Doctor Who: Nightmare In Silver

One minor visual spoiler ahead.

The Spine

Some amazing CGI!

The Design Bankruptcy Of iPad Mini Clones

There are a slew of iPad Mini clones coming out of China.

Aside from small sales through sometimes-dodgy international sellers, they are doomed to remain in China.

This is because they all appropriate what’s been established as the “trade dress” of the iPad Mini. “Trade dress” is an issue that Apple hauled Samsung into court over. Apple claimed Samsung’s tablets looked too much like the iPad and caused confusion.

The same argument can be made against all of these iPad Mini clones.

They all more or less look like this:

That’s nothing but lawyer-bait.

And it shouldn’t be that way.

The Eventual Death Wave

The Next Pandemic: Not if, but When

… you may not have noticed the little items about a “novel coronavirus” on the Arabian Peninsula.

This came into view last September, when the Saudi Ministry of Health announced that such a virus — new to science and medicine — had been detected in three patients, two of whom had already died. By the end of the year, a total of nine cases had been confirmed, with five fatalities. As of Thursday, there have been 18 deaths, 33 cases total, including one patient now hospitalized in France after a trip to the United Arab Emirates. Those numbers are tiny by the standards of global pandemics, but here’s one that’s huge: the case fatality rate is 55 percent. The thing seems to be almost as lethal as Ebola.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.