whimsical bits

And in better news...

Afghanistan won its first-ever Olympic medal.

The "Fauxlympics"

Noted sportswriter Rick Reilly takes dead aim at the image management games that China has been playing around the Olympics and points out the great (and absurd) lengths that the host nation has gone to in order to avoid any perceived embarrassment on the international stage.

Sadly, China’s actions over the course of the past year in particular have been reminiscent of the spin games played by the old USSR and ring just as hollow. Sadder still is that it took a sports columnist to make the most pointed remarks about it.

Globe & Mail on iPhone pricing: An exercise in missing the point

Instead of tackling the issue of Canadian iPhone pricing head-on, the linked-to Globe & Mail article reads more like a puff piece on Rogers and its’ “visionary” decision to build out a GSM network as well as a snark against some “Apple diehards” who are the apparent source of the growing discontent over Rogers’ iPhone plans.

To wit:

“It’s just not a responsible business decision for Rogers to blow up all its data pricing. But it has sharpened its pencil. It is watching this very closely. If this starts to truly negatively affect significant opinion — and you have to be careful about 5,000 on a blog versus what’s really meaningful — we will be on top of this thing to ensure that we manage that tension between responsible pricing and not [upsetting] customers.”

Rogers has outflanked its rivals, Bell Mobility Inc. and Telus Corp., by bringing the newest technology to market first and by canny investments in network upgrades. It’s not going to give away the farm to satisfy some Apple diehards, he said.

Rogers is using the iPhone as a flagship product, and one that, when combined with the company’s promotion of Facebook applications and other teen-friendly services, helps position the telecom giant as “hip and cool” in the eyes of consumers, said Michelle Warren, a senior analyst with Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont.

(Those who are intimately familiar with the state of the Canadian wireless market will be excused if they are stuck between the choice of laughing and then crying or vice versa.)

So let’s get this straight: Rogers is trying to avoid “blowing up” its data pricing (which, for the curious, was until now among the highest in the entire world), and would hypothetically “give away the farm” vis a vis recouping its “canny investments in network upgrades” (does snapping up Fido and removing the last remotely innovative carrier from the market count?) if it dared bring its prices in line with those of AT&T and other carriers.

Aside from having distinct feel of “it could be a lot worse - you should be lucky you’re getting the iPhone at all.”, that line of reasoning completely ignores the larger issues:

• There is no unlimited 3G data option, whereas even AT&T’s cheapest plan has such a feature
• There are fewer included text messages and voice minutes at all pricing levels
• The iPhone will only be availabe with a three-year contract
• Rogers has a long history of being extremely unfriendly to its customers (both wireless and cable TV)

And just to throw a bit of salt in the wound, the “unlimited evenings” won’t start until 9pm instead of the usual 7pm. Of course, Rogers and Fido are offering unlimited use of their wireless hotspots (do they have such things? I certainly have not seen such a thing advertised anywhere in Vancouver), which I suppose is meant to make up for the lack of unlimited 3G data usage.

In short, it appears the authors are either quite ignorant of the larger picture around both the iPhone coming to Canada as well as the general sad state of the Canadian wireless industry or they couldn’t be bothered to investigate the issues before writing about them. Instead, they’ve turned out a shallow, one-sided response to an issue that runs much deeper than a simple “pricing clash”.

World's Most Expensive Ethernet Cable?

Yes, for the minor sum of $500 USD, you too can own a 6-ft Ethernet cable as crafted by Denon. The description is interesting, to say the least:

Get the purest digital audio you’ve ever experienced from multi-channel DVD and CD playback through your Denon home theater receiver with the AK-DL1 dedicated cable. Made of high-purity copper wire, it’s designed to thoroughly eliminate adverse effects from vibration and helps stabilize the digital transmission from occurrences of jitter and ripple. A tin-bearing copper alloy is used for the cable’s shield while the insulation is made of a fluoropolymer material with superior heat resistance, weather resistance, and anti-aging properties. The connector features a rounded plug lever to prevent bending or breaking and direction marks to indicate correct direction for connecting cable.

Personally, I’m curious about the “direction marks”… I can only assume that the packets move faster when the cable is connected correctly, in which case this discovery has astounding implications for the mere mortals who build out high-tech office spaces. To think that your data could actually be moving slower because all of the Cat-5 cable has been wired backwards… the mind boggles.

However, when it comes to creativity, the product description holds the faintest of candles to the user reviews. Enjoy!

Renting music? How droll.

Warner Music’s latest scheme is so absurd that you could almost assume it was a bad April Fool’s prank but then you remember that it’s the music industry - a group of people for whom nothing is too far out in left field if it means that they don’t have to think about fixing their utterly broken business model.

When Should You Jump? JSR 308. That's When.

Insightful and sobering - I hope Sun is paying attention to its developer community. The JVM as a platform has the potential to be nothing short of amazing, but will Java the language be able to keep the mindshare of highly talented developers with changes like those proposed by JSR 308? Or are formalism and “ceremony” going to rule the near future?

For a somewhat less dramatic take, read “Over complication?” (shamelessly re-linked from raganwald). I think the salient point remains: it seems there is a sea change coming in the Java world and if JSR 308 is a sign of things to come, it doesn’t look like it’s for the better.

Side note: it’s ironic to read of this after spending the last few days mulling over Steve Yegge’s recent Stanford presentation entitled “Dynamic Languages Strike Back” - the comparison is not flattering.