chris, Author at The Septic's Companion

Right: Condiments in large bottles, not ridiculous sachets

Today, my friends, I am complaining about condiments.

In America, the way in which you receive your condiments will depend a bit on the sort of restaurant you’re in. If it’s an extremely expensive restaurant, you obviously shouldn’t be asking for condiments at all. If it’s a fairly expensive restaurant, you’ll get a rather nice silver dish cointaining your condiment of choice, with a dainty spoon in it. If it’s a reasonably-priced restaurant, it’ll be the bottle the sauce came in. If it’s a really cheap place or an on-street vendor, it’ll be one of those industrial-sized vats of condiment with a shampoo-style dispenser on the top, and you’re left holding your dinner under it and squirting at it. Consider yourselves lucky, Americans.

In Britain, in a really expensive restaurant, you’ll get the nice silver dish with a spoon. Treasure this because, pretty much anywhere else, you will get a miniature individual sachet of sauce. These sachets are around 8cm long and 2cm wide, and are made of a strange metal/plastic composite originally invented for protecting components of the Hubble Space Telescope. A note on the side says “tear here”. This is sarcastic. You can tell it’s sarcastic, because there is a tiny picture of a pair of scissors. No tearing for you, bucko. The only way these things are intended to be destroyed is by an intergalactic singularity.

To open the sachet, you must grip the corner next to the “tear here” nick as tightly as you can between your front two teeth, and then pull the packet away from your mouth. The packet is covered in your sweat, from the period a few moments earlier when you really thought you were going to tear it with your hands. It is more than a little slippery. You’re going to have to hold it pretty tight. Those space telescope scientists may not know how to make a mirror, but this sucker was designed to withstand re-entry. Get ready for a rough ride.

At this point, your dinner companions may start to pull away from the table or run to the loo. This is normal.

Those telescope scientists no doubt have friends in the rocket business. They all hang around together, joking about how rocket science isn’t all that hard anyway and making puns about quarks. Anyway, their rocket friends will tell you that any container, when squeezed as hard as possible and then split, will propel its contents vigorously in the direction of the breach. These sachets should come with some sort of written warning, and perhaps a set of protective eyewear. At the very least, they should say “not for use in densely populated areas” in clear lettering on the side.

And why do the Brits insist on serving condiments like this? I can only assume it’s because there is empirical evidence that one in five males has, at some time, stirred a pub tomato ketchup container with his John Thomas. Or perhaps some people have a penchant for opening the shared mustard, sneezing in it, then replacing the cap. It’s just the way they roll. Are we honestly that untrusting a society that we fear constantly that other pub-goers have been putting ricin in the tartare sauce? Are we really that germophobe that we can’t stand to eat something that’s been touched by another human being?

And, well, I hate to jump on the popular bandwagon, but isn’t this rotten for the environment? Whenever you ask for ketchup in the UK, you can be sure that they’re not going to give you only one space sachet. They’re going to give you six. And you just try giving back the ones you didn’t use. They’ll eye you with a suspicious look. They certainly won’t touch them. Who knows what you’ll have done with them. Heavens, they’ve probably been up your arse twice.

Right: Consumer services available when you want them

Let me illustrate this with the transcript of a telephone call I had in London whilst trying to arrange the servicing of my car.

Garage: Yes, Mr Rae, we can certainly do all that. If you drop the car off we’ll be happy to get started.
Me: Splendid. When would you like me to drop the car off?
Garage: Any time between nine and five.
Me: Okay – I’ll bring it in on Saturday.
Garage: Oh no [laughs], we’re not open on Saturdays. Goodness me.
Me: I imagine Sunday is out.
Garage: [hearty laugh] My wife’d kill me. Sunday, haha.
Me: The thing is that, well, those times are pretty similar to the times when I am required to be at work.
Garage: At work?
Me: Yes.
Garage: Every day?
Me: Every day except Saturday and Sunday. I get those off.
Garage: Oh! Well, maybe your wife –
Me: My wife also works.
Garage: Every day?
Me: Yes. Perhaps I could leave it outside and put the keys in your letter box or something?
Garage: One second.
Garage: [muffled] Bob, this guy can’t bring his car in.
[inaudible response]
Garage: [muffled] He’s working all that time.
[inaudible response]
Garage: [muffled] Yeah, every day. Well, except, apparently he gets Saturday and Sunday off.
[inaudible response]
Garage: [muffled] Well, get this… apparently she also works.
[inaudible response]
Garage: [muffled] Yeah, every day. He’s wondering if he can leave it outside.
[inaudible response]
Garage: Alright, look mate. We think you can probably leave it outside.
Me: Okay, great.
Garage: So just any time, I suppose.
Me: Wonderful. Where shall I put the keys?
Garage: Probably best if you drop them off while we’re open. They’ll get nicked otherwise.

The same conversation is being had daily across the UK, and pretty much across the entire spectrum of service provision. Parcel delivery, fridge repair, license renewal, escort services. Contrast that with the US – I just dropped our car off at the dealer for its service – I could drop it off, they tell me, any time between 6am and 9pm. Seven days a week. It’s true that things are starting to change in the UK – some supermarkets are open late, and more and more busineses are open at the weekend. However, your chances of getting anything done after 5pm on a weekday or at all on a Sunday are somewhat minimal. If you want to make a killing in the UK, I suggest you start a business which is open at times convenient for your customers. Your competitors won’t know what hit ’em.

Right: Landing on the moon

If I could put this one in bold, I would, as it’s possibly the most spectacular thing the Americans have ever done.

To me, landing on the moon was always something humans had done ages ago, and barely even in colour. I knew my parents had lived through the event but they never implied that it was an important part of their lives – it wasn’t nearly as important as, say, that time my great-grandfather drove his car through the back of the garage by mistake.

A while back I read Andy Chaikin’s splendid book, A Man on the Moon. The book is an amazing account of the Apollo programme and the moon landings – Andy Chaikin is British, so it’s pleasantly devoid of chants of “USA! USA!” and trite tales of how Neil Armstrong’s dog fell in love as soon as he landed, or similar such Independence Day-esque bollocks. It’s just an honest account of an extraordinary feat of mankind.

The extraordinary feat, if it can be summarised, was this. In 1959, America had no rockets other than missiles. In 1969, they landed someone on the moon, had them potter around for a while poking at stuff and brought them back again. Of course there are all sorts of technological wonders going on here, but perhaps the most interesting part of this is in the numbers. The moon is 385,000km from earth. That is one fuck of a long way, whether you have a rocket or not. In 2005-dollars, this programme cost the taxpayer $140bn. That is the entire GDP of Pakistan and represents a thousand dollars for every American citizen. One fifth of the world population watched the live transmission of the first moonwalk. At its peak, 400,000 people were directly employed by the Apollo programme.

