The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: March 4, 2012

Official News page 9


WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton

Well, here it is - the first Winding Down from our new apartment in the rarefied heights of Chiswick, London. It’s a bit shorter than usual, because our ISP went down for most of yesterday - the day when I usually sort out the stories for the week’s issue. Still I was able to salvage a few bits and pieces for your collective edification. And, now I can see a stack of pancakes with a heap of bacon and oodles of maple syrup rapidly approaching, so I’ll hand you over to the main news for this week’s Winding Down, and get down to my Sunday breakfast.


Shorts:

Well, since I’m in a new apartment, I guess is would be appropriate to take a look at something else new - Microsoft’s Windows 8, the shape of which is now becoming clear. Microsoft seems to have spent some time cleaning up the underlying code, and from the reports I’ve seen it’s resulted in snappier and faster code, and generally a more responsive feel to the system. Microsoft have also developed a new desktop, called Metro, which is based on rectangles, reasonably sized ones, representing the applications.

The desktop everyone agrees is brilliant for smart phones and tablets, and I’d love to see something like that on my Android phone, where I’m always tapping the adjacent, wrong, tiny icon. It’s a neat idea for touch screens. Only one problem, Microsoft is trying to force all its customers to use the same desktop for regular PCs and laptops. Quite apart from the problem that few, if any, PCs come with a touch screen, the Metro metaphor is seriously inadequate for a PC. It simply doesn’t fit in with the way people use their PCs - tablets and smart phones (and Kindles) are basically read only devices. No one tries to do extended or complex input on them, but many people run several applications at once, and do extensive and complex, input when they are using PCs. Metro is not designed to handle that.

You can get plenty of information and pictures from the net but here are a couple of register articles to get started with.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/03/andrew_does_windows8/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/02/win_8_consumer_
technology_preview_review/page2.html

Meanwhile, on a continent far, far, away from Redmond, a relic of a bygone time, the French government, has just made a massive grab for the copyright belonging to every book published in France before 2001. Talk about piracy! To quote The register, ‘Last week France passed a law that permits the state to seize authors’ rights on out-of-print books published before 2001. Scribes have just six months to opt-out, or lose their moral rights and the ability to determine a price for their work.’

The move by the French has managed to achieve the previously unheard of situation of uniting the copyright groups, the free software movement, and the Pirate Party, and, of course authors from all over the world who have had their books published in France. Ostensibly, the law is to ensure that out of print books published before 2001 are digitized and made available to the public. In practical terms it represents the biggest grab of intellectual property ever - and the law was ratified by the French parliament just over a week ago, so it is already law.

If I was a big media company, I suspect I would be referring to this as PIRACY! Still this time it’s easy to tell where the culprits live...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/29/france_authors_
rights_compulsory_acquisition/

http://blog.authorsrights.org.uk/2012/02/28/france-guillotines-copyright/

And while on the subject of intellectual property, the European Commission has suspended its efforts to have the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, known as ACTA, ratified. ACTA - SOPA’s big brother - is an international treaty developed in secret by western governments and their friends in the music and media businesses. It is very draconian and has provoked public protests all over Europe. The European Commission is now referring the treaty to Europe’s highest court to see whether it violates any fundamental EU rights. I suspect the court probably won’t bail them out, but even if it does Poland and Slovenia have already stated that they won’t ratify treaty.
http://santamariatimes.com/news/world/eu-suspends-copyright-treaty-ratification/article_bf5f7d97-a6f2-5b21-803a-118f1f063960.html


Homework:

NASA has produced a nifty little video of what it is like flying along the massive crack that developed recently in the Antarctic Pine Island Glacier. Take a look - all that’s missing is the TIE fighters...
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2012/02/29/a-little-more-on-that-ice-rift-in-antarctica/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=77266&src=eoa-iotd

I mentioned the Raspberry Pi computer a few issues back. At $35 (sans keyboard, case, and monitor, but with networking) it’s a snip for anyone who wants to tinker, and most kids won’t have to save up for too long to get one. Well, the first batch went on sale this week - and all 10,000 were sold out within minutes! Anyone else who wants one to do some hardware tinkering and learning about computers will have to wait for the next batch. Personally, I plan to get one for myself, just as soon as the feeding frenzy dies down. Writing games for that one may well prove to be a real challenge.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/29/raspberrypi_mania/

This year saw a February with 29 days in it (yes, all monthly paid workers got swindled out of a day’s pay). Ever wondered what the math and physics behind all this manipulation is? Well Discovery Magazine has an interesting piece about just that, and unlike most superficial explanations, it also explains why you don’t have a leap every time the year is divisible by 100. Unless of course the year is divisible by 400! More info that you ever wanted to know...

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Save February, with twenty-eight days clear,
And twenty-nine each leap year. (or not, as the case may be)
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/02/29/why-we-have-leap-days-2/


Geek Stuff:

Want to go for an ultra-cool drink in Switzerland? Fine, then make your way along to the Chateau St. Germain in Gruyeres, and settle down in the HR Giger bar. For those of you who think you don’t know of him, then think of the alien spaceship design in the movie ‘Alien’. That was the work of Giger. And for those of you who are old enough to remember Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s ‘Brain Salad Surgery’ album, take a look at the cover - preferably the cover of the vinyl version which was more sophisticated.

Anyway, if you like the idea of drinking cocktails in a bar that seems to be made of giant vertebrae, while reclining in a chair that also looks like the remains of something unpleasant’s spine, this is the place for you. And you never know, you might just run into Ripley!
http://www.hrgiger.com/barmuseum.htm (scroll down to see more pics of the bar)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Salad_Surgery


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, and to Slashdot's daily newsletter for drawing my attention to material used in this issue.

Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Spamato spam filter...

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
4 March 2012

Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.


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