Linkspam for 21-8-2008

[matgb]

• Axel Peemoeller - Eureka Carpark Melbourne
  This is, quite simply, brilliant. Very cunning use of perspective in a very practical manner. Wonder if I could persuade NCP to hire him?
  (tags: design usability architecture perspective signs)
• azurelunatic: Friending!
  Everyone's favourite lunatic posts about the etiquette of friending people on LJ. I fall into the "don't ask, there's no point, doing so pisses me off" school, and also the "I add you back if you make interesting conversation" thing.
  (tags: livejournal etiquette)
• IndyBlogs: Cyberclinic: The Metering Mystery
  Why are your phone battery meter and signal meter so crap? Sometimes, it's a deliberate part of the software. Which is stupid. Ah well
  (tags: rhodri+marsden mobile+phones stupidity)
• HUSA: Which witch is which? A feminist analysis of Terry Pratchett's Discworld witches
  I haven't had time to read this yet, but I know a bunch of you will be interested, so here y'go, feedback welcome
  (tags: terry+pratchett feminism)
• Red Sonja Movie Coming Up | Just Whatever
  Robert Rodriguez is making a Red Sonja and she will be played by Rose McGowan. That's the archetypal chainmail bikini wearer played by someone that isn't Nielsen. Might actually be fun. Gratuitous and stupid, obviously, but fun too. And she looks great.
  (tags: films robert+rodriguez Rose+McGowan Red+Sonja)
• Dark Roasted Blend: Hilarious Signage, Part 11
  More silly signs. Good fun
  (tags: humour)
• Win Points for McCain! - washingtonpost.com
  John McCain is so desperate for a bit of that viral internet action that he's set up a reward scheme for people posting comments in his favour. Openly. Obama supporters are, naturally, laughing themselves silly and going back to posting such support for free. Desperate measures?
  (tags: John+McCain internet+campaigning astroturfers)
• Hazel Blears's Empowerment blog
  Look at this! The Insubstantial Careerist hath blog. It's crap. Really really crap. But you knew that from the tagline, right? Empowerment? FFS. I nearly studied in Salford, she gives the whole place a bad name.
  (tags: Hazel+Blears blogging)
• Talking To Pirates
  A games software developer invites those who rip off his games to tell him why, gets a lot of constructive feedback and decides to change his SOP as a result, including substantially improving his demos and dropping DRM completely. Interesting times.
  (tags: drm piracy gaming software)
• What made Twitter do it: the essential difference between sms handling in Europe and US
  Why the Twitter SMS gateway got closed down over here. SRSLY, USians? Do you guys REALLY pay to receive text messages? That both explains Twitter's revenue stream AND why it's both more popular and less viable over here :-(
  (tags: twitter sms)
• Mosley orgy judge blocks web forum libel writ onslaught | The Register
  This is interestingâ”judge rules that comments on a discussion board are not libel, merely slander, a different, lesser offence. How that would apply elsewhere in, for example, blog comments, is open to further interpretation. Stupid libel laws.
  (tags: libel law)
• Internet Memes-a timeline
  Nice little gadget showing pretty much everything I can think of in the history of daftness online, right from the very beginning. I still love that coffee pot.
  (tags: internet humour timeline memes)
• Transform Drug Policy Foundation: Media Blog: A response to Ian Oliver's anti-legalisation comments in the Independent
  Giving a former chief of police who obviously got hid over the head with a truncheon once too often a damn good fisking over his imbecilic anti-legalisation article. There are some good arguments against legalisation, but he chose to deploy hyperbole and fear tactics. In the Independent. Fool.
  (tags: drugs legalisation prohibition)
• Dragging Internet Explorer into compliance, with no help from Microsoft
  This looks like a neat little plan. Mozilla developers are working with Adobe to create a plugin for INTERNET EXPLORER that could possibly make it able to display stuff according to standards. This could mean that mapping software like Google Maps might actually work properly. Which would be nice.
  (tags: ie mozilla adobe browsers)
• The girl in the window - St. Petersburg Times
  This is, quite, frankly, one of the most horrifying things I've read in a long time. It's also one of the most hopeful. It's not a short read, and those of an emotional should be warned that it made ME a bit teary eyed at times. If child neglect stories make you upset, read with extreme caution.
  (tags: people child+abuse hope)

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Granny Weatherwax is a bloke, and Nanny Ogg is an over the hill immoral trollop? I think SOMEONE is accepting patriarchal definitions of what it means to be male and female rather too readily, myself.

[matgb]

Nanny Ogg is an over the hill immoral trollop

Well, yes, she is. That's not a bad thing though, is it?

Oh, she thinks it's a bad thing, doesn't she? Ah well.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Yes, she thinks it's a bad thing. For someone who thinks sexless women are bad, she's awfully judgemental about women who have sex.

[gominokouhai]

It's not exactly accepting patriarchal definitions, it's arbitrarily selecting patriarchal definitions in order to reach a preconceived conclusion. And thus it's very postmodernist, deconstructionalist, self-indulgent and pretentious---just as I'd expect of a Master's thesis---but it's got almost bugger-all to do with feminism.

Who, exactly, is the one missing the point of feminism when Pratchett writes strong female characters, and then some other twit redefines them as masculine according to a set of criteria they've just made up? Because if they're strong characters, they have to be masculine?

Who is the one asserting that for a person to possess power, that person must be a man? It's not Pratchett.

And worse, in my opinion: there's no point to it. Let's enjoy the books and share them with each other. We can deconstruct all we like once the poor guy's dead.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Indeed. What you said.

[gominokouhai]

Did we just agree on something to do with feminism? First time for everything.

OP: Thanks, Mat, for the excellent linkspam---still working through it, but there's a lot of fascinating stuff here.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Yes. You may now refer to yourself as Mr Stopped Clock... ;)

[matgb]

De nada—I'm just glad to have got the automated posting setup working again, probably out to post a how-to on that, I like link collection posts, always something interesting in there.

[tyrell.livejournal.com]

Who is the one asserting that for a person to possess power, that person must be a man? It's not Pratchett.

In fact he specifically shows the opposite, and often.

Given that several Pratchett female characters are based on real people I know, have met, or have heard of, I don't think they're secretly men.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

azurelunatic: Friending!

Hmm, was that really necessary?

[matgb]

In what way? I like studies on netiquette and how it developes—I hated study sociology because it was full of sociologists, but the actual stuff is fascinating.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I believe it is what MetaFilter would call over thinking a plate of beans. Friending is not "horribly complex... on a social level" unless you make it so.

And I don't see that it is a study of netiquette so much as just an exhaustive accumulation of netiquette.

[matgb]

Friending is not "horribly complex... on a social level" unless you make it so.

But so many people do, I lose count of LJ friending dramas even functioning adults come up with—it can be amusing to watch, but getting stuck in the middle can be annoying.

And then there are the perpetual "is it ok to add you" / "can I link to this" people, who I've never understood but perpetually see out there.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

* makes you a present of this shiny new icon for your shiny new extra userpic allowance *