Every so often, we as human beings need these sort of dangerous, expensive, unjustifiable follies to be brought down upon our country by those in power. We need this to feel like we’re progressing as a species, even if on most days we are more worried about traffic and healthcare. Responsibility to the people through democracy makes things like this harder – my ancestors will sadly not be touring Castle Obama a thousand years down the line – but Kennedy proved that it doesn’t make it impossible. When the people have a genuinely inspirational common goal, a nation can unite behind it and enjoy a collective euphoria and sense of purpose so splendid that they hadn’t realised it existed.

It strikes me that the Kennedy-esque aura that surrounds Obama right now and the downturn of the economy is going to leave a situation ripe for a “grand plan” when America’s finances start to pick up.Once he’s pulled out of Iraq and turned it into a new bloody dictatorship, the American people are going to be clamouring for something less horrific and more exciting to pull together and spend money on. Ten years seems like a good watermark (it worked for Kennedy) but what to do? Tallest building? Man on Mars? Zero dependence on fossil fuel?

Right: Not throwing rubbish everywhere

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It’s well known in Britain that the entire country is a great big rubbish dump into which you may cast your cigarette ends, crisp wrappers, used condoms and half-burnt mattresses. If you see someone on the street opening a new packet of cigarettes, I would say there’s about a one third chance that they’ll thrown the packaging in the street. As a result of this, British cities are – perhaps unsurprisingly – strewn with junk. Before I moved to the US, I rather thought this was the way cities were.

In the US, at least here in Seattle, it’s quite the opposite. There’s a real sense of civic pride about keeping the city clean, and as a result it’s much nicer walking around. I suspect this is something of a chicken-and-egg situation – if everyone else is throwing their crap in the street, why shouldn’t I throw mine? Assuming I am a pikey bastard with a dog on a bit of string and whose children have tattoos.

Right: Not too many people

One pet peeve I have concerns the fact that most governments insist upon paying people to reproduce. When I am president of a country, the first law I enact will be to remove child benefits. I may even imitate my favourite government, that of the People’s Republic of China, and instate some sort of penalty for having children. Life will be great. House prices will go through the floor. There’ll never be any traffic. You’ll never be put on hold when you call tech support. Hmm, wait, maybe they’ll reduce the number of support staff. Scratch that last one. Anyway, the world will be a way better place, and all the people who decide to have children will pay appropriately for the privilege. Don’t get me wrong – I like children. In fact, I’ve been trying to persuade the wife to help me produce some. They’re just the least environmentally friendly thing we could be doing right now, and for some reason they attract government grants. It’s like subsidising Buicks.

This rant was intended to lead into an almost wholly unrelated topic. That unrelated topic was the fact that America is quite sparsely populated, although the rest of the world doesn’t really know it. Take a look at Wikipedia’s list of countries by population density. America is number 177 of the 238 countries in there. It’s less densely populated than Zimbabwe and Bhutan. There are ten times as many people in a square kilometre of Israel as there are in a square kilometre of America. There’s nobody here. For its size, it’s a ghost country.

This is good because I like hiking, and I like hiking without bumping into other people all the time. I used to go hiking a lot when I lived in London – you could get to the Peak District in four hours, but to get to any mountains higher than Trump Tower you’d be looking at the Lake District, which meant six or seven hours in the car. And even once you’re in the Lake District, it still has the trappings of a fairly densely populated place. You’re never too far from an Olde Worlde Tea Shoppe, or a McDonalds, or some roadworks. This, of course, is mostly due to the very high population density in the UK. As far as rating London against other cities goes, I don’t think population density captures quite what I’m talking about. I’ve developed a new unit of measure to quantify this. Which I will now explain. In the next paragraph.

Were I to start the car in downtown Seattle on a Saturday afternoon and drive purposefully out of town, I’d be in the countryside reasonably quickly. Of course, my idea of the countryside might not match yours, so in order to reliably measure this we need to agree on some sort of standard fixture that is present in the countryside but not in town. This is the cow. Seattle, therefore, has a rating of somewhere around thirty minutes to cow. In London I think I’d be looking at well over 90MTC. Edinburgh, where my family lives, is about 25-30MTC. Manhattan is probably 120MTC. Of course, Bumfluff Arizona is probably a mere 1MTC, but you wouldn’t want to live there. This is why you should be careful to bear in mind population size when considering MTC ratings. I tried to come up with a simple way to work it in, but I couldn’t come up with any measure that didn’t make Los Angeles seem like a dairy farm. Suggestions appreciated.

Right: Salespeople who have actually heard of the product they are selling

dixons_emmen1

Americans have something of a tradition about the place they choose to work. Regardless of their particular position in the company, they generally choose to work in places where they like the end product. Financiers in the software industry are gadget-junkies; delivery drivers in the pet food business have a house full of dogs. Hey, why work towards the creation of something you don’t care about?

In Britain, being excited about anything to do with work is gay. If you are interested in not looking gay, you should actively avoid any job which runs a risk of interesting you. If you’re bulemic and allergic to nuts, why not get a job in the food industry? You hate men? Get a job in a strip bar! If Stevie Wonder was British, he’d be a parachute stuntman.

Personally I rather enjoy being permanently curmudgeonly about work. However, this approach does leave the United Kingdom with a service industry which is almost entirely useless. Let me leave you with a typical conversation between a member of the public and an in-store customer service representative.

