Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-13-2010

[andrewducker]

• Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism
  (tags: racism race politics usa)
• U.K. Designer Grows an Entire Wardrobe From Bacteria
  (tags: design fashion bacteria biology future clothes)
• Apple allowing automatically produced code into the App store - so long as it's not made by Flash.
  (tags: iphone apps apple)
• A fantastic example of the design decisions that go into even the smallest piece of code
  (tags: .net c# design development)
• Man has a DNA test to prove it's not his son, but still has to pay child support
  (tags: law usa EpicFail)
• A really good piece on why requiring real ID for the WoW forums was a bad idea.
  (tags: privacy culture internet mmorpg feminism gaming racism realid)
• XKCD on homeopathy -a correction
  (tags: Funny comic science homeopathy)
• Marvel dumps Norton as Hulk: claims he's not a team player
  Also, you'll note, proof that Whedon is onboard.
  (tags: comics marvel hulk)
• Spotify for Linux
  (tags: spotify music linux)
• “And so…” - more thoughts on narrative and fiction
  (tags: story narrative fiction GrahamSleight)
• The release of advice given to ministers shows the tension at heart of drug classification
  (tags: drugs politics uk)
• Swiss authorities reject US extradition of Polanski
  (tags: RomanPolanski switzerland law extradition usa)
• Venting on Queerness in Dr Who
  (tags: DrWho gay sexuality)
• Brazil's copyright law forbids using DRM to block fair use
  (tags: copyright drm brazil law)
• The Runaway General - the article that cost the US commander in Afghanistan his job
  (tags: afghanistan politics obama war military mcchrystal rollingstone journalism usa)

Comments

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

A few weeks ago, I noticed a distressing development: the apparent lack of queerness in the new phase of my life. I have just moved house to Amsterdam and left everyone I know behind. My new environment - new work colleagues, new neighbours, etc, is devoid of queer characters, and near-devoid of references to the existence of queers.

Okay, so piss-take over. but, really, sometimes you just don't meet gay people at the same ratio as you do straight people. And even if you do, you don't always know that you do until someone actually says something. If and when that does happen, you don't make a a big issue out of it because it's not an issue. So why are people getting all hot and bothered just because Who hasn't got himself a token gay friend yet?

[andrewducker]

Because there used to be plenty of gay people in Who. Rarely would a pair of episodes go past without there being a gay character. And then that stopped, and people are upset that they've gone back to being invisible.

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

They'll probably do one again soon enough. He just hasn't met any yet. That we know of. Hell. Angel Bob might've been gay for all we know.

[andrewducker]

Unstated stuff doesn't really count - see the line on subtext in the original article.

I don't think that Dr Who has to have a high percentage of gay characters - but I can understand that going from multiple visible ones to a complete lack of any mention is going to piss some people off.

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

True. Everything always pisses some people off. Can't please everyone, no matter what you do.

[broin.livejournal.com]

The Graham Sleight stuff is good.

This is one reason I'd quite like to demo some of the RPGs I'm into at the moment for you (and Julie). Among other techniques, we prep for different stuff (imagery rather than locations or timelines, say), improvise more, collaborate more, and build a loose framework of story before starting anything. These days, I don't allow more than a line or two of background for most characters (compare that to Mage!).

So during narration or exposition, you can improvise/reveal some really complex, interlocking and complex stuff. The reveal is a technique all its own.

[andrewducker]

Sounds interesting.

I'm not really into storytelling, but I'll give it a go.

[broin.livejournal.com]

It's still that thing where you have a guy who does stuff. But there's more about finding out who that guy is.

But great. :)

[matgb]

OK, so Jobs really hate Adobe?

I mean, the objective of killing flash based websites and supporting decent modern standards is good, so I sorta like what they've done with the iPad even though I don't like the iPad (paradox, I don't want it to succeed, but I want it to succeed enough to force website builders to do a decent job).

I want someone to go to see the Science Museum exhibit for those clothes. And I really like that Brazilian law. Wonder if we could get it to have traction over here?

