I want a fabricator
Build anything you can imagine - way too cool.
Need to relax?
Open this link in a new tab.
Keep doing whatever you’re doing. Just listen as you work or surf.
Duh … you think?
Update to yesterday’s post about the woman who got house arrest for killing a man:
The federal Conservative Justice critic said Tuesday that cutting a woman off e-mail and ordering her to serve two years of house arrest for killing her cheating lover sends the wrong message.
The judge says that the jury found the woman to have “no formed intent.” What the heck does that mean? She killed a man! I’ll tell you, you’ll get more jail time for accidently running down a person while speeding - an accidental homicide.
Blogosphere growing
Yes, yes, it’s expanding, increasing, growing so fast it’s exploding, but that’s not the subject of this post. Rastin Mehr is blogging, and that’s A Good Thing™.
Rastin is in the Technology Solutions department at Premier, which I used to lead, and he’s doing all kinds of cool stuff there and on his own.
He’s got at least 2 great sites, but just started blogging recently. Congrats, and looking forward to more, Rastin.
Canada’s Legal System: absolutely insane
I happen to subscribe to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Canadian news feeds, and I just got two that illustrate how absolutely unspeakably insane Canada’s laws are right now.
Kill someone, stay at home
Kill a man, but if you’re really quite a nice person normally, you get to stay at home. No jail, not even confinement to your home, just a curfew for - get this - two years.
Compare that to …
Smuggle marijuana, go to jail
Smuggle some dope, and you’re going to jail for more than two years. Even if you’re almost a senior citizen.
Now, I’m not a dope-smoker, and I don’t think it’s a good idea. But is it just me, or is it really, really, really FUBARed that smuggling a drug that arguably affects a person less than alcohol (a legal drug) gets you a harsher sentence than killing someone? Note that the murder trial was in Canada, and the dope trial was in the US. Apparently, justice is a foreign concept in Canada.
I’m also not big on vigilante-ism, but really, how on earth are we going to get some justice here if we don’t tar and feather judges like B.C. Supreme Court Justice Glen Parrett who hand down laughable slaps on the wrist for convicted murderers?
Money back offers that make sense
I’m doing some consulting work for The Linguist … mostly blogging at the Linguist blog, and I’ve been thinking about money-back or risk-free trial offers that make sense.
Here’s one at Bigha. (I recently blogged about their Starseeker chair.)
It’s for a revolutionary bike - a very expensive bike. And there’s a money-back guarantee. But you’ve got to have given the product a real test - 240 miles of riding in 60 days. And there’s a speedo on the bike, so they can tell.
See how they justify how they’ve set it up - it makes sense, it’s defensible:
We ask only that you commit to giving the bike a real try. Averaging four miles per day is not hard to do. By trying the bike over a two month period, you can really get to know the bike and see how well it fits into your life. Then you can make an informed decision.
Since at the Linguist we know what people are doing on the site, we could do a similar thing.
I think it’d be worth trying.
Break my heart
Recently at Seattle’s Woodland Zoo our youngest son Aidan jumped on a park bench and started hamming it up with an eagle sculpure.
I grabbed the camera and staring shooting. Only later did we realize that - as can happen rather easily on my camera (Sony Cybershot DSCW1 5MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom
However, Teresa played around with one of the pics in iPhotos, and here are the results. Spectacular, in my (admittedly biased) opinion.
Click the pic for a larger image. (I rarely do this - you know, bandwidth and all that - but this picture is worth it.)
Collapsium, by Wil McCarthy
Two weeks ago I re-read Collapsium, by Wil McCarthy.
The first book of McCarthy’s that I read was Bloom, which was absolutely mind-blowing - exactly the experience you get from top-notch science fiction.
Collapsium is very, very good as well. Imagine a scientist - a shy and awkward scientist, to boot - as the star of an action movie that is scrupulously accurate to current science, while stretching it to the absolute limits. Add in a pinch of a detective story, and you’ve got Collapsium.
Well worth adding to your library - hard science fiction no longer suffers from a lack of believable characterization, protagonists with depth, while still retaining the best characteristics of sci-fi.
And if you’re interested in Bloom as well:
iTunes price increase: the story behind the story
So, the labels want more for their songs.
It’s well known that many record labels aren’t happy with the ‘one price fits all’ approach to digital music sales taken by iTunes, and there is speculation that when the contracts come up for renewal early next year some labels may not renew them unless Apple changes its pricing strategy.
Well, there may be a little more to it than that. Jonathan Schwarz posted the following:
I was with the Chief Executive of a music company recently, who told me how thrilled he was to have a growing percentage of his revenues being derived from digital distribution. But there was one caveat - 95% of the digital distribution came through one vendor’s product and service (guess which), the owner of which had let him know his royalty stream was being radically reduced, unilaterally, in a new contract. No negotiation.
It’s not too hard to put 2 and 2 together.
Jobs is unhappy with getting only 4 cents or so from each song downloaded from the iTunes music store. The labels are already raking in the dough by getting the lion’s share of the 99 cents, but they also want more, especially the ability to charge more for popular, in-demand, recent music.
Two groups I’m not sure are in the negotiations are the clients - everyone who buys music - and the artists. One thing’s for sure: this is the wrong time to be increasing the price. Paid digital music is very young yet, and increasing prices could stifle the newborn.
I have to say I trust Jobs more than the labels, which have proved themselves time and again as souless profiteers. And 4 cents a track for the retailer is ridiculous.
But starting a fight right now is in nobody’s best interests, which is why my prediction is that this will all blow over. The two positions are likely just initial bargaining points, from which both parties can devolve into something fairly similar to what exists right now.
I have a dream …
… and it’s about making lots of money.
Somebody, please, stop the insanity.
(Via Jonathan Schwartz.)
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About
Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
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