News Digest #6
This week in the news (Aug 29 - Sep 2, 2011): Firefox Tablet Edition, Sony's Mobile 3D Headset, At&T's Headache, Apple's Repeated Misfortune, SAP vs. Oracle, Windows Phone 7 Location Data Collection Lawsuit, No X-Mas For People in the UK and much more.
News Digest
I will begin with the big one: AT&T wants to buy T-Mobile. That's simple. AT&T has the money, T-Mobile has the infrastructure and the technology that AT&T wants. It is only natural that the deal should go through, but not so fast. The U.S. Justice Department is now suing AT&T for attempting to become a monopolist in almost all of the 100 top markets of the U. S. of A. While I do believe that AT&T should not consume T-Mobile (despite the fact the deal is sweet for the both of the companies), I do NOT believe that it is government's business to intervene with the purchase as it has this foul smell of successfully performed lobbying by the competitors rather than the genuine desire by the government to protect its citizens from a price hike. Rather than capping and pegging the prices of services, just like there is a cap on produce prices to help out the farmers, the government literally says - "screw the competition principles: you simply can't be the best, wait for the others to get where you are and then we will see". What if the other companies are lazy, not as smart as AT&T, or simply greedy and do not want to give 40 billion U.S. dollars for some GSM phone service provider? I am sure this matter is a lot more complicated: lobbying, personal interests, people's jobs, top managers' ambitions, government's desire to control rather than police, and many more other variables that are part of this formula and I will never figure it out, can you?
Many people in Great Britain are literally irritated: they are not getting the sweet HP tablets priced at 99 dollars ever as the last manufactured lot of those devices is intended for the U.S. market only. This whole story, for some odd reason, made me think of Willy Wonka movies with a twist. Charlie has never found a Wonka Bar that he could afford at a local candy store, so he ended up dying of hunger later that day. Or rather, HP has never shipped the cheap Tablets to the UK, so Charlie nearly dies of boredom and goes out on the streets and starts a riot or two. The next riots in Europe should be attributed to HP's failure to deliver in Europe.
Apple's employee lost a prototype of the new iPhone 5 at some local bar in San Francisco. It makes me wanna move there as you can find the latest gadgets right where I love spending my time, a local tequila bar. Many suspect Apple's marketing team was dismantled and the company had to go off the list of promotions the team made for iPhone 4. The only good promotion on that list was to "lose" the prototype... so they did it again. But let me quote Mr. Bush Jr. "Fool me once... shame on... shame on YOU!...If you fooled me, you can't fool me again!"
Oracle vs. SAP: SAP 'stole' Oracle's software. Oracle was awarded 1.3 billion of US Dollars in penalties, the verdict was recently overturned as evidence suggests 1.3 billion is 4 times more of the actual damage at 272 millions of dollars. Now that was a 400% profit for the shareholders of Oracle, they must be pissed now. But YAY for justice!
A private class action lawsuit against Microsoft has been filed at the Western District of Washington District Court. In the nutshell, People vs. Microsoft is about Windows Phone 7 operating system for the mobile devices. People are not happy that the software company tracks their physical location without their explicit permission for such action. People seem to not care that their high resolution picture can be taken by a satellite in the sky, revealing where they were and with whom, or their car movement can be traced using the traffic cams. The government is poor, it owes almost 100 percent of all the money in the country it makes for a year to some other countries, so it can't be sued for invading the privacy, which is done a lot (around the time when you have to report your private income information or a Patriot Act, to name a few). But Microsoft is a fair game. They've got the dough. Regardless of the fact that the evil corp does not have the resources to track every single individual and their whereabouts, but rather use this info in its data mining interests so they can improve their services to the customers, people are furious they are being noticed. Yay for people!
Sony. Oh boy, this Japanese company is something. I own a couple of their devices and I am generally happy with the quality and all, but the company needs to put their act together. Successful products by Sony: Playstation and Blu-ray Disks, and maybe by a slight margin Bravia TVs can get on this list too. I can't think of any other Sony products that I desired. Samsung's products are cheaper, of great quality, and as stylish as most Sony's products. I would not be surprised if Samsung entered the portable game console market in the near future – they've got all the tech for success. Sony is behind on many things: its inventory and profits due to the tsunami in Spring 2011, as well as the ideas, due to the conservative management of the top executives at Sony. 2 years after the revolutionary iPad and 1 year after the revolutionary iPad 2 was released, the company behind PS3 releases a(n iPad) Tablet with the similar naming scheme as Samsung's product line: it is Sony Tablet S (versus Samsung's Galaxy S) without any support for PS3 or PSP-Go. You got a successful product (Playstation Network) – capitalize on its fans as much as you can, it is not illegal! On the other hand, Sony demonstrated a cool new device – a 3D headset. Very bulky glasses MHZ-T1 (they've really made their product unpronounceable completely) with tiny high definition displays for the left and the right eye produce large three-dimensional images before your eyes, they say. This is for all of you, bachelors who lost the hope of finding the one; you can buy yourself this gadget for 800 bucks, pair it with three-dimensional adult entertainment and you will never need a nagging girlfriend by your side in your life. Go Sony for making an antisocial product in the World where everyone is trying to make social, interactive, group products.
Wikileaks is leaking and I mean it with all the seriousness that is attributed to me. A new scandal surrounding Assange – his puppy, the service that is aimed at educating any soccer mom about the true doctrine of the Governments around the world, is leaking and leaking bad. If in the past it was a diluted version of the facts, this time a full-blown stream of unfiltered information hits the streets. Lives of many informers are at stake as their names can be easily matched to the cavils and secrets about things they've shared with the Wiki. Their respective Governments, which do not tolerate being criticized in any way, can be after them hardcore. "I didn't do it," Assange says, "He did it!" So it turns out, the illness of pointing fingers that penetrate every single Government on this planet is very contagious. Man up, Assange, and take the blame!
I am sure you will be able to read the Wikileaks quibbles on your Tablet using the Firefox web browser quite soon. Mozilla is showing off its concept of Firefox for the tablets. UI concepts were proposed and now the community of the developers will have to discuss and create. It won't come to iPads anyway, because Apple is a controlling freak.
And before I quit with the news, I am asking you to stop complaining that Apple will go bad without Jobs. It won't be the same, but it is a good thing, because I want to see an iPad in other colors than White and Black. I want it in Blue. It will be different! Successful or not, the time will tell.
