Interesting Links for 10-04-2014

[andrewducker]

• Font War: Inside the Design World's $20 Million Divorce
  (tags: design typography font )
• Everything you need to know about the Heartbleed SSL bug
  (tags: security computers )
• Ants Build Complex Structures With a Few Simple Rules (which we can now simulate!)
  (tags: ants computers rules brains )
• Why does C# use UTF-16 for strings?
  (tags: text c#

Comments

[andrewducker]

If you could just persuade London to secede then this would all be easier :->

[helflaed]

A great pity- I think if the people of the North East were asked we'd be running up the Saltire post haste. Heck, Newcastle actually WAS part of Scotland for a while (albeit not long, but we've got St Andrews Church to prove it)

I can't comment on those further south in Yorkshire and Lancs, but if asked, I suspect that Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Co Durham and Cumbria would probably all be in favour.

[gonzo21]

You know, I might be alone in this, but I really liked Elektra.

[gonzo21]

(Also thought Captain America was as dull as dishwater.)

[andrewducker]

Even the song/dance routine?

[lil_shepherd]

Anyone who thinks that 'Captain America: the First Avenger' was better than both 'The Avengers/Avengers assemble' and 'Iron Man' loses my respect and interest immediately. (C2 isn't better than them, either.)

[andrewducker]

I wasn't a massive fan of The Avengers. It wsa fun, but light-weight, and the invasion of New York got pretty dull pretty quickly for me.

Iron Man I liked a lot more, and I'd rather that above Captain America. But I loved things like the song/dance routine in Captain America.

[lil_shepherd]

Now, you see, that's the bit where I go and make a cup of tea.

[momentsmusicaux]

I thought American Gods was a bit bland and dragged on for too long and in the end wasn't really worth it for the reveal at the end

[andrewducker]

I don't tend to like Gaiman's novels that much. I like a lot of his short stories, and novella-sized things like Stardust and The Ocean At The End of The Lane, but American Gods and Anansi Boys were both "ok".

I totally know what you mean about Vonnegut - some nice ideas, but not really connected up well. I liked Slaughterhouse-Five, but I wasn't blown away by it the way I was by, say, Catch 22.

And I also got a short way into The Name Of The Rose and bounced badly.

[momentsmusicaux]

I liked Anansi Boys a lot more than American Gods. And The Graveyard Book more than either.

I'm glad it's not just me!

[andrewducker]

Yeah, Graveyard Book was better.

When he does short form stuff he seems a lot more comfortable experimenting, and not needing to follow a structure.

Anansi Boys was more fun, which helped a lot.

[drdoug]

There was a bit of copypasta around at the time of the launch that went something like this:

If operating systems were smileys:
MacOS :D
Unix ./
Windows XP

[andrewducker]

Hah!

Yes - what gets me about the wailing that XP will be sadly missed is that I remember that Win2k was the "one that got it right" - it combined Windows 95's interface with NT 4's rock-solid design, giving the best of both worlds.

Whereas XP was bemoaned as "XP with a clown face on".

How time's change :->

[simont]

Whereas XP was bemoaned as "XP with a clown face on".

The thing I remember most about initial reactions to XP was its visual redesign inspiring the nickname 'Windows for Teletubbies' :-)

[drdoug]

I remember that too - you set the desktop to one of these:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=windows+xp+teletubbies&tbm=isch
and set the startup sound to the Teletubbies theme tune.

What larks!