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iPhone… hmm

When large Irish families gather for events, it usually means they come from various parts of the world.

At my grandfather’s wake, I had the opportunity to compare the iPhone to the Prada to the N73.

My quick capsule review: Prada is the nicest. The iPhone is overrated. The N73 is nice too.

iPhone (from NY) and LG Prada (from Belfast) side by side.

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iPhone and Nokia N73 (from Australia)

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And the iPhone again, in the wild, in Ireland. Well it does look nice I guess.

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More on my grandfather when I gather my thoughts.

Ahern's Haugheyite tactics

So Bertie Ahern, as Taoiseach, rings up AIB executive Jim McNamara in advance of his appearing at the Mahon Tribunal. Between January and March, Ahern and his office called McNamara on a number of occassions.

Sandra, who apparently works for Ahern, calls Mr McNamara from Dublin Airport, as she was going on holidays. She said Mr Ahern was looking for information on certain transactions, in particular four foreign exchange transactions. These very transactions were being inquired into at the very same time by the Tribunal.

It is worth reading the transcript from today. McNamara is challenged by counsel for the Tribunal on why he did not ask the Taoiseach the obvious question: were the amounts lodged sterling amounts?

McNamara had apparently been criticised by the Tribunal for the lack of his inquiry into the transactions.

The Tribunal rightly asks if in fact Ahern was seeking not to find out whether foreign exchange transactions had taken place, but whether the bank had records of foreign exchange transactions taking place.

Crucially, the Tribunal made no enquiry of Mr Ahern prior to his interview on April 5th in relation to foreign exchange transactions. So why was Ahern asking Mr McNamara about foreign exchange transactions before the Tribunal had even asked Ahern about them?

Sandra Cullagh, on her way to her holidays, specifically asked if there were records of a transaction – not if there were transactions.

Manhattan explosion

That’s an awful lot of steam. Transformer explosion apparently.

That actually looks like a frickin big explosion. No sign of terrorism yet.

Update: It looks like the crater is huge… and the noise sounds like a leaking main, could take a while to get this one under control.

One person died, at least 16 injured

The steam has now been stopped. The NY Times has some pretty amazing photos of the aftermath.

Licence to Roam was there, and has pics.
Kamal has photos too.

That $45,000

There has been some speculation about this sum. The lodgment of about £28,700 on 5th December 1994 was a cash lodgment which is not exactly £30,000 sterling but rather is a lesser sum and may have been a mixture of sterling and Irish pounds. Hence it is in an irregular amount. It is not a dollar sum. I never had $45,000 either then, before then or since. There are no dollar transactions in my accounts. I do not deal nor have I ever dealt in dollars.

In addition two points need to be emphasized. Firstly, at the appropriate AIB rate for dollars on that date, a lodgment of £28,772.90 would equate not to $45,000 but to $44,277.68. Secondly, there are a number of combinations of sterling and Irish pounds that result in the amount which was lodged. The sum of $45,000 was never lodged to any account maintained by Ms. Larkin for the purpose of the house.

So said Bertie Ahern in his statement of last May. The Mahon Tribunal and AIB appear to disagree. Does his statement hold water? In short, it appears so.

Parsing Ahern’s phrasiology, one could be inclined to read between the lines. He says, with my emphasis added:

“There are no dollars transactions in my accounts”

I do not deal nor have I ever dealt in dollars.

“…a lodgment of £28,772.90 would equate not to $45,000 but to $44,277.68.”

“The sum of $45,000 was never lodged to any account maintained by Ms. Larkin for the purpose of the house.”

Not in his accounts, no, in Celia’s.
Maybe he never dealt in dollars, but Celia did.
Ahern gives the incorrect figure for the transaction, he is off by £1, the sum is £28,773.90 not £28,772.90.
Maybe the dollars were not for the purpose of the house, but served another purpose?

In relation to Mr Ahern’s contention that the amount equates to $44,277.68, the AIB official is pretty straight:

Q: 700: … in relation to the exchange on the sum of 45,000 US dollars, in the event that the published rates were used, and by published rates again I mean the rates we see on page 19110 as being the US dollar Forde Money Changer rates for the day. There are two rates, up to 500 and up to 2,500.

Now if we look back to 22065, we will see that if 45,000 US dollars was tendered by a customer for exchange into Irish currency and if the rate applied to it was the rate appropriate to the transaction up to a value of two and a half thousand dollars, and if the £5 charge was deducted from that transaction, the net result would be £28,773.90, which was the amount of the lodgement to Ms Larkin’s account, isn’t that so?

A: Yes.

Hmmm.

Ah, bloggin

Apologies for the lack of posting. A combination of laziness and tiredness is to blame.

However I have started tagging stuff on delicious, and hope to start using it on a much more regular basis. Just don’t want to find it replacing regular blogging either.

You can view my delicious feed here.

iPhone with 3G

Hehe. I do wonder sometimes. This week Cringely hints that the iPhone has in built 3G, which will be activated through software upgrade. I speculated on the same thing over on engadget a couple of weeks ago. The announcement might be made when the phone is announced for a particular network in Europe.

I might as well repeat the comment here:

Why do I get the feeling that iPhones sold today will already have the physical capability to connect to 3G… Would it make sense for two models of the iPhone to be built separately, one 3g capable the other not? Why not just build them all 3G capable and then software activate (eg 802.11n on Macs earlier this year). I’m inclined to believe the rumours here, 3G in Europe is more pervasive and network providers will fall over themselves to sell iPhone.

The question is will it be Vodafone or O2/Telefonica. Given that O2 phones are much less branded, I would be inclined to say them rather than Vodafone. But then recent hints from the existing firmware suggests Vodafone. Either way, it will be one or the other.

Here’s an idea. Buy long calls on both. Once the announcement is made one or other will see an overnight increase in share price. Or if you don’t like the risk, buy shares in both. See what happens.

A bit like the horses, I know, but hey.

Update: Business 2.0 says their is no evidence of 3G hardware in the 1st generation iPhone.


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