What’s that, Informa? You chucked a dart at a giant calendar and hit 2016, and so are now claiming Google tablet sales will overtake the iPad in five years? What, you’re all insulted by me suggesting you made this up? Really? You mean you actually have some kind of analysis tools for this kind of bullshit and don’t just pull it out of your arse at random? You really think you can predict the future patterns of this kind of technology, when the entire market didn’t even fucking exist five years ago? And you know that the market is going to trend towards Android, because, what? Because you think it will? Because Google has pimped its OS to any company with a credit card? Because that’s more or less (ish) what happened with Windows and the Mac, and Apple never learns because it’s closed and BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH?

What about the iPod, dickheads? Didn’t Apple retain the lion’s share of the market in that sector throughout? What about new disruptive technology that doesn’t exist yet, which may or may not be designed and released by Apple? What about the fact that right now, no bugger nor his dog can match Apple on price and build quality and experience? What about the simple, plain fact that Android tablets aren’t selling well, to the point companies making them only reveal how many have shipped?

Maybe you could try answering some of those questions next time, analysts, rather than shitting out yet another random point in time when you think the iPad will be ‘inevitably’ overtaken by Android.

Gary Marshall for TechRadar on BT being ordered by the High Court of Justice to block access to Newzbin2, a site largely devoted to sharing illicit copies of files, as reported by the BBC and others. This is an unbelievably fucking stupid decision. Marshall:

It’d be funny if it weren’t so serious: anyone with even a passing knowledge of how piracy works knows that going after specific sites is a giant game of whack-a-mole. But there’s more to this than piracy. Blocking copyright infringement sets a dangerous precedent.

The people who want to access Newzbin2 will be able to find workarounds, so piracy won’t be affected to any great degree. But it’s that second point that’s most important here. UK law now has precedent for ISPs to be compelled to block sites deemed to be infringing copyright, censoring content due to the demands of a corporate entity. What next? BitTorrent? YouTube? Anything the media industry and government decides people shouldn’t have access to? That might sound alarmist, if it wasn’t for the Tory-led UK government already considering a national firewall.

TechRadar reports that the Nintendo 3DS is selling poorly compared to expectations, with the company now being bolstered by the Wii U. Nintendo blames the games:

During the three months ended June 2011, for the Nintendo 3DS The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was launched and favourably received, but Nintendo had few other hit titles

Big fucking surprise there, then. This is what has always happens with Nintendo handhelds. A few hit titles are rolled out, but the games releases rapidly trend towards Pony Game 7 and Pointless Dolly Dress-Up Bullshit 4. The difference this time round though is that Nintendo has massive competition from Apple. Instead of rushing out to buy a Nintendo DS with 3D, kids can for roughly the same price buy an iPod that:

• shoots HD video;
• connects to the internet, for Facebook, web browsing, and so on;
• stores and plays music, and;
• offers a staggeringly large games catalogue, with each title costing less than its 3DS equivalent.

On that last point, it’s still commonplace for Nintendo fans to claim the App Store is full of shitty games, and that happens to be absolutely true. But the App Store also has about 40,000 games at the time of writing. If only one in a hundred is worth playing, that still leaves you with 400 games. In my experience writing for Tap!, I’d say that ratio’s out anyway, because I find something new and exciting to play—often costing nothing or priced under a few quid—every single day. I own a ton of fantastic games across all genres, and many of these games have appeared since the 3DS arrived.

Nintendo isn’t doomed. Writing off the company would be ridiculous, since it is generally pretty smart and the closest thing to Apple in gaming, daring to innovate. But it dropped the ball on this generation’s handhelds, trying to eke out another round from an old idea while Apple blazed past with something new. Apple should perhaps be wary now, because, historically speaking, leaders in the games industry have tended to get complacent, allowing rivals to steam ahead. This appears to be the case with Nintendo now, so perhaps it can fight back next time round. If not, it’ll be increasingly reliant on its TV consoles, and if they go belly-up, it’ll be the latest Sega.

If you like games, nip over to Humble Indie Bundle and splash out some cash (how much is up to you) on the five available games, knowing that you’re supporting indie devs and charity. That’s like some kind of karma rainbow dolphin.

But how much you splash out might have something to do with the platform you’re running. At the time of writing, from about 90,000 purchases, about 60 per cent were from Windows users, with the remaining 40 split evenly between Linux and Mac. Interestingly, though, that smaller number of Linux users has raised almost as much for charity as the Windows crowd, due to higher average purchase prices. Donation averages right now are:

• Average Windows: $3.83
• Average Mac: $6.15
• Average Linux: $10.79

Conclusions to draw from this: Linux users, despite advocating ‘free’ seem perfectly happy to splash out money on a good cause and for great indie software; Mac users pay a bit above the average, presumably due to being trained to do so after years of high-quality shareware; and Windows users are, relatively speaking, a wee bit tight-fisted, perhaps suggesting that any ‘app store’ on that platform will see an even faster ‘race to the bottom’ than what we’ve seen on the Mac App Store and Apple’s iOS store.

Update: World of Goo’s ‘pay what you want’ sale ended up with similar patterns. (Hat-tip: Bruce Phillips.)

Charlie Brooker for The Guardian:

If anyone reading this runs a news channel, please, don’t clog the airwaves with fact-free conjecture unless you’re going to replace the word “expert” with “guesser” and the word “speculate” with “guess”, so it’ll be absolutely clear that when the anchor asks the expert to speculate, they’re actually just asking a guesser to guess. Also, choose better guessers. Your guessers were terrible, like toddlers hypothesising how a helicopter works.

This refers to the recent and terrible events in Norway, but also happens to be relevant for an awful lot of news coverage these days.