Articles from June 2011
2011-06-25: Berlin celebrates being … what? queer? weird? or just liveable?
Today is the day that Berlin celebrates its CSD parade. Maybe I can be just a little bit proud about my native city that the celebration of “not being the same as everyone else” (for Austinites: “being weird”) is held in such high regard around here. Gay or straight, flush or broke, it doesn’t matter so much around here.
Berlin (and other German cities, notably Cologne) has embraced Christopher Street Day or CSD rather early, to the point that many party people out on the streets will not know what the original phrase meant, or where it came from. It goes back to the Stonewall Riots in NYC on June 28th, 1969.
While I myself am heterosexual, I actively support the freedom of people to live their lives unmolested, whatever their sexual orientation or preference. And from what I have seen today (and over and over again throughout the years), Berlin as a whole feels the same way. That, to me, is “Berlin Pride” – the pride of being part of a city that lets people be happy with what they are.
2011-06-24: Apple totally loses it.
I know it’s only a patent application at this point. I know there is no guarantee there will be a marketable product at the end of this. But to even think about this kind of thing proves yet again in which low regard Apple holds the interests of their customers.
It’s not the first time either. Hardly alone in this, Apple has always been at the forefront of denying their customers the right to make full use of the hardware they have bought from them. This, at the moment, is primarily true of iOS devices, but with the Mac App Store it will increasingly be true for the Macintosh platform too. (The only Apple device I own, an iPod Nano 4g, continues to be unaffected as long as iTunes continues to import any MP3 file, whatever its origins, and upload it to the iPod. Not something to be taken for granted though. Maybe I should save a copy of the current version of iTunes.)
In case you are wondering what I am talking about: reportedly, Apple has applied for a patent for an encoded infra-red signal that would cause any digital camera so equipped to refuse to record images if so told by said infra-red signal. The stated use case would be cinemas but it is only natural that it would mainly be employed by abusive police forces, like we get to see so often these days in Germany. Or Libya. Or Syria. Or the US.
Let’s consider the hypothetical fact that I owned a device that has been enabled in the way the patent – as widely reported – describes. A third party which is not under any control from anyone, like a theatre owner or an abusive police force, can set up a signal to a device that I own, that I have paid for with my own money, so that said device will disobey the commands of its rightful owner to activate the “Record” function. This is so outrageous it actually defies belief. I can, to a point, see why fanbois will happily turn over control of their devices to Apple Inc. – I still find it revolting, but why not, it’s a religion, so to a point reason is suspended. But to enable third parties to do that, and such a sensitive function – think “Arab Spring”?
I hope they receive their just reward. I can’t see how anyone could spend a dollar (or even a Eurocent) on an Apple product again after this.