Interesting Links for 2-2-2011

[andrewducker]

• Scientists can now manufacture a synthetic version of the self-healing sticky substance that mussels use
  (tags: seafood glue nature science awesome)
• Extra £400million to treat depression and anxiety
  (tags: government healthcare uk)
• A Guide: How Not To Say Stupid Stuff About Egypt
  (tags: egypt)
• How to Piss Off a Bunch of YA Authors
  (tags: censorship writing fiction)
• Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
  (tags: flickr yahoo EpicFail)
• Apple Just Declared War On Amazon Kindle. Demands that content must be buyable through iPhone so they get a cut.
  (tags: apple amazon)
• Bishops back change in voting system to AV. I wasn't expecting that.
  (tags: religion voting politics uk)
• The Colorless Revolution - a blog about (and initially from the midst of) the Egyptian Revolution.
  (tags: blog egypt revolution)
• Bing turns out to be copying Google search results.
  (tags: google microsoft wtf)
• Great Moments in Text Messaging
  (tags: text comic funny)
• The Daily Mail: Lying, Evil Bastards. (Of course, you already knew that)
  (tags: journalism dailymail law libel defamation newspapers media)
• Chimpanzees mourn their dead children just like humans (Well, not _just_ like humans.)
  (tags: animals emotions death)

Comments

[simont]

"How Not To Say Stupid Stuff About Egypt" appears to be friendslocked, unfortunately.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

I don't believe the hype that "Bing is copying Google search results".

The Bing toolbar (who runs that anyway?) tracks user clicks and feeds them back into later search Bing results. Because a link that a user actually follows as opposed to ignoring is good data as the the relevance of a link, i.e. what future users might also want to follow. So if someone clicks on page "AAAA" as a link for term "BBBB" then, in the carefully engineered absence of any other data for term "BBBB", this makes "AAAA" a good search result for it.

This data collection isn't really news, and the equivalent Google toolbar does the same. I'm not sure what Google's point is - that if they send data to Bing by running the toolbar and clicking on a link, Bing uses that data? Duh. That the google search results page is treated like any other page in this process?

[marrog.livejournal.com]

A Guide: How Not To Say Stupid Stuff About Egypt

is flocked.

[andrewducker]

Darnit, didn't realise it was a repost:
http://sarthanapalos.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/a-guide-how-not-to-say-stupid-stuff-about-egypt/

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> A Guide: How Not To Say Stupid Stuff About Egypt

Locked, even when I log into DW.

[andrewducker]

http://sarthanapalos.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/a-guide-how-not-to-say-stupid-stuff-about-egypt/

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

Re the Egypt article:

"Recent studies shows that mild-moderate swearing actually helps people relate more. If “ass” is offensive to you, I’d disconnect the internet now because it only gets worse. <.<"

lol

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

RE: Apple

The implication in the article above is that the apps are being rejected because you can't by content in-app, only from exterior sources and then view it on an iOS device. The implication in The Register's take on all this is that the apps are being rejected because they can access content not bought on an iOS device.

Both mean Apple don't get their 30% but there's a big difference in the implications. Either the app will be approved as long as you can buy elsewhere AND in the iOS app, or it'll be approved if you can ONLY view content that was bought in the iOS app, not bought from the same content-supplier elsewhere (non-iOS) online.

Anyone know which of these it is? Do Apple even know yet, I wonder.

If, for example, Microsoft turned round and said that iTunes running on Windows had to be restricted so that it could only play music bought via a PC, Apple would throw one hell of a hissy-fit and Microsoft would be ridiculed, yet Apple seem to keep getting away with this sort of thing time after time.

Never buying Apple.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I think if you gave me £400 million it might well solve any hint of depression and anxiety :-)

[marrog.livejournal.com]

How many depressed people are there in the UK? Even if it was all of us I think we could be made a lot happier by just splitting that £400m between us...

[andrewducker]

Depends on whether you mean "all the people who are feeling down right now" or "people suffering from depression". If it's the former then £200 isn't going to go _that_ far (nice thought it would be).

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Where does £200 come from?

[andrewducker]

D'oh - I meant £20.

I reckon at least 1/3 of the country is stressed or unhappy right now, which is 20 million people.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough, if you ask people, 82% rate themselves as 'happier/more satisfied with life' than 2/3 people (though his study whose figures ai quote below was, I think, US, I recall that this effect seems to be cross-cultural).

1 - completely dissatisfied 0.9%
2 - 2.1%
3 - 3.7%
4 - neutral 11.3%
5 - 20.7%
6 - 39.6%
7 - completely satisfied - 21.7%

Usual provisos on asking people stuff about themsleves even in a written questionnaire apply. But I think that since it's about feelings and thus by definition a subjective judgement that only the individual can make, then I don't see how else you do it!

See "Happiness" by David Lykken for the actual numbers and what they asked and a ton more good stuff on this.

[andrewducker]

Good Lord. Much better than I'd expect. That is good news.

[dpolicar]

The tag "delicious glue" entertained me because of your link about mussels.

[andrewducker]

Hah!

If only I liked the taste of mussels.

[matgb]

Bishop of Exeter's been involved in reform campaigns before, met him a few times when I lived there, helped set up the SW constitutional convention amongst other things. So not that surprising, a lot of bishops are fairly liberal politically, even if not on other issues.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

Apple Just Declared War On Amazon Kindle. Demands that content must be buyable through iPhone so they get a cut.
FRAK you Apple!

Go Egypt. :)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Not that surprised at all about the bishops. Why are you?

The bishops are pretty free to vote in a way that those from the major parties are not, and their intent is generally to vote 'morally' (defined as what they think is moral, but in reality apart from a very small % of issues we all probably agree with what the bishops think of as moral).

[andrewducker]

I'm not used to hearing them get involved except on fairly straight moral matters (poverty, etc.) - I hadn't expected that they'd see the difference between FPTP and AV as one of those things.

More a matter of my ignorance than anything else, of course.