REAMDE read

No, I spelled that right.  The author, Neal Stephenson, named it after a fictitious virus (which was a misspelling of the "README" common in computers, and probably a reference to "reamed" as well).  It's a roller coaster ride involving a young couple, a massively multiplayer roleplaying game, Russian mafiosi, Chinese hackers, spies, and an Al Qaeda cell headed by a Welsh terrorist.  Oh, and currency exchange.

This may be his best written novel yet, although some people were disappointed in it (it was not as brimful of technological flights of fancy as his usual fare).  Perhaps the cast of characters is a bit large and hard to keep track of, but he ties everything together splendidly.  Don't expect very deep character analysis, but do expect to be surprised by his sudden turns and made thoughtful by some of the ramifications of technology that he exposes (such as using computer games to facilitate real life crime).

Not a cause I support.....

...but it IS kind of funny.

I guess putting some kind of boundary to vandalism seems almost worthy, unless you are a chicken concerned about being misunderstood.

Hairdressers and transvestites saving the environment

in a rather unexpected way....

That zooming in bit especially frosts me.....

This article on "Top 10 things Hollywood thinks computers can do" hits a couple of my pet peeves. As you can tell, my single biggest irritation has been that in almost any movie you can take a grainy security video frame and "enhance" it to see a bacterium on the skin of an intruder. The other one is about guessing passwords, although for me it hasn't been just the EASE of guessing, it also has been how there often seems to be some sort of special hone-in-on-the-password interface that computers are equipped with.

Webinar on Twitter on Vokle

...was given by Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist.

From my point of view it was a bit chaotic, but then I pretty much
only use Twitter to update my Facebook status - so maybe a good bit
was over my head.

I got a clue about "@", which I'd seen before but didn't understand.

Also a pointer to a couple of services, such as Buzzom, not that I'm
likely to use it.

Best advice: don't be boring. But I already knew that.

Internet Laws

A friend of mine just fell prey to....well, actually, I didn't remember the name of the Law she stumbled into, but I remembered there was one (the only one I could recall was the frequently cited Godwin's Law, which wasn't the one I wanted), so I took a deep breath, centered my chakras, assumed the appropriate stance, and activated my google-fu:

Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe

For those too lazy to click through (just taking the first quote from each, original gives you more background):

1. Godwin’s Law "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."
2. Poe’s Law “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.”
3. Rule 34 “If it exists, there is porn of it.”
4. Skitt’s Law "any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself"
5. Scopie’s Law “In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses the argument immediately, and gets you laughed out of the room.”
6. Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law) “If you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly.”
7. Pommer’s Law “A person's mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.”
8. DeMyer's Laws (2nd) “Anyone who posts an argument on the internet which is largely quotations can be very safely ignored, and is deemed to have lost the argument before it has begun.”
9. Cohen’s Law “Whoever resorts to the argument that ‘whoever resorts to the argument that... …has automatically lost the debate’ has automatically lost the debate.”
10. The Law of Exclamation "The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters."

Not quite ready to plunk down millions of dollars for this, but....

it's a good sign the state of the art in quantum computing is moving up fast; keep in mind we went from house-sized computers affordable only by major governments to desktops in only about thirty years - so I could very well be playing (indirectly) with ultracold beryllium islands in my lifetime (or more likely, some alternate technology that achieves the same effects).

Here's a topic on which I DEFINITELY agree with Paul McCartney

There have been proposals in various countries (and I believe a successful one in Australia) to cut off people's internet access if there is even an (or at least several) accusation that they have been downloading illegally. No conviction, no trial, enough to just say so. Various artists, including McCartney, are speaking out against these efforts by the record companies.

Definition of the week - Pulfrich Effect

OK, we haven't had one of these in ages. The only reason we do now is that it is just so deliciously obscure. This is an optical illusion that simulates back and forth movement based on side to side movement, with the appropriate goofy glasses.

The end of professionalism....

Apparently, too many people are giving away the milk for free.

HT MR

Fat and stuck with it?

McArdle is pretty sure you can lose weight...but not much....

Interesting......

Partially in response to their libel suite, chiropractors are under major pressure against false claims in the UK.

Medical Rant....

It's the 21st century. Truly and indisputably. Don't try to tell the doctors that.

They still give me multiple forms to fill out that require me to enter my name and address. Even better than that, they ask me to tell them who they are.

Then they ask broad questions with only the most tenuous relationship to the case that are particularly burdensome on those of us who feel compelled (I have no idea why) to answer honestly. "Are there steps in your house?" OK, I can see why that might matter when it comes to counseling me about my behavior after a procedure that might leave me woozy. "How many?"

WTF????!!!

Maybe they are trying to catch the person that has just a single step down into the kitchen or something, but how useful can that count really be? (There are 26 steps, by the way, including the stairs to the second floor, the stairs to the basement, and single steps down to the family room from both the breakfast room and the dining room) It must make a pretty big difference whether I live in a tiny 4-story house with ladders or a sprawling mansion that has twelve places with shallow single steps....

Then I am supposed to give my height, in feet/inches and in centimeters, and my weight, in pounds and kilograms. They can't do their own effing conversions?

Don't even get me started on the "recreational" questions. Do I smoke cigarettes? Yes, approximately one puff every decade or so.

I write software forms that allows users to enter information using the fewest steps possible. User friendliness is the first thing we think about. If I decided to make a hobby out of doing tonsillectomies on my friends without bothering to get a medical degree first they would have the law down on my butt so fast my head (or tail) would spin. But they haven't the slightest compunction about having rank amateurs designing their user interfaces.

Get with the program.

XKCD

always has insight.

And my wife always complains....

...that we only have a toilet on the ground floor and the basement. For four (or right now, three) people. It could be worse.

Of course.....

some of my friends are already doing this.

Ain't technology wonderful....

The headline pretty much says is all:

Pea shooter traditionalists decry use of laser sights at annual competition

Quote of the day

As I wrote at the time, the Times confused what people were emailing each other with what they would be willing to pay for. If those things were the same, poems about Jesus and pictures of kittens wearing hats would have replaced gambling and porn as the internet's most profitable content.
- Megan McArdle

Texting for somebody else's supper....

Marginal Revolution points us to this article that describes how you can donate to charities by texting.

Strutting my stuff in San Antone....

One of my missions on my San Antonio trip was....

I'd bought my mother one of those electronic picture frames a few years ago. More recently, I bought her another one (having forgotten about the first). She gratefully commented that the second one would get an honored place right next to the first in a box in her closet. So I figured it was about time I helped her set these things up with pictures of her loved ones. OK, mission accomplished, and they seem nicer now that they work for her.

During the process, I found out that she often needed to re-scale pictures, and spent quite a bit of time doing so. OK, me too. Not the only one, either - once my friend Heather's mom needed to resize a couple of photos to submit to an art show, and I helped out with that. So I decided to do what I do best (no, not "Tubthumping") and write a little application for her: now she just clicks on her "scalepix" icon, fills her "c:\shrink" directory with copies of pictures she wants smaller, clicks "Go" (or optionally, sets the desired width first if she doesn't want them 400 bits wide) and everything in the "shrink" directory gets shrunk. I can use that one myself at home, and anybody that wants one is welcome to a copy.