More Zonkyness

Author: Mike Meredith

  • No Flash?

    So I was trawling the web looking at chairs (one manufacturer in particular – it doesn’t matter who) available at various stockists, when I was suddenly brought up short by a little error message “Your browser does not support Flash files”.

    Strangely enough the site I had just visited itself had an annoying Flash-based website … all presentation in full-screen window with non-standard navigation controls. So what was the error about ?

    Well obviously my browser does support Flash, but the chances are the developers were checking for a particular version of Flash that does not exist for the operating system I use as yet. So “does not support Flash files”  is not quite appropriate, something more like “Nah! Nah! You aren’t as up to date as we are” would be more accutate.

    Not really sensible however as I could have been looking to drop something like £1,000 on a chair (yes they really do cost in that region, and yes they probably are that good). Especially as the Flash site in question probably does not absolutely require all of the features of the latest version.

    Ah well, I guess I won’t be buying a chair from that place then.

  • Corporate Stupidity – Sony and the Little Big Planet Game

    It was announced today (on the news at least … Sony may have announced it earlier) that Sony have released a game called “Little Big Planet” that has a music track that may annoy some Muslims. The track in question (please send corrections if I’m wrong) is a Mali language track, and quotes from the Koran. Apparently the singer is himself a devout Muslim. Sony in their not-so-infinite wisdom have announced that they are delaying the launch of the game, recalling all issued game disks, and re-mastering a version without the track in question.

    Glossing over whether this music track really is offensive, it is perfectly reasonable for Sony to do something about this. But to do a full recall of the game disks already in the distribution channels? That’s pretty costly, and I would be pretty miffed if I were a Sony shareholder.

    Why not simply issue a groveling apology, point out that it was a genuine mistake, promise to remaster all future game disks without the track in question, and issue an online patch to remove the track from disks that have already been distributed ?

    Incidentally the track in question (Tapha Niang) is available at the artist’s website :-

    http://www.worldcircuit.co.uk/#Toumani_Diabate::Boulevard_de_lIndependance

    To “excuse” this mistake, if Muslims cannot agree on what is and what is not appropriate and Islamic, how can the rest of us avoid making mistakes like this ?

  • Street Furniture

    We all know that street furniture that clutters our streets … signposts, street lights, traffic lights, etc. The majority of this furniture is for providing information to motorists. So why is it all planted in the pavements where it gets in the way of pedestrians?

    The obvious answer is that one or two signposts do not matter that much and avoiding the street reduces the risk of accidents. Well maybe that was true when it was just a few signposts, and on quiet pavements without much foot traffic.

    But all too frequently that is not the case. Rather than plonk down the poles for that street furniture right in the middle of the pavement, why not put them right on the edge of the road ? Or perhaps reduce the amount of signage where it isn’t necessary.

  • Olympic Winners Parade – On A Weekday?

    Tomorrow (16th October), London will host a parade of the UK’s Olympic Games medal winners. It is not something that personally excites me, and I will not be going. Not that I have any problem with the athletes getting a parade – why not?

    But why is it on a weekday? And this does not seem to be an isolated case; there seems to be an assumption that if you really want to go, you will find a way of doing it. But what if you are a weekday worker (and most of us are) who might like to go, but cannot take a day off work to get there ? Why should we be excluded ?

    It sometimes seems that there is some sort of conspiracy to keep working people away from certain celebrations. Perhaps we would lower the tone.

  • Banking: Now We Own The Banks, Why Give Them Back?

    Now that the UK government has ‘obtained’ a large stake in Lloyds, and RBS, the question is whether we should sell off that ownership when things improve. Hopefully we will be hanging onto the banks until we can make a decent profit from helping them out. But what would happen if we kept hold of them ?

    Well we would essential lose the capital (or more accurately it would be locked into the investment), but we would get paid dividends every year. Or every year they are paid.

    We would also have a greater influence on keeping the banks and bankers well behaved. Given the behaviour of the banks in the past, it would seem to be worth having a “finger in the pie” to keep an eye on their future behaviour.

    Some are complaining that the government (and thus the taxpayer) is taking unfair advantage of the shareholder because we are getting a huge number of shares at a very much reduced price. Tough. Those same shareholders were taking advantage of unsound banking practice in the past when they should have been insisting that the banks were properly run.