Salesman: Can I help you, sir?
Customer: Well, yes, actually, you can. About this hifi system –
Salesman: Ah yes, the C9000. Beautiful system, sir. Sound quality is truly astounding. Blows your mind, the sound quality on this –
Customer: I was wondering if it has a radio. I’m guessing it does, but I can’t see any buttons for it.
Salesman: Oh yes, sir. State of the art, the C9000.
Customer: So it has a radio?
Salesman: We can also do you a two year warranty on this one – if anything goes wrong, you can just bring it back here, no questions asked, and – well, you know the rest. Not that anything goes wrong with these things. I don’t think we’ve had a single one back this year.
[Salesman gives the stereo system an affectionate but firm pat on the top]
Customer: So it definitely has a radio?
Salesman: It’s got everything, this puppy. Sound quality is astounding.
Customer: Can you turn on the radio for me?
Salesman: Blows your mi – hmm. The radio?
Customer: Yes, can you turn on the radio? So I can hear the sound quality?
Salesman: Well yes, of course. Let me find the remote.
Customer: I don’t think it has a remote, actually.
Salesman: Of course, yes, I’m thinking of the C8000.
Customer: Actually, I don’t believe that one –
Salesman: All of the functions are available from behind this beautiful stainless steel sliding panel. See how smoothly that slides back? That’s quality right there.
[pause. Salesman gazes with reverence at stereo system]
Customer: The radio.
Salesman: Yes, amazing radio. Astounding sound quality.
Customer: The radio switches on from this panel?
Salesman: Look, I’ll let you in on something. It’s getting near the end of the month and my boss is really putting pressure on us to get the numbers up, so I think we can come to some sort of deal.
Customer: I’m unlikely to be interested unless it has a radio.
Salesman: Well sir, here we pride ourselves on our sixteen-day money-back risk-free guarantee. Do you know what that means, sir? It means that you can take it home, use it for two weeks, and if it turns out it doesn’t have a radio, you can put it back in its original packaging and bring it back here with no questions asked. Is that a deal, or is that a deal?

Right: Supermarket trolleys with fixed rear wheels

Some bright supermarket proprietor, many moons ago, realised that it would be much easier for people to shop at his supermarket if they had some sort of hand-propelled vehicle in which to pile up their shopping. He doubtless came up with a few different ideas and eventually settled on some sort of neo-cuboidal wireframe device with a handle at one end.

But then, something happened. Somehow the world managed to agree on the design so far, but something was to cause something of a schism in the realm of supermarket improvement.

If this was a Discovery documentary, there would now be a commercial break.

Somehow, the mechanism of steering a supermarket trolley in the United States ended up being different to that used in Europe. The Americans opted to have the rear wheels fixed on their vertical axis and the front wheels able to laterally rotate, much like the type of steering mechanism used on a car, or any other goddamned wheeled vehicle. The Europeans, however, elected to have all four wheels steer. This has the great benefit of making the device able to travel sideways, or diagonally, or through time, or across dimensions, with the only side effect that it cannot be deliberately moved in any direction whatsoever. The only way to steer a European shopping trolley is to crouch down behind it, stretch your arms down the entire length of its sides and rotate it using a shuffling motion like some sort of Russian dancer with an early Communist kidney dialysis machine. It is a common site in Europe to see old ladies, drawn and haggard, being led down the street by errant supermarket trolleys on journeys that had originated in a supermarket, sometimes one in the next town.

Right: Tax refunds

Boy, are we going to have some fun — It’s playtime, Sheryl

I can’t speak for the rest of the world here (well, I can, but it stands a high chance of being discovered to be false) but America has a much smarter approach to making you do your taxes than the UK does. In the UK you slave away all year, fill in your tax return, send it off and in a couple of months you either gain or lose a few quid. While you’re filling in the forms, you think about how the government are taking all this money that you worked so hard to make and spending it on gay marriage and old people. In America, you almost always get money back. This means that, whilst they don’t like form-filling any more than anyone else, Americans aren’t thinking the same stuff while they are sitting there writing down their social security numbers. They are actually thinking of the ride-on lawnmower, or the new flat-screen television, or the Sheryl Crow special edition real doll that they’re going to buy when the refund comes in. These are not necessarily the things that I personally thought about. I don’t have a lawn. I am also against neither gay marriage nor old people, just to nip that one in the bud.

Search terms used by people to find my site. Yes, really

I was inspired yesterday by my friend Richard MacKinnon to go hunting for the search terms people have used to find my site. I use Google Analytics to monitor my site traffic, which provides a nice way of scrolling through these. Of course, most of them are pretty predictable – “british insults”, “british slang”, “british slang words” et cetera. What’s more interesting is where you scroll down to the searches that had only one single occurence.

Some of these were still looking for my site.

the septic’s guide
septic dictionary
septic mans dictionary
syptic companion

Some of them were looking for the right sort of thing, although perhaps they didn’t find it on my site.

what does the term love mean to british

[Lady, I think this means it was a one night stand.]

british euphemisms has your wooden leg fallen off

[Are you pulling my leg?]

Some people were just angry. About stuff.

why are americans such tosspots
are audio cable companies taking the piss

Some people needed help with something.

how to demo letter g?

[This is your seventh demo, right?]

derogatory chat up lines

[Hmm. Your mother told you this was a good idea?]

am i most likely to date a guy thats starts with the letter c

[Perhaps, but I’ve a sense it’s not me.]

c-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s meaning in each letter

[Fact: Christmas started as an acronym.]

what do americans call faggotts

[Well, erm…]

I want to have a pear everyday is that ok

[Knock yourself out. Assuming you’re eating it, there are worse vices.]

what belt would faggot attic ed wear

[I’m going to a fancy dress party as Ed. Ed. You know Ed. No, not that Ed. Faggot Attic Ed.]

Some people were looking for… well, they were looking for something. Heaven knows what it was. I’d like to warn readers that this is where it’s going to start getting more colourful. If Faggot Attic Ed was too much for you, close this window now.

“fag snow fairy”

[For the person who’s tried everything on top of the tree.]

the bitterness of s.w.o.t. is in the analysis,while the sweetness of wedding cake is in the icing sugar.discuss

[The nonsequiteur seminar seemed to have started well.]

why do prostitutes eat ice cream

[Good question. And why is it that they wave when they see someone they recognise? Those crazy prostitutes.]

strung up by the tits tube

[YouTube for the sado masochist.]

is the word fucking religion an insult?

[That’s two words. And probably.]

colloquialism for nothing dick

[Yep, I’ve got ole’ nothing dick again.]

wanking with washing up liquid

[Not recommended. It says on the bottle that it softens your hands.]

wellington boots wanking

[Unless these are children’s boots, you’re better endowed than I am.]

big fat black slaves hung by pantyhose

[There’s no such thing as an overly-specific fetish.]

animal words for willies and vaginas beaver

[If animals could talk, my bet would be that this was a likely topic.]

dog buggers the grandmother

[Not just any grandmother.]

russian or romany lady required as live in 4-sex shagg buy please apply if you can help

[I get a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart that some people didn’t end up with very accurate search results.]

how to get your wife to make sense and shag you

[Do you need these simultaneously?]

how to strangle your manky skanky daughters

[It’s just the same as strangling other people. Drop some search terms for better results.]

how to transport a naked girl into your house in two seconds

[On wheels? Or teleport?]

if was going to shove veggies up my pussy i use a zucchini

[This is why nobody at the party understood! Those Brits call them aubergines!]

