July 31, 2007
After last week’s filing of a frivolous iPhone battery-related lawsuit, we hear another voice of stupidity on the subject, this time from the New York State Consumer Protection Board (courtesy of WCBS TV):
In a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Bockstein addressed the major complaints voiced by frustrated consumers. “Consumers should not have to pay a $79 fee to replace the battery in an iPhone,” she wrote.
One solution she proposed would be a redesign to allow a consumer to replace the battery instead of having to send away for a new power supply.
Note to whiners and government bureaucrats: no one is forcing people to buy an iPhone. If you want a replaceable battery, there is something like seven gazillion other options. I’m sure Apple appreciates design advice from the New York State Consumer Protection Board, by the way — certainly the battery issue never even crossed their mind until the CPB came up this idea.
If you want an iPhone, lack of a replaceable battery is one of the trade-offs you have to put up with, like EDGE data service and the inability to edit Word documents. If you don’t like that, then make a stand with your wallet: don’t buy one. Courts and consumer protection boards shouldn’t be dictating feature trade-offs, especially in a case like this, where there is no unfair monopoly exploiting consumers because they have no other choices. This is a market with tons of choices.
July 29, 2007
I’ve been in love with the De Lorean sports car ever since I watched Back to the Future for the first time in 1989. Now, according to the Los Angeles Times, the De Lorean Motor Corp. — a De Lorean repair and restoration shop based in Houston, Texas — is planning on bringing the De Lorean back into limited production:
With 200 of the original 2.8-liter V-6 engines still in stock and facing a dwindling supply of cars suitable for rebuilding, Espey figures that within a year or so they’ll start making the cars from scratch.
Their manufacturing plans are modest — maybe 20 or so cars a year. But it would be quite a comeback for a car that was given up for dead more than a quarter of a century ago.
Every once in a while, there are a few stories about how some company is planning on building De Loreans again, and it never pans out. Even John De Lorean himself came out in 1999 and said he had plans for another new sports car. (It never happened — De Lorean died in 2005.)
According to the L.A. Times article, 6,500 of the original 9,000 cars are still on the road.
Hopefully the De Lorean Motor Corp. is able to get its plans in place and start producing some new cars. I’d love to see what a De Lorean with the original look and style but with an updated and modern interior looks like.
July 28, 2007
According to the Arizona Republic, the suspect in yesterday’s car chase that resulted in two news helicopters colliding in mid-air could be charged with murder in the deaths of the four aboard the helicopters:
The suspect who led police on a vehicle chase Friday in Phoenix could face murder charges after two television news helicopters filming the pursuit collided in midair, killing both pilots and their photographers.
[...]
He could face harsher repercussions because the chase resulted in four deaths, Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris said.
“I think he will be held responsible,” he said.
I sure hope the Phoenix police chief is just talking out of his hat. It doesn’t make any sense that the suspect should be held responsible for their deaths. It’d be one thing if they were police helicopters, assisting in the pursuit — he would definitely be culpable then, just as if a police automobile had crashed during the chase. But the news helicopters had no reason to be there except to satisfy the curiosity of their viewers.
This is more like a situation where, in a hurry to catch a crime in action, a news photographer trips over a step and breaks his neck. Would the suspect involved in the crime be responsible for the clumsy photographer’s death? I’m assuming not. I don’t see any difference between that situation and the situation with the helicopters. It appears from the initial investigation that the helicopters collided due to pilot error (they apparently failed to see and avoid each other, the responsibility of the two pilots-in-command). Nothing the suspect did sabotaged the helicopters in any way.
Flying around in congested airspace is dangerous work, especially if a bunch of helicopters are hovering in the same area trying to catch the same story. My best goes out to the families of the pilots and photographers on board the helicopters, but charging the suspect with their murders is too much of a stretch. What if a helicopter had been felled by mechanical failure during the chase? Would that also be the suspect’s fault? What if the photographer had had a heart attack from the excitement of the chase?
Charge the guy with the crimes he’s actually committed. Justice isn’t served by making him responsible for the mistakes of others.
