Day: July 11, 2008

French reject Muslim women's citizenship–says 'total submission' to husband incompatible with French values

Expect to hear more about this case.

France has denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wears a burqa on the grounds that her “radical” practice of Islam is incompatible with basic French values such as equality of the sexes. The case yesterday reopened the debate about Islam in France, and how the secular republic reconciles itself with the freedom of religion guaranteed by the French constitution. The woman, known as Faiza M, is 32, married to a French national and lives east of Paris. She has lived in France since 2000, speaks good French and has three children born in France. Social services reports said she lived in “total submission” to her husband. Her application for French nationality was rejected in 2005 on the grounds of “insufficient assimilation” into France. She appealed, invoking the French constitutional right to religious freedom and saying that she had never sought to challenge the fundamental values of France. But last month the Council of State, France’s highest administrative body, upheld the ruling.
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How the iPhone will kill XM and Sirius

It’s over.

I’ve just spent about 30 minutes in my car and the very thought of buying XM or Sirius satellite radio has been purged from my mind forever.

Internet radio on your iPhone will doom XM and Sirius. It will get to the point that the only saving grace they will have is the fact they have long term contracts with Howard Stern and some sports programming, but in a matter of years, when they lose the exclusivity to their audio content and the iPhone will drop even further in price, there will no longer be any reason for either, unless you are a long-haul trucker plying those bits of the Interstate that still do not have cell phone coverage.

I’ve downloaded all of the Internet radio applications from the iPhone application store. I have the version one iPhone which works on Edge, but pretty much any stream under 32k will come in just fine at that speed. Still, even with reduced speeds, the offerings are extensive.

I drove to the store listening to Virgin Radio out of London. I heard ads for ‘insurance cover’ for your auto from AA of England (maybe I should buy as I almost hit someone). I switched over to di.fm, the best Electronica station out of New York to hear the content you won’t hear on American radio stations. I then flipped to AOL’s radio plug-in and heard 1010WINS traffic (sorry for those in the Holland tunnel stuck in traffic right now).

I predicted this long ago (yes, I own the domain name ‘phoneradio.com’). But with iPhone’s ease of use, mass marketing power, and legion of adoring fans, I foresee the demise of the big satellite radio companies in just a few years. Radio is just a ‘free’ ad-on to the other services you get with the iPhone. There are very few business models that can compete with ‘free’, and XM and Sirius’ limited offerings are not one of them. There are a few out there who can’t see the forest for the trees, (’the iPhone is too expensive’, ‘the monthly service plan too costly’), but these same people did not foresee the iPod either.

Satellite radio is not network radio. It requires massive expenditures of cash to basically recreate ‘towers in space’. It’s not about getting your connectivity wherever you can (i.e. edge, 3g, wifi, dsl, cable). It’s a massive infrastructure and canned content deliver via satellite in much the same manner as radio has been done for 100 years. It’s an expensive and fancy recreation of existing broadcasting, not the future of broadcasting.

Sorry about the billions you spent throwing your birds in orbit.

UPDATE: More here on the future of radio with the iPhone, not just from me but also from Doc Searls of Linux Journal

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iTunes error 9838 and the iPhone update

Macintouch reader reports are filled with others getting the same messages. And now with Itunes being overloaded with new subscribers and updates, the process is quite annoying. Some suggestions include removing any applications you downloaded prior and resetting the iPhone to the factory default. Perhaps I can do the manual update that was in the Macrumors.com site yesterday (I have the software somewhere). UPDATE: It’s due to massive overload of the activation servers (thanks ATT for your stupid requirement that phones be activated day one). UPDATE: Here is a thread about it on the Apple site. UPDATE: The Washington Post chimes in. UPDATE: The 9838 error is a problem connecting to the iTunes server. I was able to connect and reactivate and complete the upgrade at 12:53 EDT. Your mileage may vary. I should note that the v.2.0 upgrade which was ‘stalled’ mid-upgrade ‘took’ and when the phone got back online it was running 2.0 (you’ll see an icon for the App Store and a new icon for Contacts). More updates as the day goes on…]]>