iPhone anyone ?

[Richmond Mathewson]

Um . . .

Maybe the reason I cannot appreciate any of Thomas McGrath III's listed advantages are that I have a 12 year-old Citroen (which I love); no RV, no boat, and this year cannot find the money for a vacation. Not that I mind any of this as I chose to live in Bulgaria and work my "B" off for peanuts.

However (possibly my favourite word); most people don't have RVs and boats (except "productive" fishing boats), so they may not feel the need to have an iPhone in quite the same way.

I normally "pass away" my "free time" programming content delivery and reinforcement stuff, marking tests, telling parents either that their children are "geniuses", "doing fine" or "fairly moronic". If I had the price of an iPhone (at the moment I have the money for next month's food, internet, electricity and water) I would probably spend about 20% of it on some cheap-and-nasty mobile phone and invest the rest in a few "free" text books for a couple of really bright kids I met at the local orphanage so I can smuggle them into my school to shake up some of the rich kids I normally teach.

Bye-the-bye, Tom, this is not an attack on you; I am jolly happy for you that you have all the pleasures that your work can bring.

However, I cannot help but see the iPhone as something fairly gratuitous when I see horrible poverty just down the road from where I live. Now, if somebody would start a factory making mobile phones in Bulgaria, rather than propping up the stinking Chinese communist regime (Apple!!!!!) quite a few Bulgarians might well be able to improve their standard of living even to the extent that they can afford an iPhone.

I am sorry to get "all political" on the RR Use-List, but the iPhone does seem, somehow, a political issue; as do all the other luxury electronic goods, all made in countries with nasty, non-democratic regimes.

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson.
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A Thorn in the flesh is better than a failed Systems Development Life Cycle.
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