Rules get ruled out

Ripping up the playground rulebook is having incredible effects on children at an Auckland school. Chaos may reign at Swanson Primary School with children climbing trees, riding skateboards, and playing bullrush during playtime, but surprisingly the students don't cause bedlam, according to principal Bruce McLachlan, who rid the school of playtime rules as part of a successful university experiment. "We want kids to be safe and to look after them, but we end up wrapping them in cotton wool when in fact they should be able to fall over. When you look at our playground it looks chaotic. From an adult's perspective, it looks like kids might get hurt, but they don't." Even better, the school is actually seeing a drop in bullying, serious injuries, and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are increasing. This is clearly not a playtime revolution, but a return to the days before health and safety policies came to rule. And speaking of rules, bigger screens are already beginning to rule the phone world, and Apple are now throwing their hat into the ring. Citing "people familiar with the situation," The Wall Street Journal claims that Apple will be launching a 4.5-inch and a 5-inch display iPhone this year due to mounting competition from flagship, big-screen Android handsets. The publication also states that according to its sources, both handsets will sport a metal casing and that the iPhone 5C, launched this September, will be discontinued. It's about time Apple got on board because their iPhone is now the only flagship smartphone on the market with a sub 4.5-inch screen. When challenged about this display shortfall, Apple has always pointed to two factors - a) a bigger screen uses more power and battery life is just a critical to a good handset as being able to watch a video, and b) a phone should be simple to hold and use with a single hand. That's why when Apple did bump its phones' screen sizes up from 3.5 to four inches in 2012, it did so by making the handsets longer, rather than wider. In other mobile news, South Korea is investing in a 5G mobile internet service, which it says will be 1000 times faster than 4G. While most of the world has yet to experience the improvements offered by 4G services, South Korea's science ministry said it aims to implement the technology within six years. The science ministry said 5G will allow users to download a 800-megabyte movie file in one second, compared with 40 seconds using 4G. "We helped fuel national growth with 2G services in the 1990s, 3G in the 2000s, and 4G around 2010. Now it is time to take pre-emptive action to develop 5G," the science ministry said in a statement. "Countries in Europe, China, and the US are making aggressive efforts to develop 5G technology and we believe there will be fierce competition in this market in a few years." There will also be a focus on new features such as ultra-HD, cutting-edge social networking services, and hologram transmission. But by that time, development will have started on 6G, which I'm sure will be even more powerful than 5G could ever aim for.