Brief Notes

I must start this latest in my Brief Notes series with an apology to anyone that’s been wondering where Song Of The Day has gone. The last one went up on 7 January and there’s been no sign of it since. The simple answer is that I’ve been too busy to get round to putting anything up recently, but I’m hoping to get back on to it in the next day or so.

The frequency of SOTD postings may change for the future, too. I’m going to try as much as possible to get back onto the one song per day schedule, but where that’s not possible there may be a few days gap in-between. I’m also going to stop filling in the gaps where I miss days. For example, in the past if I’ve missed a two days, then I’ve done two date-adjusted posts to fill in the gaps. From now on, the gap will stand. I’m hoping that what this will help me to do is to write about each song a bit more.

I’m going to continue calling the feature Song Of The Day, because that’s quite established and it will still apply. It doesn’t say that I have to post a song every day….

So, on to some of the news stories that have caught my eye recently and which I’d like to comment briefly about:

1. The EU Commission are apparently going after Microsoft. Again. For anti-competitive practices. Again. Because Internet Explorer is bundled with Windows. Again.

Sorry, but haven’t we been there, done that? I didn’t get it before and I don’t get it now. Browsers are, generally, free. There are a number out there that can be downloaded and installed on Windows. So what’s the big deal? Can Microsoft really be expected to either not offer a browser with Windows, or permit other browsers to also be bundled with Windows? I don’t think so.

If the argument is that by bundling Internet Explorer, Microsoft have forced all other browsers to be free-to-own then is there any indication that anyone could ever have made money selling browser software? Personally, if I bought an operating system that did not come with an included browser I’d see that as a bad thing.

And why should Microsoft be singled out for bundling their browser? Apple do it with Safari. If it’s an anti-competitive practice, it should be applied across the board. But no, as we’ve seen before Apple get away with that sort of thing – even when they tie up the online music market with their iTunes / iPod stranglehold.

2. As I may have mentioned before, I work for a company that sells complementary medicine products – in our case, nutritional supplements. The complementary medicine field has become more and more popular over the years and you can now visit therapists for nutrition, reflexology, kiniesiology and many more. There have often been calls – usually from the tabloid press, or traditional medicine practitioners – for some sort of governing registration body to oversee them all.

Well, that day has come and the CNHC is now with us. Trouble is, it seems like it’s doomed to failure because it’s voluntary, doesn’t cover all disciplines of therapy and costs therapists a fee to join. I have an objection to such organisations when they take money to, supposedly, vet and approve members. It becomes in their interests to have more members, and that’s when you have the possibility of standards slipping.

I’ve always thought this about the Soil Association, one of the UK bodies that deals with organic registrations. Many people seem to think the Soil Association are the only people that can register a product as organic, but this isn’t the case – they’re just the biggest one. Unlike some of the other bodies in the UK, they charge not only a fee for their initial classification of a product as organic, but they also take a percentage of the sales turnover for that product. Therefore, they earn money for every unit of every registered product that is sold. To me, that makes it in their interest to register as many products as possible. And that makes me think that there’s the potential for the profit margins to take over.

3. Two stories about parents now. The first concerns a couple that have been told that they can’t adopt as the husband is too fat. Never mind that he’s not unfit, or that he and his wife could offer a good loving home to a kid that really needs it. No, apparently being too fat is just another item on the list that means you’re not qualified to be an adoptive parent.

4. Unfortunately, there’s no such list for natural parents and stories like this really make you wish there were. This story is really quite distressing, and makes me wish that we lived in years gone by where we would be able to properly punish these monstrous, inhuman scum. I’ve got friends who’ve got children of the same age, and I just don’t understand how anyone could inflict that sort of pain on such a helpless little one. One can only hope that a goodly amount of prison justice gets meted out to them.