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Technology keeps the ladies happy

Sex has always been a good driver of technological advancement such as the video camera and the new sex robots and appears to have been so for centuries.

However, I think this one takes the biscuit. A vibrator which is controlled by an iPad or iPhone. I wonder if it has passed Steve Jobs strict application rules. (Maybe this is why he is taking timeoff :) )

A sense of smell

Adding smells to computer games and movies has been discussed before and so far there didn’t really seem a good way of doing it.

So along come ScentScape. Like a printer is has 20 base smells in cartridges which it mixes and matches to make the smells that have been programmed.

I think this could be the way to go. Soon you will have cartridges with as many base smells as needed to make any smell you can imagine. The world of smell awaits.

Of course, I’m not sure I want to smell some things. Imagine war films when you can smell the blood and fear, or films where you are down sewers and the like. I think I’ll give it a miss.

If I ever get one, as part of a package, it’ll be used by the kids to play until it runs out of smells. It’ll then sit in a cupboard after that.

Games with life

Scientists have created several games including PacMan where instead of computer generated characters microorganisms are used as the characters. I assume that consumption of the life forms must be the way the game is played although I wonder how they make the PacMen eat the others when the cherry is eaten. Also, how do these microorganisms get replaced when they die?

Anyway, I was thinking about this suspect that that is how the Afghanistan War is being run from Whitehall. Moving some tokens across a scene and waiting for the news back from the front. What about Sim games where we were actually controlling a real city or country. We couldn’t do worse than some of the guys running them now.

Although, I can’t see it getting any bigger than microorganisms. We would have people too squeamish to use them and kill things and others would wipe out all life in their systems in minutes.

So when it comes down to it what is the point of this? I’m stuck for an answer.

Health and Safety will end War

It seems that the next generation of weapons will not be allowed to hurt the bad guys. Unlike the Russians who have the right way to deal with pirates we have decided to go for the usual namby pamby solution of dealing with them in a non lethal way.

Meet BAESystems new weapon for dealing with pirates. It’ll sell well in the EU I suspect but nowhere else.

Wimps.

Data charges and fair use

Data charges is one of the main areas where comms providers make their money. The data ranges from simple text in an SMS message to pictures on web pages. As with all thing each provider offers different packages to entice customers to them instead of a competitor. So instead of just charging by per Mb downloaded they offer special terms such as different rates for out of peak hours and special packages.

As data charges can work out expensive, and you don’t find out until your next bill, many people opt for an unlimited data package, both for phone use and internet use. This means a fixed fee and no worry about the costs.

Then we discover that unlimited means something different in the comms area. It’s caveated in the small print as ‘Fair use applies’. What is fair use? It isn’t defined. It means what the providers wants it to mean and those that have been a bit more specific can simply change the numbers anyway. Without any repercussions. OFCOM seems to be just another revenue collector. Why is it not stopping these misleading adverts?

As more and more sites add more and more data the amount we download increases dramatically. So more and more data is being transferred. As their infrastructure starts to feel the strain they seem to have decided that offering unlimited is a problem but they don’t want to be seen as not offering it so they revise their fair use policies. T-Mobile, not the only culprit of this scam btw, has revised Unlimited to be 500Mb, in the small print anyway.

You could argue that this is for a mobile phone contract but my views are clear. It says unlimited. That does not mean 500Mb. I wouldn’t sign up for a 500Mb phone contract in this day and age as I suspect most of T-mobiles customers wouldn’t and that is why they use wooly words like fair use. As phones and PDAs start to become the internet access tool of choice we need to have unlimted packages and they need to be costed right. Honesty is required. Why can’t these marketing people try a bit of that? Personally, I’d rather pay extra for unlimited and if the cost is too much because I don’t really use it then I’ll go for the 100Gb monthly limit or if I think that is too much I’ll go with a 30Gb limit and so on. I’ll pay for my data in a way I want and balance the cost benefits myself.

Its things like this that stifle innovation and advertising standards are one of the only areas that government do any good. Well, sometimes anyway. We need this fixed and soon.

