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From the monthly archives: July 2009
Gollygosh, don’t Google and Apple know they’re both on the side of Coolitude? Don’t they know we love them? Why are they acting like money-grubbing corporations? Can’t someone explain to them that there are enough credulous techno-gits to go around, willing to buy whatever they’re told is new and shiny? Gee whiz, you’d think that once you’ve convinced a bunch of idjits to fork over $400 for a friggin’ plastic telephone, you’d realize that you’ve got a golden goose on your hands and competition becomes irrelevant. But I guess not.
Earlier today we learned that Apple had begun to pull all Google Voice-enabled applications from the App Store, citing the fact that they “duplicate features that come with the iPhone”. Now comes even worse news: we’ve learned that Apple has blocked Google’s official Google Voice application itself from the App Store. In other words, Google Voice — one of the best things to happen to telephony services in a very long time — will have no presence at all on the App Store. If there’s ever been a time to be furious with Apple, now is it.
via Apple Is Growing Rotten To The Core: Official Google Voice App Blocked From App Store.
Max Keiser does a Howard Beale:
Incidentally, Matt Taibbi’s amazing Rolling Stone article on Goldman Sachs is now up on the web in its entirety.
I wanted one of these back in 1975, but they cost a couple of hundred bucks. I just bought one at a thrift store, where it had been tossed in a pile of cheap point-and-shoot cameras. It’s in good shape and it seems to work. Price? Ninety cents. They go for $25-80 on eBay.
The Olympus XA has been described as the camera that professional photographers carry on their vacations. The 6 element F.Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 lens is extremely sharp, especially past f/5.6 where it reaches 56lpm. Unique to carry-along point-and-shoots, the XA has a completely coupled rangefinder down to 0.9 meters as well as full aperture-priority metering. It even has a +1.5 exposure compensation for backlighting.
The design by Yoshihisa Maitani of Olympus is simply brilliant. It has a body not much larger than the Minox 35, but without the cumbersome folding lens mechanism. The electronic shutter is extremely accurate and the XA series takes LR/SR44 batteries that are still commonly available. It is truly a masterpiece design and it is difficult to believe that it was introduced in 1975, over twenty five years ago.
Somebody didn’t get the memo about going quietly into that good night:
French workers threaten to blow up factory • The Register
Workers at a bankrupt French car parts factory have decided that the best way to get some redundancy cash is to threaten to blow up the factory.
According to Autocar, the 366 belligerent ex-employees of New Fabris in Chatellerault have seized the premises and are ready and willing to detonate stockpiled gas bottles unless Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroën cough 30k for each worker – to match the amount the two car makers apparently paid to 200 former employees of another defunct supplier.
Renault and PSA accounted for 90 per cent of the factory’s output. There are car parts with an estimated value of €2m still inside, along with a Renault machine worth another €2m. The companies have until 31 July to stump up the cash or face the consequences.
Guy Eyermann, CGT union official and secretary of the company works council, insisted: “The gas bottles are in the factory. Everything has been planned for it to blow up.”
[more at link]
today’s moodcat
