[Quote:]

To many observers it is one of the great mysteries of the electronics world. Not how the iPod became such a huge success, but how other manufacturers have still failed to effectively compete against the white ear bud toting little player from the company formerly known as Apple computer. Yet with each passing year, the total dominance of Apple Inc.’s humble little player continues to baffle experts. As each new device from competitors is hailed as an “iPod Killer�? and promptly fails to live up to expectations analysts seem to have finally given up on the term altogether. But why hasn’t anyone been able to create or market a music player that can effectively take on Apple’s iPod?

It was the recent launch of the iPhone, and more important the reaction to it that made me realise what the key is. I think most manufacturers simply still cannot grasp that the iPod could have ever been a success, even though the reality is staring them in the face. I think that there is this feeling among many boardrooms is that the success of the iPod is a fluke; after all, this is the company that in the minds of many business people, failed so spectacularly with the mac. What makes me think that? Well, much of the reaction to the iPhone is the same as the reaction to the iPod when it was released. Manufacturers are assuming it will be a failure because they offer devices with similar functionality for less money.

[..]

Last week, Apple once again showed a better way of doing something. Not a way of doing more things, but a way of doing things better, and once again everyone scoffed. “Sure it’s pretty but my cheapo smart phone deluxe can do all those things for half the price.�? One of the things that struck me while watching the keynote at Macworld, was it was not that any other company couldn’t have come up with the user interface on the iPhone, it’s that they wouldn’t have. It’s almost as if everyone else seems to be only capable of thinking in terms of raw features, rather than how those features are implemented. It’s as if everyone is wearing “feature�? goggles. They think of smart phones as a computing tool, in which the number of features are more important than the user interface. Take the iPhone’s touch screen for example. There have been touch screens before, and everyone has written off the iPhones touch screen as “nothing new�? because they can’t conceive that someone could change the rules and make a touch interface from the ground up. They can’t seem to see past the touch screen “feature�? to the way that it’s implemented. Look at much talked about LG phone. It has a touch screen and a relatively nice graphics, but there the similarities between it and the iPhone ends. The LG’s user interface is a standard computer interface with scroll bars folders. It took Apple to see that the interface needs to be re invented for the touch screen rather than trying to meld two existing functionalities together.

Electronics firms are not going to respond to the iPhone, because in their eyes, the iPhone couldn’t possibly be a success. Just like when the iPod was released, they will sit back absolutely convinced that device will to fail to capture the market. Even if in the first year, Apple is incredibly successful with the iPhone, other cell phone manufacturers will still be in denial that the company that let Windows take over the world could possibly sell a device that could be a market leading success. When they realise that crudely trying to bolt features onto their products in an attempt to out do the new rising star isn’t working, everyone will be collectively scratching their heads once again wondering how this could have happened. By that stage, history will have repeated itself and it will be too late.

[Quote:]

You have to be seriously freaking into Vista if you’re even thinking about the Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Limited Numbered Signature Edition (seriously, we didn’t even think Microsoft was capable of a title like that), but at least the price is on target ($259) and they claim it’s signed by the man himself, Billy G. Something tells us it’s just an embossed signature print or something along those lines, but either way it’s down to you and 19,999 others prepared to get their fanboy on with the latest, greatest version of Windows.

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

Kajal Khidr was accused of adultery by her husband’s family and held hostage by six family members in Iraqi Kurdistan. Kajal Khidr was tortured and mutilated; family members cut off part of her nose and told her she would be killed after the birth of her child. After fleeing to Syria, two of her abusers were arrested. However, they were both released within twenty-four hours because authorities determined they had acted to safeguard the honor of the family. No charges were ever brought against them. (Amnesty International Website)

In northern Uganda, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducts children, forcing girls into “marriage” and institutionalized rape… The men then have total sexual control over their “wives” and “domestic helpers,” subjecting them to rape and various other forms of violence. (Amnesty International Website)

Mary Ann Kingston was pulled out of school at 13 and told to prepare for marriage. At 16, she was forced to marry her 33-year-old uncle. The order teaches that incest is a preferred practice to preserve a pure family bloodline originating from Jesus Christ. When Mary Ann ran away, her father took her to a remote ranch near the Utah-Idaho line and beat her with his leather belt. She counted 28 lashes before passing out. [The number of people in polygamous families in Utah is estimated at as many as 50,000.] (J. Nichols. “Wives suing to bring end to abuse under polygamy.�? The Arizona Republic. October 15, 2003.)

