Category Archives: Technology

Boycott Apple – Really?

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Apple, the computer giant whose sleek products have become a mainstay of modern life, is dealing with a public relations disaster and the threat of calls for a boycott of its iPhones and iPad.

via Apple hit by boycott call over worker abuses in China | Technology | The Observer.

Two Important things to note about this 'bogus-ness':

A) Foxconn make lots and lots of consumer electronics for practically every company on this earth. Xbox or PS3 yup that's them.

B) Apple, has been extraordinarily transparent about its manufacturing record. But, rules and expectations do not translate from one country to another.

"If you add up all the workers who have died to build your iPhone or iPad, the number is shockingly high,"  - Peter Cohan : Forbes

Finally, if your going to write sound-bites, at least have the decency to give the number or cite the source.

A Bad Week For The Cloud.

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gfail

The world is abuzz with talk of the next big thing in computing, the cloud. Well this week my experiences have told me one thing, the cloud sucks, it is the biggest pile of BS since the bailout of the banks.

First, Google Mail (gmail for the US) failed. Leaving customers both on hosted and the standard accounts, then my favourite hosting provider of nearly 5 years fails on me, there (gs) or GridService. The cloud based shared hosting system, which I decided to put some of my clients on to allow rapid scaling or as it has turned out rapid failing.

fail

The storage cluster of which my server is a part has failed, in a whale like fashion - Spewing its entrails all over the server. Thankfully my managerie of dedicated servers are still up and running, but I hadn't transferred the remainder of the sites out of the (gs). Meaning the biggest of all my sites is no down for the count, and has been down for over 24hrs.

I love (mt) mediatemple, and there support staff are not doubt taking flak from every corner. But, I would really appreciate it if I could edit my DNS entries so I can get something up to explain to customers what the hell is going on, and no we haven't gone bankrupt.

I would like to add, that I still would recommend mediatemple to anyone, but just not the (gs). If you want cloud Amazon EC2 or mediatemple (cs) when its out is what you want.

MediaTemple Cluster2 Status

TechCruch GFail

last.fm vs TechCrunch

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Being the heavy user of Last.fm I was a little concerned when techcrunch broke the story that supposably, last.fm had given the RIAA, information pertaining to users who had scrobbled any tracks from the Upcoming and undrealeased U2 album. The fact I can't stand the rose tinted glasses wearing, Irish Hypocrite is beside the point.

Firstly, what got me there was no mention of the Data Protection act fair enough last.fm is a CBS company, but its still based in the UK (for the most part) and that would mean the passing of this data would be illegal. You cannot pass data to a third party without consent from the data subject.

Also it seems like there are alot of people and blogs posting unsubstantiated rumours to get traffic and therefore ad revenue etc. I know its always been there but it seems like everybody is at it even big news companies, what little credibilty these sites have is been quickly ruined by hastly researched stories and a all too trigger happy publish finger. 

Last.fm - Keep up the good work.

TechCrunch Article

Last.fm - "TechCrunch is full of shit"

Psystar Continues to be a thorn in Apples Side

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In an interesting twist, Computer World is reporting that a federal judge ruled last week that the Mac clone maker Psystar can continue its countersuit against computer maker and Mac OS developer Apple Corporation. Neowin

So what is Apple's next move, well thats quite simple. If you can't beat them fairly beat them unfairly. I can see Apple taking some of that Cash on Hand, and buying Psystar outright and effectively putting them out of business.

Apple Bans Facebook – Not So Sure.

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Well at least some stores are banning the popular social networking sites from the instore computers. While alot can be said including that its an evil move by a big corporation. Although it is since been found out that Apple is not doing this by a policy and it appears only a handful of stores are operating the policy.

I personally think that Apple will enact such a policy across all stores soon, they want to stay profitable after all and time is money. The time spent dealing with questions and people who a clearly not there to buy only to check their gmail account has to stop. Apple has a massive retail presence based on quality of staff, if they are to keep the quality of staff high and thus maintain this appearance through the oncoming storm, they have to draw the line at some point.

Via TinyComb TechCrunch

“Hello Dave, You Look Nice Today” – One step closer to HAL 9000

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Today, the machines became a little smarter, as a computer named Elbot managed to achieve a 25% success rate when convincing a human being that they were talking to another human. via Gizmodo & The Telegraph 

Should the law of exponential growth hold, it isn't going to long until we can create programs that can ace the turing test. Its taken 58 years [1] from its inception to this point, I don't think it will take us many more years before the test is passed.

Ray Kurzweil has previously stated in his books (Age of Spiritual Machines & The Singularity is Near) that we would be able to create a system that accurately simulates human interaction to pass the turing test [2] I think I am going to go out on a limb and say it will be much sooner.

The Problem with Open – Android vs iPhone.

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There has been lots of talk about Apple is doomed to fail with the iPhone as a software Platform and the Android platform is going to be so much better, simple because its open.

