On CIO, Dell’s global head of marketing, Andy Lark, puts his foot in his mouth and keeps kicking until he’s a gummy exec with a mouth full of shards:

I couldn’t be happier that Apple has created a market and built up enthusiasm

“We didn’t have a clue how to do tablets, but we’re glad Apple’s made something we can rip off in a half-hearted and sub-optimal manner!”

but longer term, open, capable and affordable will win, not closed, high price and proprietary

“I’ve never used an iPad, nor looked at iPad price-tags and compared them to the usually more expensive competition. So now I sound like an idiot! OOPS!”

[Apple has] done a really nice job, they’ve got a great product, but the challenge they’ve got is that already Android is outpacing them.

“I read something about Android winning the smartphone battle somewhere on the internet. Smartphones are tablets, right?”

Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island.

“Like the island of crazy IN MY MIND!”

It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.

“Dell, as you know, is great at making simple things quite complex! … What? What do you mean I wasn’t supposed to say that?”

We’ve taken a very considered approach to tablets, given that the vast majority of our business isn’t in the consumer space

“I hate Steve Jobs. I kick iMacs to death for fun. Also, I have no idea how to win over consumers.”

[A company] like Samsung has to aggressively go after their business, but we’ve got a far more diversified footprint than some of these players.

“We have no idea how to focus. In fact, we have no idea what we’re doing regarding tablets.”

An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse and a case [means] you’ll be at $1500 or $1600

“Especially if the case is made from solid gold and tiger fur, but then I’ve been reliably informed that’s the case for all Apple cases. And, no, I’m not going to explain my reasoning in saying you’d need to buy a mouse for a touchscreen tablet, nor how the hell I managed to get to $1600 when the most expensive iPad 2 is $829. Look, just leave me alone!”

Our strategy is multi-OS. We will do Windows 7 coupled with Android Honeycomb, and we’re really excited. We think that giving people that choice is very important.

“We think we can mate a turtle and a monkey and get a unicorn.”

It’s always fun when the people in charge are hypocrites. While the UK government bitches about freedom of speech in the likes of China, Open Rights Group confirms Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, is now in discussions with ISPs regarding:

self-regulatory measures to tackle online copyright infringement through site-blocking

If you want to sift out the bullshit, he’s talking about a national firewall, where IP owners would have sites blacklisted, for rights infringement. It’s a far cry from blocking Tiananmen Square protest pictures and entire social networks, but it’s a slippery slope. And we all know how mental the media industry is regarding rights infringement. (Boing Boing adds that the list would, naturally, be ‘secret’ and likely wouldn’t be transparent nor open to judicial review.)

The silver lining, according to Open Rights Group:

[Vaizey] has promised to invite civil society groups to participate in future discussions on the matter

Yeah, I’m sure that’s going to go swimmingly and that Vaizey and co. won’t ignore the protests of civil liberties advocates and technology gurus entirely, in order to appease their rich chums who own or have a huge stake in multinational media companies.

Seriously, Facebook, what the steaming shitting fuck were you thinking when you enabled Enter to post a comment on your website? While the entire human race is hardly properly versed in the absolute correct manner in which to use paragraphs, people know that hitting Enter (or Return, depending on your operating system’s key layout) gives you a carriage return. This has been the way since typewriters, you absolute buffoons.

But no. Facebook’s decided that it’s a bit much effort for people to write a post and then—shock!—have to confirm they want it posted by clicking or tapping a post button. Now, Enter does that job. Brilliant! This won’t at all lead to:

• millions of users posting in error, deleting, rewriting and then posting again;
• lots of people wondering where the hell the post button has gone and thinking Facebook is broken;
• a lack of nicely formatted long posts, since no-one will know how to create paragraphs.

“Aha,” says Facebook’s simpleton UI designer, “I’ve got that covered. Just use Shift and Enter!” It’s at this point that I’m glad said designer isn’t in the room, because I would not be responsible for my actions. Shift and Enter for a carriage return? Wow, that’s discoverable, you cretinous pea-brained halfwits. What next? Will we have to hold Control and Shift to get a capital letter, because Shift and a letter on its own will delete your privacy settings? How about Shift and Backspace to delete something, because Backspace on its own will remove your entire account?

In short: GAH.

Amazon’s just unveiled its Cloud Drive, including a Cloud Player, enabling you to upload your music and then play audio across PCs, Macs and Android-based smartphones. This is massive and the sort of thing people were hoping Google and Apple would do, but Amazon’s got there first.

This also means Amazon’s the first to test the murky legal situation of back-ups. In the UK, fair-use laws barely exist. The 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in theory enables you to make a copy of software and games, although it’s in part been superseded by the Copyright And Rights Regulations act, which stamps all over the prior law by making it illegal to exercise your rights should you circumvent copyright protection technology.

In music, things aren’t any clearer. There’s a general misunderstanding in the UK that it’s fine to make copies of music you legally own; in the old days, that meant transferring vinyl to cassette for your Walkman, and now that means ripping CDs to a PC or Mac, or (technically) making copies of digital audio files by placing them on an audio player or smartphone. Interestingly, the BPI (the UK equivalent of the RIAA), while generally taking a typically hardline stance towards filesharers (ZeroPaid), announced in 2006 that it would refrain from suing people making copies of purchased music for their personal use (Macworld). BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said:

Traditionally the recording industry has turned a blind eye to private copying and has used the strength of the law to pursue commercial pirates.

We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties and make it unequivocally clear to the consumer that if they copy their CDs for their own private use in order to move the music from format to format we will not pursue them.

This is an eminently sensible decision, of course, but, importantly, it is at odds with UK law. Therefore, while Jamieson once said this, there’s nothing to stop the BPI changing its mind, being overruled by another party, or from some other organisation (such as a record label) suing you for ripping your CDs.

Naturally, then, this also means Amazon’s in the same position. According to the Guardian, Amazon claims it can circumvent rights legislation by claiming its online storage is the equivalent of an external hard drive. Craig Pape, director of music at Amazon, said:

We don’t need a license to store music. The functionality is the same as an external hard drive.

But note who (or rather what) that quote is referencing: Amazon. In other words, Amazon is indemnifying itself and putting sole responsibility for rights issues on to the user. Now, this is fine, because it’s the same as any other online service, but in this case Amazon is suggesting to users that they use Cloud Player for their music. In effect, Amazon is directly tempting people to break the law, but noting that it won’t be liable for any comeback.

I’m wondering how record companies will react. If they’re smart, they won’t care, since Amazon’s offering is a step up from the likes of Spotify in encouraging you to upload content, which you may have bought legally in some format. Most importantly, I’m also wondering how the law will react, because if Amazon’s service says anything, it’s that the UK desperately needs fair-use (i.e. copying of media—across formats, if necessary—for personal use) utterly enshrined in law.

I hate iTunes. It’s reasonable as a digital jukebox, but it sucks big-time for dealing with iOS devices, with nasty file management and terrible app management. But Apple gets one thing right with iTunes: if a new iOS upgrade is available, you plug your device in and upgrade, regardless of where you are in the world.

Compare and contrast with Microsoft’s Windows Phone Where’s my phone upgrade? page:

First, look up your mobile operator on the table. Then check to see what stage the update process is in.

Sounds great and not at all far more complicated than it needs to be.

Hat tip: Matt Gemmell.