For millennia the world’s great prophets and theologians have applied their collective genius to the riddle of womanhood. The result has been polygamy, sati, honor killing, punitive rape, genital mutilation, forced marriages, a cultic obsession with virginity, compulsory veiling, the persecution of unwed mothers, and other forms of physical and psychological abuse so kaleidoscopic in variety as to scarcely admit of concise description. Some of this sexist evil probably predates religion and can be ascribed to our biology, but there is no question that religion promulgates and renders sacrosanct attitudes toward women that would be unseemly in a brachiating ape.

While man was made in the image of God, the prevailing view under Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is that woman was made in the image of man. Her humanity, therefore, is derivative, contingent, ersatz (Gen: 2-21-22 Koran 4:1; 39.6; 7.189). Of all the animals, woman was the last to be made but the first to sin (Gen 3:12). The Old Testament puts the monetary value of a woman’s life at one-half to two-thirds that of a man’s (Leviticus 27). The Koran elaborates: it requires the testimony of two women to offset that of one man (2:282) and every girl deserves exactly one-half her brother’s share of inheritance (4:11). God suggests in his tenth commandment that the woman next door is your neighbor’s material possession which, along with his house, slaves and oxen, must not be coveted (Exodus 20:17); Deuteronomy 5:21).

The God of Abraham has made it perfectly clear that a woman is expected to live in subjugation to her father until the moment she is pressed into connubial service to her husband. As St. Paul put it: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.” (Ephesians 5:22-24). The Koran delivers the same message, and recommends that disobedient wives be whipped (4:34). The suppression of women under Islam achieved hideous precision through the writings of Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), perhaps the most influential Muslim since Muhammad:

She should stay home and get on with her spinning, she should not go out often, she must not be well-informed, nor must she be communicative with her neighbors and only visit them when absolutely necessary; she should take care of her husband and respect him in his presence and his absence and seek to satisfy him in everything… she must not leave the house without his permission and if given his permission she must leave surreptitiously. She should put on old clothes and take deserted streets and alleys, avoid markets, and make sure that a stranger does not hear her voice or recognize her; she must not speak to a friend of her husband even in need… Her sole worry should be her virtue, her home as well as her prayers and her fast. If a friend of her husband calls when the latter is absent she must not open the door nor reply to him in order to safeguard her and her husband’s honor. She should accept what her husband gives her as sufficient sexual needs at any moment… She should be clean and ready to satisfy her husband’s sexual needs at any moment.
(Cited in Ibn Warraq’s, Why I Am Not Muslim, p. 300).

Recall the blissful lives of Afghan women under the Taliban, or reflect upon how many Muslim girls throughout the world are still obliged to wear the veil, and you will understand that this type of thinking has consequences.

The net effect of religion (especially in the Abrahamic tradition) has been to demonize female sexuality and portray women as morally and intellectually inferior to men. Every woman holds the dignity of men for ransom, and is liable to tarnish it with a glance, or destroy it outright through sexual indiscretion. From this perspective, rape is a crime that one man commits against the honor of another; the woman is merely Shame’s vehicle, and often culpably acquiescent—being all blandishments and guile and winking treachery. According to God, if the victim of a rape neglects to scream loudly enough, she should be stoned to death as an accessory to her own defilement (Deuteronomy 22:24). Every man’s daughter is a potential whore liable to grow drunk on the blood of good men—a Delilah, a Jezebel, a Salome. Every girl, therefore, must be mastered and locked away before she can succumb to the evil that is her all-too-natural enthusiasm. According to God, women have been placed on earth to service men, to bear their children, to the keep their homes in order, and above all to not betray them by becoming the object of another man’s sexual enjoyment. And so it falls to every man to shield his women from the predations of his rapacious brothers and oblige them, until death or decrepitude, to fulfill their most sacred purpose—as incubators of sons.

