IT IS now 30 years since Sony launched the Walkman personal stereo cassette player, changed the way we listen to music and put a new word in the dictionary.
Sonyâs subsequent transition from analogue tape to digital memory player was a lot less successful, mainly because the companyâs various digital incarnations of the Walkman lost out to Appleâs stylish and user-friendly iPods. Now Sony is trying to regain the initiative with its new X-series Walkman.
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To put some buzz into the worldwide launch, Sony hired a disused platform â normally used for railway staff training and as a movie set â at Charing Cross, on one of London Undergroundâs deep tube lines. A train was shunted in with some fancy furnishings and X-series Walkman units were installed for the press and public to try.
One of the main selling points of the new player is âWi-Fi connectivity for easy YouTube streaming, podcast direct downloading and internet browsingâ. It also receives FM radio â a feature that Sony hopes will claw back some of the market share from Apple.
Oh dear. Did no one at Sony remember that there is no Wi-Fi or FM radio signal to be had in a tunnel deep underground? When Feedback visited, embarrassed demonstrators were spending their time explaining why those special features wouldnât work.
âWho would have thought it? Martin Gardiner points us to a headline on the website that reveals: âSex is main cause of population growthââ
HOW do you respond to the news that a fraudster has conned people out of their money to the tune of billions of dollars? One way is to use the news as an opportunity to con more people out of their money.
It took a while to get going, but a 419-style email plea from âRuth Madoffâ has started spreading around the internet. It asks for help in recovering some of the loot that her husband Bernie had stashed for a rainy day.
âFederal investigators in the USA are working around the clock to freeze all my assets,â the letter says. It doesnât look like they have done a very good job, though. Press reports estimate that Bernie Madoff stole $65 billion, but the letter says: âMy husband deposited the sum of USD$17.000.000.00 Million in a Finance Firm in Europe some years ago in my name.â Thatâs more than enough to pay off the US and UK national debts combined. Was Madoff an even more successful swindler than everyone believes?
Let us deposit this valuable fossilâŚ
MEANWHILE, other 419 scammers have turned their attention to palaeontologists. A researcher at the Indiana Geological Survey in Bloomington recently received an email claiming to be from âa retired Washington DC science teacherâ staying in Iran. It began: âI have discovered a unique dinosaur sight [sic] which contains many different kind and many different size, and from different periods of dinosaurs. some of them very huge and some of them still intact, by any standard it is a great discovery.â The email then warned that âthe matter is not in the hand of educated peopleâ, so people âare braking them by slug hammer and loading them into trucksâ to use for building blocks.
The fractured English was an immediate giveaway, and so was the fact that the sender did not realise that the fossils in a real dinosaur site would all be from the same period. Even so, the note intrigued the recipient enough to pass it along to colleagues with an enquiry whether it was âa scam of some kindâ.
HERE is one of those trivia âfactsâ that are supposed to brighten up your day but are actually more likely to leave you feeling depressed. On the wrapper of a Harvest Cheweee bar, Max Sharp was informed: âA broken clock is right at least twice a dayâ.
Max concedes that if the display has frozen on a 12-hour digital clock, or if the hands have stopped on a 12-hour analogue clock, then yes, these clocks will be right twice a day. However, he points out that a frozen 24-hour clock, of which there are many these days, will be right only once a day.
But thatâs not the depressing part. The depressing part is the âat leastâ. The use of these words leads Max to believe that Honey Monster Foods, maker of Harvest Cheweee bars, âhas some sort of broken clock that can be right more than twice a dayâ. Such a clock must be neither a 12-hour one nor a 24-hour one. What kind of clock can it be? Worrying about questions like this can ruin your day.
FINALLY, Humphrey Evans has joined the UK-based Authorsâ Licensing and Collecting Society, which ensures writers are compensated for work of theirs that has been copied, broadcast and the like.
He reports that each member receives a computer-generated online password backed up by what the society calls a âmemorableâ word. His memorable word? Itâs â0AFB13BAâ. Unforgettable.