• Ofcom considers termination charges – Does anyone consider it a problem that we don’t get charged to receive calls on a mobile phone in the UK? Thought not.
• Man’s ‘pants’ password is changed – Not sure what to conclude from this other than it’s funny. Banks have no sense of humour? Don’t bank with Lloyds?
• US made to wait for Quantum of Solace – I would like to see the release of QoS pushed out by six months in the US as revenge for making us wait that long for Ratatouille last year. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Today is a big day for me. A few minutes ago I uploaded my iPhone application up to Apple’s servers, the first step in making it available to users in iTunes and its App Store.

You possibly have two questions. First: what does it do? Secondly: when will it be available?

I know, I have been deliberately vague when talking about it online. This is partly because I didn’t want my thunder stealing by pre-announcing, but mainly because it’s only been in the last week or so that I’ve been sure that I was going to publish.

This weeks PhotoFriday is “Old Fashioned.” Here is my entry. You really can’t beat Cuba for that retro, old fashioned look, and here is a great example of a 1950’s American car, still apparently in use and in great condition.

Somehow the idea of replacing the head of Hellboy with that of the last Deputy Prime Minister and MP for Kingston upon Hull, John Prescott, amused me. Even the slogan kind of works.

• US made to wait for Quantum of Solace – I would like to see the release of QoS pushed out by six months in the US as revenge for making us wait that long for Ratatouille last year. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
• How Sick Are Patients? – How the US is patenting DNA and licencing it back to the third world countries who discovered it.
• Dave Packard’s 11 simple rules – Interesting insight into the original principles of management at HP. Now it all seems to be redundancies and “cheapest is best.” And don’t get me started on my work laptop…

This originally started as a question on Apple’s support boards:

With the current AppStore model (which seems to be a money machine for developers) I do not understand why anyone would give away their applications. At least charge $0.99 and get something back for your hard work.

So, why do you give away your apps?

With the caveat that I have not actually submitted anything yet…

My motivation in writing an application was entirely for the pleasure of doing it. If I never do anything with it once it’s “finished” my goals have been achieved. So my only objective in pushing it to the AppStore is for other people to get some benefit from using it too. There is little incremental cost in doing so and zero cost means that it gets the widest possible distribution.

• Why Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers to learn – I would have loved to have learned more of the language when I was there. The natives fluency in English really didn’t help!
• Did we say you can read that? – “What the Police appear to be saying is that you can be given the all-clear as a bona fide researcher of terror material in the morning – then re-arrested the same evening for the same offence.” And not only that, but you need to prove your own innocence. This is wrong on so many levels.
• Eight ways the iMac changed computing – I never owned one of the original iMacs (indeed, before OS X I was never likely to buy a Mac) but this was the beginning of the new Apple, one that resulted in me buying three Macs and various other Apple products. My bank account would probably have been more healthy without it!

• Georgia, 1999 – When I went to Georgia in late 1999, we had to change the itinerary because the Russians had “accidentally” fired mortars somewhere near where we were supposed to be walking. Some things never change. It’s a shame because it’s a really beautiful country.
• Facebook Claims Right to Create Derivative Works from Members’ Photos – This is exactly why I don’t post my pictures on Flickr and am not a member of Facebook.
• Atheist Finds Nothing in His Toast – Grin.

I’ve not done much programming in the last few years. When I first started working my job was mainly to “cut code” but I’ve done less and less as time has gone by. I now tend to concentrate on high level modelling and writing small utility scripts. I have not been doing much at home either, just minor tweaks to pre-existing software to “scratch an itch” or programs to automate tedious tasks.

• ‘Fakeproof’ e-passport is cloned in minutes – “In the tests, a computer researcher cloned the chips on two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports.” I feel safer already.
• Science is like a good friend: sometimes it tells you things you don’t want to hear – Many people find bald, unvarnished truths so disturbing, they prefer to ram their heads in the sand and start dreaming at the first sign of scientific reality. The more contrary evidence mounts up, the harder they’ll ignore it.
• Over-driven: why our cars guzzle gas, what to do about it – Interesting article explaining why American cars use so much petrol (gas) and their plans to reach an average of 35mpg by 2030. In the UK average fuel consumption was 38mpg a couple of years ago…