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Barely Related: Marvel's Civil War, DC movies galore
Welcome to Barely Related, a conversational Friday column that presents the non-gaming news stories that we, the Joystiq staff, have been talking about over the past week. And no, we're not stopping our focus on industry and gaming news. Think of this as your casual weekly recap of interesting (and mostly geeky) news, presented just in time to fill your brain with things to discuss at all of those weekend shindigs. Grab a fresh drink, lean back in your armchair, and get ready to talk nerdy with us.
UK iPhone 6 ad features Chris O'Dowd and Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd)
Along with the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus came a charming pair of ads featuring Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon that showed some of the abilities of the two new phones. At least that's what happened in America. In the UK the ads are basically the same, just with one major and important difference -- their ads feature Chris O'Dowd and Richard Ayoade from The IT Crowd. There are minor differences between the ads, but the most glaring example shows a major difference between our two cultures. In the UK ad Ayoade brags about eating a "massive" Arctic roll loaded with 540 calories, while in America Fallon consumes a 1200 calorie funnel cake. We suppose Americans would simply say "540 calories isn't that bad"... Currently the ads are only streaming at Apple's UK site, so head over there to see the different versions of "Duo" and "Health".
June 6th 2012: IPv6 goes live
When Vint Cerf and his friends at DARPA concocted a system that allowed for 4.3 billion IP addresses, it was never conceived that everyone's computer would be able to access the internet -- before the age when your telephone, fridge and air conditioning unit would too. The IPv4 system officially ran out of addresses last year, but fortunately the moment was prepared for: June 8th 2011 was "World IPv6 Day," where a host of sites including Google, Bing and Facebook quietly tried out the new system for 24 hours to make sure it wouldn't cause the internet to explode. June 6th this year will see the final activation of the new network provision that has a capacity of around 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 unique addresses, which we figure will keep us going until Black Friday, at least.
European Union extends Beatles' copyright, still gonna have to buy the White Album
If you've been waiting for the hits of the '60s to lapse into the public domain, prepare to be disappointed. The European Union has agreed to extend the term of protection for sound recordings -- which previously lasted for 50 -- to 70 years. That means the White Album won't be free to own until 2038. The extension was granted to guarantee income for performers in their old age who would otherwise lose out, such as impoverished multi-millionaire Sir Paul McCartney. Opinions are divided, with record companies praising the move and open-rights groups being a lot less enthusiastic. An interesting point to note is that the move was done in spite of government-funded research to the contrary. Either way, ever increasing copyright legislation means it's far more likely we'll see even more extreme anti-piracy adverts, just like the one after the break.