And finally, onto some personal favourites.

replica of chocolate cocks

[A real chocolate cock?! What do you take me for?]

arab womne looking like binbags

[Come on, admit it. We’ve all done this search after a few beers.]

quickest way to deflate boner at the beach

[My site is pretty much guaranteed to have provided some results.]

where can you fine scandinavian grope suit

[Well, sir, they’re over here. What chest size are you. Oh – wait – *Scandinavian*?]

what do you call a system that really slows work flow in a company

Ah yes. That would be the internet. Back to work, everyone.

Soda Mario

This is what happens when your company gives free soda to its software developers.

This fine creation is located in building 35 of Microsoft’s main Redmond campus. It was made by a friend of mine called Thibaut, who informs me that it contains 512 cans. He matched up the drinks to the pixels in Excel (obviously) and then put up a “wanted” poster for the appropriate number of each.

As I’m sure you’re wondering, the artwork contains:

170 Diet Coke cans
82 Peach Nectarine Talking Rain cans
36 Coke Zero cans
120 Coca Cola / Dr Pepper full caffeine & sugar cans
4 Caffeine-free Pepsi cans
68 Pepsi full caffeine & sugar cans
32 Mug Root Beer cans

Apparently the hardest ones to find were root beer. Proof that software developers are not without a sense of taste.

Some more anti-freedom ramblings

As you probably know already, I am not a great gun fan. Like everyone else, I spend my lunchtimes sitting watching videos that already agree with my point of view. Because, y’know, otherwise how would you learn anything? Anyway – one of the things that is often cited by people on my side of the debate is the vast number of gun deaths in America compared to other civilised countries. And, sure enough, there they are on the list, right up there with all the places you’d not like to live. But I think this is a kind of meaningless statistic – of course hardly anyone in the UK is killed with a gun. There aren’t any guns there. There are very few snowmobile-related deaths in Afghanistan.

I would assume that, every hour, about the same volume of the population in America and the UK decide “Right. That does it. I’m going to do that twat some serious damage”. Then, with the finest murder weapon they can get their hands on, off they trot. Americans obviously have it comparatively easy as they can either use one of their own guns or pop to the supermarket and buy an AK-47. But us Brits are resourceful souls. We could run someone over with the car, or throw a waffle iron into their bath, or push them out of their bathroom window. How hard can it be?

Instead of comparing firearm murder rates, what we really want to compare is any-old-weapon murder rates. And, actually, Americans do way better on that list. They have 4.7 homicides per 100,000 people – this compared to a world average of 6.9. They’re still behind most of the places I’d like to live (UK 1.2; France 1.1; China 1.0; Switzerland 0.7) but they’re ahead of some surprising locations (Russia 10.2; Saint Lucia 25!). So perhaps it’s not such a bad spot after all.

Another thing to think about is the fact that a gun is probably a more sure fire murder weapon (ha, ha) than whatever the angry but resourceful Brit might have come up with. So presumably America has a higher successful-murder rate but Britain will have higher rates of other injuries. There aren’t so many clear numbers on this, but the Wikipedia page about American crime has a section devoted to comparisons. Summary: probably not.

Of course, there are probably quite a few murderers in the UK who run out of steam while trying to find a murder weapon, or their weapon of choice fails entirely to injure the person they were after. I’ve no statistics on that. Hopefully they got it worked out some other way. Maybe it’s for the best.

Sometimes I wish things were more expensive

Here’s a scenario that played out for me this week, and has probably played out for you before too. I’ve been tinkering around with the idea of recording on-track video from car races, and I was looking for a mobile app which could record video along with telemetry from an OBD2 engine management system while driving the car. From this you can make nifty videos overlaying dials from the car on the live feed.

Anyway, I was delighted to find that such an app exists! So off I went and downloaded it (it’s called aLapRecorder HD). It’s a rather specific niche market, so unsurprisingly there’s pretty much just the one app to do this.

I installed it, got it going and then found a few bugs in it that were going to cause a bit of a problem with what I had in mind. So off I went to the developer forums… only to find that the forum is full of spam and appears not to be in use. Off I went to the reviews page (sometimes you can get some useful extra info from there) only to discover that the most recent reviews were all one-star ones complaining that the app didn’t work well on current hardware and that the dev didn’t pay any attention to the forum or email, and appeared to have given up on the project. And, sure enough, the last update was from November last year, so it looks like he has dropped it.

Why would the developer give up on something that was so close to great? The app looks superb and just has a few bugs. It’s so nearly perfect!

Well, let me tell you why. The “pro” version (which removes a two-recording limit) has sold “1,000 – 5,000” copies, for $6.50 each. The developer has made somewhere between $6k and $30k. This app obviously contains many months of solid development work – I’m going to estimate six months, but it easily could be longer. The US Department of labour says that computer programmers in the US earn $60k per year on average. This app’s first review was in April last year, so if this talented programmer has sold the absolute highest number of copies that he could have done, he has been paid the average developer wage for the last year. And if he’s sold the least, he’s been paid what he could have got working in McDonalds. So, screw it. Instead of buggering around answering emails from angry users and fixing bugs for various new devices, the developer has no doubt just gone and got a job with some software company and is busy programming his heart out doing something different.

The consumers of this are car racers, and this is an expensive hobby. I just got an email suggesting that I buy the cheapest bolted neck restraint available for $600, which also involves replacing all four of our team’s helmets, at about $150 each. Race entry fees are easily $500-$1000 even for the cheap races. It would make no difference to a race team if this app was $30, $50 or perhaps even $100. And then the developer would have been able to keep working on it.

We’re used to wanting to pay the lowest price for everything, of course, but we have to remember that software is not like physical goods. It needs care and feeding to stay up-to-date with hardware and technology, and it is something that can evolve over time to improve, well after you have purchased it. It makes perfect sense to just want the lowest price when you go and buy a waffle iron. If the company who sold you it goes out of business, who cares? You still have a waffle iron. But if the company who sold you a piece of software goes out of business, it’s not going to get updated to work on the phone you’ll buy next year.

Of course, it’s the developer’s choice as to how he prices his application and in my view this developer made a poor choice. But the culture of users right now is constantly forcing prices down, and giant companies are busily producing mobile apps that make no money because they want a foot in the door of this market and, hey, they already make money from other stuff. For the poor indie developer who isn’t making money from other stuff, he’s left with a userbase that isn’t willing to pay for anything and an app that doesn’t make him a living wage.

