Issues

This is hilarious: Microsoft and Google: The Good Guys

“Anyone who likes competition and choice should root for Microsoft and Google, not Apple, in phones.”

Yeah – this guy clearly has nothing to do with Microsoft. Apart from he writes for PC Mag – owned by MS since forever. But otherwise, judging by the tone of this article he has never actually heard of Microsoft before at the CTIA Wireless trade show this week.  Not surprising – he doesn’t sound like he has enough of a clue to have thought up the topic of this article all by himself.  Not by a long shot – he must have either been:

1. Born yesterday
2. Come down in the last shower
3. An alien that immigrated to Earth in the last few weeks
4. Another one of MS’s stooges

The premise of the article is that Apple, Palm Pre and Blackberry are ‘bad’ (but mainly Apple) because they are so bad-ass, so evil that they have the gall to design not only the hardware, but the software as well for their smart phone offerings. Can you imagine that? What bastards!

The doofus explains:

“Before you mock, understand that putting together a mobile OS is a huge investment. If every mobile manufacturer had to create its own mobile OS, you’d have either a huge barrier to entry, hideous fragmentation with dozens of incompatible platforms, or both. Think about how many platforms and how few manufacturers are already out there. It would be worse.”

Let’s just have a quick look:

• ‘A huge barrier to entry’ – Right, and owning a mobile phone fabrication plant isn’t a huge barrier to entry in the mobile phone market? For crying out loud!
• ‘Hideous market fragmentation’ – so market fragmentation is hideous eh? Now we *know* the guy works for Microsoft.
• ‘Incompatible platforms’ – GAF. As long as the data can be shared, differences in platforms is a non-issue.

So what the guy is saying is that someone has to stand up for the poor guys with the shitty mobile phone fabrication plant that can’t possibly afford to get the talent together to make an SmartPhone OS specifically for the phones they manufacture. Android and MS are good – it’ll give the rubbish handset manufacturers a shot at the smart phone market, which is unfairly dominated by those horrid companies that design and manufacture both the OS and Handsets.

Unfortunately, Windows 6.5 is a bag of shit and everyone knows it. So what if a shitty phone manufacturer can use it – it will only add competition to the ‘rubbish smart phone’ sector of the smart phone market – it won’t actually be competing with the top 3 smart phone providers.

Android, on the other hand, I like. In Google’s typical fashion they’ll dump a whole lot of resources into developing a Smart Phone OS that makes using and accessing their services easy, conforming to open standards, and then releasing it under the GPL. However, much like the Windows Phone OS, they will be competing in the ‘rubbish smartphone’ sector of the smartphone market, and not with Blackberry, Palm and Apple.  They will be competing with Windows Mobile, Symbian and Linux.

Can’t wait how this competition pans out for Microsoft.

What I hate about this carbon trading thing is that there is this big resistance to it centred around spending money. Certain people are all about the fact that the climate science isn’t bedded down properly and therefore the whole carbon trading thing is a total scam. They feel it’s corrupt because climate change is either natural, or it’s not actually happening. And quite frankly they don’t see why they should have to pay for bigger energy bills based on information prone to having lots of holes poked in it.

There is enough science out there to throw doubt on the entire premise of carbon trading, and worse, it’s all valid. It’s because it’s about carbon emissions. Geologists, or any scientist with an affinity with the last billion years of climate on Earth, will tell you that the climate has gone through patches where the earth was so warm there were forests that went all the way to the poles. Is that bad? In the grand scale of things, no it’s not. In the grand scale of things our civilisation is so negligible is mathematically isn’t even there – so really, why even give a shit?

Personally, my thing with carbon trading has bugger all to do with climate change. Climate changes, it’s natural. Even if humans do, or *could* affect the climate does it really matter in the long run? We will all die out eventually – apparently we only have another billion years or so before our sun turns into a giant red star and engulfs Venus and Mercury. Life won’t continue on Earth after that, so therefore it’s pointless forcing the current sentient inhabitants to take responsibility for what they consume.  Carbon trading won’t affect the continuance of life on earth – nothing in Earth’s history has.

Maybe the fact that we are burning all fossil fuels and releasing all this carbon into the atmosphere will allow earth to go through another dinosaurean-like renaissance – another biological peak of evolution. Perhaps all the extra carbon on the atmosphere will allow forests to flourish in a big way again, seeding the next era of mega-fauna, especially if it gets rid of those pesky humans. After all, what are we actually here for? Is it so that we can live forever? Is it so that we can seed the universe with life and technology? Are we supposed to all become gods? Does anyone have any science on this?

Short answer is no, no, no and no.