If we ever achieve a civilization of true equity, respect, and love between the sexes, it will not be because we paid more attention to our holy books.

[Quote:]

Another questioner asked about the same subject – the French parliament’s pursuit of legalising P2P and setting up a blanket license for ISPs to compensate artists. After a year ago which approved the plan, debate raged for three months, largely under the radar of the Anglo-Saxon press, before being rejected.

If you were thinking someone had got to the French between the first vote and the second, you’d be correct.

“On the 21st of December 2005, at 2am, the whole world got out of control,” said Kennedy.

“Global licensing was going to be imposed on us, and our first thought was this wasn’t thought through. We didn’t know if it was going to be compulsory or voluntary.

Kennedy sought out the French weak spot.

“Now the French music market is unique in that it is not so influenced by US or English, as most markets are. So we went to the French and asked them, ‘What’s the most important thing about your music market?’, and they thought, and then gave the right answer. That was when the penny dropped.”

“We asked, ‘Who’s going to invest in French music?’ With an ISPs and a flat fee, you’re going to have more US companies and American music dominating the French market.”

Now the funny thing about the nationalist argument is that I’ve also heard the exact opposite advanced as a reason against a digital flat fee.

According to this argument, national markets go decidedly off-track. They start rewarding their own, and developing their own talent, and the global reach of American corporations is permanently damaged.

Which one is more likely? It depends on how music flows in the future. If you only get music through the web, then this may favour American corporations: the web is decidedly flavoured by Californian brands such as Google, eBay and Yahoo!, not to mention MSN.

But if your iPod fills itself from a ubiquitous wireless connection, it’s going to reflect what’s playing in your neighbourhood. So if you walk past a Bistrot, you’ll be hearing French pop. If you get drunk in a German Bierkeller, you’ll be able to download some thigh-slapping drinking music (or German pop). And if you’re in English boozer, the chances are it’ll be the Arctic Monkeys.

Because rights holders are rewarded by totting up the digital exchanges between devices, a blanket license will naturally favour local cultures – provided they make that music available to their citizens (as any small shop can).

That’s something the French hadn’t thought through, either, as they were being mugged by the RIAA.

But expect to hear both contradictory cases advanced at the same time.

[Quote:]

The “Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images” exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art manages to both celebrate and betray fair use at the same time. It’s a beautifully designed exhibition that incorporates themes from Magritte’s work into the carpet and ceiling, the bowler hats on the attendants, and the exterior of the building.

Inside, they’ve hung many of Magritte’s famous works, and, accompanying these works, they’ve placed dozens of contemporary sculptures and paintings that riff off of Magritte, making fun of him or paying homage to him or commenting on him. These are canonical fair uses — an artist who takes from another artist and uses his work to make new work. In these other works, from the likes of Warhol and Antin, there are instances of Magritte’s work being duplicated in photos and paint.

So far so good — there’s a clear message from the paintings in the exhibit: culture is well-served by liberal rules that let one person remix another’s creation.

But that message is undermined by the exhibition policy on photos: no photos are allowed in the exhibit. If you take out your camera, one of the bowler-hatted guards will come up to you and shout at you (literally shout at you!): “No photos allowed!” They won’t even let you take out a phone or PDA and make notes with it, in case you’re sneakily taking photos on the premises.

This is a riddle: does the Magritte exhibition celebrate fair use, or deny it? Does it want to inspire us to remix Magritte, or warn us off the idea of reproduction without permission?

