August 30, 2006
Sony Ericsson "support"
My Sony Ericsson P900 smartphone is failing to synchronise properly. I call Adele in the Sony Ericsson help centre in Tyne and Wear. After 35 minutes on hold she tells me that the only way the phone can be made to synchronise with Outlook is if I manually delete every single contact in it. There are about 3000 contacts, including the duplicates. So, if I am prepared to spend three days of my life tapping at my phone, I can have a phone that works again. This phone was sold originally for £800.
The customer service Sony Ericsson provide is scandalously poor.
Since I rely on contacts synchronisation to do my job, my phone is now officially a piece of junk.
My next mobile phone will be made by someone else.
Posted by Mark at 4:09 PM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2006
Girl takes a picture of herself every day for 3 years
Posted by Mark at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
Iraq war - the bill
A bleak survey by Sarah Baxter of the war (now civil war) in Iraq tosses in the remarkable statistic that there were 858 bombings in July. The break-up of Iraq on sectarian lines now seems all but inevitable, and the main winners are likely to be Saddam's historic enemies, the Shias and the Kurds.
The increasing power of both groups spell problems for Bush and Blair. The Shias are likely (though not certain) to become satellites of Iran. An independent Kurdish state will alarm NATO member Turkey and may provoke separate unrest in the North. What happens to the Sunni rump is less clear, though the Saudis over the border may well want to guarantee the safety of their co-religionists.
This is the bill for the invasion of Iraq. If you were generous you might say that this invasion was poorly thought through. If you were not you might say it was mendacious (the casus belli was fudged, or faked, depending on your level of cynicism), it was bungled (dismissing the entire, fully armed Iraqi army was a particular blunder), and it was corrupt (the no-bid award of the logistics contract to Vice President Cheney's friends at Halliburton springs to mind). So far it has absolutely failed to deliver on its broader goal of delivering a) a pluralistic democracy in Iraq; b) a wider peace in the Middle East; c) secure oil supplies.
Where do we go from here? Well, we have to stick it out. We have to contain the fall-out from this civil war. We have to work with the democrats and oppose the extremists.
Posted by Mark at 6:46 AM | Comments (0)