The BBC's iPlayer, the Windows-only DRM-encrusted alternative to just downloading the shows you've already paid for off BitTorrent, has been approved by the BBC Trust. I'm looking forward to Mike Arrington saying something stupid about this. 
Simon Willison points to something cool - phpBB now suports OpenID through a set of patches.
I think the One Day Blog Silence thing is utterly retarded, and, no, I won't be following it. It smacks of victimhood being good in and of itself. When someone kills another, the only morally justified response is to shout louder, to think bigger and play the music louder. This respect for silence is a hangover from Christian morality and it's something we need to tie a brick to and chuck in the damn ocean. The only way you can stop me blogging is to either pay me a large amount of money not to or kill me.
I find these Alcohol Concern people utterly insane. They want to criminalise parents who give alcohol to their children. Next they'll be criminalising ginger beer because it has the word 'beer' in the name, and, heaven forbid, someone use their own damn brain. I haven't got the time or energy to get angry this morning, so I'll leave it to Perry and the Samizdata kids.
Graze your Twitterspace and other experiments 
James has named a little OPML mashup I've written to get the Twitter friends of any user and display them in a Grazr.
The URL format is simple enough:
tools.opiumfield.com/twitter/username/opml
There's secret behind-the-scenes Semantic Web magic going on with this that you'll see over the next week which uses the script that produces the Grazr to seed a triple store which we use to allow comprehensive searches of the (public, non-protected) Twitterscape.
The results of some of the early Semantic Web experiments will be available as RSS feeds and Grazr-specific OPML feeds.
One of these is the 'compare friends list' function (because your friends are just like collectible trading cards, see?) - which allows you to do a 'diff' on two people's friends list. Another is the ability to produce blogrolls from a friend list.
Angels for everybody
So, you think theology is a proper academic discipline. You'll be glad to know that the Archbishop of Cantebury, Dr. Rowan Williams has just published a book on - wait for it - angels. Belief in angels is, according to the columnist, far more respectable than belief in other 'terrestrial unseen beings'. It'd certainly be nice to know why, but I'm pretty sure that such reasons will be as cloaked in mystery and wishful thinking as everything else that we call 'theology'.
Why should there not be pure intellects, with no admixture of matter, who are located wherever they act, are of immense intelligence and power, and vary greatly from individual to individual? They remain servants of God.
Yes, just consider to yourself that a broadsheet British newspaper is actually publishing an op-ed piece arguing that angels exist, and this is the reason.
I'm looking forward to "In defence of pixies" and "Hobgoblins: teach the controversy" or whatever else these superstitious pretend-intellectuals and numbskulled hacks think up next. Okay, I'm not. I think it's the intellectual equivalent of candyfloss and that the public are being played for fools by funding the academic charlatans that inhabit the discipline of theology.
For MacBook Pro users
Apple seem to have released a new 'Battery Update' for MacBook Pro users which updates both the OS and the battery firmware is available via Software Update.
It's a 700KB download which makes updates each of your batteries as you plug them in.
Hopefully, it'll fix a few of the little errors I get with the batteries, which have been less than satisfactory.
Tags: apple, macbook pro, laptop batteries
Why being an Apple customer sucks
So, last July, I had battery problems with my MacBook Pro batteries, so much so that I wrote a cynical ditty about it.
Apple have finally admitted that they have a problem with some batteries in the MacBook and MacBook Pro range. This is after hundreds of blog posts and thousands and thousands of threads on Apple's Support forums and elsewhere. This is combined with the fact that they must recieve absolutely hndreds of support calls every year from people who can and have Googled it and know exactly what the problem is, but the drones they have on the end of the phone line has to pretend that each customer is talking absurdities.
I'm trying to do some damn work, and Apple have these fugging adverts all over London telling me that the laptop I spent the best part of £1,500 on is "for home". No, it ain't. It's my primary coding machine. I use it to crunch tons of XML and cook up yummy Python with.
Going to the bloody 'Genius Bar' in London (which one has to do these days - regardless of practicality - if one wishes one's machine to be repaired) has all the allure of an NHS waiting list. At least on the NHS, you can book 48 hours in advance while with the Genius Bar, you have to book on the day. Or take your chances at the Store, where you can end up waiting for the best part of an hour to talk to someone who'll give you the stock answer and find every reason to disqualify you from getting a warranty repair. When you have an appointments policy that makes the NHS seem competent, something is wrong.
Decent support and admitting that St. Steve can be wrong (as he was in this case) are the key - if only they could sort all these annoying little problems out, then I'd be the most satisfied Apple customer there can be.
As for the iPhone? I don't want one, at least not until (a) it runs Python and (b) Apple sort the process of owning a Mac out so this kind of crap doesn't happen.
