DJ Deck Of Choice To Die?

It is rumoured that a classic workhorse of the music DJ is to stop being manufactured in February 2010. The Technics SL1200 series of vinyl turntables first saw the light of day in 1972 as a Hi-Fi turntable with an improved MK2 model released in 1978 and soon became the DJ’s dependable favourite. It is widely considered to be one of the durable and reliable turntables ever produced. The British Science Museum even has one amongst it exhibits of technology items that have shaped our world.

Much beloved of Hip Hop DJ’s due to the direct drive motor (rather than the belt drive of most Hi-Fi turntables) which easily leant themselves to the 80′s scratching phenomena. Highly accurate pitch controls made them an ideal tool for mixing too.

But demand has been falling as digital decks have become more sophisticated and as vast libraries of sound can now be stored on small memory cards, hard drives and laptop computers.

It is thought the SL-1200 and SL-1210 models will stop production in the new year. Their durability is almost their weakness as there are probably enough working models in circulation to satisfy its increasingly minority niche position with demand no doubt easily satisfied by the second user market.

If the rumours are true it will truly be the end of an era for many.

Photo by johanlundahl under this creative commons license

Schoolies week and the culture of skulling it to excess

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I was only listening to a phone-in on ABC Canberra radio the other day which was debating the culture of drinking amongst the young in Australia.Whilst Australia is by no means embroiled in the kind of excessive alcohol consumption of the United Kingdom  (see league table for alcohol consumption by country but the rise in the level of young people taking part in acts of binge drinking is perceived to have increased.

Obviously Australia is a somewhat more macho culture where hard drinking can be seen as part of the supposed attraction of machismo. Witness the bare essential approach of many Australian pubs and bars and the bizarre availability of drive through ‘bottle shops’ (off licenses as we call them in the UK) to see the place drinking alcohol has in the culture.

Interestingly binge drinking has not been at the levels ‘enjoyed’ by the UK of late. Australian politicians are getting concerned in a way that British politicians do not seem to (our brilliant solution to binge drinking was to increase the hours that pubs and clubs open in the hope that our youth culture would suddenly go all European and be less likely to consume the greatest amount of alcohol in the shortest available time frame).

Sculling, by the way is an Australian term for knocking back alcohol. Cultural differences and all that.

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Who Pays For Banking?

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UK banks have won their appeal at the supreme court over the matter of unfair bank overdraft charges.

David Buick, market analyst with inter-dealer brokers, BGC Partners was interviewed on BBC radio this morning following news of the judgement. Whilst he did not argue against the accusation that the banks precipitated the recession he took the view that in the current economic situation a ruling against the banks would have been an administrative and financial nightmare and took the view that the era of easy credit pointed the hand of blame at all of us. He also forecast more draconian overdraft terms in the future.

Of course were the banks not in the financial pickle that they’re currently in then we might have seen a different judgement. Clearly having averted a worldwide banking collapse would not be helped (in our capitalist system anyway) by the legal requirement to then manage a deluge of charge reclaims by numerous individual bank account holders.

That’s not to say that the judgement is correct. The argument is whether the Office of fair trading really has the powers to regulate effectively. The supreme court clearly indicates that it feels it is not in the OFT’s  remit to have brought this action and points out that this decision is not a judgement is not about whether overdraft charges were fair but that the OFT cannot and should not have instigated this action on behalf of consumers. That perhaps is  an argument for regulators with real teeth rather than having quangos of consumer rights tokenism.

It’s worth pointing out that if the ruling had gone against the banks then they would have taken their case to the European court

Can the consumer ever really win? In Australian credit card hidden charges were regulated against but all that happened was that the credit card companies were able to tack on a raft of new charges with fees that exceeded the old hidden charge fees. Better the devil you know?

The same may have also applied to a ruling against the banks with the probable introduction of a monthly account charge for all account holders. Maybe in future the privilege of having an overdraft will incur a fixed monthly fee whether you used that facility or not.

Martin Lewis the consumer champion who pioneered the reclaiming of excessive bank charges may well have more to say on this subject.

The full supreme court judgement is available here (PDF)

 

Robin Hood Robin Hood Riding Through The Bank

A rare example of humanistic altruism in the now much hated world of banking comes from Germany. Erika Schmidt, the manager of a bank branch in Germany was found to be transferring money from rich clients into the accounts of those who were heavily in debt. Her lawyer said that “she couldn’t bear to see my less-fortunate customers go hungry”.