So the next time you look at the price of an app, don’t think “$5.99?! Jesus Christ, what am I, made of money?”. You should instead think “$5.99? Hmm, perhaps this will still exist in three years”.

Ten Nürburgring Videos You Won’t Secretly Be Bored By

Let’s face it. We all know the Nürburgring is the greatest racing track in the world and we’re all so excited as we click on yet another Nürburgring lap video. But then, somewhere around Adenauer Forst, our attention starts to waver. Is he intending driving the whole lap with the air conditioning on? And who on earth would wear slip-on shoes in a driving video? Or any video? And, shit, wasn’t I supposed to be presenting at our team meeting five minutes ago?

Yes, while it may be the greatest racing track in the history of the world to drive on, eight minutes is a lot of video to watch of someone else having a good time with their clothes on.

So, we present to you, ten Nürburgring videos that are in some way different. In no particular order:

1. Crashes at Adenauer Forst in 1970

Some useful things can be learned from this video:

Always wear your seatbelt (particularly while driving on racing circuits)
When racing, do not keep the entire contents of your home in your car
Do not buy a car made in the 1970s
YouTube has a “mute” button

2. Hans-Joachim Stuck Driving Faster Than You

Meet Hans-Joachim Stuck. He’s a thousand years old and he can drive faster than you. This 2004 video is either from a VLN race or the Nürburgring 24-hour, so it runs on the Formula One circuit as well as the Nordschleife (and there’s no pass-on-left rule). Bear in mind that the cars he is passing are actual racing cars, taking part in an actual race.

3. Porsche 911. Nürburgring. Snow

Skip to one minute in and, unless you speak German, just imagine some commentary. But here is a Porsche 911 driving on the Nordschleife in the snow. Which looks like a lot of fun, if a little daunting.

4. Under 7 Minutes in a Radical SR8 LM

Okay, you got me. This is just a video of someone driving. But, on the upside, you only have to watch it for seven minutes, because that’s how long it is. It’s not the fastest SR8 lap that’s out there, but it’s pretty exciting.

5. CTR Yellowbird

“Sideways Stefan” Roser, drives a 930 RUF CTR around the ring in a rather enthusiastic fashion. Quite a few external shots from a helicopter and various on-car cameras, which should help stave off the boredom.

6. Helmut Dähne Bike Lap

It’s a surprise to most that car lap records are faster than bike ones on the ring – what bikes gain on the straights they make up for in the corners. But, even if you’re not a bike person, you can’t help but appreciate Helmut Dähne endangering himself for your entertainment. Dahne holds the two-wheeled lap record on the Nordschleife – and will hold it for the foreseeable future: Lap records can only be set during official race or qualify sessions, and the track’s motorcycle homologation was not renewed after Senna’s 1994 accident, so until that changes no official bike lap record can be set. Because we’re talking bikes and Nürburgring here, I ought to add that Helmut is still alive.

7. Liri Farfus Passenger Lap

I have driven my wife around the Nürburgring several times, and each time she has managed to look equally bored. My wife is obviously made of much sterner stuff than Liri Farfus, the wife of WTCC driver Augusto Farfus. He drives almost as fast as I do, I think, and she goes to pieces.

8. Electric Car Speed Record

Toyota ran a 7:47 in an electric car back in 2011. We’ve seen the future, and it looks exciting and sounds awful.

9. Sabine Schmitz Top Gear Van Video

I was at the ‘Ring when Jeremy Clarkson tried to break ten minutes in a diesel Jag and apparently succeeded. They closed the circuit in the early-morning for him to practise, on the only day I’ve ever been at the track when it opened. Sigh. Anyway, after Sabine Schmitz told him she could beat his lap time in a van, they sent her a van and a Richard Hammond. So she tried.

10. Seven-Second Ring King

What Nordschleife video collection would be complete without the shortest ‘ring video known to man? Two chaps from Manchester join the ring at Adenau only to leave it again at Ex Mühle. Using the alternate track entrance was probably a wise idea, as they ended up only five minutes’ walk from a pub.

Tesla to take US license plate legislation head-on

PALO ALTO, CA – High demand for the Model S from Silicon Valley auto manufacturer Tesla (TSLA) is greatly increasing demand for holier-than-thou electric-themed vanity plates, a spokesman for the company said during a press conference this morning.

“A large part of purchasing this automobile is the sense that one is saving the environment, and that others aren’t,” said Crabtree Wolstenthorne, head of the company’s new Plebiscite Differentiation division. “Many of our lucky customers have already successfully purchased appropriate plates such as ‘VOLTS4ME’ and ‘GASSUCKS’ but, as yet more concerned environmentalists join our ranks, the archaic seven-character restriction on US license plates is making it exceptionally hard for us to help them secure an appropriately haughty message for other road users”.

The company has lodged a case with the US Supreme Court demanding a change from seven to thirty characters on standard US license plates for electric vehicles only. “The restriction may seem unusual”, Wolstenthorne added, “but owners of gas-powered vehicles have less of relevance to say to the outside world”. When questioned about the increased difficulty for law enforcement in reading these new plates, he noted with a laugh, “our customers are all just going to hire a lawyer anyway”.

In anticipation of a successful verdict, Tesla is allowing its customers to pre-purchase the new vanity plates. “We’ve had a great response from our clients so far,” Wolstenthorne mentioned, “only this morning I sent home two happy individuals with ‘UH8PLANET’ and ‘MY4THCARISGREENERTHANYOURONLYCAR'”.

The 4,600lb Tesla model S has been highly praised for its cat-like agility by many tech bloggers in the computer industry.

The cute little elephant in the room

I have a rather bad carbon footprint. We have two cars in which we drive around 25,000 miles a year (11 tons of CO2). We have a large house with ancient oil-powered heating (9 tons). I fly several times a year for a mixture of business and pleasure (15 tons), I don’t make any attempts to buy local or in-season produce and I have carbon-expensive hobbies. All told, the Carbon Footprint Calculator tells me that my footprint is around 45 tons a year. This compares badly with a US average of 20 and a world average of 4.

And, of course, I’m doing this every year. CO2 production varies a lot with age so it’s hard to come up with a figure for my entire life, but using the UK Carbonica calculator and extrapolating it to my life, I’m guessing I will consume somewhere around 2,000 tons of CO2.

I could get a job that involves less flying, and probably save 200 tons over my life. I could get the bus instead of driving, and perhaps save 150. I could start shopping more carefully, and maybe save 20. We’re converting our heating to electricity, which should save 50 or 60. These are the sorts of things I’ve been thinking about in order to reduce my footprint.

