UKHamlet's Blog

Your rights are under attack. Apple have filed a twenty seven page statement to the U.S. Copyright office arguing that the modification of an iPhone’s software is in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The ruling as to this issue is expected this autumn. If they are successful it will mean that when you buy an iPhone, not only can they dictate which service provider you use, but also what you can do with the phone.  It will erode the basic concept of ownership still further.

Things used to be simple – you bought something, it became your property and you could do what you wanted with it. Isn’t this simple? Isn’t it a good thing? Well, that depends on your view of property, but in essence, in a capitalist society, where ownership is a lynchpin of the economic method, you’d expect the simple elegance of this proposition to hold sway.

You buy it, you own it, you do what you want with it.

This is no longer the case. Microsoft et al saw to that with software, which they licensed it to you without ceding ownership. Then it became: You buy, we still own, you do what you want within certain limitations detailed in this twenty page document. Now Apple are seeking to take it still further – it’s about to become:

You buy, we own it, we tell you what you can do with it.

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Nail, err screw

Search Engines: look guys, you really need to get your act together.

No, really you do. A customer of mine is an image consultant and they wanted suitable images for their website. They have various categories that needed pics – one of which is  ”Older Women”. So, I Googled it. Please tear that image from my brain! Oh my effin God.

I appreciate the form of women of age more than most – take my ex-wife… (please…) she has a great figure – but some of the stuff that came up on the screen is enough to put your breakfast back on the table.

Okay, I laughed it off, because it’s a once in a while occurence that maybe my incaution contributed to, or at least that was what I thought. Anyway, today I was designing a new front end to the Hammy Cave and I decided I would have a wall with pictures on it. So, I got the wall, got the pictures, but then I realised you have to hang pictures on something.

Yeah, I Googled “Nail”. Christ on a bike – is that all the internet is all about? I’m hardly Mister Innocence, but let’s draw the line somewhere. Even with Safe Search on, I had SOME dubious results. I have to say, I was getting quite fed up with it all and decided to give it one more try before I jacked the whole idea in. So what could I use instead of a nail, I asked myself.

That’s when I decided to Google “screw”.