Contender for worst Twitter photoshop job ever
Twitterrific’s Ollie, with Steven Fry. Appearing on Notcot, inexplicably.
Ben Ward's Scattered Mind
A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.
— George Orwell
A rather fine quote, via Jeremy Keith’s rather fine post on HTML5 nomenclature.
Tom Scott’s Journalism Warning Labels, via Ben Darlow and John Gruber.
For our American readers, Richard Littlejohn is responsible for the “speaking German” headline here.
The Britisher
CAPTCHART via Nick Douglas.
Some of these are rubbish. Many are rather better. Regardless, there goes my morning.
3tongallery via -clu-.
One of these things is not like the other.
HAAAAAAASHTAGS
Rated Awesome via caro via nerdshares.
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants.
Bob Dylan via theimpossiblecool.
I keep my image blog subscriptions lean, but The Impossible Cool is pretty great.
Google, Verizon and an "Open Internet" from a Mobile perspective - pinch/zoom blog
Brian Fling provides some authoritative analysis of the Google-Verizon proposal, exploring the wireless technical constraint that could make net neutrality unworkable. It’s a very good read, well reasoned and worthy of consideration, but my overall feeling is that this sort of information and interpretation should be something that Google explicitly explains and justifies in their summary release.
It is reassuring to hear that the foxes are guarding the henhouse so diligently.
Charles Miller in reply to A joint policy proposal for an open Internet.
I’ve regarded ‘Don’t be Evil’ as mantric bullshit forever, so the hysteria that this is somehow Google’s twoface moment doesn’t concern me in the slightest. They’ve been dicks like every other company for ages (resolving copyright issues in court for them and them alone, not supporting open standards in Android, to name two.) What’s more, I also think it might be entirely reasonable to propose that wireless infrastructure needs temporary special treatment to be developed, given the United State’s legacy infrastructure problem. Which means that in theory, Google’s compromise proposal for limited net neutrality and regulation might be based in necessity.
Unfortunately, I’m sat here with what pretty much amounts to a huge ‘citation needed’ frown. If there’s scientific and engineering merit to their compromise, they’ve dropped the ball by not stating up front what it is. All that’s left is shady dealing and openwashing.
Some weaksauce low-balls at Microsoft’s ‘PC vs. Mac’ campaign
Pitiful exercise in FUD that at best pushes a set of edge-case features, but mostly just whines about what a ‘hassle’ it might be to move to a Mac.
With a Mac, it’s harder to set up secure sharing for your photos, music & movies, documents, and even printers with other computers on your home network. With HomeGroup, it’s easy to connect all the computers in your house running Windows 7.
To share music on a Mac: Open iTunes.
To share photos on a Mac: Open iPhoto.
To share any kinds of files on a Mac: Open “Sharing”. Press the “+” button.
I don’t really know what’s easier than that? Maybe Windows just automatically emails your shit to random people without you pressing anything? Oh, right.
With PCs running Windows 7, you can play the videos and music stored on your home PC while you’re on the go, for free. Apple charges $99/year for its online service.
This is an odd one. Ripping on the cost of MobileMe is fair game, but, erm, it doesn’t actually do any of that remote video/music stuff. Jesus, it would be awesome if MobileMe did that (especially since Google killed SimplifyMedia.)
You can’t get a Mac with a Blu-ray player, TV tuner, Memory Stick reader, or built-in 3G wireless. PCs running Windows 7 often come with features that aren’t available on even the highest end Macs, including Blu-ray, eSATA, multi-format card readers, Touch, and mobile broadband.
Sure. If you want. I assume by ‘Memory Stick’ you mean the Sony proprietary flash storage, right? Because I’ve got an industry standard SD card slot right here where you can stick it. Well, not the memory card, obviously; it’s a different shape. But ‘it’, figuratively.
Your spreadsheets might not calculate correctly.
FEAR!
If there’s a Mac version of a program you need, you’ll have to buy it again and relearn how to use it on a Mac.
UNCERTAINTY!
For example, the mouse works differently. And many of the shortcuts you’re familiar with don’t work the same way on a Mac.
DOUBT!
Also, the mouse works differently? I’ve been rubbing it on my face. Is that wrong?
Macs only come in white or silver. PCs are available in a full spectrum of colors
“All right, you know what? Fine. Mac OSX has got us boned. Microsoft would totally buy a Mac too, if only there was a blue one. Do you like blue? Blue is our favourite colour. We like it so much we made Microsoft Office pretty much entirely blue. It’s as if your eyes have stopped responding to medium and long-wave light.”
Sixth, we both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wireline world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly. In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the wireline principles to wireless, except for the transparency requirement. In addition, the Government Accountability Office would be required to report to Congress annually on developments in the wireless broadband marketplace, and whether or not current policies are working to protect consumers.