Firstly, take a look at the iPhone. Its a fantastically designed device, and the attention to detail is insane - that's not to say the Android platform isn't. But it is a sensible justification that the platform needs to slightly closed to allow a continuity of quality to be maintained. Secondly, the iTunes to iPhone facility has yet to face any real competition, its far from perfect but there is a seamless connection from buying to using. You click buy and the app or music is downloaded and synced to your phone, without having to drag and drop, move or do anything manually. However there is growing concern that the closed nature of the platform will be its undoing see Pull My Finger [1] Continue reading →

ITV: Your Problems Michael Grade

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"Google and YouTube are parasites. It's all about content; the rest is just railway lines."

You utter clot, YouTube living off the great content that ITV are making - CelebAir another brilliant way to spend ITVs budget. I am sorry but you have complete lost touch with reality and ITV deserves to loose its place on the FTSE100, business man exploits whatever tool available to them when in a corner, ITV resorts to cheap shots.
Continue reading →

Viacom = Big Evil, Judge = Insane

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Fair enough Viacom is going after money from its interlectual property or however they want to justify it but in the long run they have damaged themselves beyond repair. 

Firstly, they image wasn't all that great, and they completely miss the point of the internet. For example, by allowing clips to be uploaded of 'their' material they generate more hype and buzz and most importantly more viewers, yet again late to the party reaction. Insert foot into mouth and take the people to court.

Secondly, they have forced Google's hand, by releasing the data on what IPs and therefore people have viewed on Youtube to Viacom, this is illegal at least in the UK, under the data protection act. It sets a very scary president one that brings us very close to the Orwelian 1984 set up. I wish somebody takes this up and fights back, the days when the big companies could dictate what happens in the world should be over, seemingly not.

eBay Selling Fakes – No it couldn’t possibly be…

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The online auction site has been ordered to pay compensation by a judge in Paris for allowing users to trade counterfeit items

Via Times Online

Louis Vuitton sues eBay, for selling 'luxury' fakes. First question what took so long, and what makes them think they have any possibility of winning or even settling the lawsuit.

I think its laughable that companies still think they can get away with such stupid lawsuits, the bottom line is the profits can't be all that good, on their end.

How not to survive the onslaught of WWDC.

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Twitter has come under attack for being a great service that has a poor record of up time Link1 - TechCrunch, Link 2 - TechCrunch. Well news on the street is Twitter survived the several thousand posts it recieved during WWDC, including my own meager posts. But at what cost.

I laughingly joked that the next feature for twitter to disable to ensure it stayed up, was to turn off twittering. In reality it was nearly at that point the following features were cut for the duration of the Keynote:

 

  • @ Replies
  • Everyone Tab
  • Archive Tab
  • Public Timeline
  • Limit number of API requests from 30 Request Per Hour to 10
  • Updates by SMS
  • User Deletion and Restoration 
It seems to me that the vast majority of the functionality of twitter was culled to ensure uptime, the community was just lobotomised with no thought. I applaud twitter for staying online, but it shouldn't have cost the features that make Twitter, Twitter and not just some meta-blogging platform.
Twitter has got plenty of issues with scaling, if anything WWDC has proved that twitter cannot scale with demand. To use a analogy, a TV station does not cut the commentary of a football match because the system cannot cope with the demand, this is essentially what Twitter did to the community.
It looks like we were spot-on with our estimate of ten times the normal traffic today. Our preparations held and Twitter stayed up! Only one unexpected disruption occured and that was a network problem in our data center which caused a few minutes of service distruption some time after Steve Jobs' keynote. With that single distruption, our uptime during the event was 97.3%
I love Twitter, and despite the fact I don't really get it yet. I don't want to see it disappear because it couldn't handle its popularity.

 

WWDC Roundup – iPhone 3G & Mobile Me

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WWDC was a bit of a let down, iphone alleys' coverage by ustream however was fantastic. I was expecting more information and more products, not a grueling 45mins of demo's of apps we cant use for a month, not quite the usual Apple finesse we have come to appreciate.

One important thing to note was Steve Job's committed to pricing the new 8gb iPhone at no more that $199US in all 70 countries the iPhone 3g will be sold in by the end of the year. I hope this is the signal of a much bigger push by Apple to price equivalently in all countries. That said they create products people will gladly pay for in some cases even twice such as myself who will be upgrading come July 11th once again.

Surprisingly the announcement of OS X 10.6 dubbed Snow Leopard was pushed from the forefront of the announcement, giving credence to the fact it will not be a stability release just a fit and polish release to keep ahead of the competition. Also .mac will be no longer and be replaced by mobile me, which has to be an improvement of the aging .mac name and technology.

It was a bit of a let down in the fact that Steve had very little stage time, some reported as usually steve looked ill.

Shock Horror - There was no one more thing.

Once your lucky, Twice your stupid.

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BBC1 will be web-streamed live through BBC.co.uk as of next year, according to the broadcaster’s director general Mark Thompson.

BBC1 is internet bound

Hoping to capitalise on its impressive iPlayer service the Beeb has decided why not go back to the 90's and try something they know doesn't work.

People simply do not want to watch TV in a linear sense anymore, the only content thats worth streaming are sports events, I there isn't much chance of that happening soon.

The BBC needs to work on iPlayer and getting the BBC online identity sorted out, its abit of a mish mash at the moment. With iPlayer the BBC struck gold and unless they keep pushing they will become a follower not a leader. I think the best idea would be to can live streaming, and just make iPlayer better they would be forgiven for that.