What I like about carbon trading is that it makes us more efficient. There are a bunch of things that being efficient makes better for humans. Less degradation for a start. More resources for things for another start. Initially, sure it’s gonna cost humans a bit more to move to a more efficient way of life. There will certainly be an outlay to get there, and there is no two ways about it, we will absolutely have to do it. If it isn’t climate change, then it’s over population. If it isn’t either of those then it’s a lack of cheap, non-renewable energy sources – or some other catastrophic event that makes life for humans on Earth a lot tougher. Regardless of how you view it, people are never going to volunteer to die so that there are more resources for everyone else – and if you look at the Easter Island scenario, it becomes a life that’s hardly worth living. Life like that doesn’t progress – it simply disintegrates.

If there is a way to make human life on Earth happier it’s about having an abundance of resources to go around. Being efficient is only going to help that cause. Paying a bit of extra cash now is going to make life way better for the our progeny, so it comes down to an ethical decision. Do you like beautiful landscapes? Do you like to see an abundance of biodiversity? Do you like nature and the environment? Do you like being happy? Do you want your future generations not to stuggle? If you do then carbon trading is at least doing *something* about maintaining those parts of our lives. Doing nothing because you don’t want to part with a few greenbacks, is simply preventing progress for humans on Earth – unless, of course, you have a better idea.

You got a better idea? I really fucken doubt it.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Emissions from burping cows ‘higher than family car’.

How is it that it’s so incredible that a ‘herd of cows’, which is 75 to 125 times the weight of a car, emits more CO2e than a vehicle over an entire year?

Is this stupid web site article suggesting that we drive herds of cows around instead of cars? Is it suggesting that we should convert our cows to ethanol? Is it suggesting that ‘Big Cow’ should stop lobbying the government against climate change and start producing the ‘E.B.’ (electric bovine)?

Who the fuck knows?

Just so that people can actually get some perspective here, the problem with the man made portion of climate change is the fossils we dig up and release into the atmosphere via the burning thereof. All we really have to do to halt the vast majority of our contribution to climate change is to stop doing that.

Just for a bit more cow perspective, apparently there are just under a billion cows on the planet, which means there are roughly 5 million herds of cattle (going on the ‘200 cows per herd’ number published in the stupid article) compared to 625 million cars. This means that cars out-pollute cows by 125 times alone. Cow methane is a friggin piss in the goddam ocean! For fucks sake, stop pointing the finger at developing countries and get rid of your stupid SUV you fucken dick head!

Carbon Planet has become all corporate lately. The direction of the biz has taken on some new things: Origination, Franchising and Affiliates – all built upon the GHG assessment products developed over the last year or so.

*yawn*

I know – millions of you are wondering where the noise is in this post. Millions of you are thinking, ‘Geez Dal, why are you holding back? Where’s the normal level of juice for this article? It’s almost as if you have whored yourself to the ‘corporate machine’ to help pimp their community philanthropy to give it more visibility on web!”

*cough*

Yes, er, well, I realise it may appear that way, but I assure you I am still a man of the people and that my heart is still with….

***zap!!!***

Oh crap I just got struck by lightning.

….anyway, one of the things that Carbon Planet did was put together a set of educational materials for kids about Climate Change, the causes, the effects, and what can be done about it.

Motiv designed the resource pack – their graphic design work was excellent, but they were expensive and the girl working on the job was often grumpy and short with us.

Nahum Ziersch designed the art work used for pretty much everything else. Nahum is a total pro and a brilliant artist – really pleased to have worked with him.

Have you all had a nice, enjoyable read of this?:

Classic Clips: Bill Gates Chews Out Microsoft Over XP over at Gizmodo.

It’s replete with a carefully manicured forum of breathlessly drippy Mac fan people (mainly boys) loving every second of Bill Gate’s very eloquent ‘alleged’ feedback memo to the Windows dev arm about the user experience of trying to install Windows Movie Maker. I found it amusing too, but I never believed for a second Gates wrote that mail.

Go and search online, a cursory glance will give you the impression it’s legit – down to the faked interview with Bill where the guy shows him a printed version of the memo, and then Gates shrugs and says he sends emails like that everyday because it’s his job.

Erroneous!

The email was in fact written by Steve Jobs as a favour to Bill. One of the informal clauses of the contract between Apple and MS when MS bought 5% of Apple to help them out of a tight patch, was that Steve was to assist Bill with improving Windows usability. Of course, the shareholders weren’t to know, nor the boards of either company because of the ruckus, as you would expect. According to Steve, it was that or a solid tea-bagging from Bill.

Think about it – if Gates really did have that eloquence when it came to describing an appalling user experience, don’t you think that Windows would have been a whole lot better? Why else would his executive team be so incompetent when it comes to UI? It’s because Bill never gave a rats arse about the UI. He left the UI decisions to a bunch of money grubbing pricks, so self centred they never cared if their stuff makes your life miserable.

You can believe it or not, it makes no difference to me. But re-read it and instead of thinking Gates is telling it, imagine it’s Jobsy dealing with the user experience after a nice fat doober. It then makes perfect sense.