The United States government are also doing their bit to shove me in the right direction. Last year they gave me $300 in subsidies to help insulate my attic (which should save 1-2 tons a year). They’re taxing motor fuel to encourage me to drive less, and that’s certainly made me carpool more often. They’re taxing air travel, and that’s cut down my number of work trips somewhat. All these seem like moves in the right direction.

This is my son, Philip. He’s probably the cutest baby in the world. Well, top ten anyway. My wife and I made a choice to have him, and we’re very happy indeed about it.

Unfortunately for the planet, he’s munching through CO2 with gay abandon. He’s been born into a world that is more careful with this sort of thing and where carbon munching is more expensive, so I doubt he’s going to hit the 2,000 tons that I’ve used up. Let’s be conservative and say he is going to consume a tenth of what I will – 200 tons.

In environmental terms, my child will be the equivalent of:

Driving around the planet nine times in a Hummer H3
Seven Space Shuttle launches
Flying first class from London to Sydney 16 times

And all this only if he manages to produce ten times less CO2 than I will.

I understand that reproduction is an important thing for human beings, and I don’t propose that we stop anyone from reproducing. But we could at least quit encouraging each other to continue banging them out. It seems odd to me that we’re all quick to look scornfully at the person zooming around on their own in an SUV, and at the same time smile demurely at the person with 3 kids in a Prius. It seems odd to me that kids get to eat for free in a bunch of restaurants, and that a person earning $100,000 in the US gets a $1000-per-child tax credit.

Which brings me on to China.

China is the world’s largest emitter of CO2. There are a lot of things that are a bit wonky about China’s one-child policy but it seems to me that, while the rest of the world footles around making subsidies for hybrid cars and solar panels and having pop concerts to “raise awareness”, China is the only country that’s actually made any effort to reduce the greatest cause of environmental damage.

Well, that’s the end of my child-hating blog post. No doubt my child will wave this at me at some point claiming it’s a fine example of my bad parenting (although hopefully he won’t have printed it out).

The ten best track cars, chosen by a spreadsheet

I’ve often wondered how successfully one could choose a car by looking purely at numbers, and nothing else. So, without further ado, here’s my list of the best road cars to drive on a race track, as declared by my spreadsheet.

Position	Car
1st	Tesla Roadster Sport
2nd	Porsche Cayman R
3rd	Lamborghini Gallardo Coupe LP 570-4 Superleggera
4th	Ferrari 430 Scuderia
5th	Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0 Coupe
6th	Audi TT Coupe
7th	Audi R8 GT
8th	Aston Martin V8 Vantage S Coupé
9th	Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG
10th	Audi S4 Sedan 3.0

Okay, there you go. That’s that decided. Now, should you be interested, here’s how I got to this list.

I downloaded the textfile version of Freebase’s automotive data
I loaded it into Excel. I am now looking at 23, 812 cars
I filtered out all the automatic transmissions – down to 6392 cars (presumably this data is somewhat skewed towards America)
I filtered out the front-wheel drive cars – down to 5312
I filtered for 0-60 times of less than 6 seconds – down to 355
I took the lightest ten by curb weight

Here’s the list I had at this point:

2010 Tesla Roadster Sport
2010 Tesla Roadster
2011 Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5
2011 Tesla Roadster 2.5
2011 Porsche Boxster Spyder
2011 Porsche Cayman R
2011 Porsche Boxster Spyder AT
2011 Porsche Cayman R AT
2011 Porsche Cayman
2011 Porsche Boxster

The list is actually fairly reasonable, although unfortunately it’s not very exciting, because it only contains cars from two manufacturers, and a limited set of models at that. So for each car model we’ll take only the lightest, because they make the best racing cars anyway. This cuts my list down to:

2010 Tesla Roadster Sport
2011 Porsche Boxster Spyder
2011 Porsche Cayman R
2011 Lamborghini Gallardo Coupe LP 570-4 Superleggera
2008 Ferrari 430 Scuderia
2011 Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0 Coupe
2012 Audi TT Coupe
2011 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 Cabriolet
2012 Audi R8 GT
2010 Nissan 370Z Roadster

The only problem with this new list is the presence of the convertibles. Without trying to get into mud-slinging here, it’s a fairly well-established fact that convertibles don’t have great structural rigidity and so the hardtop version of a given car will normally race better than the convertible. It’s certainly true that when a car has both convertible and hardtop versions, the manufacturer does not tend to race the convertible. Fortunately there are no rag-tops here without a hardtop equivalent, so I didn’t feel too guilty when I filtered out the convertibles manually, leaving me the list at the top of the article.

Obviously this system of selecting cars isn’t perfect, but there are a few caveats beyond even that in this specific data set. The Freebase database has hardly any weights for cars more than two or three years old, and the acceleration figures are missing for many. I’d love to have included some other factors (lap times; weight distribution; price) but these things aren’t present in the data set.

The exercise did teach me a few things, though. First off, Aston Martins and AMGs aren’t quite as fat as I thought they were, and neither is the Tesla roadster, despite all those batteries. Next was the heavy presence of Audis, which aren’t really known as especially wonderful track cars, and the entire lack of BMW, which are (the M3 fell just short of the top ten). And the complete lack of my own car (but hey, maybe this shows I’m unbiased).

If you fancy, download my spreadsheet and choose your own selections!

Ah well. It turns out there’s more to cars than numbers. But you knew that.

The words that really get your film an R-rating

There are some people who spend their lives determining what makes an R-rated film and what makes a PG-rated film. And, of course, there are all sorts of factors. But if you took the visuals out and compared just the dialogue? What words appear in R-rated films but not PG-rated films? And vice versa?

PulpFictionGuns[1] — We’re really cross now

I used the Internet Movie Script Database and several computer programs to build a list of the most common words in the 519 R-rated films they had scripts for, and the most common words in their 332 PG-rated film scripts. Obviously the majority of the words contained in these scripts are pretty unsurprising. The most common word in both is the, which is also the most common word in the English language. Where it starts to get interesting is where the proportions differ.

Some differences you’d expect – the word fucking has the greatest disparity, occurring in 80% of R scripts and only 33% of PG ones. The rest of the top four are taken up by fuck, fucked and fuckin. In at 5th is asshole (56% of R; 31% of PG). Then comes jesus, shortly followed by christ, so obviously it’s the two words together that are making the difference. It’s amusing to see that “jesus christ” is used in language so much more often than either “jesus” or “christ”.

