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Yes, this is how it’s done.

Kubrick:

Does I. B. M. know that one of the main themes of the story is a psychotic computer?

I love the one person who expensed his trip for a job interview.

Interesting to say the least, but I think the comment about the list on Coudal.com sum this up for me.

In order to use the SDK, you must first agree to this License Agreement. You may not use the SDK if you do not accept this License Agreement.

This sentence alone already violates freedom 0, the freedom to use the program for any purpose without restrictions.

Oh Google.

Where the hell does something like this come from?

Much respect to Tyler Kirk for everything that he’s accomplished.

Toyota and Audi plan to demonstrate autonomous vehicles at CES.

Rob Griffiths dug around and found out how to remove Google+ plus from your account.

Marco Arment:

But Google’s increasingly desperate push to cram Google+ down everyone’s throats hasn’t made Google+ any more relevant. It has only resulted in a lot of confused Google-account owners who inadvertently “upgraded” to Google+…

Bingo!

Google has settled with the FTC, avoiding antitrust penalties by agreeing to license standard-essential patents to rivals without threat of injunctions, and to remove restrictions on online advertising, though the concessions aren’t enough to placate activists. As part of the agreement, Google will be forced to license the standard-essential Motorola Mobility patents on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms to any rival that requests them, after fears that the search giant might use its acquired IP to bludgeon competitors with extortionate licensing fees else run the risk of expensive and limiting injunction proceedings.

This is brilliant. I love the Spider-Man art.

The bookseller, which also saw fewer shoppers come in to its bookstores, has bet heavily on its Nook business, which includes e-readers and tablets as well as digital books, as a source of growth.

But the Nook segment saw revenue fall 12.6 percent from a year earlier during the nine weeks ended December 29 as it cut prices to compete with Amazon.com Inc’s Kindle and Apple Inc’s iPad.

Amazon will eat you alive if you try to compete with them like this.

Google has to be the creepiest company around.

At about 10 a.m. on Dec. 21, a Tim Hortons customer at the Beaverhill Boulevard location decided to pay for the order of the next vehicle in the drive-through line.

That began a chain of random acts of kindness that lasted for three hours — and 228 orders.

Canadians love their Tim Hortons coffee… and being nice to others.

Ars Technica:

When Steven Vicinanza got a letter in the mail earlier this year informing him that he needed to pay $1,000 per employee for a license to some “distributed computer architecture” patents, he didn’t quite believe it at first. The letter seemed to be saying anyone using a modern office scanner to scan documents to e-mail would have to pay—which is to say, just about any business, period.

This is just ridiculous. Someone has to do stop these trolls from doing this.

Car rental service Avis has acquired car sharing service Zipcar in a $500 million deal.

The age of the netbook is over. Or is it?

I wanted to take a minute and thank all the readers of The Loop in 2012. You are the most incredible group of people and I really appreciate the fact that you take the time to read the site and offer your feedback. […]

Want great press for your startup, app or company? EZPR specializes in getting great stories written about what you’re working on.

“Dirty Harry” made it.

Americans suffer with slower, more expensive Internet access than other first-world nations like South Korea. Why?

Gizmodo: It seems like only yesterday we were planning for the Mayan apocalypse, but like so many other products, the 14th b’ak’tun (next era) has been delayed due to bugs and lack of pre-orders. No doubt, in 2013, several long-rumored … Continued

Ars Technica: Let us take a moment to remember a few of the companies, brands, and products that went to the great electronic recycling center in the sky in 2012. Some you may still have traces of in your sock … Continued

The New Yorker magazine has posted what they call “The Hundred Best Lists of All Time”. Leaving aside the impossibility of this actually being true, it’s an interesting “list of lists” nonetheless. It includes everything from the obvious (The Ten … Continued

Thanks to Macroplant for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop with iExplorer.

iExplorer makes a great gift this holiday season for any iPhone or iPad owner. The app’s one-touch music transfer seamlessly copies all your music and playlists from your device back into iTunes. Its messages feature allows you to search and export all your messages to PDF files or other formats. The app also offers access to your device’s voicemails, photos, and much more.

For while Liverpool has John Lennon Airport and New York JFK, the record company boss who discovered Black Sabbath is calling for Birmingham Airport to be named after Sabbath front man Ozzy Osbourne.

This has to happen.

Gerry Anderson, creator of “Supermarionation” TV shows like the Thunderbirds and live action SF entertainment like Space: 1999, has passed away.

Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook’s founder, doesn’t understand how Facebook privacy settings work either.