Google Public Policy Blog: A joint policy proposal for an open Internet
Difficult to comprehend the entire scope of this in one sitting. Edited out snarky paragraphs for the time being.
But.
- Wireless connectively is the near future: Both in terms of convenient home broadband, and getting internet connectivity out into the wilderness. It’s going to replace wires, and Verizon would obviously like to not have to obey any rules when their industry takes over.
- It also does imposes net neutrality rules on the old cable companies. Which I guess suits Verizon nicely too.
- I strongly object to “because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly”. Partly because connectivity in the United States is a joke, decades behind other parts of the world. We see service providers getting bigger and more lumbering. Parts of the US are covered by just one provider (citation needed.) And all the while the consumers who are supposed to be protected by these kind of of regulations are bound into 24 month service contracts, which outrageously restricts consumer’s ability to rebel against negative changes in service.
- Between Android and this, Google may have displaced Adobe in the ‘open’ bullshit stakes.
-
In general, the announcement misses two things: The weasel words claim about wireless being ‘different’ is not backed up by explaining how the wireless industry would supposedly be harmed if you were to apply the neutrality rules properly. Secondly, it doesn’t hint at what kind of long-term beneficial network innovation will occur within the wireless space as a result of not being regulated.
They happily hint at the kind of generic innovation that is allowed to happen outside the rules on wired networking (“health care monitoring, the smart grid, advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options”) why can’t they hint at the kinds of innovation that will happen outside the rules in the wireless world that is so fundamental as to require the rules not be applied at all?
“Imagine”, sang John Lennon. “All the people”, he’s rumoured to have continued. All of them? Really? Can you imagine all the people? Of course not. There are people living in parts of the Brazilian rainforest that no-one has even found yet. How could you possibly imagine something that no-one else has seen? Are you some kind of imagination super-man? Of course, you are not.
Don’t worry though, rampant deforestation will ensure within 20 years we discover every hidden civilisation that still lurks in those countries just far enough away not to emotionally affect us. Then we’ll all be able to imagine them; thanks to photographs.
It having been two years, I’ve just written an epic new invitation to another party (my place in a few weeks. Invitation is private and on Facebook this year, so befriend me if you haven’t heard.)
Anyway, as follows the pattern of the past few years, I had far too much fun writing it. (But I’ve preemptively integrated a tl;dr joke, so it’s fine.) Can you imagine when I get married? That girl’s gonna need tolerance. Three-part novelization, totally. And the way things are going, I’ve got the free time to write it. That last sentence is deeply sadder than I intended, sorry. Everything’s fine. I digress…
Michael prompted me to look up all of the previous invitation efforts. The first couple are clumsy, but this is from last year’s First Annual Ben Party and I had totally forgotten it. I hope it’s not too pompous to rather enjoy re-reading after 12 months. I know you’re not supposed to laugh at your own jokes. Or blog about them, I guess.
Also, try reading it in Isaiah Mustafa’s voice.
Of evil and magic
This is written late at night, so I reserve the right to edit heavily in the morning.
It’s noticeable the level of scepticism that Google’s net neutrality/Verizon dealing denial is being treated with. People don’t really believe “don’t be evil.” In fact, everyone has always deep down believed that it’s bullshit. A fuzzy founder’s playground ideology that doesn’t really tie into anything tangible. I mean, it’s not like we can say for sure that Gmail is “evil” with the same level of certainty that we could call bullshit on their fictionally rejected motto: “Don’t build shoddy UI.”
By contrast, Apple are currently marketing the word “magic” all over. Product names, PR ledes and copy all over says “magic” and “magical” and “seriously, we ground down an actual pixie to make this thing flick-scroll”
Apple’s marketese is surely more bullshitty than Google’s (see also: “it’s like holding the Internet in your hand”) yet because it’s all tied into features consumers can see and touch and feel, they require no faith or trust. They try to convince you of their claims with physical products.
Google expects you to buy into their non-evil behaviour because they say so. They also expect you to buy that Android is “open” even though you can’t use it without using their services through proprietary protocols.
Apple will tell you that their touch sensitive rectangle is “magic”, and then let you flick-scroll your email.
Google seem to be lacking in tangible product to match their mantra. It’s no wonder that their net neutrality denial isn’t a wash.
Treats is the album iPod speakers are warned about as children, a ghostly camp fire tale to the eardrums, tinnitus’s backward cousin from across the pond. Mastered at a level surely pushing the boundaries of legality, on first listen it seems less an album and more an elaborate prank to make the listener jump when a track appears on shuffle.
Sleigh Bells - Treats // Drowned In Sound
9/10, says DiS. The vinyl looks how it sounds: Awesome.