[andrewducker]

The problem is twofold:
1) There are things that you can do with Flash that you can't do any other way (adaptive rate streaming video, for instance).
2) Flash was producing a toolkit that you could use to write apps that would run on both Android or iOS. This is what Jobs is afraid of - if you can get your apps on both, then there's less advantage for the iPhone.

[matgb]

See, this is my problem with some of these discussions. You type "adaptive rate streaming video", I read "akjhskjhd alkjdlkaj akljdlkja dlkjalkj", or at least I might as well have. I understand the meaning of all these words, and I could go look it up, but I probably won't be more emlightened.

OK, Flash can do stuff that others can't, yet. If we just stick with flash, then no one else'll bother outside a few open source hardliners. Forcing it off the table, or at least ensuring other options come forward, is probably good.

But yeah, I get why he's worried about open standards, but if that's his principle concern, why allow all the stuff from the other platforms? I know, technically, they can't be stopped, convert it to the version of C Apple insists on, send them the source there if they insist on it, they can't do owt, but that's a much bigger threat to the exclusivity thing.

The advantage the iPhone has is it's the iPhone, and is therefore guaranteed massive publicity with each new version. And let's face it, make me choose between Android and iPhone, all hail our new Google overlords. I'd rather not choose either, but fortunately with Nokia going a different way again, looks like choice and diversity is here to stay, which I think is good, a very dynamic market is better than the market that PC software developed into for ages.

[andrewducker]

God that sounds horribly illiberal. The answer to bad options isn't to ban them, it's to improve the other options to the point where people choose them instead. If Flash is better than HTML then improve HTML! We're finally reaching the point where Javascript and Canvas are able to do some of the things that Flash can do. They're not quite as good yet, but they're getting there. Once they improve beyond that point people will naturally move to the open alternative - which is exactly what is happening with Android/iPhone.

I hope Nokia do get themselves sorted out. I loved the N80 and the N85, but their current crop can't hold a candle to the better Android or iPhone models. If they can get that sorted then I'll be happy to go back to them when my contract runs out.

[matgb]

The answer to bad options isn't to ban them, it's to improve the other options to the point where people choose them instead

Is, um, what I said? Jobs has chosen to make a business decision that I think is questionable. But it'll have the effect of forcing an improvement to the other options, which is what's needed.

I ban nothing, but I welcome the effect that the idiot who has banned something is hopefully going to have, even if I think the ban itself is questionable and of dubious motivation.

[andrewducker]

Aaaah, I thought you were saying that you were in favour of the ban.

If you're saying you're against the ban, but pro its effects, then I'll agree with you :->

[matgb]

The decision not to support it on iPad has technical reasons and ultimately it's a lack of feature, market can decide. The decision to block Flash derived apps after Adobe spent money on the software to make it possible is utterly mind boggling.

[draconid.livejournal.com]

their current crop can't hold a candle to the better Android or iPhone models

Bah! The N900 is so much better than the Android phones (I can't really compare to the iPhone since the N900 is a bit of a brick in comparison) (And I'm completely biased because I'm a total Linux geek) (But it's still the best phone out there. No. Really!)

[andrewducker]

The HTC Desire is pretty much the same shape and size as the iPhone, so the N900 is a brick next to it too :->

And the N900 has a resistive screen, which isn't as good for touch-screen as a capacitive one.

It's definitely the best of the Nokia phones - and it has a keyboard, which is a big bonus, but it's still reliant on the Ovi store for apps, and much though I have numerous fond memories of the N85 installing apps is not one of them.

[draconid.livejournal.com]

The resistive screen isn't actually as bad as I'd read it was going to be. Compared to the G1 it's really no worse (and having a stylus is great for delicate stuff).

I don't really like Android as an OS from what I've seen of it - there are things that just don't seem to be right that still haven't been fixed since my other half bought the G1 since it came out, what, 2 years ago? That said, size-wise even the G1 is slightly less of a brick than the N900. But I like my brick!

It's easy to turn on the extras repo in the N900 (just a tick of a button). I've only actually used Ovi for Firefox and a few themes. Admittedly, I've gone to the testing repo for some apps, but the extras one is full of really great stuff. I think this is something particularly improved in the last update. (From what I've read of the changelog, there are a lot of improvements from the N85 Maemo to the N900 Maemo).

