Spot the mistake in this graph...
Clue: This mistake isn't in the graph but in the terrible fact the graph represents.
(Graph is from swivel.com)
If you're a yummy music seeker check out Mika
Mika is the most exciting new artist I have heard and I heartily recommend him if your looking to freshen up your disco.
Sensible Subjects - Email as a workable task list.
I often send group emails for work. I quite often don’t know who the best person is for any job, but I know they do and so a group email is a great way to delegate tasks robustly and efficiently.
Sumith,
Can you…
Thanks
Mat
If you think about it that’s a big waste of time for me to write, even using sub text and signatures. And because it gets sent as a group, that generally means that everyone who gets it will open it and read it. Surely that’s wasteful.
Productivity + + ?
Could this could save millions of man hours a year the world over?
Future Blog: The sIgnature SP Pen
I finally got my hands on one of these intriguing little buddies, the sIgnature SP. As you can see, its a pen.
It cost me 4k and I'll prolly never use it, but its funk and rare and worth 6 on ebay I reckon. It feels heavy, like a Mont Blanc Nevee, but it isn't that kind of craftsmanship - its a bit sony. *shrugs* So what do you get for your 4 big ones:
- A pen that writes in blue chemically unique ink. As in, each pen has a unique and easy to scan chemical composition. (You can get a scanner that will authenticate for another 2k, but you don't need it).
- It has 2 hi res cameras (nib and top) that record what is being written was well as the face of the person writing. (It conforms with MeID 1.1, which is good)
- A sphere motion sensor (like in the Fin pointers). This motion data is all tied in with the camera images.
- The ball in the nib is istelf is a sensor that works out the path on the paper.
- The side of the pen is a fingerprint scanner. One of the new weak filed ones. You just can see it in the picture.
- GPS tracker.
How does it work?
The idea is that the sIgnature SP will be used for signing important business documents and stuff like that. It says on their website that the UN and the World Bank are using them, so that’s a good plug.
The SP only works when connected. When you want it to authenticate a signature or signatures, you simply blue in and give it the MeID of the signatories. It then downloads all the data it needs for those MeIDs and blues back that it’s ready. It took less than a second for me.
When you sign with it, all of the data recorded by the sensors is hashed together in real time and compared with the MeID data it has. At the same time it uploads the signature data to the proprietary sIgnature waterhouse. So the time, location and biometrics of the person are locked in with the act of signing. At the same time it can blue out confirmation that the people who signed were the people who were supposed to sign.
It is all pretty nifty. Impostors can’t sign and fakes are not possible and there is a digitally eternal record that the document was signed.
Any downers?:
- They charge $70 each time it’s used but will release the data off free of charge at your request. That’s pretty good I suppose. I guess it's not aimed for home use.
- Their watermark server isn’t connected to Open Waterhouse. There is no need for this and it would add extra certainty and reliability – I guess their reasoning is its already certain enough.
- They claim its impossible to fake but I reckon if you could get physical access to their waterhouse and some q-grid access you could pop it. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be possible – that’s my guess.
Conclusion
For what its does is awesome. But I cant help think is what it does needed or is it just another avenue for commercialising. I have never heard of signatures being contested or doubted. At least no recently and a search on google legal doesn’t show up much.
If you want to prove with certainty that you signed your new rental (or maybe global peace treaty) in person at that time and place, then you need this pen. Offer me 4k and it is yours, else its going ebay.
(This pen is featured in The Final Chapters)
Yippie! Draft 2 of my book available for free download as a PDF file.
Thanks to everyone who emailed with comments and crits, the second draft of my new book is now available for download as a PDF file. Get it here, The Final Chapters, Book One.
The Wonderfull Lasse Lol
If you have less than 2 lots of three minutes to spare when online then I really recommend these two you tube videos by the same guy ( Lasse Lol).
This one
And then This one.
Wonderful stuff me thinks.
The Final Dialogues: 3 : The reiteration of the system point.
Host: The system isn’t a part of everything, it isn’t real, it is just about the connection between input and output. A house is not just the bricks, but the way those bricks are arranged, and all there are, are bricks. Just bricks, Daniel.
Guest: So, what are our bricks? The bricks of the final reality?
Host: Systems Daniel. It is all systems.
The Corpornation: 1
There is a lot of buzz on the wires at the moment about the
Sealand is a WWII radar platform in the
The
I think this is momentous. I also think that a new breed of social system, akin to family, corporation, nation, class… will be born. I am calling this new breed the Corpornation.
The Corpornation
If the
This Corponation would be able to operate in ways that the old school corporations never could, however much they may try. I think though the Corpornation is a necessarily benign social entity. It has to be, because if it is seen as malign in any sense it can be closed down by public opinion alone - this beneficial vulnerability is not shared by the corporation.
In a sense, we have a purely democratic entity that has a nation’s power but is very socially fragile, and that surely is a good thing for collective good?
The end is nigh. Long live the end.
I have lots more to say on this so Ill do lots of little posts rather than long essays.
The Final Dialogue: 2 - The tripartite nature of systems.
