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I as having a particularly hot and enjoyable shower this morning, and it was a little cold outside, and when I got out of the shower there were clouds in my bathroom.
It was super cool.
They were moving around on the air currents in the room. They had distinct densities and gaps. They almost had shapes (although that may have just been my brain wanting them to have shapes….).
Anyway, it was almost a bit of a pity when they finally dissapated, leaving only codensation on the walls…
Only a couple of weeks after the Supreme court delivered it’s ruling stating that publishers of Peer-To-Peer software could be held responsible and sued for the unintended illegal uses of their products by their customers, comes this wonderful news, illustrating the blinding hypocrisy of the White House and US Senate.
While it’s bad to steal music and you can get sued for making software which makes said activity possible, there is no problem whatsoever with manufacturing assault rifles and handguns that people can then use to commit murder…
Below is a direct quote from the article:
“The president believes that the manufacturer of a legal product should not be held liable for the criminal misuse of that product by others,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. “We look at it from a standpoint of stopping lawsuit abuse.”
And yet you haven’t heard a pip from them on file sharing have you…
I had the most vivid dream last night that the australian iTunes store had (finally) opened, and was so wierded out when I woke up that I had to get up and check that it hadn’t actually happened.
The dream included TV advertising, print promotionals and me downloading from the store.
It really was quite reminiscent of that Futurama thing where companies beamed adds directly into your dreams…
I really am such a disturbing geek (but I also really want some legit option for acquiring music, and one that doesn’t suck arse like the existing australian ones seem to).
Turns out that mobile phones can predict your behavior. Well not the phones themselves, but a computer program tracking where your phone goes, when you go certain places, and who you regularly come into proximity with.
After tracking you for a while it can pick up patterns of movement and socialisation, and can begin to (eventually quite accurately) predict your future movements etc on the basis of your historical actions.
I wonder how long it will take for the intelligence community to start doing it….
Someone has just released a 1Gb MP3 player that is only 25mm cubed. I didn’t believe it until I saw the pics on the site….
The other day I was shopping and noticed that my shaving cream seemed to be more expensive that I recalled it previously being, and it got me thinking about whether the cost was related to the current high price of crude oil.
Now most of the concern in the news relating to the high oil cost revolves about the flow on costs for petrol, jet fuel, and diesel (with the associated increase in transport costs for trucks, ships and trains). Not much mention is made of the other effects that scarcer oil reserves (with their associated high free market prices) will have.
Now my shaving cream has butane as the main propellant to get it out of the can, but Butane comes from oil (either directly or by “cracking” heavier hydrocarbons in the oil). Butane has many many other applications as well, from gas stoves to refrigeration, which would become more expensive as oil gets scarcer.
The other thing that people are often unaware of is that Helium (as in the gas, which floats those party balloons) is almost entirely acquired by extracting it from oil, and when our oil runs out so will our helium, which is a problem given how much we use helium for cooling things like the magnets in Medical MRI machines, in deep sea diving, in weather balloons, and in welding and other industrial processes.
Food for thought really.
Due to a series of mishaps I am without several of the electronic gizmos which would usually be referred to as “inseparable” from me, and it’s a mighty odd sensation.
Firstly my microphone on my phone has been playing up, meaning that I can hear people talking to me, while they can only hear a buzzing on the other end, so off it went to get fixed (under warranty luckily (and less that a week left on the warranty too – Score)).
Then I had a rather embarrasing episode where I tripped while undressing and stood on my PDA, cracking the screen, which also meant that it needed dispatching to the repair centre (although no warranty this time – D’oh).
All in all it has left me very disconnected from the electronic world, and with unnervingly light and empty pockets.
I read this article the other day which was an interview with Will Wheaton (who if you are old enough and geeky enough to remember, played young Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation) about what he’s doing now, and it was really really funny.
My friend James often sings this little ditty that goes “If it hadn’t been for NASA I’d at least have stood on Mars”.
It almost always pops up whenever we are talking space exploration, with James claiming that NASAs beaurocratic nature has been and continues to be a restraining and inhibiting influence on humans space exploration, and me defending NASA and reminding him of all NASAs successes over the years.
Recently however the situation has become so rediculous that I find it impossibly hard to keep up my usual defense of NASA and it’s culture.
NASA has become so fixated on sticking with flying the (frankly ancient) space shuttles, while at the same time being morbidly unwilling to allow a launch if there is any concievable risk to the vehicle and crew.
The result of this is that they are jepordising continued manned space flight out of fear of public and political opinion, and the sad fact is that their delays may ultimately end up being just as harmful to their public image as any accident. The space station will stay unfinished (remember when it was going to have a 6 man crew and extensive science capabilities…), they will get beaten back to the moon by China or the Europeans. They will fail, ironically because they are afraid of failure.
The new Harry Potter book is only days away from being released, and already the same old boring stereotypes are coming out with the same old boring rhetoric about what a bad influence Harry Potter and his love of witchcraft and wizzardry is, and how the books promote un-Christian ideals.
It really is rather tiresome. It also seems rather pathetic really. If [insert your religion of choice here] is really that good and inviting and all embracing, then they have nothing to worry about, but to me the wails and castigations from the pulpit just indicates that a little work is needed to make [you faith of choice] more accessable and relevant to today’s youth in today’s world.