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.
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.
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
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"
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.
