A poor reception | Bangkok Post: tech

WORLD REVIEW

Quote of the week: "Due to this problem, we can't recommend the iPhone 4"; that was the verdict by the respected Consumer Reports magazine and website, which said reviewers loved the Apple device, but they had reception problems; also, this one by US comedian Jay Leno: "They are working on a new app for the iPhone 4. This one will allow you to make calls." It has been a long time since fanboys were put down like that.

Steve "President for Life" Jobs explained that the fading reception and the dodgy aerial design of the Apple iPhone 4 was a feature, and no one should be fooled by the jealous, public-baiting, addled media who were misleading the world into thinking there was something wrong with a phone that loses connections; Apple has "earned enough credibility for the press to give us the benefit of the doubt," he told fanboys and a press conference; any smart phone loses power if you hold it the wrong way; in compensation, Mr Jobs launched the generous giveaway of a "bumper", a rubber-plastic band that wraps around the phone, basically showing you how you should hold your iPhone 4 so you can talk on it; Mr Jobs himself will continue to use his iPhone 4 without a bumper, and investors showed no sign of dumping the shares in Apple, one of the world's most valued companies at the moment.

In case you need a guide to just how successful Apple has got under Steve "President for Life" Jobs, here is a tasty morsel; Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi predicted that if Apple were to recall every iPhone 4 to fix them so they actually work, it would cost Apple about $1.5 billion (48 billion baht); that would be 3.5 percent of the cash Apple has on hand - not value but actual, lunch-fund cash in the safe; that would feed a lot of orphans.

Chinese censors shut down dozens or hundreds of blogs, which everyone knows are a severe threat to public order and national security; the crackdown closed regular and microblogs, particularly those hosted on sohu.com, a popular gathering place of writers and lawyers, who everyone knows are subversive types; this entire paragraph is against the law in China, where people don't have to know this sort of thing.

Paul D. Ceglia of New York state told the judge that he had a contract signed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to design and develop the website that eventually became the world's gold standard for social networking; the contract gave him $1,000 (32,000 baht) cash and 50 percent of the final product; Mr Zuckerberg said it was ridiculous, but a state Supreme Court judge said "not so fast," and ordered the lawsuit to go ahead.

In 1978, the US Supreme Court said that the "Seven Dirty Words" monologue by comedian George Carlin was far too filthy to broadcast; in 2010, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals concluded by a 3-0 verdict that the US and the world have changed quite a bit since 1978, and backed US broadcasters who said dirty words are no longer all that dirty that they should be banned; the court could not overturn the original decision but indicated it would never again fine, censor or ban any sort of nasty language.

The Palace Theater fired five of the 10 string musicians in the Broadway revival of West Side Story to save money; the five were replaced for the next performance by a synthesiser piped in from another room.

On June 1, 2008, a megalomaniacal narcissist declared that his victories in a string of minor US state elections meant that, "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal"; it didn't quite work out for Earth and Barack Obama; even when he became president, the oceans didn't seem to notice; today, no humbler but a little more pragmatic, Mr Obama said he wants US government employees to start cutting back on business travel and commuting by car, and using this new Internet thingy a bit more for their work; no special plan, of course, just a lot of political hot air, but the eventual aim is apparently to cut down "indirect sources of pollution" and lessen greenhouse gases; right after the speech, Mr Obama flew off for another holiday, and his dog flew in a separate airplane.

What's black and white and read all ov... by quite a few people?; that would be the new website of the US Department of Justice at (justice.gov) overseen by Attorney-General Eric Holder and determined not to show its true colours of red, white and blue any longer; there was no warning and no explanation of the new website; officials were so excited that forgot to mention how much the vital, badly needed new look cost.

Stuart Lawley, the nice man who controls sales of dot-xxx domains, emailed Post Database to inform us that there has been a "rapid surge" of people wanting to get their names in; if we want to set up a site with feelthy pictures and video called PostDatabase.xxx, we need to hurry.