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Tony Blair Wants My Blackberry
Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org)Blair:
He dragged us kicking and screaming into an illegal war then rode roughshod over thousand year old civil liberties before stepping down to make millions 'at a time of his own choosing' - Now Tony Blair is back... and he wants my Blackberry.
Let me explain. If I should dare pop into London's Piccadilly branch of Waterstones when he appears on the 8th of September - not just to buy HIS book you understand, but any book - I'll be required to check my phone into a "holding point." Bag as well. The terms and conditions for entry listed on their website continue. "There will be no customer photography" "There will be no personal dedications." Perhaps best of all: "Wrsitbands remain the property of Waterstones and will be removed after the signing" ...
Congratulations Waterstones: pettiness, confiscation, restricting the dissemination of information and making grandma's Christmas Present a little less original. All good work for a bookshop. No news yet on whether the masses will be forced to don orange jumpsuits as well.
[...]
So I urge you. If you happen to be in London’s Piccadilly on the 8th, to pop down and insist on being allowed in - phone, bag, jacket and all – to buy a copy of Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’ or better still John Kampfner’s ‘Blair’s Wars.’ This man still thinks he’s the messiah but the mess in Afghanistan, the carnage in Iraq, the shame of Guantanamo and the CCTV cameras all went ahead with his support. The latest estimate from the group Iraq Body Count suggests a minimum 97,461 civilians lost their lives in Iraq as a result of the war he started. NINETY SEVEN THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY ONE. There will be no personal dedications. NINETY SEVEN THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY ONE. Wristbands remain the property of Waterstones.
Brilliant stuff from James as always. Please, go read the whole article.
The trouble with rounded personalities...
The trouble with rounded personalities is that they don't tessellate. I think I get a lot more purchase on the nooks and crannies of life with my spiky one than those poor, well-adjusted sods who are sent out into a world completely unprepared for their goodwill.
Good article by David Mitchell, but I thought that this quote in particular was brilliant.
Seriously Cool Headphone Packaging
This concept design for Panasonic's 'Note' headphones, whilst strangely reminiscent of Apple's recent packaging, goes one better by using the headphones themselves to make the shape of a pair of quavers. How cool is that? Clever and simple. I like.
Font Wars
Stop Drinking Bottled Water
Norway's largest paper: iPhone 4 Antennagate is a US problem
After testing Apple's iPhone 4 against competing HTC and Nokia models in a remote area on the edge of Norwegian carrier Telenor's mobile coverage, the county's largest paper has concluded that its antenna design is "just as good and bad as competitors," rather than suffering any defect.
Kim Jong-il a secret Justin Bieber fan?
It is not known if Kim Jong-il is a fan of Justin Bieber's music
Best photo caption ever. Well done BBC! :-)
Nokia pokes at iPhone 4 death grip, but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones
I'm not defending the iPhone 4's issues with reception when held in certain ways - I'm certainly hoping that the rumours of a firmware fix to improve matters are true. But Nokia may really have shot themselves in the foot by posting a blog on their official website mocking the iPhone 4. They say you can hold a Nokia any way you like; "you’re free to hold your Nokia device any way you like. And you won’t suffer any signal loss. Cool, huh?".
Yeah, that does sound pretty cool! So why is it that the E71 (the device pictured in their blog post) comes with instructions saying, "avoid touching the antenna area... [this] affects the communication quality". Hmmm... sound familiar? How about the scores of videos on YouTube showing exactly the same issues have existed with Nokias (and other phones) for years?
I'll re-iterate, I'm not saying the iPhone 4 is perfect, but seriously Nokia, people in glass houses should not throw stones!
2010's iPhone 4 vs 2000's iMac
| iMac (2000) | iPhone 4 (2010) | |
| CPU Speed | 500MHz | 1GHz |
| RAM | 128MB | 512MB |
| Graphics | ATI Rage 128 Pro (8 million triangles) |
PowerVR SGX 535 (28 milltion triangles) |
| Display | 786,000 pixels | 614,000 pixels |
| Storage | 30GB Hard disk | 32GB solid state |
| Weight | 15.7Kg | 137g |
An interesting comparison! Specs from this blog.
McDonalds shows us it's French division has a heart, it's COO is a heartless idiot
McDonalds France recently aired a rather heartwarming ad in which a gay teen finishes a conversation with his boyfriend before having lunch with his father in MaDonalds. The ad ends with the slogan, "Come as you are". It's really rather good.
But now McDonalds have gone and ruined it all, as their COO Donald Johnson (below) has come out publicly saying that the ad would never air in America due to his Christian faith.
I've never shied away from the fact that I'm a Christian. I have my own personal beliefs and I don't impose those on anybody else... Having said that, at McDonald's, there are core values we stand for and the world is getting much closer. So we have a lot of conversations... about things that may have an implication in one part of the world and may be the cultural norm in another part of the world... But, you're right, that commercial won't show in the United States.
Oh, nice. I was sent a link to an article by David Dust which covers this, and whilst I didn't think much of the article as a whole, I thought the following was a valid comparison.
Consider this: can you imagine if a major American company hired a devout Muslim COO from Saudi Arabia who was a follower of Sharia law? And this COO decided that men and women weren't allowed to be in the same room at company headquarters, and women couldn't drive company cars and must keep their heads covered at all times??
And when questioned about this, the COO honestly replied: "But I'm a good Muslim, and to do otherwise would offend me and my religion". The right wing of this country would go completely insane.
The question is, can I overcome my occasional junk food cravings and join David in boycotting McDonalds? I think I need to try - I owe it to myself.
