From The Metro:

Baroness Greenfield is concerned about the banality of Twitter

Baroness Greenfield doesn’t understand Twitter.

Baroness Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology, fears [social networks] may be having a negative impact on users.

It’s true. Those damned social networks, which keep you in touch with people and enable you to share ideas and communicate. THEY ARE EVIL.

She claimed that a focus on developing internet friendships and the constant feedback they involve had the potential to ‘rewire’ the brain, making people expect instant gratification and reducing their ability to concentrate for prolonged periods of time.

Ooh! Look at that cute LOLcat!

Sorry, what?

Baroness Greenfield suggested the ‘banality’ of the information exchanged on Twitter could become a problem.

The banality in my Twitter feed today being arguments about the US debt ceiling, tons of comments on design, responses to Daily Mail/Liz Jones idiocy regarding the NHS, and articles arguing about the pros and cons of activism.

In other news, the banality of information exchanged by professionals (say, professors of pharmacology), TV pundits and people in pubs “could become a problem”, but it all depends on who you’re conversing with.

The academic said: ‘Why should someone be interested in what someone else had for breakfast?

Why should we be interested in the views of someone who’s clearly never used Twitter, but nonetheless feels compelled to churn out the same old ill-informed arguments about the service?

It reminds me of a small child (saying): “Look at me Mummy, I’m doing this, look at me Mummy, I’m doing that”.

Unlike, say, a professor of pharmacology doing an interview for a newspaper and parroting the same old garbage we’ve heard a thousand times before?

‘It’s almost as if they’re in some kind of identity crisis.

It’s almost as if they’re keeping in touch with people and letting them know what’s going on in their lives, from the banal to the extremely exciting and interesting. Not everyone juggles sharks for a living, every second of the day, Baroness Greenfield. And not everyone can be a professor of pharmacology with a poor understanding of Twitter.

In a sense it’s keeping the brain in a sort of time warp.

MY BRAIN IS DOING PELVIC THRUSTS ON TWITTER! PLEASE SEND HELP, BARONESS GREENFIELD!

In case you’re not keeping up regarding Nintendo, things aren’t looking good. From dominating the handheld space a few short years ago, it’s now found itself in the position of finding its older handheld (the DS) outselling its newer model (the 3DS) by nearly two-to-one, and the new console having its price slashed, in an attempt to boost poor sales across the entire range. The company’s CEO has taken a 50 per cent pay cut, and Nintendo doesn’t seem to have any big answers to Apple’s iOS and even Sony, matching Apple in making genuinely multifunctional devices.

To my mind, Nintendo has the following options:

• Dig in. Nintendo has said it believes that dedicated gaming units are still the way forward. It could produce a follow-up to the 3DS (perhaps the Game Boy 2, to leverage that still-loved brand), but this would be a high-risk strategy. It’s increasingly common for kids to be armed with iPods, and once they have one, dedicated units look limited by comparison (especially those largely utilising physical media).
• Follow the crowd. Nintendo could fight back against Apple and Sony by nicking their best ideas. Have the next Nintendo console, at the very least, be fantastic online (for browsing, not just multiplayer games), work well as a media player, and have a top-notch games and apps list, which are largely available via download and for a more affordable price than existing Nintendo games. This has less risk in the sense of future-proofing, but Nintendo would have to take great care to differentiate.
• Do something entirely different. Apple—the company, remember, in part responsible for the Apple Pippin—largely blindsided Nintendo in handheld gaming. Apple didn’t design the iPod as a gaming unit, but it did design iOS devices as something different to what existed at the time. A combination of factors then led to devs and gamers flocking to the platform. Is Nintendo capable of creating something so awe-inspiring, new and innovative (rather than welding a 3D gimmick to an existing console) that it could go for this option? I’d like to think so, because while it’s also high-risk, it offers plenty of rewards if the Japanese giant got it right. And it’s not like Nintendo’s been bereft of new and exciting ideas in the past.

Whichever path Nintendo chooses, I think it’s got one more shot at this, before it finds itself in the same position as Sega around the time of the Dreamcast. If that ever happens, the company ends up with option four, which I’m sure it would never want to do:

• Be like Sega. Nintendo could give up on hardware entirely and go software-only in the handheld space, either with lucrative exclusive deals with a single platform, or by casting the net wide. Imagine if Super Mario Bros., MarioKart and other famous Nintendo brands were to officially exist for iOS. Angry Birds would be ousted from the number-one spot for good—those birds and pigs would never know what hit them. But this would come at a price—the ability to control the hardware and software, and to innovate when it comes to making new hardware. That said, given how regularly Nintendo recycles its famous IP, this wouldn’t necessarily be a poor option, especially for gamers.

Callum Jones:

Sky have attempted to buy every successful programme on television in the past two decades.  But, instead of buying out shows when they are initially offered, they wait for other channels to show them for their first few seasons.  At which point, should the show in question be a success, they use the ludicrous amount of money they have access to and outbid the broadcaster who first bought its rights.  This dirty method, unfortunately, guarantees Sky more customers and more viewers.  In case you don’t believe me, I’ll run by you a fraction of the programmes Sky Television have bought via these methods:

24 (from the BBC)

Entourage (from ITV)

ER (from Channel 4)

Flight of the Concordes (from the BBC)

Friends (from Channel 4)

Glee (from Channel 4)

Grey’s Anatomy (from Channel 4)

Lost (from Channel 4)

Mad Men (from the BBC)

Prison Break (from Channel 5)

The Simpsons (from the BBC)

As of today, it’s been announced that Sky’s grabbed F1 coverage from the BBC, a network that has provided superb coverage of the sport. The BBC simply couldn’t afford to outbid Sky, not least with the British government hobbling the BBC by freezing the licence fee. The Murdochs still claim the BBC is too rich, too dominant and has too much influence, while regularly outbidding it for anything considered popular. One wonders how Sky will act once it’s obliterated terrestrial channels, and once it’s colluded with successive governments to essentially turn the BBC into PBS UK.

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.