention. Injured “enemy” troops are to be treated the same way as your own troops – army hospitals are often small and make-shift so it’s hardly like that they’ll be able to find private wards for them. However, the army hospitals do try and screen off such people, as well as provide guards. They are, after all, prisoners of war.
Quotes from soldiers include…
“A lot of people are getting injured out there, and the last thing they want to see when they come round is the Taleban on the same ward. It’s just not right.”
Except it is. And another…
“I’m appalled that Taleban are being treated in the same room at the hospital. I know we have to treat them under the Geneva Convention, but no one should have to wake up in the same place as someone who may have injured them or their mates.”
So, they accept that they have to follow the Geneva Convention but don’t think they should be in “the same place” (and I’d love to know exactly how specific they mean that to be). So, where, then? Outside on the street?
It doesn’t matter that they are the enemy, that we’re fighting them – we treat them with respect and a level of morality that is often lacking the other way. I’m appalled that the soldiers that are out there representing us, at the front line of that morality, can’t see this.
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has admitted that he’s unwell (although strangely shrouding this in further secrecy by declaring it as “a hormone imbalance”) and so has stepped down from his job for 6 months whilst he gets better.
Obviously, no one would want anything other than for him to get better soon.
However, the outpouring of sentiments and statements, mainly from the US, is bizarre. Many feel that Apple won’t be able to cope without him and the share price has plummeted as a result. Many seem his a guru, genius, even a God-like figure.
But let’s rewind a bit…. Steve Jobs, as we know, helped created Apple. During this time, under his command, both the Apple III and the Apple Lisa were commercial failures and he had resigned by the mid 80’s. In both cases the computers looked good, were advanced but were expensive and riddled with problems.
After leaving, he moved onto form NeXT, where he created a technologically advanced workstation that sold badly due to its high price. They moved into software but after just 11 years the company failed and, ironically, was bought by Apple. This positioned Jobs back onto the board and after a top-level coup, he became CEO. Under his lead Apple went onto great success with the iMac, iPod and iPhone and the rest, as we know, is history.
But I don’t own a single Apple product. And for a good reason. What Steve Jobs has been able to do is to tap into the current “bling” market, where style is the most important factor. What the iMac/iPod/iPhone have in common is that they look great. But in many cases, the latter two in particular, it’s style over substance. But Jobs hasn’t been some genius in doing this – he’s been doing it all along. Even in the 80’s when he created NeXt he created an exotic, amazing looking office with floating staircases, $10,000 sofas and designer prints. He was doing it when the Apple III would overheart as it had no cooling fan or air vent (as suggested by Steve Jobs for quieter performance).
What all of these iProducts have in common is Apple locking the products to their hardware and their software. The iPod, for instance, has a non-replaceable battery. Indeed, if you can get the case off to replace it yourself, they often solder it in place to make sure you won’t get it out (although I’m sure they use a different excuse). It won’t be surprising to hear that Apple have a poor environmental record.
The iMac is known for its difficulty in being upgraded. The iMac’s graphics chip is soldered to the motherboard and many models make it virtually impossible for you to change the hard disk or optical drive.
The iPhone, like the iPod, has a non-replaceable battery and the operating system is designed to only run software that is approved by Apple (and downloadable from Apple’s “App Store”). Once a developer has submitted an application to the App Store, Apple holds firm control over its distribution so, if they want, they can halt the distribution of applications it deems inappropriate. For example, they have a habit of banning third party applications that enable a functionality that Apple doesn’t want the iPhone to have. Last year, for example, Apple banned Podcaster, which allowed iPhone users to download podcasts directly to the iPhone, bypassing iTunes.
The iPod is also locked to iTunes – a terrible piece of software in my opinion.
This level of “lock in” would get Microsoft pushed into court. Apple, however, seem to remain immune. Microsoft have been forced, particularly in Europe, to remove software such as their Media Player (and there’s further news that IE may be the next target) because it can affect sales of third party products, yet the iMac comes pre-loaded with a whole host of applications. Again, they seem to remain immune to prosecution.
But then again this is the company that agreed with Apple Corps (the Beatles music company) that to keep its name it wouldn’t do anything music related.
Let’s get one thing straight, these are not totally bad products. The iPhone has a fantastic interface. However, it also has no way to change or improve its battery, no SMS facility, a locked and restricted, application store, no video capability, a poor 2MP camera… I could go on. But it sells like gold dust because it’s trendy and looks good. The same with the iPod which is sold by a terrible set of earphones, but people don’t seem to mind. Indeed, so trendy is it to be seen with a pair of white iPod earphones on, that many people don’t upgrade them for just this reason.
The way I see it is that Jobs has struck lucky by being the kind of person who helps design products that are perfect for a throw-away, fashion-obsessed culture. Some kind of genius? No.
Now I can look forward to lots of hate-mail from obsessive Apple fans.
If you’ve not heard of iolo during their 11 years life then you’ve probably heard of their products – award-winning tune-up software for your PC.
Probably the most popular is System Mechanic, which will automatically repairs errors and fragmentation, cleans out clutter, and tunes up your PC. They also sell anti-virus and disk cleaning and recovery solutions.
And you can get 50% off their product range. Simply enter the code “20804043407749” on the shopping cart screen (click “Redeem a coupon”).
I’m not a fan of all the recent bleating about broadband speeds and how we’re apparently being “conned” by our ISP’s. The wording is already clear… you get “up to” 8 Mbps. You can’t then complain that you only get 2 or 3.
However, testing your actual connection speed is something else entirely. How do you know what speed you are actually running at? Using 7 different online speed testers I’ve just received an upload speed of anything between 537 and 960 Kbps and a download speed between 2498 and 3494 Kbps. That’s a rather big difference and the kind of thing that will cause more people to write to Watchdog, Ofcom, and whoever else.
Over the last few days I’ve had a problem accessing my online banking (in this case Alliance and Leicester) from Firefox. Internet Explorer was fine.
After running Firefox in safe mode (run firefox -safe-mode) I realised the issue was with one of my add-ons. With a hunch I launched Firefox normally and disabled Firebug. Sure enough, I could now access my banking.
I don’t know why this change has occurred – possibly A&L have upgraded their site security. Anyway I can live with FireBug disabled until I need to use it.
If you’ve not heard of