Replicator v2

While not quite up to the standard of a Star Trek Replicator (by a long long way) we have now got a system that can form 3D parts from a PC at a reasonable price. Read about the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic here.

Now I’ve mentioned these systems before but then they were either custom built or $15K+ systems and well out of our reach. Soon they will be in the workshop of every handyman and model maker.

Of course the fictional Star Trek Replicator created parts out of thin air using transporter technology, again fictional. This system creates componets from ABS plastic. We can already create components out of metal via CNC lathes and millers so this system complements that.

So we are still a long way away from being able to reproduce anything we want but a good step in the right direction for home users and tinkerers.

Could the demise of computers and notepads see the demise of MicroSoft?

The pace of technical innovation accelerates, as usual, and the devices of the future certainly look to be shrinking, again as usual. Here and here are the latest examples from established manufacturers for the tablet/pad market. IMO the way of the future.

Although servers are going the same way they tend to be different because corporations want to stack and manage them easier and they just get more powerful in the same rack sized footprint. The OS doesn’t need to do much more than supply the basics that servers are there for. Centralised file storage and ensuring resilient data. EMail, FTP, Web Servers etc. are all just files stored and run by a program. That is why Linux make such a good server OS. Not many bells and whistles to go wrong although Microsoft has a strong presence there.

Although it is inevitable that devices shrink, one thing that does strike me though is how few of them are actually looking at a Microsoft OS. Could Microsoft become insignificant in the next decade?

It is possible. Microsoft’s OSs have always been heavy on resources, requiring faster and faster CPU and memory speeds with every release of an OS. It does this so that it is not just the core being updated to want people to feel they need all the new features although most they do not use. People now want a basic OS and then they add on the apps they want as they do with hand held devices now. So changes to the OS will need to add some value or they just won’t be upgraded. Think of the last time you upgraded the firmware (software) in your network devices, DVD players or phones for example. OS’s won’t be a big revenue stream outside the server market.

As an aside Microsoft and Microsoft developed code has always been called bloatware although this is less of an issue with the cheapness of disk space which saves development time over the cost of hardware. Almost everyone does that now and certainly it works out to be more cost effective for everyone. However, tablets/pads are not fitted, yet, with that much memory and SSD.

It seems to me that if Microsoft doesn’t want to go the way of computers in general it needs to ensure that the next generation of OS, based on Windows, is a good one. With Microsoft seeming to release a good version followed by a bad one in a cycle and the latest, Windows 7, being seen generally as good then it needs to get it’s act together to fix that or find that every other OS has a head start and it falls behind into history when desktops and laptops do. The server market, .NET tools and Bing isn’t enough to keep you up there with the big boys if you don’t need Windows as a base OS for the tools to work on.

Just thinking.

Death and Taxes

Benjamin Franklin said that there are only two things certain in life. Death and taxes. I don’t believe that.

One thing that is often said and I believe is that ‘Everything that has a beginning has an end’ Taxes started, I believe, to fund the Napoleonic War. Theoretically once we are at a stage where we can live with minimal impact on others we will need no taxes. I’m looking at my own spaceship thanks so I’m be out of reach of the bills. In the meantime we can look at reducing taxes thank you.

As for death. That may be easier to overcome than taxes. Medical advances should allow us to extend our lives significantly. The only area that we don’t seem to have a viable plan for is the brain itself. God’s little time bomb to stop us getting too ahead of ourselves. There are several proposed solutions that may have some promise almost within our grasp. Although I wonder at what stage you actually lose your humanity. That is a different issue.

In the meantime in this new world of CO2 reduction and recycling it seems that even in death we will be impacted. Two new methods have been researched that are classed environmentally friendly. One involved freezing and then being vibrated to a sterile dust. The other requires being dissolved in a silk bag to a sludge. I noticed it didn’t say a biodegradable sludge either.

I would think that a straight burial would be the most environmentally friendly but apparently we are running out of space. I suspect that is more to do with planning and NIMBYism than anything else. I suspect the costs of these new methods will be more as well so yet another increase in cost on the horizon.

