Wires Crossed #121 – July 9

By Mike Wheeler

By Mike Wheeler

Lucky Escape For Facebook COO
Even multi-millionaires like to collect miles when travelling by airline, and Facebook CEO Sheryl  Sandberg is no exception. With an annual salary of $300,000, $30 million worth of Facebook stock, and another $800 million in options, Sandberg has her frugality to thank for not being on board the Asiana flight that crashed at San Francisco airport on Sunday. Sandberg and other Facebook staff were due to catch the flight but Sandberg decided to take a United Airlines flight instead so she get more frequent flier miles. Her flight landed 20 minutes before the Asiana accident occurred, although one friend, Samsung’s David Eun, was on board the fateful flight, but survived uninjured.

Woz Takes Pot-Shot At Apple Critics
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has hit out at suggestions that Apple has become less of a market leader, and more a market follower since the death of his former partner Steve Jobs. Critics have pointed out that since Jobs passed away in 2011 the company has struggled to live up to its “innovator” tag as it has yet to release anything over the past 18 months that had the same “wow” factors as the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Wozniak defends the stance by stating that “you can't expect a whole new incredible revolution of a category of existing consumer electronics, you can't expect that every year”, which is true. However, the lack of interesting products over the past couple of years does mean that those looking for chinks in Apple’s innovative armour are given a little bit of ammunition when its share price has gone from $700 to just over $400 in just over 10 months.

Nintendo Nix Vitality Sensor
Back in 2009 Nintendo announced that it was developing the Vitality sensor, a device that would be attached to your Wii console that acted like a biometric widget. It would be much like that found in your doctor’s surgery, that will read you temperature, take blood pressure etc. Company president, Satoru Iwata, says that prototypes have shown only a 90 percent success rate with test subjects, which is far below acceptable standards, so the company has shelved the idea – for the moment. Although Iwata is disappointed in the outcome, he is more than happy to put something on the backburner rather than risk a potential disaster in the marketplace.

Teen Faces 10 Years In Prison For Facebook Post
It was an idiotic thing to do, but that might not stop 19 year old Justin Carter being sentenced to up to 10 years in jail. Soon after the Newtown massacre in the US, the Texas native posted on his Facebook page “I think I’ma shoot up a kindergarten and watch the blood of the innocent rain down and eat the beating heart of one of them,” and was promptly arrested for posting a terrorist threat online. Carter is not backing down though, refusing a plea deal that would have seen him get eight years inside, and his mother is crying foul in that she says his post also had the term “j/k” in it, which means ‘joking’ or ‘just kidding’. However Facebook has erased the offending post and only the district attorney has a full transcript.