Just deserts, Spoons?
Apple-bashing, beer, and cats for lonely OAPs all leave Dave full of Christmas cheer High-profile security breaches are so commonplace these days that you become somewhat inured to them.
“Who cares?,” you find yourself thinking. “If you chose to look for an affair online or use a communications provider with a silly name, you’ve made your bed.” But when the organisation being hacked is a pub, it hits a little too close to home. So it was that I felt deeply traumatised by news of the recent Wetherspoons attack. There but for the grace of going to an actual boozer with some sense of identity and character go I. The newspapers reported that more than 650,000 customers’ details were affected, but the pub chain stated that hackers only got away with “extremely limited” payment details for about 100 people who purchased Wetherspoons vouchers online before August 2014. If I were one of those 100, I’d be bricking it right now. Not in fear of having my bank account compromised, but of being outed as the kind of person who thinks a Wetherspoons voucher is any kind of acceptable present.
You’ve gotta be kitten
I was thrilled and bemused to learn this week that toymaker Hasbro has launched a robot cat and is hoping the creature will be one of the year’s hottest festive gifts.
The Joy For All Companion Pet (snappy name) has been designed to be as lifelike as possible. Just like a real feline, it reportedly purrs and meows and is fond of curling up on your lap for a snooze, as well as having its belly tickled.
And, if it’s anything like my moggy, it does a massive vom in a hidden corner of the lounge at least once a week. But this furry must-have gadget is not targeted at children, rather at those at the other end of life’s journey.
Hasbro claims that the Free For All Communion Cat could be an effective way of combatting the loneliness and isolation that besets all too many elderly people these days. What a nice idea. Why not get one for the older relative in your life? It’s probably an awful lot easier than having to visit and spend time with them.
Photo bomb
If you’re the kind of person who finds Apple to be unbearably twee and smug and self-congratulatory, then you will no doubt be delighted to hear that the fruity device maker and its high-priced lawyers recently lost a court case to a persevering pensioner from central London.
Deric White, 68, of Pimlico recently received a text message telling him there was a problem with his iPhone 5, which he duly took into the Apple Store on Regent Street. Workers from the shop’s in this case hugely inaptly named Genius Bar facility reportedly gave him back his phone before only then deigning to ask whether or not he had backed up its contents.
White then discovered that all his photos and videos were no longer on the device, which had contained numerous pictures of holidays with his wife, including the couple’s honeymoon. The Central London County Court ruled earlier this month that Apple must pay the Londoner ￡1,200 in damages and ￡773 in court costs. Leaving the vendor’s bank balance at a perilously low infinity millions pounds less ￡1,973.
Festive not festive
In time-honoured tradition – with “tradition” in this case being used in the usual IT industry sense of something I just started doing a few years ago and decided to inaccurately characterise as being traditional – it is with great pleasure and mild nausea that I bring you Dave’s Official Christmas Message 2015.
Wherever, however, and with whomever you’re spending it this year, I wish you a very good one. Unless you’re the kind of person who thinks an e-card is a remotely adequate way of conveying your best festive wishes to your loved ones, in which case I hope you spend the entire holiday season thinking long and hard about your life choices and priorities.
Other than that, I have nothing but peace and goodwill for my fellow humans, at this most sacred and expensive time of year. Eat, drink, and be merry and I’ll see you back in this crazy industry next year. Happy Christmas, one and all!