[Quote:]

The cake below was supposed to be a mix of English and Italian, but the staff apparently knew no Italian. The problem? Wegman’s email system also apparently did not recognize some of the proprietary Microsoft HTML extensions!

[..]

The email likely feeds directly into their computer that runs the food-grade equivalent of an inkjet printer to place the message on the cake, so it is possible that the message made it onto the cake because someone did not check it on the computer first.

[Quote:]

Bavaria Beer, a Dutch brewer, doesn’t just make a hearty beer, they’ll also sell you bright orange pants with a lion’s tail attached. You can buy them here but they were originally given away if you bought enough beer. Bright orange is the color of Dutch pride and the Lion is the symbol of Dutch soccer so it would seem the perfect novelty garment. People who drink your beer get a free pair of lederhosen, the company gets some free adverstising as “Bavaria�? is emblazoned across the chest. Chances are you’ll get a few people to wear them to the game. You want to see a sea of orange? Look around for Dutch soccer fans on flickr.

Now, come World Cup time you have thousands of lanky Dutchmen streaming into Germany wearing bright orange lederhosen with lion’s tails. And the most offensive part…the brewer’s name. Disallowing non sponsor company logos at the stadiums, the Germans ordered the Dutch to strip down if they wanted to watch the game, so they went ahead and watched the game in their skivvies.

It was a funny story at the time. NPR had an article, I wrote a thing about it, these were newsworthy pants.

Had the Netherlands progressed in the Cup, the pants/no pants issue might have grown into a more pressing controversy and become a hot ticket item to wear in order to show that you wouldn’t take any guff from Der Mann. Things didn’t work out that way though and once the team was sent home, the pants were relegated to the rag pile.

Or so it would seem.

A few weeks ago, I came across this post about orange lederhosen showing up in Shanghai which led to the you tube video below. I’m watching it and thinking “I know those pants�?.

Scrappy Chinese manufacturer, Wang Ming, saw an opportunity where others saw a crisis and pressed the excess pants into service as props in a baffling looking board game named Smack The Lion. Wang Ming makes 3 products: Plastic trees, Industrial oven hand protection, and Family Game. While I’m sure they make a nice tree, Family Game has a weirder back story.

The official description of “Smack The Lion�? from the product page reads:

The first of series family board games smack the lion offers new horizon to combine both mental and physical qualities into one game. Up to four players will have special designed high quality garment that will ensure optimal gaming pleasure. Ideal for small groups, family and friendly times. Easy to carry.

What I find most interesting is that they show the pants on fire, then exploding, in the commercial. Wang Ming also makes industrial oven mitts, so maybe you really do try to burn the pants off your opponents as the game progresses. At the very least the commercial encourages you to throw your youngest child over the edge of a building.

Dave Marsh, a Lead Program Manager responsible for Windows’ handling of video:

[Quote:]

Over the holidays, a paper was distributed that raised questions about the content protection features in Windows Vista. The paper draws sharp conclusions about the implications of those features for our customers. As one of the Lead Program Managers for the technologies in question, I would like to share our views on these questions.

Windows Vista includes content protection infrastructure specifically designed to help ensure that protected commercial audiovisual content, such as newly released HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs, can be enjoyed on Windows Vista PCs.

[..]

Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios

A first attempt to run this through my marketing-dictionary resulted in “proactively leverages the synergies of blue sky entertainment by thinking outside the box and innovating front-end methodologies for consumer satisfaction.” but then I realized I had the dictionary turned upside down, so I tried again:

Windows Vista has shit inside in case some asshole wanted to sell you overpriced crap. Because it’s digital crap, you can’t return it. Vista is designed to take your fucking money and give it to assholes.

Also in the article:

Contrary to claims made in the paper, the content protection mechanisms do not make Windows Vista PCs less reliable than they would be otherwise — if anything they will have the opposite effect, for example because they will lead to better driver quality control.

So…. Less freedom = better quality?

Might as well say it:

War is Peace.

Freedom is Slavery.

Looking through the comments on that article, people are not buying it.