I think when I go I’d like to be vaporised in a nuclear explosion or in the heart of a star rather than some sludge. I’m working on it.

Evolution in action

What many do not realise is that evolution did not stop when the human species created our great society and started to control this planets resources and modify the direction of their own evolution.

Evolution continues, species die out and other species are born. The speed this happens is so slow that even a politician could keep up but nevertheless it continues. Our planet changes as it always has, from a molten rock to one large continent to the world as we know it and eventually on to a dry and arid end as the sun expands. All, currently, beyond the control and, to be honest, even the understanding of the common man.

We understand the concept of cause and effect. We know if we give people money for nothing then we offer a tempting route for those that have no aspirations or abilities. Sure a socialist state is a good idea but only if we all worked towards it. It requires those that can work to work for those that can’t and it requires certain moral traits that are missing from our species. We are not ants or the Borg (yet). It will never work while we are the independent thinkers that we are and so we adjust and tweak every aspect of our fellow mans lives to meet ideals that can never be achieved because we all dig our heels in when we are forced to work to keep others who can rob us and beat us up without punishment and live at a higher standard than we can despite us being the ones doing the hard work.

Eventually we snap. It takes a while but when we do it is a doozy. Not only do we take out the deserving of our wrath but also those who do not. Suspicious people like curtain twitchers or that odd guy down the road. But that is the way we work. A cleansing of the species. We will then set up a new order and, for a while anyway, we will have freedom and people will prosper. The weak, as always, will suffer. Then along will come another group who will want to control, for the good of the people, for the children and just add a few rules, who can object to that?

On the plus side we are now at the stage where our advances are not lost. Our medical and scientific knowledge is retained and thus we do not lose too much. Even the poor nowadays do not live in the squalor they once did. Our poor have electricity and running water although others do not yet. Our government’s attempts to stifle knowledge they do not like is wasted and knowledge goes on. I believe that in 100 years time people will look at the global warming swindle and laugh at our gullibility. How we even considered such a thing and the governments of our last 50 years will be known as the stupid, useless and most ineffectual since time began.

The only reason they won’t be hamstrung by socialist agendas is that by then, unless our lot screw it up too much before they are hung for the traitors they are, is that we are scientifically removing disease and genetic abnormalities such that there will be few deserving people requiring support and with machines doing the bulk of the manual work we won’t really have many expenses for basic living.

Of course there are alternatives. There is no guarantee that the human race will survive. Most of us are too dumb to survive on the planet now if it wasn’t for the infrastructure that greater minds have built up for our advancement. We have taken that and whilst living in a lifestyle that only 60 years ago was not even available to Kings and great leaders we have corrupted our evolution with whingy whiney ideas and thinking.

If we don’t take control and bring our species back on track we can be sure that Nature will show no mercy. Nature will not keep our homes heated while windmills vainly try and generate a fraction of the power our society needs to survive never mind grow and prosper. Nature that for thousands of years of trying to eradicate us, not because of malice but because that is how nature works, will find us totally unprepared and helpless. Nature can also claim us in other ways, we all know there are others of our species that would kill us in a heartbeat because we will not bow down to their sky fairy and their spiritual leader allegedly said a millennia ago those that do not must die. Nature has other ways to claim us and relegate us into the dustbin of history. To be some alien creatures fossil collection in their version of a history museum.

What we can control we have controlled for years, not perfectly, and were working on the rest and yet despite the fact they are clearly still a threat we are now looking at relaxing our guard and relying on some miracle to provide the protection we have performed ourselves in the past.

