APC jailed for five years

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Bluescreen: Alex Kidman satirises the state of the IT industry, crashing more than a few kernels along the way.

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The IT industry has been so sad lately.

First and foremost, Bluescreen was alarmed by the news that APC had received five year's imprisonment from a US judge. Bluescreen has had a long association with APC, and even owns the APC Steak Knives and the APC Computer Of The Year*. Sure, there have been plenty of staff changes over the years, but five years without APC? What would Bluescreen do?

In a blind panic, Bluescreen attempted to contact APC's resident sexpert Candy Hudson relating to matters of "going down" to the "big house", but was unable to procure any comment. Bluescreen suspects she's been gagged by a judge. Again.

Thankfully, it turns out that the APC in question wasn't the beloved computer publication, or even the oft-confused power supply people, but some group of grubby software and music pirates calling themselves the Apocalypse Production Crew. Talk about your self-fulfilling names...

Telstra also made Bluescreen sad. Sure, you might say "well, come and join the rest of the Australian populace, mate" to that, but specifically, it was with its attempt to jump aboard the hype train around the the first mother and daughter team to climb Everest. Except that the BigPond release on the matter came out two days after it happened and had been widely reported. That's OK, apparently, as BigPond was a major sponsor. You remember BigPond, don't you? It's the ISP that aspires to become a major player in media and, amongst its offerings, has a big banner on its homepage proudly proclaiming "latest news". Bluescreen wonders if the mother/daughter duo were, in fact, scoping out new locations for Sol's Winter Ski retreat...

Adobe also made Bluescreen sad. Being but a lowly tech satirist, Bluescreen doesn't make anywhere near enough to actually afford Creative Suite 3. As such, Bluescreen was excited about the open Beta of Creative Suite 4 -- presumably creativity doesn't run more strongly at Adobe than adding a prefix number -- which is fine if you're an existing CS3 user. If you're a new user, however, then the Adobe Chief of Police is giving you just 48 hours before the software explodes, so you'd better get assessing its worth rather quickly. Neither Nick Nolte or Eddie Murphy come in the beta package.

Bluescreen isn't particularly saddened by Palm, but it reckons it would be if it had owned Palm shares circa 1999. In somewhat more recent news, Palm announced it was back in the market with an innovative low-cost smartphone offering. Bluescreen could have sworn that Palm has been down this innovative low-cost road before with low cost offerings like the Palm z22. Oh, and when we say "back", it's "back" in the sense of "launching a phone that's been available in the US for nearly a year".

Bluescreen remembers well walking past a Palm store in San Fransisco earlier this year, presumably when all those millions of US punters were buying Centros. Except the store was empty -- even the staff members seem to have abandoned the idea of turning up for work**. Abandoned technology makes Bluescreen cry rather easily.

Bluescreen gets saddened by the state of broadband in Australia rather easily too. Primus this week launched an initially appealing 200GB ADSL2+ plan it dubbed "The Big Kahuna". Bluescreen can only guess that the company figures that the majority of its customers are either night owls or know how to set up scheduled P2P downloads, as a hefty eighty percent of the quota is only accessible between 3am and 9am. Well, it's either that, or they figure most of their customers won't notice the fine print - possibly distracted by the buxom babe in the gold bikini on Primus' Web site (perhaps taking a leaf out of Dodo's marketing book?) --  and they'll rake in the cash for much less service than 200GB. But surely no ISP could be so cold and calculating -- could they?

Bluescreen was going to use this space to comment on the whole Trading Post/eBay ongoing struggle, but finds itself wanting to cry that the saviour of the online auctions space in Australia might just be... Telstra.

Apple usually makes Bluescreen somewhat happy, at least when it's releasing decent software. OS X 10.5.3 came out last week, but most of its 420MB is taken up with bug fixes, not new features. 420GB is a whole lot of bugs. That hefty 420MB download will take you a while (and a bit of cash) to download, depending on your broadband speed and cap. In the meantime, you can ponder if Apple's managed to finally settle the argument over which operating system has the longest official name, and whether it should be pronounced "Oh Ess Exx Ten Point Five Point Three" or "Oh Ess Ten Ten Point Five Point Three"***. Somehow, Windows is only up to version six in the same time period.

Speaking of all things Redmond, Ballmer's Boys started the hype machine for Windows 7, showing about as much love for Vista along the way as... well, everyone else has, really. Bluescreen was amused to note in APC's coverage the line that "Unlike the excessive hope, extensive hype and eventually just too drawn-out campaign for Longhorn and Vista, this looks to be a decidedly measured approach for Microsoft." Because there's nothing drawn out about hyping up a technology that you won't even finalise for a year and a half at best -- is there?

* It's true! Sure, the year was 1986, and the computer in question is the Commodore 64. When was the last APC Computer Of The Year, anyway? Oh, and the steak knives are pretty wobbly, and it's to your benefit that they were never cover-mounted on the magazine.
** This is also true. Bluescreen is intermittently honest, and this is one of those times. It's very creepy being surrounded by only handheld technology in a dead quiet and seemingly abandoned store -- like Dawn Of The Dead with fewer flares and more flashing lights...
*** Before the pedants jump, Bluescreen is well aware of the "official" answer to this question.