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Pythonesque
Thursday, June 24th, 2004 12:23 pmThe best comment I've heard on the embarrassing revelation about the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's address to members of Congress is "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
Thursday, June 24th, 2004
Phasers on stun
Thursday, June 24th, 2004 12:38 pmMy attention was taken by this article on prototypes for stun guns that develop the taser principle by using ionised gas (sprayed or ionised by laser) instead of wires to transmit the electric charge. This would transform the humble taser from a one-shot weapon with a range of seven metres to something much more impressive and science fictiony. Police departments are interested in its potential for crowd control, and human rights organisations are worried about it for exactly the same reasons. Given that my first thought on reading the article was "I want one NOW!" I can understand their concern. I can picture myself with one of these things strapped to my belt* next to the handcuffs and other sexy dangly things. "Alright people, let's go home. Nothing to to see here ... except my Zapomatic Disruptor Beam - EAT HOT IONS, SLIMEBALLS!!!"
* Rather impractical at the moment, since the prototype of the laser version is the size of a suitcase, but the manufacturers assure us they will, like most things, get smaller. As my old English professor, Tom Shippey, pointed out, look at the size of the radios in the original Flash Gordon TV series.
* Rather impractical at the moment, since the prototype of the laser version is the size of a suitcase, but the manufacturers assure us they will, like most things, get smaller. As my old English professor, Tom Shippey, pointed out, look at the size of the radios in the original Flash Gordon TV series.
Linnaean bookmarks
Thursday, June 24th, 2004 01:09 pmSorting my Mozilla bookmarks is a last-ditch displacement activity (I get a mental image here of someone jumping out of a ditch, dripping water and shouting "Eureka!"). Beyond this lies only work.
One thing I noticed during this time-wasting activity was that the hierarchical organisation of bookmark files (reminiscent of Linnaean biology) really doesn't fit the way I think. For example, "Occult" goes under Philosophy::Religious, since it started with a couple of links on Thelema, and Thelema is both a philosophy and a religion; however, most occultism does not qualify as either (I could have a subdirectory called Ideas::Nutty, but that would cover far too much). Then there are all my Iraq war links. Do they go under Politics::Middle East or Politics::Americas::USA? I need some kind of intellecutally fashionable cogsci prototype / family resemblance / neural net way to store bookmarks.
Anyway, for the enjoyment of other procrastinators, I have posted my bookmarks page here.
One thing I noticed during this time-wasting activity was that the hierarchical organisation of bookmark files (reminiscent of Linnaean biology) really doesn't fit the way I think. For example, "Occult" goes under Philosophy::Religious, since it started with a couple of links on Thelema, and Thelema is both a philosophy and a religion; however, most occultism does not qualify as either (I could have a subdirectory called Ideas::Nutty, but that would cover far too much). Then there are all my Iraq war links. Do they go under Politics::Middle East or Politics::Americas::USA? I need some kind of intellecutally fashionable cogsci prototype / family resemblance / neural net way to store bookmarks.
Anyway, for the enjoyment of other procrastinators, I have posted my bookmarks page here.
Thumbs down
Thursday, June 24th, 2004 06:22 pmGary Brant's company VeriTouch will soon be marketing a media player called iVue, which will ensure that no music is ever shared again. The iVue uses your fingerprint to generate a unique key when you buy music online, and you can only play that music back once your fingerprint has been verified by the machine using this key. It's a brilliant idea!
The writer was, of course, being sarcastic, and later quoted one correspondent who put likely consumer reaction succinctly and graphically: "I see no better way of ensuring that a media device won't sell apart from smearing it with excrement before packing it."
However, there might be some market for the technology, given that people's ingenuity in finding unintended uses for products extends as far as installing Linux on an XBox (incidentally, the iVue protoype runs Linux, which some might find a little ironic). Like, for an example, an iPorn, which allows you to subscribe to all those naughty Internet sites, view your smut anywhere you like, and rest assured that no one else will discover what is hiding in what they think is your MP3 player.
The writer was, of course, being sarcastic, and later quoted one correspondent who put likely consumer reaction succinctly and graphically: "I see no better way of ensuring that a media device won't sell apart from smearing it with excrement before packing it."
However, there might be some market for the technology, given that people's ingenuity in finding unintended uses for products extends as far as installing Linux on an XBox (incidentally, the iVue protoype runs Linux, which some might find a little ironic). Like, for an example, an iPorn, which allows you to subscribe to all those naughty Internet sites, view your smut anywhere you like, and rest assured that no one else will discover what is hiding in what they think is your MP3 player.