I had intended to follow up my last post with a long, informative piece about where the various cloud hosting providers were registered and where they kept their data. I had hoped to work out how to escape from the situation in which all of my personal and business data is being provided to foreign… Continue reading So, the cloud
Category: America
“It didn’t violate the First Amendment because Americans weren’t among the people targeted”
We've recently been told quite a lot about the activities of the US National Security Agency in monitoring internet communications. Much of it could be described as "stuff you might have feared, but that's a bit depressing to have confirmed". For people outside the US, one perhaps surprising thing is that the US government seems… Continue reading “It didn’t violate the First Amendment because Americans weren’t among the people targeted”
Can the American be trusted?
I found a striking bit of cultural conditioning in my head today. I watched Apple's introductory video about iOS 7. That's this one: If you haven't seen it already, and have some minutes to spare, watch it now. The first half is narrated by Jony Ive, Apple's (former) top hardware designer and (now) chief Designer… Continue reading Can the American be trusted?
Did you know? Some people like Helvetica
Helvetica is—as every font geek who enjoys a repulsive turn of phrase must agree—one of the most iconic fonts of our time. Which is a pretty strange thing. Designed in 1957 by two not very famous type designers as a neutral typeface for the Haas foundry in Switzerland, Helvetica might almost have been drawn to… Continue reading Did you know? Some people like Helvetica
“Various nifty functions”
Further to the code-literate judge in Oracle v Google, via Groklaw we now have his ruling that the Java APIs are not copyrightable. It's an exceptionally clear piece of work and a good introduction to the subject. I certainly couldn't have written a better technical summary, although I'm sure there are bits that a non-programmer… Continue reading “Various nifty functions”
Speaking of learning to code
Dialogue in Oracle vs Google, between Judge Alsup and Oracle's lead counsel David Boies: Judge: We heard the testimony of Mr. Bloch. I couldn't have told you the first thing about Java before this problem. I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like… Continue reading Speaking of learning to code