Interesting Links for 26-01-2012

[andrewducker]

• Okla. Senator Wants Ban on Human Fetuses in Food
  (tags: abortion food usa politics wtf )
• TINKER TAILOR: A guide for the perplexed. Wow, this was fantastic.
  (tags: movies analysis )
• Apple has so far spent $100million on its patent war with Android. How long will it continue?
  (tags: patents apple android )
• When Disney meet Joy Division
  (tags: disney t-shirt wtf )
• The SNP are involving other parties in budget decisions - despite not needing to
  I heartily approve.
  (tags: snp politics scotland money )
• Why The Muppets Are Propaganda
  (tags: propaganda liberal politics muppets )
• Maniac Tentacle Mindbenders: How ScummVM's unpaid coders kept adventure gaming alive
  (tags: games history scumm lucasarts )
• O2 makes a statement on sharing your number with everyone. Has been doing it privately for ages.
  (tags: O2 privacy mobile )

Comments

[miss_s_b]

The Tinker Tailor guy lost this John Mortimer fan at "he might be our only major popular novelist who has held uncompromisingly critical positions on international affairs, including the Iraq war and the growth of American militarism and corporate power."

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Love the Tinker Tailor article. I followed the plot quite happily at the time but still, it seems, missed quite a few of the subtleties. Admittedly a few require prior knowledge from the book (which I could never get through) but I'm definitely going to have to pick it up on DVD now and watch it again - and possibly again and again.

[andrewducker]

I'm definitely going to pick it up on DVD. And probably the original series too.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Soilant Green is people!

[makyo.livejournal.com]

When Disney meet Joy Division
Brilliant! A friend of mine has a pair of Joy Division oven gloves which her partner got made specially for a Christmas present one year.

[andrewducker]

That's awesome!

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

The story about the Oklahoma senator's legislative bid is very strange.

[andrewducker]

That's American politics for you!

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the Tinker, Tailor article - very perspicacious.

[andrewducker]

Happy to oblige!

[steer.livejournal.com]

ScummVM is brilliant -- been using it for years. Similarly, of course, MAME is awesome.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I've intended to read TTSS for years.. still have yet to get a copy, though I think my dad has it in hardback in his bedside table. :)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Apple has so far spent $100million on its patent war with Android. How long will it continue?

Apple has a cash pile of about $100bn, so it could afford to carry on for a thousand times longer than it has already. And that's assuming no income, and it earned $13bn last quarter, which is money coming in a lot faster than it was going out on the patent dispute.

Money is not the limiting factor - or even a particularly relevant one - in this dispute.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

the basis of most of Apples complaints is that Android devices look and feel like Apple devices. So logically, Apple should cease litigation when that is no longer the case. The copying, especially with regard to Samsung, really is amusingly blatant.

having argued it out far too many times, I now find it impossible to have a firm opinion on whether it's justified. The constant pro-Samsung squeals of 'Apple should just shut up and be more innovative' gave me a brain melting case of the WTFs.

[andrewducker]

Seeing as Apple's complaints basically stack up to "It's black with rounded corners" they can frankly fuck off.

http://androidandme.com/2011/12/news/apple-provides-ridiculous-list-of-changes-samsung-can-make-to-avoid-legal-trouble/

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

hehe... here's the thing about that list [ I've seen this argument elsewhere ]


the list was written up in response to Samsung stating that is was not physically possible to design and produce a tablet that doesn't look like an iPad.


I don't know where to begin in the stakes of how fucking stupid that statement is.

If Samsung don't have any designers capable of producing something that looks different, they need to fire them all. Entirely irrelevant of whether the legal argument is sensible. Samsung are now developing something of a reputation for 'borrowing' designs.

[and yes, I am aware that Apple and everyone else do that too]

I've said before and still feel that this legal battle is horrible. It would be difficult for Apple to make themselves look any worse. That doesn't excuse Samsung lifting designs directly from one of their core customers.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm no Samsung fanboi, but I will say that I owned a Samsung Q1 tablet computer in spring 2006, more than four years before the iPad was released. Indeed, the ol' thing was mistaken so many times by passers-by after Apple's announcement... I had to show some people the wear-and-tear, and the Windows XP desktop, before they believed me.

-- Steve will also confess to a mild anti-Apple bias, given how amazingly cult-like the Jobsolatry got sometimes.

PS: That review of mine is still getting weird comments in cyrillic and other alphabets, all these years hence. Indeed there's a fresh one in the hopper now, flagged as suspicious and so screened automagically. Hm.

[andrewducker]

I got five bits of spam earlier, all at once...

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

you will note that the Q1 really doesn't look like an iPad at all.

which puts nonsense to Samsung's deeply weird statement that it's not possible to design something that doesn't look like an iPad.


They are clearly very capable. It just so happens that Apple's designs sell, where Samsung's old ones didn't. Which is not to say that the Q1 is in any way bad. I actually quite like it.