News You Can Bruise for 2007 August 14

Cool-sounding book: Essential Electronics for Software Folk. I thought software folk was dead.

A few years ago my family had a brief interest in Kinder Eggs, possibly as Christmas stocking stuffers. They were objects of intrigue, being illegal in the US because of some ridiculous law about putting non-food items inside of food. Those non-food items were cool toys which you could assemble; my mother was very fond of a cow which made a funny face when you moved its tail.

Maybe a year ago I saw Kinder Eggs start showing up in stores in the US. I thought the law was now a dead letter, but Wikipedia alleges our imported Kinder Eggs have simply been adulterated with stickers and other lame treats, instead of cool machines you build. I will investigate.

Apparently Apparently lame Kinder Eggs have now taken over in the UK too, in a heavy-handed analogy for the detrimental effects of copyright harmonization.