Interesting Links for 30-01-2014

[andrewducker]

• Spotify: how a busy songwriter you've never heard of makes it work for him
  (tags: spotify music business )
• UK government plans switch to open source from Microsoft Office suite (kinda)
  (tags: opensource software government uk )
• Welcome to the new era of fast genetic engineering
  (tags: genetics )
• German cows cause methane blast
  (tags: methane cows

Comments

[bart_calendar]

That joke would work better if pansexuality was linguistically connected to panis.

[andrewducker]

Only for students of linguistics. And they're all _weird_.

[bart_calendar]

You saying I'm weird?

:)

[bart_calendar]

Scholars of ancient Greece would also take issue with trying to connect pansexuality with panis.

China's internet vigilantes and the 'human flesh search engine'

[cartesiandaemon]

I think this is essentially an example of a new crime, one that never needed a law for before. When information didn't spread so fast, a mob wasn't really a problem unless they turned up in person, when we have existing (imperfect but useful) laws describing the difference between threatening behaviour, legitimate protest, and rioting

[gonzo21]

It would be covered by existing laws in the UK wouldn't it? Stalking and harassment.

[cartesiandaemon]

Is it really? The laws normally assume that those are a *pattern* of behaviour. If you ring someone up and call them a evil fuck, that's not stalking or harassment (or it shouldn't be, right?) If you strongly suspect, but don't actually know, that 999 other people have just done the same thing... is that enough to make it harassment? Maybe it is, but even if so, I think it need to acknowledge the differences. And it's horrendously difficult to prosecute -- everyone will say "oh, but I didn't know everyone else was doing it".

[andrewducker]

I'm fairly sure that an individual act can be harrassment if you do it as part of a campaign.

But yes, difficult to deal with.

[gonzo21]

Geezus christ, it seems like every day this government of ours is doing something else to march towards fascism. That's just terrifying. Particularly considering how much they've lowered the bar on what a person needs to do to be considered a 'terror suspect'.

Sharing a video on Facebook. Having a talk with a friend.

[nancylebov]

Thank you for the debunking of "one in four have had a mental health problem".

Cover cliches-- I think fog isn't much of a cliche unless the covers actually look similar. See also "bloke with a sword".

I was more taken with covers which have the same composition and the same stock photo., as in 2. Woman holding a birdcage for some reason.

Font cliches cry out for investigation: 1.Scary silhouette man covers all have the same font. At lest isolated birdcage woman gets different fonts, not that it makes her feel any better.

The first story in the Poe anthology was very good-- I should read more of the book.

Books in a series are allowed, even encouraged, to have similar covers. I have spoken.

Ever since early in the war on terror, I've been expecting to see revocation of citizenship as a government tool. I expect it to happen to people who used to be native born citizens, too.

[ajr]

Cliches such as 'scary silhouette man' usually exist because there was one book with a scary silhouette man on the cover and it sold really well, so publishers used the same thing on ever single similar book they could to see if some of that selling magic would rub off

[channelpenguin]

(for the Scots)

Is it still pansexuality if you use a plain loaf?