Shortly behind our lord and saviour is motherfucker and the top ten is rounded off nicely by bullshit and fucker (29% of R; 6% of PG). Some of the words I might have expected to appear in the top ten are nowhere to be seen – murder is way down at 20th and gun comes in at a miserable 517th (just 18% of R-rated films and 12% of PG-rated ones). It’s interesting that cigarette (in 12th) beats joint (in 13th), which in turn beats drugs (29th).

Of course, there must be some words that appear in PG films but not R films, right? Well, there are, but the difference is less distinctive. The biggest hitter is the word ship, which appears in 40% of PG films but only 23% of R ones. It’s followed closely by bows, excitement, cloud, larger and tower (41% of PG; 26% of R), but sadly I think any statistician would tell you this was irrelevant on a data set of this size.

Without further ado, here are the words that appear the most in R-rated films compared with PG-rated films. The words are sized by discrepancy.

capture1

And, in case you’re interested, here is the entire list in a big spreadsheet. Want to guarantee a PG rating for your film? Steer clear of any sort of fucks, don’t mention cigarettes (other drugs are ok) and don’t blaspheme. Perhaps add a nautical theme and your film is practically guaranteed a PG. Unless its primary visuals involve people being gunned down while conducting sexual acrobatics with a chain-smoking Shetland pony.

It’s possible that films are rated on more than just dialogue.

Time to stop being an atheist

Atheists will all tell you that atheism isn’t a religion, but I think these days it’s becoming one. I constantly see more and more people posting links to posts proclaiming that “science” beats “religion” every time, even though the majority of the world’s religious population are perfectly normal people who also believe in “science”. And plenty of the world’s not-religious people are blithering halfwits.

Perhaps I’m getting old, but there’s a sneering pompousness about atheism these days that doesn’t really reflect my own point of view. Sure, I don’t believe in gods. And yes, I think that people who do are a slightly odd. I also think you’re slightly odd if you want to drive a car with an automatic gearbox, but I won’t align myself with a group of people whose only entertainment in life is slagging off people who have automatic gearboxes. It just seems a bit too negative.

So from now on I’m not an atheist. My religion is “none”. I don’t believe in a god, and I don’t believe in taking pot-shots at people who do.

Who’s with me? I need money to build our church.

Why I hope there’s a SOPA v2

The purpose of having a blog, as we all know, is to complain about stuff in an acerbic fashion without proposing solutions. Today, we’re going to talk about SOPA.

SOPA, as we all know, is a bill going through the the House of Representatives in the United States right now. It is intended to stop online plagiarism of intellectual property of various sorts, and proposes implementing this by allowing the police to delete Wikipedia, shoot internet service providers on sight, and detain potential suspects without trial indefinitely. No, wait, that was something else. Well, you get the general idea. It’s not a very well thought-through bill and I hope it fails.

SOPA inspires me to become grumpy about two things. Firstly, I’ve heard several times that this bill is being forced through by the film industry, who are incapable of waking up to a reality of digital distribution. And, of course, Viacom, Warner Brothers et cetera are all supporters of SOPA. It’s certainly true that these companies stand to make money if SOPA passes. But the list of companies that oppose SOPA isn’t a list of companies that have the best interests of the glorious internet close to their cute little altruistic hearts. It’s just an equivalent list of organisations that will lose money if this passes. It’s the companies who’ll have to spend a ton of money vetting user content, screening their output and adding infrastructure for reporting and monitoring. Facebook, Microsoft, Google, et al. The fact that some of these companies had the muscle to black out a chunk of the internet on January 18th is something of a confusing message, but I think we should disregard the corporate sponsors on either side and think about the bill itself.

The second thing I’m grumpy about is the fact that there’s far too much online piracy, and the death of this bill will probably mean the continuation of that. People justify ripping off films, music and software because they’re just taking it from a big company and they’re all bastards anyway. And I can see why that justification is socially acceptable most of the time. But this rampant stealing from “the man” has left people my age with a similar disdain for intellectual property rights in general. How many of us have needed a picture of two rabbits having sex for a work presentation, Googled “rabbits having sex“, taken the first image and stuck it in the presentation? Sure, it probably belonged to someone and they had some blah on their site about attribution but it’s only a presentation and, hey, they put it on the internet for heaven’s sake, what do they expect? My generation is habitually stealing this sort of content with only the merest hint of shame.

What I only really realised this week is that people younger than me are doing this with no idea that it could actually be wrong.

My friend Doug takes pretty nice photos. He doesn’t do it professionally, and he states on his web page that you can use his photos for noncommercial purposes as long as you give attribution, and should contact him for commercial use. He’s a nice sort of a chap. I suspect his total income from this has been less than the price of a nice lens. Doug doesn’t go off looking for stolen copies of his photos, but he’s a good enough photographer that he or his fans regularly just come across them.

5061121478_e8807033f7_b_d[1] — Imma boop your intellectual property rights

Doug’s most stolen photograph is probably this one. It was turned into this by a gentleman, who unashamedly added a copyright message for himself and then posted it all over the internet. This week it was posted on one of those “funny thing every day” Facebook pages – Doug spotted it, and pointed out that it was his stolen picture. The usual mixture of YouTube-style comments (from both sides) followed, but what really struck me was a comment from the original poster who was incredulous that someone could be so “up-tight” about “A FUNNY PICTURE POSTED ON THE INTERNET”. This hit a raw nerve for me – I was kind of okay with us having a society that ripped off each other’s internet content the whole time, but we’re breeding a society that has no awareness that this is even wrong.

Ten years ago or so, I used to occasionally search for plagiarised versions of my own web site. I’d send them an email asking them to link to my actual site as well, and they’d normally reply saying they were happy to. I thought I’d have another look today, so I searched for a reasonably distinctive phrase which appears in my definition of “bollocks”. Rather disappointingly, my own site is the third result after copy-pasted versions on The Urban Dictionary and DictionarySlang.com. Other highlights were a Facebook page which seems to consist of nothing other than unattributed chunks of my book, several copy-pastes of swathes of my site content and the rather glorious version of my entire paper book that the Chinese search engine Baidu has, complete with a handy reader app, some colour added and “Mr_doody2004@yahoo.com” carefully written in the footer. Sorry to disappoint, ladies, but this is not my email address.

Capture

Shall I mail all these people asking them to attribute me? Probably not, because there’s every chance these days that these are people who are genuinely unaware of such a thing as copyright (well, except for Baidu). If I did this now I’d probably get incredulous replies wondering why on earth I’d try to shut down funny stuff posted on the internet.