Anyway, I'm going to stop going on now! I'm definitely biased! And I have to be... I have to wait 2 years before I can change phone again!

[andrewducker]

Well, I hope it takes off - I have 18 months to go, and I want as much choice as possible when I come to renew!

[draconid.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure that Nokia have anounced that their N-series is completely dropping Symbian for Maemo so they just have to work on the thinner hardware now!

[skington.livejournal.com]

Name me one cross-platform desktop application that didn't suck, though. Tcl, Java, Qt - the list goes on. It's not just about obeying the rules about how dialogue boxes are laid out or which order the OK and Cancel buttons go in, even if you can get that right (and precious few cross-platform development systems ever have).

That's what Steve Jobs is concerned about: that people will write apps that either a) cater to the lowest common denominator (and Apple's business model is anything but being the lowest common denominator), or b) will attempt to work on a hybrid of multiple operating systems that doesn't exist, and will end up looking rubbish on all OSes.

[andrewducker]

Tweetdeck. Written in Adobe Air, is great.

Pidgin - written with Qt, is great.

Firefox - written with XUL, is great.

It's none of Steve Jobs business what people write the apps in. He doesn't filter the app store on "Does the app look any good" (and I'd disapprove of that anyway).

[skington.livejournal.com]

The Firefox team have spent years getting Firefox to look like a modern-day Mac application, and they have in fairness almost succeeded.

Tweetdeck? God, it's a monstrosity. It looks nothing like a normal Mac application. Appearance aside, the scrolling is subtly different, making it difficult (to me, not having used that application before) to follow the movement of the window. And all sorts of system-wide stuff that you'd expect to be in the Edit window (spelling and grammar, substitutions, transformations, speech) is just missing. The spell-check, it turns out, is available via a contextual menu, but that's not obvious.

Tweetdeck is in fact a perfect example of why applications written via some sort of "cross-platform" middleware are inferior to native apps: they look and behave differently from native apps, and you can't guarantee that the middleware platform supports all of the most recent features of the OS.

Pidgin? It requires that you install a completely new package manager first, and the download page recommends that you use Adium instead, which is a Mac OS native app written around the same back-end library. The prosecution rests.

[andrewducker]

I don't care that Tweetdeck looks nothing like a Mac app, or a standard Windows app. It's a great app that works really well for me.

Pidgin on Windows just installs. And it doesn't look particularly like other Windows apps. But again, I don't care.

It should be up to individual users to decide whether they want to restricted to apps that follow the standards, not imposed from above.

[skington.livejournal.com]

What if people choose to use a system with a curated app store, though, precisely because the apps they get are more consistent, more reliable, than what you'd get through a free-for-all open system? Why isn't their choice a valid one?

Apple are in the business of designing a radically new user interface, just as they did when they popularised the windows, icons, mouse and pull-down menus interface with the original Macintosh. Back then, the Mac keyboard didn't have cursor keys, as a deliberate design decision, to force developers into building interfaces that relied on the mouse, rather than implementing the sort of software you saw on Windows in the early days - a standard 80x25 DOS screen with keyboard-controlled menus, inside a window with maybe a small button bar.

Apple are doing the same thing. It's a business decision - see Daring Fireball for some background on why Apple are doing this - and it's totally their right to do so, in the same way that all mainstream game consoles have a locked-down development and publishing process.

[andrewducker]

What if people choose to use a system with a curated app store, though, precisely because the apps they get are more consistent, more reliable, than what you'd get through a free-for-all open system? Why isn't their choice a valid one?

If they choose to only use the curated store then that's fine. Take Android - you can install from just the store, or you can choose to install directly.

If Apple provided a "I take responsibility for my own actions and would like to be able to install from anywhere I like" button then I'd be fine with it.

And yes, of course it's their right to do so, just as it's my right to despise them for it.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

"The question that’s begged is how and why that happens."

Jeez. Not only failing, but doing it in overly flowery style.

[andrewducker]

I can't actually locate the source of your quote...

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Sorry... though if you will post so many links ;)

It's from http://grahamsleight.com/talks-and-so/

I nearly wrote a comment there but was overcome with meh and felt too pedantic.