Notes: This is part of my ongoing series of Novels, The Final Chapters, its trying to get down ideas I have had about the nature of reality for well over a decade, it is deeply tied in with my Philosophy Phd Thesis and more recent reflections on the possible nature of reality.
Host: Consider a system, that is made of three parts, input, process, output. It does not matter what those parts are, or the purpose of the system, just see if you can see those three parts of the system. That they make sense, to you, Daniel.
Guest: What could the system be?
Host: Anything. It might be falling in love or the interaction of two atoms. You need to understand that this tripartite aspect of systems is the mechanism of existence. And I don’t mean here, Daniel, existence as you conceive of it, but existence in the most absolute of senses. I have emerged from your viewpoint, the viewpoint of human sentience, into this new position and I see things so very different from how saw them when I was your Mother. You are the first who I have tried to explain things to and so just as you are learning understand that, I too, learn as we talk.
Guest: Where are you?
Host: Let us focus on systems in this talk. You will see why at some point. In the tripartite understanding of a system what happens in the middle, in the process, isn’t relevant to the purpose and nature of the system itself. It might be relevant to the curious, but it isn’t relevant to the framework in which the system partakes. Are you confused?
Guest: Very. I’m so confused I feel more awake. Like I have been woken by something crazy. Do you see what I mean?
Host: Yes. You are bound to be confused. I am still confused by some things. Our intelligence is so close to the bottom of what is required to understand things as they are, Daniel.
Guest: Systems.
Host: Yes, Systems. Think of a magic bag that ripens apples. You put in an unripe apple, and a few moments latter you take out a ripe apple. This bag may be fascinating, but in terms of what it is as part of a wider system, all that is important it its function. The input is an unripe apple, the process is ripening, and the output is a ripe apple. Is this clear?
Guest: Yes…. I think so.
Host: You need to be certain you understand Daniel. This forms one of the tools, the concepts, that you will need to understand the state of affairs.
Guest: Then I am not certain. No, I am not certain. I don’t see why what happens inside the bag is not relevant. Surely that’s everything, that’s where the magic is?
Host: There is no magic Daniel. All there is are different levels of abstraction, different places and distances to stare at things from. I am not doing very well, I think.
Guest: How was it explained to you?
Host: That is a very good question. I think that the only way I can meaningfully answer that at this point is that it was explained to me by an intelligence and an understanding far greater than mine. I will try again to explain this point, then we should stop so you can think on it.
Guest: Yes.
Host: Let me try another way. Systems always contain systems and systems always are contained by systems. At any level there are no isolated systems. What is in the magic bag will be a collection of systems and those systems will be made of systems. The bag is part of many other systems. But at the level of the bag, when all you are focussed on is the bag and what it does, what is inside it, isn’t meaningful or relevant.
Guest: I see. I think I see! The system, the middle part, the processing important when you are just looking at the system. Just the input and the output are. They are all that is relevant to that system when you are just looking at the system?
Host: Exactly Daniel.
Review: Ipod Shuffle 2nd Gen 1 Gig
In this last review I reviewed my new Chinese MP3 player with OLED screen and 4 gigs of memory. Last Saturday night I was at a party and my friend Paula had her new Christmas present out causing a considerable wow. It was the second generation IPOD Shuffle and my lord, it was a thing of beauty.
I had to have one. I simply had to. It is rare that I know I need something so much, especially on the tech/gadget level where I am pretty jaded. I pretty much forced my wife to purchase me one (“If you don’t get me one in your lunch break we are through, beeeotch!”) and yesterday she did just that.
This thing is tiny, this thing is light and this thing is remarkably cheap (£50/$79) for what it is. I would happily sleep with it plugged in or take it out on a night on the town, which I wouldn’t do with its bigger more vulnerable, and costly, siblings.
In terms of the design ergonomics I can’t find fault, and I can normally find fault in most interfaces. In fact it has aspects that I hadn’t thought of, like when you skip a from one track to the next and back again it goes back to the point you left. Smart.
It doesn’t have a screen. It doesn’t need one. It doesn’t even need an off button - but it has one. In essence it is a stylish aluminium clip not much bigger or heavier than a postage stamp.
Itunes
I have used Itunes for months to download podcasts, but that was it. Last night I spend a good few hours bringing all my music into Itunes and I love it. Its really well design software that has the apple aura that Windows Media player lacks. The cover flow view has, as Jobs said in his September keynote, shown me music forgot I had in such a delightful way.
The way Itunes works with the Ipod is something I have never experienced before. I have always had to hack my own synchronizations methods using SyncyToy etc. But now the Ipod+Itunes coupling really is a seamless union. It’s the MP3 version of the EPR paradox.
Conclusion
The IPOD shuffle is for people who are always close to their PC. At one Gig it can hold 250 songs but with no screen its not much use for that quantity unless you like want to always be stochastic. The idea is, you USB2 whatever you want over to it in a few seconds and it does the rest. And for this purpose, right now I think it’s the best gadget in existence.
Emily want's me to be her boyfriend!
I just got this in my hotmail:
"i'd like it if you were my boyfriendmy name on msnmessnger is
emilyfitgal@hotmail.com lets talk there pls thanks"
Does this mean she is in love?
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