Ölbaum’s Delirium

I ordered my Daring Fireball T-Shirt through PayPal today. I was first asked to specify my country. As soon as I selected Switzerland, the whole site turned into German, without any means of changing it to French or reverting to English, except by ein anderes Land auszuwählen. Nicht guuuuuuuut!

# Posted by Ölbaum, late morning | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, the Swiss Parliament refused to decriminalise cannabis. Today, the headlines of Le Temps read:

(Drugs: where did the politicians’ courage go?)

I wish I saw it sooner because I would have liked to stick up my own poster next to it:

Anyway, if there are enough people working at Le Temps who think cannabis should be decriminalised for them to write such a headline, then it explains the increasing number of typos they’ve been making recently.

# Posted by Ölbaum, late evening | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw this at the entrance of the Coop near work.

Clearly, they have something against open source software. That’s another reason to boycott them, in addition to the ugly hangar they built near my home and their megalomaniac effort towards one store in every square kilometre.

# Posted by Ölbaum, late at night | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Good article on MacCentral:

Analysts weigh in on Apple’s newest Power Mac G5

# Posted by Ölbaum, the wee hours | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Venus meets the Sun on Tuesday, June 8, 2004 at 8:29 CEDT.

# Posted by Ölbaum, early morning | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Obviously, the news that Sony would stop selling Cliés in the U.S. and Europe, frantically relayed by countless news sites, is only a rumour. Maybe it was secretly started by Sony itself, to probe the market’s reaction, maybe by someone else, to spread FUD, but a number of facts should have come to our attention:

• Among the sites that relayed the news, not a single one provided a link to a page even remotely looking like an official announcement;
• Nothing is mentioned on the Sony.net Press Release page;
• Europe was never explicitely mentioned. I don’t see Sony saying “We won’t sell Cliés in the U.S. anymore but we’ll continue to make them for the Japanese market. About Europe, we let you guess;”
• An employee of a Sony Digital World Shop told me that it was not official.

There is still hope, I feel better.

# Posted by Ölbaum, lunch time | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most tech news web sites, apparently relaying an announcement from Sony, although it does not appear on any of their web sites:

Sony will not introduce any new Clie handheld models in the U.S. this fall. Product development and sales continue for the Japanese market only.

Which makes me wonder: is Europe part of the U.S. or of Japan? Geographically speaking, it’s closer to Japan but Sony-doesn’t-give-a-shit-about-it-ally speaking, it looks a lot closer to the U.S.

It’s an important question, though, as I just bought a TH55 when it was released a month ago and I was hoping for some carrying case manufacturers to announce new models for it.

# Posted by Ölbaum, late evening | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)