Ben Goldacre's latest piece on Gillian McKeith is something to savour: "McKeith is a menace to the public understanding of science. She seems to misunderstand not nuances, but the most basic aspects of biology - things that a 14-year-old could put her straight on... McKeith's pseudo-academic work is like the rituals of the cargo cult: the form is superficially right, the superscript numbers are there, the technical words are scattered about, she talks about research and trials and findings, but the substance is lacking". There's lots more. Read it. 
Suw Charman: "The reality is that WeMedia hasn't built any bridges, because in order to build bridges you actually need to have constructive conversations with all parties involved. And WeMedia has failed to do that. How can you have a conversation when only one side of the debate gets to speak?"
Ian recently interviewed Molly Holzschlag on video. It's a good discussion, and Molly talks a lot of sense about interoperability (I'm glad that she's working for Microsoft). I get called an "XML disciple". 
Apple Store is a ripoff 
I've just ordered a little microphone for my iPod called a "MicroMemo". It looks pretty neat, and I'm planning to use it to record sessions and do podcast interviews this weekend at BarCamp London 2 (it's shocking how much good stuff doesn't get recorded at these events - if you are going, please bring along an audio or video recorder and start tapin').
I saw this device in the Apple Store the other day on sale for £49.95. While I was there, I logged on and started searching around.
The manufacturer sell it for £37.99 (including VAT and UK deivery). AppleStore online sell it for £39.95 plus shipping.
iWorld has it for sale at £29.99 plus shipping (which means it's about £32.99 once you've added a slice for Royal Mail on top).
Apple's markup is ridiculous on this product. My insurance company has just shelled out about £800 to get my Macintosh repaired too. And what do we get? Service that gets worse. Longer queues to talk to a "Genius". If Apple's warranty was worth anything, it would have cost my insurance company nothing. And I'm going to have to call them again later anyway, because the goddamn fans are misconfigured on this machine.
All the while, the adverts out there tell me that my computer is good "for photos and music" while my PC is good only for work. Fuck off. My PC is what I use to play computer games on. My Mac is for Eclipse and Protégé and SubEthaEdit. My Mac is a coding machine. Stop telling me what I'm supposed to use my computer for and fix it properly. I've just paid almost a grand and my computer still has problems.
At the risk of trivialising domestic abuse, being an Apple customer feels like being repeatedly smacked round the head by an abusive partner and then having to say "thank you" afterwards. Any sane person would call it what it is - an abusive relationship - but we call it the "Cult of Mac". Cults tend to be abusive organisations, and the Cult of Mac definitely qualifies.
