Pocket Universe

This is a nice, brief obituary for George Carlin, by Jerry Seinfeld.

Okay, the birthday hoopla can wait: This news is too big to wait.

Contrary to what some people may have thought, the unthinkable has occurred: Apple has reached a new agreement with Apple Corps over the use of the “Apple” name. Specifically (and surprisingly), Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer Inc.) will own all trademarks related to “Apple,” and will license (or “licence”) certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps. Additionally, each party will bear its own legal costs.

To be fair, some may have predicted this turn of events, and the question of legal costs may in fact have spurred negotiation talks. But in any case, a long legal battle has come to an end, and I think everyone is better off because of it.

Now to get the rights to the Beatles back catalog….

What kind of earth-shattering news would get me to start posting again? How about a coup in the world of animation, as Disney buys Pixar?

But I can hear your question now: How can this be a coup, if Disney bought Pixar? Simply put, this is basically a reverse takeover, just like when Apple bought NeXT. When that happened, Steve Jobs returned to Apple, along with most of the NeXT executives, who replaced their Apple counterparts, and the Macintosh operating system was replaced with the NeXT operating system (since renamed �Mac OS X”).

So in the same tradition, Disney has bought Pixar, which will place Jobs on the Disney board of directors, and Pixar creative director John Lasseter will assume the role of Chief Creative Officer for the combined animation studios of Disney and Pixar, and will also oversee the development of new Disney theme park rides and attractions. So now, the director who was competing with Disney has become Disney. Hopefully this means he will resurrect Disney�s recently-dead traditional animation division, among other things. And now Disney�s work on Toy Story 3 (they retained sequel rights after the initial split with Pixar) will hopefully die a quick death, and Pixar can make the sequel the right way, if they decide to make it at all.

In short, it appears that once again, Steve Jobs can do no wrong.

I am not sure of all the implications associated with this story, Sony loses PlayStation patent case, must pay $91M. It seems that if Sony loses the appeal, they will no longer be able to sell any of the infringing items, which include the PlayStation concoles, DualShock controllers, and 47 games. Of those games, there are some fantastic ones that I would highly rcommend, including Amplitude, Ape Escape, FantaVision, the Gran Turismo series, the Grand Theft Auto series, ICO, Jak & Daxter, Kingdom Hearts, The Mark of Kri, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Twisted Metal: Black, and War of the Monsters. Yikes! Many of these are only $20 on the Greatest Hits series, so if you don�t have them already (and you have a PS2), I would recommend making a Best Buy run and picking them all up. Soon.

Here�s a creepy little news story, just in time for Halloween. It manages to be depressing and kind of cute, all at the same time. I hope you enjoy it, and are depressed by it, as much as I did, and was.