This is more of a quick link type of thing (see the side bar) but this is so cool that I felt it warrented some “frontpage” type exposure: Impossible Structures

I just put up two media files:

1. From Yakko’s World (the animaniacs). The nations of the world (kind of low quality but the funny comes across loud and clear).
2. A wav file played by the Senior Director of R&D when trying to explain the requirements the higher-ups are demanding for the next development effort.

Also, rocketboom was well done today.

Ideology provides a lens through which one sees the world, a set of beliefs that are held so firmly that one hardly needs empirical confirmation.

• Joseph Stiglitz, Globalizatoin and Its Discontents, 2003

Yes… I’m a huge fan of Veronica Mars. Such a great show.

I fully endorse you checking it out.

This season hasn’t been as good as season one* but it’s still been very enjoyable. The unfortunate thing is that the rating haven’t been very good leading to speculation that there might not be a third season.

The good news is that I came across this interview which gives me a lot of hope that the series will continue next year:

We do have a Season 3 mystery planned. I believe the careful observer will be able to figure it out before the end of Season 2. It falls under the heading of “You’ll know it when you see it.”

Of course planning is much different than actually implementing (filming) but I’ll take what I can get. Now for the standard immature celebration, excuse me as I yell ‘w00t!’

*Season one: Better mystery, better love interests, better character dynamics, and Veronica’s hair was way better.

Ironic isn’t it? Despite our magnificent technology, we find ourselves still susceptible to the ravages of old age. The loss of dignity, the slow betrayal of our bodies by forces we cannot master.

- Jean-Luc Picard (ST:TNG)

Yesterday I got a knock on the door. It was my next door neighbour, a nice old man who’s starting to loose it a bit but all-in-all is doing pretty well for himself. Apparently his neighbour (two houses over from me) had called him; she had fallen and couldn’t get up (no jokes).

He needs a “strong guy” to help lift her up. I went next door and helped out. It was a little scary though, the woman couldn’t walk at all but she continued to live alone in a house without the modifications that aid someone in a wheelchair.

I’ve joked before about not needing to really worry about when I get older because
I don’t plan to live that long. I couldn’t imagine living a life that way: unable to do some of the simplest tasks, my entire body betraying me, worst of all loosing my mind. At the same time I don’t believe in suicide so I’m stuck here as long as god (or whatever else) wants me to be here–I guess I better take care of my body a little more.

My point, nothing really. I’m just posting some disjoint internal dialog… Oooooo chicken wings would be good right about now.

Live fast (ADSL fast, not T1 fast), die pre-retirement, leave a smelly but not too wrinkled corps.

I came across the following quote from this blog:

I think of the patent system in our country a bit like the tenure system in our academic institutions. It protects ideas and people that may not deserve to be protected and it allows for underperformance and it stifles creativity and energy.

I think the author is bang on. But in addition I believe that technology patents simply last too long and are too costly to acquire. We need to provide shorter term patents for technology and reduce the cost of acquiring them so it’s easier for the patent office to perform prior art checks. A very interesting idea I’ve heard is introducing a “mini-patent” in addition to the traditional patent. The system would work as follows:

• Mini-patent would be cheap, prior art checks would wouldn’t be very extensive, and patent clerk involvement would be minimal.
• Mini-patent would last for a much shorter period of time (e.g. 5 years).
• Mini-patent would only go into effect for products/services in the market.
• Mini-patent, like traditional patents, would need to be defended but when defending a mini-patent, you must first “upgrade” to full patent (for a minimal cost once you’ve filled a lawsuit). This is needed to compensate for the lack of extensive prior art checks.
• Prior art checks for traditional patents would become more detailed and traditional patents will become more costly (and take more time to acquire).

The overall idea is to encourage people to “patent” everything they come up with without trying to encourage the patent trolls (hello, NTP). The mini-patent acts like a bookmark to say “hey, I did this at this time.” Hopefully due to the easy of acquiring the mini-patents, anyone and everyone will get the patents and make it very easy to tell if new patents are actually novel and if they deserve to be granted a patent.

I’m no lawyer and haven’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about this. This is just an idea I’m throwing out there.

On another topic, Jason has written up a good little post on Steven Harper and the Media. I suggest you take a look.

This has already made the rounds on all the big news sites but Google Calendar is out.

I’ve been playing with it for the last 15 min and in that time I’ve:

1. Imported all of my calendars from iCal.
2. Imported some public calendars.
3. Subscribed to my calendars via iCal.
4. Added/deleted some sample events.

So far the only thing I wish it did was allow me to set a default view for when I log in (i.e. current month, not current day).

All-in-all I’m very, very, very impressed. I’ve made the move to Google Calendar and I can really see this being very useful. If you want to start swapping calendars let me know.

From the it’s about time department… I’m really glad to hear that at least one network is going to push out some of it’s shows on demand for free. I think this is a great way to finally meet the consumer demand for… ummmm… on demand (why should I rearrange my life to watch a show? The show should be on when I want it). I really hope it works out—I can see this as being a really goood way to take a chunk out of piracy and make a few extra bucks from both ads and consumers purchasing shows. If it does we could end up with a totally different distribution model for shows. Bring it on!

First, thanks to Tim for sending me the link.

For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m a huge fan of the Coupland book, Microserfs. It looks like he’s done up another book called jPod which is along the same lines–just for the Google generation of geek.

At first I was really excited but as I started to read the excerpt, I started to have a feeling I’m going to get very annoyed/bored with the new book. Why? Because he is claiming be talking about me now. Well, not exactly me but rather my generation of geek (yes, geek generations are less than 10 years).

Although the excerpt is humorous I see a little too much Microserfs and not enough of the newer generation of geek he’s claiming to be talking about. Also, I see a lot of the same old characters and jokes.

It’s been a while since I’ve read Microsurfs and I’ll have to re-read it (and actually buy/read jPod) before I can finally pass judgement. For now, put me down as worried but (in ASCII) {0×68, 0×6F, 0×70, 0×65, 0×66, 0×75, 0×6C}.

I just saw a trailer for the Sentinel. The movie seems unbelievable to me for a few reasons:

1. No one is better than Jack Bauer.
2. Jack Bauer is never wrong.
3. Jack always gets his man.
4. There’s no ticking time at the bottom of the screen.

In Jack we trust.