Interesting Links for 29-03-2012

[andrewducker]

• Ursula K LeGuin on the continuing life of the book.
  (tags: technology ebooks reading books )
• Female crash-test dummies survive unscathed much less often than male ones.
  (tags: crash driving safety cars female male )
• You know what they call The Hunger Games in Paris?
  (tags: QuentinTarantino movies HungerGames funny )
• Watch Woman Get Attacked By

Comments

[ice_hesitant]

People seem to be finally noticing that Pinterest is built on copyright violation

Not on Pinterest myself, but I am on Tumblr, and I'm hoping that this ends with a rationalization of copyright laws rather than wholesale shutdown of such sites.

[cartesiandaemon]

A gorgeous map of the wind right now in the USA

Oh, that's beautiful. It also gives me an opening to comment that my maths degree provided only one conversational factoid, and no-one ever gets to use it apart from when someone says "here's a map showing which direction the wind is going at each point", which is that if you have such a map of the whole world, there always must be one point where the wind is stationary (or at least, the horizontal component is stationary).

[andrewducker]

That's fascinating. I love that the explanation shows that it has to be a cyclone too!

Software patents: Now used to silence disabled children

[cartesiandaemon]

The scale of "how bad does publicity have to get before it's unsupportable" seems unending.

I wish I had more time to work out if there's any patent regime that would make more sense. I mean, obviously, the _first_ thing I'd like is if patent applications were looked at by someone who was awake, over 5, had touched a computer, and had the power and will to deny it if it was stupid. But I wonder if there's any sensible middle ground between now and "free for all" which does have significant downsides. One would be conditions under which someone could build something patented, but had to give some proportion of the profits to the patent holder (so it was at least possible to build _something_, and you might even be able to build something and give it away at cost for free, although that would possibly be problematic for monopolies driving innovators out of the business). Or software patents that only last a year or two. Or something.

[brixtonbrood]

There is a patent regime that makes more sense, it's called the European and/or British one. The Brits have a large office full of 20 somethings who are not idiots who look at patents and say, "no, that's crap" all day long (with occasional breaks for tea and office cricket). Patent law > US patent law.

(caveat, this is the half of the family who is not an ex patent clerk speaking, so I'm just giving you the knowledgable one's normal spiel as I remember it)

[wig]

love the wind map!