Her aim was to stop the struggling accounts from being closed due to lack of funds. When these accounts became solvent again she would largely transfer the money back again. She took no money herself but was found to have transferred a total of 7.6 million Euros between December 2003  and February 2005.

Inevitably despite her interventions some clients never managed to become solvent again and so the bank lost 1.1 million euros due to the bad debt.

A court in Bonn was viewed the altruistic fraud leniently by handing out a 22 month suspended jail term.

It is reported that the manager lost her job and now lives off a small pension.Her lawyer said “She did it out of compassion for people and now she is as poor as a church mouse herself”

Photo by marie-ll under this creative commons license

Source

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Responsible Parenting And Social Networking

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I listened with interest to this morning’s phone in on Five Live which looked at the worries of youngsters on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace following criticisms of those networks for not putting any kind of help button on the site for people that are experiencing bullying or child abuse. Bebo a site that is perhaps bigger in the UK than the rest of the world has put such a help button on their own social networking site.

What soon became apparent as the debate developed was that:

• Most parents were unaware that these sites had a starting age limit of 13 years.
• Parents had allowed some children as young as 7 years to sign up to social networking sites
• Parents largely gave in to peer pressure such as “but all my friends are on it”.
• Youngsters like to be seen to have as many friends as possible
• Some youngsters can have as many as 600 contacts most of whom they don’t know in real life
• Youngsters are more tech savvy than their parents so parents leave most things to their children

I was surprised at the extent to which some parents were prepared to just blank this aspect of parental responsibility. One local authority had run a free course to help parents get helpful information on how to manage access to social networking sites but only two parents availed themselves of the workshop.

18 age limit on xbox360

An example of age limiting access to such sites comes in the form of  Microsoft who have just launched access to social networking sites on their Xbox 360 games console but are to actively block access for users below the age of 18 by only allowing  gold membership users to access the services (a 12 month paid for fee is payable to unlock access). Don’t go thinking that Microsoft are doing this purely in the name of being responsible. It’s probably just as likely being implemented to reduce their liability as much as anything else.

Whose Responsibility?

I know many parents are just going to use the excuse that their children are the tech savvy members of the family but isn’t it about setting barriers, getting informed, getting help, taking responsibility and putting appropriate measures in place to safeguard your children?

Easy for me to say I know but I must admit I was a little taken aback at the buck passing by some parents with regard to this.

social networking image by 10ch under this creative commons license

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Netherlands Considering Pay-Per-K Motoring

The Netherlands government are getting serious about abolishing road tax and a current 25% sales tax on cars and replacing them with a per kilometer fee in an effort to cut car congestion and carbon dioxide emissions.

If the law is passed then it would come into effect in 2012 for Netherlands drivers and implemented for foreign motorists in 2018.

The proposed system would rely on each car being fitted with a GPS device that would send data regarding distances travelled to an appropriate revenue collection agency.

Initially a charge of 3 Euro cents per kilometer would be charged rising to 6.7 Euro cents by 2018.

If successfully introduced then the rest of Europe will be watching closely as to how effective a measure it is in achieving its stated objectives.

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Dragging Educated People Into The Underclass

“If that underclass increases relentlessly over time, and if you start seeing more educated people getting dragged into it, then we are going to have a huge problem. I think that may happen as machines and computers keep getting better until eventually they can do the jobs of even people with lots of education and training. At that point I think you have to do something,”

Martin Ford identifies the possible down sides of technology in a capitalist society in his book: The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future

Ford is presumably no Luddite by nature. His main profession is as a computer engineer.

30 years ago similar sooth sayers were predicting a future of increased leisure time as technology took the drudgery out of work and provided an unprecedented standard of living for all. The decade that followed that prediction saw, in the UK anyway, a huge increase in the number of hours that people worked and as old industries crumbled to give way to a service based economy, a growing underclass and social divide. Martin Ford seems to hint that it’s probably capitalism that needs to be regulated rather than the growth of technology in isolation.

At the same time as this forecast of a utopian world of increased technology there were more realistic forecasts such as Alvin Toffler‘s The Third Wave with it’s vision of a post industrial society and the end of ‘a job for life’.

We seem to be some way into that post industrial third wave. Is Ford hinting that technology is merely hastening the collapse of the post industrial society or just highlighting that with out certain checks and balances many of us in the future may unexpectedly travel rapidly backwards along the metaphorical escalator of social mobility.

Is technology just a tool? It’s how we deploy it that creates the benefits and/or disadvantages isn’t it?

Photo by Sammy0716 under this creative common license