Pitstop made it pay for someone! $1000 apparently.


via j-walk

Speculation is growing about an on-line calendar by Google.
I like the idea!
I suffer an MSOutlook based system at ${WORK}, which I must admit, is very useful despite the odd iritating quirks. Setting up meetings & group reminders, deadlines and tasks etc. To be able to have the same sort of functionality available *wherever* would be fantastic!
I might then start remembering birthdays, and when to check the batteries for the old fella across the road.
Integration with Thunderbird would sure be preferable to having a stand-alone calendar like Sunbird.

I don't believe I heard myself saying this!
"To write really good spaghetti code, there's nothing beats BASIC."
Arghhhhhhhhhhh!

Security

by Hunter S. Thompson (1955).

Security ... what does this word mean in relation to life as we know it today? For the most part, it means safety and freedom from worry. It is said to be the end that all men strive for; but is security a utopian goal or is it another word for rut?

Let us visualize the secure man; and by this term, I mean a man who has settled for financial arid personal security for his goal in life. In general, he is a man who has pushed ambition and initiative aside and settled down, so to speak, in a boring, but safe and comfortable rut for the rest of his life. His future is but an extension of his present, and he accepts it as such with a complacent shrug of his shoulders. His ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a respectable, but average and prosaic man. But is he a man? has he any self-respect or pride in himself? How could he, when he has risked nothing and gained nothing? What does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? How does he feel when he realizes that be has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? If he thinks this is all well and good, fine, but think of the tragedy of a man who has sacrificed his freedom on the altar of security, and wishes he could turn back the hands of time. A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-hand. Life has by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better. What has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes?

Turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs, but they lived rather than existed. Where would the world be if all men had sought security and not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now- familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.

As an afterthought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?

via Schneier

(via bluprnt)
There's a sobering interview with John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".
He lays out very clearly how the corporate world wraps a country into economic dependancy.

" ... out of the 100 largest economies in the world, 52 are corporations; 47 of them are U.S. corporations – they're not countries, they're corporations."

"This empire that we've created that's made so many people around the planet angry, that's resulted in destitution for billions of people on this planet: 24,000 people starve to death every day; 30,000 children die every single day from lack of medicines for diseases that could be cured and we have to take responsibility for that. We can change that and we will change it. But we'll only change it when we really come to understand what's going on."

It's scary stuff, and then we have the new Overseas Investment Bill currently in parliament which is designed to make it easier for NZ to be controlled by outside interests.

What is it with the LTSA? Are they determined to be stupid?

This new road rule for indicating on roundabouts is plain daft!

First there is the logic.
Indicating right while doing a left turn onto a roundabout, is that counter-intuitive?

Then there is the practical issue:
Having to hold the indicator on, while doing the maneuver. The automatic cancellation on the steering keeps turning off the indicator! So you need to hold it "on", thus leaving only one hand for the wheel.
This is surely a safety issue.

Then there are all the little roundabouts.
They are so small that they are really just glorified intersections with a chicane.
So now you need to indicate right, and then indicate left; and in the amount of time it takes to go through these roundabouts, you'll get about one indicator flash each way.
Oh, and you'll have to do that one-handed, while you operate the indicator.
Brilliant. Like that's helping.

It's easy to forget how much freedom we have ...
Committee to protect bloggers
... and how little others have.
If one more posting can help make a difference, it's not much to ask.

Sadly this is to be no more ... James says it's finally going! The new BB is OK but ain't the same. And once transplanted, the cafe will be all poncy and upmarket eh?

A picture's worth a 1000 words ...

And now ... the movie of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The movie website is a bit hohum, but the trailer just released on the amazon site is more like it! It does seem to be rather laden with hollywood cliches, so I'm hope that the studio machinery don't ruin a perfectly good story in order to make it "accessible" to the american market. Don't Panic: can't wait!

I had a bit of a jaw drop when I read this article about Orcon having problems with Telecom and the UBS.

"We have been waiting for Telecom to split our UBS traffic across two data circuits, as we are now exceeding the 155Mbit/s of UBS traffic that can be carried on a single ATM circuit. Telecom [is] currently trying to figure out how to migrate half our customer base to the new circuit as this has not been done before."

Haven't these guys heard of Inverse Multiplexing (IMA)?
Either Telecom aren't telling the full story (is this a surprise? No.) or they are being exceedingly incompetent (is THIS a suprise? ...yes.).