If you look back, IMO the best years for people in the West, were the 60s and the 70s, little government and a period of rapid medical and intellectual development. The 90s was the peak of our society but the cracks were widening. Since then we have become servants to our masters in government and little, if any real progress is being made in our society. Oh! Except we are enlightened enough to have a black leader of the Western world. If he can really be called a leader that is. Of course the seeds of socialism were sprouting even back in the 70s but they were not powerful enough to have reached most people although the welfare state and the NHS were being introduced in Great Britain. People felt good about themselves and human nature being what it was we were happy to reach out and feed the starving of the world. We want to help people it is in our nature. Although only in times of plenty do we see beyond family, neighbours and close friends. The latter part of last century was a time of plenty and we reached out to bring those who don’t have electricity and running water up to our minimum level. It was a start and was done with good intentions but where it all goes wrong is that there are always those that want more, always some to take advantage of a generous nature and always those that think we need to be controlled to do what they want. Those that think we should be punished for the lives and progress of our great great grandparents because they had different, olde worldy, morals and the balls to go out and do something instead of just existing like animals.

Thus we don’t end up doing what most of us want but end up doing what we have been pressed, and when that doesn’t work, forced into doing what a minority of do gooders want to do. It starts voluntarily and then becomes compulsory. Governed by self serving fools that care not for the damage they do to us as long as it furthers their chosen goals, and they personally benefit. No elected leaders ever did that in the past they all strove to get the most out of their country and they had rigid moral codes they worked to. Caught fiddling the books and they fell on their swords. Not our bunch of crooks though.

So instead of striving and reaching for the stars, still well out of our reach, and dragging the lowest on our planet up with us our, self styled, intellectual elite decide that the easiest way to gain control and provide equality, as we all clearly want, is to stop all of us accessing the gains of an advanced society. Make electrickery unaffordable and ration medicines and travel, except for them of course, and tax everything to death to make it work. Inevitable leading to disease, starvation and death but what the Hell. The rest of the world is already like that so it is our turn.

As the wheel turns and we move closer to this scenario. Let us gain hope that when we rise and the shackles are thrown off that before we get to the utopia of the 60s again, we have developed space travel where those with the balls can go and make a new civilisation leaving the dregs on Earth if they do not want to leave. Let’s see how they do without those forced to work for them. Although I am unlikely to be there I would love to see that chicken come home to roost. I was kind of hoping it would be this time around while I was around but our politicians have seen to that.

And this time, the planet of the future, make it such that your basic laws are defined in such a way they cannot be changed on a whim by scraping away at them as whingey whiney liberal socialists have done in America.

This leaves me awaiting calls I hope never happen but inevitably must where I must do my bit to make my children and their children’s lives worth living. In the meantime I’ll read the blogs and watch the world being led down the rabbit hole by government until the bulk of the population wake up. It’ll be when they realise that despite working 60 hours a week they are still hungry and cold and that Government is not the solution but the problem. Welcome to your socialist dream world. When you rise up remember that you allowed it to happen by inaction and, let’s face it, generally being stupid.

Boy, this was going to be a post on that large fox found in Maidstone, UK and how actions have consequences and it just kind of exploded. For my two loyal readers who got so far I thank you.

2011 is going to be interesting

With all the upset with the economy, the uselessness of our political masters and they way we are lied too I see more and more people becoming activists.

Now being an activist doesn’t mean that you are like the students going out and objecting because they have to pay for their services. It means someone who is active in politics.

Of course in this day and age you don’t have to go out to cause trouble. A DOS attack seems to be a good way of making your views known. After all unless you do something everyone just ignores you. This turning the other cheek we have been brought up to believe doesn’t seem to work. The only way to make yourself known is to make noise. It works for the whingey whiney people. So it will work for us.

In the meantime lets clog up the inner workings of our society. Let’s put our sabots, shoes, in the machines. All legally though. Let’s not give plod something they can use against us. In the meantime download what you can on to your computers and encrypt them or store them on removeable drives. There are plenty of online books on there on how to sharpen sporks, make hemp rope or even make your own SMG if you feel the need to go that far.


BTW Phil Luty was in prison for producing this book. The book is one of many that can be bought over the internet. Even now nobody knows where Phil Luty is. Don’t seem to remember Mandela supporters calling for his release. It seems our politic clout is only against other governments. Ones we don’t like.

2011 is going to be the year where it all starts. I want to be ready and my sporks are sharpened.