Keys Corner

Someone in the UK decided to send us an iTunes gift voucher. A nice idea, but unfortunately, it’s not possible to download the gifted CD. The error message in red on the screen shot says: This code is only valid for customers of the iTunes store in Great Britain. As we don’t have a UK credit card, that means that although the CD was bought and paid for in the UK, we can’t download it.

A bit as if the music industry could tell the postal service – we don’t allow UK residents to post CDs to Germany, so please return any that you spot in transit to the sender.

Oh, actually we have seen this sort of behaviour before – it’s called the regional code on DVDs; it stops you sending a DVD purchased in the USA to your friends in Europe. A fine way to treat your customers!

Update (2005-12-23):
In the mean time Apple has confirmed that, indeed, you can not send iTunes gifts internationally:

A US federal judge has ruled that “Intelligent Design” may not be taught – or even mentioned – in biology classes in a Pennsylvania school district. His judgement included the opinion:

“It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.
“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom.”

If you are prepared to take your iPod mini apart (which you need to do anyway if you want to replace the rechargeable battery), then you can replace the standard 2GB or 4GB hard disk with an 8GB hard disk from Seagate (street price around $200). See Jason Parry’s home page for details.

Oh dear, the Cheney Bush government continues to inhabit a different universe to the rest of the world. While over 150 countries seem about to agree to move forward on the Kyoto protocol to limit global pollution, the USA is still conviced that global warming is an evil communist theory that does not apply in their universe. (And Blair doesn’t come out of the affair much better, since he has claimed all along that he could convince the American government of the error of their ways.)

Update (2005-12-11):
Even the USA can be nudged to sign up for taking further steps, albeit small ones, towards making the Kyoto protocol happen, (after ending up in a “coalition” of one).

Our Views On Climate Change:

We care about the environment we live in and excellence in environmental performance is essential to our business. As such, climate change is an important issue to us—one that we take very seriously. Because we take this issue seriously, ExxonMobil is taking actions now and working with others to create long-term solutions. Our views and actions will be guided by future learnings on fundamental science and technological achievements.

ExxonMobil cares so much about our environment, that it is a major funder of top-secret US efforts to derail the efforts of 189 other nations which support the Kyoto protocol, the Independent reports today.

I don’t agree with the actions ExxonMobil “is taking now”, so I know where I won’t filling up my car in future. ExxonMobil operates under the following brand names: Esso, ExxonMobil, Exxon, Mobil and On the Run.

The Independent reports that UK retailers expect to lose £9bn of business to internet retailers like Amazon and eBay this Christmas. That is over 37% of their pre-Christmas business.

We will be part of the same trend in Germany – we went out two weekends ago to try and get our Christmas shopping done before the advent rush and spent twenty minutes cruising the local shopping mall carpark looking for a space to park. Not one space was free and the car park was full of others also looking for free spaces. So we decided it would be more convenient to shop on the internet and came home. We haven’t bought a single present in a physical store this year.

Difficult to believe, but the BBC reports that a group of black squirrels in some trees in eastern Russia being barked at by a large dog suddenly descended from the branches and attacked and gutted the dog.