There's a fascinating story going the rounds, (including ths version at the NYTimes - free registration required), on Google's increasing ocean of information about the world's population. Remember those stories about the National Grid folk reading the Radio Times to predict likely kettle usage? Similar stuff, only much more fine-grained.
Fascinating, if not slightly scary in a 'big brother' sort of way. Be careful what you search for.
Speaking of The Prisoner, I've recently finished waded my way through the whole thing on DVD. It is - as you will know if you've seen it - completely barking. McGoohan is at once impossible to take one's eyes off and unwatchable, and the whole endeavour makes very nearly no sense whatsoever.
Fantastic.
As I sit munching on a loaf of the The Village Bakery's Baltic Rye (Latvian recipe, rye mixture, molasses & caraway), I realise just how much I like bread. Particularly these whacky Eastern European breads. Village Bakery stuff is available from Safeway and Sainsbury's, if you're lucky - look particularly for Rossisky and Borodinsky.
A deliciously barking story about Terry Waite, a pair of clogs, and a somewhat circuitous delivery route. Incidentally, when Waite returned to the UK after his hostage ordeal, he took up lodgings in the peace and quiet of his Archbishop's old College - Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was given a simple room in South Court... complete with bars on the windows.
In Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street today - a European market. Bizarre sausages, preserves, cheeses, bulbs, even a clog stall. Tremendous, if not weirdly like being trapped in The Prisoner.
You learn something new every day. The new international delivery requirements for How2 specified full effects tracks, which means sound effects without the overlapping dialogue. Which means that yours truly has today been sitting in a dubbing booth scraping coins down copper rods, blowing into glasses of water, dropping ping-pong balls, and generally doing some weird old stuff. I tell you, it's hard!
Kinda fun, though somehow I suspect the novely will wear off after... er... about tomorrow morning.
...gone too far. The G man has been taking swipes at the old Apple Newton. Completely out of order, since (a.) Tablet PC is actually quite cool, but in a completely different way, and (b.) he can clearly not have used a Newton, if he thinks they're comparable. Soup storage, for heaven's sake!
Apologies for geeking out, but last night I managed to sync my Newt, over Ethernet, to my Mac OS X address book. Oh, and the Newton still serves its contents as web pages over my LAN. Newton is so much more than people think; I still use mine daily, and can't see that changing in a hurry.
The Microsoft case. Hmm. So, let's assume that Judge Jackson's remedial measures were excessively harsh to the convicted felon (vis. Microsoft). Thus, his punishment was thrown out by a higher court (not, note, his verdict, which stands - Microsoft is still a convicted monopolist).
It now appears that Judge Kollar-Kotelly's alternative measures are so woefully lenient that Microsoft might be considered, on balance, to have got away scot free. For heaven's sake, they're even policing their own sentence!
Presumably, one guesses, this verdict too will be overturned on appeal, and something more reasonably harsh might be substituted. In another couple of years' time. But somehow, I suspect this is the end of it, and that Microsoft has won.
[sigh]
I hate doing the whole 'ooh, I saw this on [insert name of blog here] and thought I'd link to it too' thang, but this is simply lovely.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody else did a demo at the World Congress of Science Producers.
OK, who's up for this, then? Colin? Greg?
Anybody?
