Such Beautiful Symmetry

KitKat: 60 cents, number 46
CocaCola: 60 cents, number 64
The perfect snack.

The Wind

I was checking out gizmodo today, which I normally don't do (I read engadget instead, they are almost the same), when I came across this. It's an excellent (and apparently award winning) advertisement about wind power. At the beginning it just seems good, but when they hit the punch line, and for a couple of minutes after, it dawns on you that it's not only good, but it is in fact excellent. It is both subtle and yet at the same time clear.
Everyone can get it, but unless you think of it before hand, the genius of the portrayal will not be immediately visible.
I suggest you check it out for yourselves:

FIRE FIRE YEAH!

fire!

It Has a Name

I have long been interested in the way computers reason about things. I've wanted to make computers make better and more informed decisions about things to make them easier to use and more robust against unexpected events.
This has been an interest of mine for many years. I've been interested in artificial intelligence for as long as I can remember, and I've always had a soft spot in my heart for multi-agent systems.
It turns out, that all these things that I like are now being lumped together under the umbrella of Autonomic Computing. The concept was outlined by Paul Horn, Senior VP of IBM Research in a paper a couple of years ago.
It calls for systems to be self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing and self-protecting, and it explains why systems should have these properties, and talks about why autonomic computing is needed. I completely agree on every point in the paper.
It is interesting that my master's thesis project, which I didn't really think would involve this kind of stuff, has brought me to a point where I can combine my interests, put a name on the amalgamation, and actually get to work with them.
All in all, very cool stuff.
This post sounded much better in my head before writing it down, but feh, it's out there anyway, and it is time for me to leave the office.

Another absolutely amazing thing that my research has brought me is this. It's a short story by Cory Doctorow (author and co-editor of Boing Boing)about hacking the human body with technology. I remember reading it a couple of years back and absolutely loving it. Unfortunately, I lost the link to it some how, and I've been searching for it ever since, but with no results. Until today.
If you like sci-fi and technology, this is a must read. It is awesome!

Digital Content Delivery

What if I believe in digital online content delivery?
What if I think that it's the best idea I've heard in a long time?
What if I'm psyched that there's finally an acceptable payment model for music?
What if I want to buy a bunch of songs, just to find that the online stores don't have any of the music I want, what then?
What if I was to tell you that, while digital content delivery is an excellent idea, it won't work until you can purchase the right to have something digital, regardless of the source.

I want to be able to pay some record company for, say, 100 of their songs, and they are to not care how I got them. Maybe I copied them from friends, maybe I downloaded them (illegally), maybe I found them on a USB stick at school. It wouldn't matter, because I still have this license to own so many of their songs. This would work, because then I could get the kind of music that I want in digital format and not have to have these horrible CDs that take up so much space.
Of course, DRM would be out of the question, but it seems that DRM is going the way of the dodo anyway, so that would be less of a problem.
iTunes and its ilk works great for mainstream music, but as soon as you want music from a record label that isn't one of the enormous ones, you're shit out of luck.


(What if I think that, for once, the blogger spell checker would work? Would that be too much to ask?)

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

I just saw this over at wired, and I saw the future of killing. You may wonder why I say killing, and not combat, but when one side is using this weapon, there will never be a battle of equals.
This is absolutely, without a doubt, bat-shit fucking crazy.
It's a fully automatic shotgun, recoilless, that can fire 300 rounds per minute.
And as if that wasn't enough, it can also deliver grenade payloads up to 175m at 120 rounds per second.
I can't possibly imagine any (non-WWII) FPS in the coming years that will not feature this weapon.
Some crazy stuff.