Summer Solstice 2013 in Catfood Earth.

Updated 2013-06-30 20:01:

Updated 2013-07-06 19:00:

Updated 2013-11-05 14:38:

Updated 2013-11-06 12:56:

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Updated 2015-05-01 18:38:

How to make war on patent trolls (The New Yorker), Obama wants to crack down on patent trolls. That’s not enough. (Washington Post) and When Patents Attack... Part Two! (This American Life).

And then call your congress person.

(previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously)

My new debate site, Like Debate, is finally up and running and I'm losing the first debate badly. I need your help: The Oxford comma is an acceptable form of punctuation. Actually vote your conscience. I don't care if I win this one, but give it a spin and let me know if it works for you.

If you have a better argument for or against that wretched comma have at it.

There are things I still sort of like about Skype. I use it a lot for video calls (although for work and muti-party video it's pretty much all about Google Hangouts these days). I have a Philips phone that integrates with Skype for international calls (they seem to have discontinued it, and while the calls are cheap the UI is baroque). But the IM is horrible. It can't remember which messages you've seen between devices and so you're constantly trying to figure out what you have and haven't read.

And the IM on the desktop is nothing compared to the horror of the Skype Android app. This slowly spins up and by the time it's loaded previous messages your battery is dead.

Imo.im made Skype IM tolerable on Android and possible on a Chromebook. In the last week it seems that Skype has kneecapped them and blocked their servers from signing in. I'm limping by with IM+ Pro at the moment, but it's slow and buggy and frustrating.

I sympathize with Imo.im. I've been stiffed by Skype before as an officially sanctioned partner so it's no shock that they'd take out this kind of tool.

It would be nice if they could fix mobile and web access to the network first though.