Posts by AJO

Beastly Android will batter Apple's iOS beauty

Is it?

Is Android outselling iOS??? Overall?

The only figures in the article are for smartphones. But iOS includes the iPod Touch and iPad too, both of which are sectors in which Apple is totally dominant (basically without competitor in the case of the massive-selling Touch). So it's not clear who's total sales for the platform are actually higher.

Remember the iPod Touch

The article appears to completely forget about the iPod Touch. Yes, it's not a smartphone, but it's an iPhone in every respect other than the phone bit, and it sells shitloads. It really doesn't make a lot of sense to think about iOS while only considering 1/3rd of its products (and, probably, about 1/3rd of its sales). For developers, the presence of the Touch means a massive (and heavily app-buying) additional market, which Android has no competitor to – and for which the additional development cost and hassle is essentially nil.

Android can consider itself winning when most of the best new apps and games appear there, and do so first. But that's still a very long way from happening at the moment for a number of reasons.

In any case, given the size of the market is growing incredibly quickly, there's plenty of room for two platforms to co-exist, at least for now.

Beeb, British Museum face smut issues over saucy pot

Not Really

Nice idea, but not really. To be a 'prohibited image', it has to be all of three things:

a) be pornographic,

b) portray a prohibited act, and

c) be grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character

So the fact that the image might fulfil criteria b) means nothing unless it also fulfils a) and c).

Legally, something is only 'pornographic' if "it is of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal". Given the original cup was produced primarily to be drunk out of, and the images produced by the British Museum were produced entirely for educational and cultural purposes, a) is almost certainly not fulfilled, and so it could not be a prohibited image.

In addition, it seems unlikely that one of the greatest treasures of the British Museum is going to be classed as 'grossly offensive or disgusting' or legally obscene any time soon, so it probably fails on criteria c) too.

So is it a prohibited image. Er, no, almost certainly not.

The original article rather leaps to conclusions without looking at the detail of the legislation, unfortunately.