People ripping off Doug’s photos and my book doesn’t really make a difference to the world. Although we both make a little money from our enterprises, we’re not trying to make an income and we’d both still do it if there was no money at all. But what about my sister, Joanna, who is trying to start a career as a professional photographer? What about my friend Nick, who makes a living writing online Excel training?

As I mentioned towards the beginning, I have no solution to this problem. Maybe it’s not SOPA, but we need something to teach our kids that going to a web site and hitting Ctrl-C is the same as going to the library, selecting a book, taking it home and starting typing from it verbatim.

Why you don’t want a curated app store

Some web sites are bad. Just clicking on a link in an email can send you somewhere that looks like PayPal, asks for your login details and will then instantly automate the emptying of your account. Some web sites prompt you to download software which will encrypt all the files on your computer and then try to charge you for a decryption key. Some web sites are bad, m’kay?

Well, the great news is that Google have solved this problem. Rumour has it that the next version of Chrome will limit your web access to a predefined list of “known good” web sites. Sites can easily apply to be added to that list and, as long as Google approves them, they’ll be available in your browser the next day. Isn’t that great? I don’t think any other browser is going to be able to compete with Chrome once they get this out.

Of course, Google aren’t doing this. Because it is a terrible idea. The reality is that the existing security systems build into browsers actually do a pretty good job of preventing access to malicious web sites. Don’t believe me? Visit http://winsetupcostotome.easthamvacations.info/answered-polynomial-eccentricity-unserviceable/029287718218614814 . It contains malware that will install on your computer. Go on!

The site was first reported as malicious just today, but opening it in Chrome I see this:

Browsers, operating systems and the interconnecting web technologies have a bunch of mechanisms built into them to keep you safe online. And they work. How many times have you actually been caught by a phishing email, or installed apps that empty your bank account? How many people do you know who have?

Apple’s marketing around the app store is centered around the fact that it protects you from malware. Which is true to a degree – there’s almost no malware on the Apple app store. F-Secure estimates that 0.1% of apps on Google’s Play Store (which has no approval process) are malicious. But a whacking 10% of web sites are malicious. So why don’t you want a curated web site list?

I don’t want a curated web site list either. I also don’t want a curated app store – even one regulated by some sort of independent nonprofit would become a horrendous mess of inconsistencies, but one regulated by a corporation is even worse. Let’s take a look at a few of the actual Apple app store requirements. You can download the whole lot of them here and read them yourself if you like. What, you say? There’s 25 pages of them?! Oh, yes…

Let’s start with the easy ones.

3.15 Apps with previews that display personal information of a real person without permission will be rejected

Fair enough. That seems sensible and reasonably measurable.

4.1 Apps that do not notify and obtain user consent before collecting, transmitting, or using location data will be rejected

Seems fine to me.

14.1 Any App that is defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited, or likely to place the targeted individual or group in harm’s way will be rejected

Okay, I guess we don’t want people to be put in harm’s way. But offensive to one person isn’t necessarily offensive to another. What about Charlie Hebdo?

14.2 Professional political satirists and humorists are exempt from the ban on offensive or mean-spirited commentary

Oh okay. Am I a professional satirist?

2.18 Apps that encourage excessive consumption of alcohol or illegal substances, or encourage minors to consume alcohol or smoke cigarettes, will be rejected

I… hmm… what is excessive? And alcohol is legal – what’s wrong with me consuming plenty of it?

And here is the crux. A gatekeeping system that involves humans making judgement calls is almost impossible to keep fair and consistent. App developers know that the best way to get your app through these requirements is just to change something minor, resubmit it and hope you get someone different in whatever offshore team is reviewing these. I had one app that was just for submitting data to another system and required the user to log in. It was rejected due to 17.2 Apps that require users to share personal information, such as email address and date of birth, in order to function will be rejected. I resubmitted it with the same login screen and an “about” page but with a bug whereby it displayed an alert saying “[object object]” every time you ran it. It was immediately approved. My fix to remove the bug unfortunately took two weeks to make it through.

As well as making requirements that are hard to consistently measure, you’re making censorship calls on what your users may look at. Do I want to view anti-Jewish websites? No. Do I want to be prevented from viewing them? No, I do not.

18.2 Apps that contain user generated content that is frequently pornographic (e.g. “Chat Roulette” Apps) will be rejected

What the heck is “frequently”? I don’t know about you but I once shared a hotel with the crew of an aircraft carrier on shore leave and they were all sitting in the lobby on quite eye-opening Skype calls to their girlfriends. Also Skype is owned by Microsoft, a competitor of Apple’s. So probably a great idea getting rid of that. FaceTime doesn’t have to get store approval. Oh yeah, that reminds me:

3.1 Apps or metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected

This was the requirement that recently started Apple blocking apps which mentioned Pebble support (the Apple Watch’s most viable competitor). Don’t worry, though, after some negative press coverage they eventually decided to stop paying attention to that requirement and instead hold the Pebble iOS app in review for a curiously long time.

And this, to my mind, is where the curated store really starts to leave a bad taste in the mouth. While some of these requirements are mechanically measurable and undeniably beneficial, the great majority of them range between ill-defined judgement calls and downright anti-competitive practice.

2.16 Multitasking Apps may only use background services for their intended purposes: VoIP, audio playback, location, task completion, local notifications, etc.

This is why your favourite mail app can’t actually download email in the background. It’s not that the platform can’t do it. It’s that only apps that Apple themselves made are allowed to do that.

2.17 Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript

You know what this means? This means the only web browser you can use on iOS is the Safari one. You installed Chrome for iOS? Well that’s not actually the Chrome browser. That’s just some Chrome icons and the default browser. You thought it was faster? You were wrong, my furry friend.

Apple takes a 30% cut of all revenue from apps. In 2014, that was $3Bn. While the app store purports to protect Apple’s customers from themselves, what it mainly does is prevent anyone making money in apps without giving Apple 30% of it.

11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In-App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an App will be rejected

11.13 Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the App, such as a “buy” button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected

Ever wondered why the iOS Amazon app doesn’t have the ability to purchase things? It’s because Amazon don’t want to give Apple 30% of the money. Apple also blocked any updates to Microsoft’s SkyDrive app because they wanted their cut from users who paid for storage.

It’s almost hard believe but, in the 1980s, Microsoft was the darling of the tech world. They disrupted a near-monopoly on software and hardware and made a brand new technology available to a huge mass of people. They spent the next decade destroying their competitors via any means available and are still paying the goodwill price of that behaviour twenty years later. Let’s hope everyone can learn from that lesson.

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