Should companies be forced to apologize to Nigeria for “offending” the country?

Question:

After Sony released a commercial that made light of Nigerian 419 scams(You know, the one where the price of Nigeria sends you $1 million as long as you Western Union him $5,000 or something like that), Nigerian officials said that Sony should apologize for the commercial. It also happened with the movie District 9. In the movie, there are a group of Nigerian criminals and the country is now not screening that movie anymore either and is calling for an apology. Should companies apologize for showing Nigeria in a poor light?

Answer:

No. I think that if Nigeria wants an apology, then perhaps the country should do something about the amount of illegal activity that goes on in the country. When there were traces run on the scams that were said to be from Nigeria, guess what, they originated from Nigeria.

Also, think of how movie studios portray criminals from any country. The villains in movies are always ruthless and you are made to hate them. I have watched District 9 a handful of times now and I have to say that as bad as the Nigerian criminals in this movie are, the MNU is far worse. I think Nigerian officials missed the point of the movie if all they saw was the Nigerian criminals.

Could you go without a car?

Question:

I’m sure the answer will be “I already do” or simply “Yes” if you live in a big city, but what about the suburbs or even rural areas? Could you go without a car?

Answer:

Ha. This one is pretty funny, after all, there was one point in time when cars didn’t exist. However, I have been without a car at one point in time and it was quite difficult to find a ride from place to place for the months I was without a car. I suppose what was even worse was being able to look at my car and know that I couldn’t use it (in the summer of 2006 my car was in the shop all summer and I wrecked it in September 2007).

Living in the “suburbs” of a small(er) city makes it extremely difficult to go without a car. I live 6 miles from the city and there aren’t any bicycle paths to get to and from the city, just a two lane highway (oh, the joys of living in Mississippi). There is a public transit system, but only within city limits.

What do your summer plans include?

Question:

Well, summer is upon us. Yesterday was Memorial Day, the unofficial kick off of Summer 2009. Considering gas prices are on the rise and we’re still facing some pretty heavy duty unemployment numbers, what do your summer plans include?

Answer:

Personally, my summer plans include finishing up school then working to find a job. At this point, any job may be just fine for me.

Gas prices are on the rise, so going away for a week or so may be out of the question for some (and I am even thinking twice about a trip to Florida at the end of the summer).

I think this may be another one of those “staycation” years. Like last year when gas was $4 a gallon, many families opted to stay home rather than go far away to vacation. That may happen again this year.

Some big names in consumer electronics made their press conferences today at the show. Names like LG and Samsung, as well as Cisco.

But tonight’s Sony event was probably one of the more anticipated of the showings.

Tonight at Sony’s press event, it introduced the Vaio P, which could be considered somewhat of a “super netbook.” The price for it is between $900 and $1500. The difference between the $900 model and the $1500 model is that the $900 has a 60GB HDD while the $1500 has a 128GB solid state drive. It is also the lightest 8″ laptop weighing it at 1.4 lbs.  The new entry was highly anticipated, but in my opinion, overpriced. Yes, it is Sony and it’s beautiful…but, it’s not worth the price, at least with my initial reaction (I can be persuaded though)… Here’s a picture via Sony.com

Mugen Pop Pop

I didn’t know what it was, so here’s the gist of it: It is a key chain toy that simulates popping bubble wrap. It makes a little noise and every once in a while makes a fart noise or something like that. Reviews for the toy online are hard to find right now (I think it’s relatively new) but people seem to like it…proving that some people will buy anything.

AOL will be shutting down AOL pictures, one of the oldest photo sharing sites on the web, BlueString, a service that stores photos, video, and music, and XDrive, a site which AOL bought in 2005 where you can backup information from your computer to the internet. While AOL is trying to sell at least XDrive, they are all expected to be shut down by the end of 2008.

AOL is shutting down these services to focus AOL as an advertising business rather than a business that offers several different services. According to Executive Vice President Kevin Conroy, AOL wants to make sure every product impacts their bottom line.

AOL should shut these services down if it isn’t doing anything for them. With other hosting sites like Photobucket or Flickr for pictures and with the cost of portable data storage (like flash drives) coming down, these sites are becoming obsolete.

*Image courtsey of BlueString.com

So what makes the 3G iPhone so different than the first? From what I hear it’s the faster internet. I don’t know how much different the internet speeds are. Since I’ve been on the internet with my cell phone, I’ve always had high speed wireless internet (Thanks Sprint Ev-Do). If you look at AT&T Wireless’s website, 3g really looks fast, because it has flames surrounding the icon.

Congratulations Apple….you really make a popular product. Is it the best phone in the U.S.? Probably not… Is it one of the best selling phones in the U.S.? Definitely. Did it make your shares rise 3.1% today? Well, quite possibly. However, I will take my Centro over this iPhone. My Centro has all the features in a phone I could want…Touchscreen WITH a keyboard. It’s really nice actually. It also plays music and has the internet (along with Palm’s (outdated but very reliable) OS.

In other phone news, Sprint released the Treo 800w on Friday. It, like my Centro, has a touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard. It also sports Wi-Fi and Windows Mobile 6.1. However, it does not come in electric blue or pink, so I will be sticking with my Centro.