WTF? Microsoft is trying to patent 'emoticons'

Now this is fking ridiculous. At first I thought Amazon's 1 click patent was insane. Now this takes the cake.

My favourite company on the planet, Microsoft, is trying to patent the emoticon.

Thank god europe has the sense to disallow software patents.

It's a matter of time before someone tries to patent the chair to keyboard interface.

17 years later, he finally married the girl.

Well it finally happened.

This past Saturday, the (mostly) Reverend Wil Stonehill got married.

What more can I say?

The weekend was awesome!

The drive up to Canada was great – nice and relaxing with perfect weather (I took the back roads and avoided the interstates). I arrived nice and relaxed after only 9 hours of driving.
I got to see some old friends, and generally have a great time.
The Stag party was even fun – despite the groom not being a drinker and an Anglican minister. I won't go into any details in order to protect the guilty and their marriages. :) All I can say in this respect it that it was good to be back in Canada.

Anyway, I'm thrilled that Wil and Susan, years later, are finally together.

Yay!

It's worse than that, he's dead Jim.

Today, Canadian actor James Doohan aka Scotty, Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise from the original series of Star Trek died today at 85.

Dammit Jim.

Doohan was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, youngest of four children of William Doohan, a pharmacist, veterinarian and dentist, and his wife Sarah; his family later moved to Sarnia, Ontario where he attended high school at "SCITS", Sarnia Collegiate Institute and Technical School and excelled in math and science.

During World War II, he participated in the invasion of Juno Beach on D-Day as a captain with the Royal Canadian Artillery. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. The chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case. Returning from the war, Doohan started his acting career with a CBC radio show appearance on January 12, 1946. He also enrolled in a drama class in Toronto, later he won a two-year scholarship to New York's famed Neighborhood Playhouse, where fellow students included Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall and Richard Boone.

[edit]

whoda thunk it...

so last night Andy and I decided to go for a bit of nostalgia and pop onto our old mud to see who was still around and goof off.

i looked at the message board in my old room and found a message dated tuesday may 5 1998 from andy in response to my looking at getting a bmw motorcycle...

"that motorbike is as hot at my pants.

theyre scary things though - one nudge and youre
pavement peanut butter. I'd go with the convertible
myself. I just think cars are more useful :)

_-//Andy"

Now that's funny on so many levels.

the _ultimate_ ipod accessory for women

Yes, that's right, someone's created a wearable vibrator that works in harmony with your music player. Strap the silicone butterfly in place, plug it into your favourite music player and get jiggy with the musical beat. It will also work in rhythm with external noises from stereos or club sound systems, so you'll be able to get into the... er... groove and get off on it all at the same time. Ah, the joys of modern living... If that's not an example of technology making life better, we don't know what is. Get yours from the excellently-named Grand Opening for $70.

Almost makes me wish i was a chick.

Paint it black

i'm a nerd.

no - really i am.

i'm sure this comes as a shock to you.

why (today) am i a nerd?

because i'm all excited about this keyboard I bought from Thinkgeek.com. the action on the keyboard is actually pretty nice - and i do enjoy the liberating feeling of not looking down to type. my typing speed is getting quicker. i love it.

Black is beautiful.

IKEA Phu><0rz!

Okay, you'd think i would learn from Andy's wonderful experiences at IKEA, but hey- i'm a dumbass.

So sunday i get up nice and early, call IKEA to see if they have the bit i need (i'm not that much of a dumbass), and upon receiving comfirmation - i'm off!

I get there, and of course they're out of stock. I just wanted a nice leather ottoman thing to be an ottoman/coffee table for my living room.

no joy.

so i made that 45 min drive each way, fought my way through birkenstock wearing lesbian couples, gnarly old men and their wives griping about prices as they (presumably) were shopping for their college freshmen daughters, and a small army of smelly foreign people who were looking get some good american/swedish deals to take back home(?) with them.

ikea blows monkeys.

Your secret is safe with us - promise!

this is a repost from the fine folks over at Attrition

If you get a phone call from your credit card company, do you give them your social security number? Your mother's maiden name? The soul of your first-born child? Do you think that the company that holds your personal information cares more about you than their own bottom line? Of course you don't. And of course they don't.

In a one month period, an estimated 40 million credit card numbers could have possibly been compromised. What do the companies in charge of your personal information have to say about it? Better yet... what is the media reporting? You won't get the same story on both sides, will you?

What is becoming a near weekly occurance, large companies are collecting your personal information (sometimes without your knowledge or consent), and subsequently letting it fall into the hands of the bad guys. This is your personal information; name, address, social security number, credit card number, and more sometimes. All of this information is invaluable to criminals who carry out identity theft crime every day.

---

Ten Most Recent

University of Southern California - [2005-07-09]
(270,000 people to be contacted regarding security breach) [update] [mirror]

Michigan State University - [2005-07-07]
(27,000 accounts possibly compromised) [mirror]

Iron Mountain - [2005-07-06]
(physical loss of backup tapes - 600,000 exposed) [update] [mirror] [mirror 2]

DSW Shoes - [2005-06-30]
(Unspecified customer information, FTC Chief is victim - 1.4 million card numbers exposed) [mirror]

Medica Health Plans - [2005-06-29]
(System administrators may have had access to 1.2 million member records) [mirror]

CVS Corp. - [2005-06-21]
(Information on millions of transactions possibly revealed) [mirror]

CardSystems (MasterCard, Visa, American Express) - [2005-06-19]
(13.9 million compromised, but "only" 68,000 at high risk?) [update] [mirror] [mirror 2]

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) - [2005-06-17]
(personal data of nearly 6,000 current and former employees stolen) [mirror]

Equifax Canada Inc. - [2005-06-17]
(605 consumer files breached - second breach in the last year) [mirror]

Motorola - [2005-06-13]
(Theft of computers containing names and Social Security numbers) [mirror]

********

And you people call me paranoid.

Vive la France (or not)

I have found the really and truly stupidest lawsuit of all time. Actually, someone from Groklaw found it and and i'm blatantly doing some cut 'n pasting.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald [sub req'd], a transit company is suing a group of ten cleaning women in France, because they are car pooling instead of continuing to use their service. The Guardian has the story too. The number comes from this French account. The transit company lawyers call that "unfair and parasitical competition." They are asking for damages, including fines and -- believe it or not -- confiscation of the women's cars.

I love this quote from the Guardian:

"Using our cars is quicker and at least twice as cheap. And on the bus we didn't have the right to eat or even to speak," said Martine Bourguignon.

Wow, you dont' have the right to speak? No wonder the women are carpooling. ;)

Wtf is going on with our society? Monopolies are using to courts to maintain their monopolies... Kinda like Microsoft using SCO to go after the GPL....

Real Life Tron...

I've seen a lot of weird game/reality crossovers ( i.e. real life monopoly in London), but this one is the coolest.

Remember the movie Tron? the first big CG movie?

Turns out some geeks managed to re-create the light-cycles game from Tron, but for real life.

That's really cool.

With some minor mods, one could do it with motorcycles....

Hmmmm

Arcola's Angels

So yesterday a couple of us from my station, along with a whole slew of 1st responders from DC and Maryland got together in downtown DC for a photoshoot.

We were part of what will be a poster campaign for the Emergency Preparedness Initiative

The Emergency Preparedness Initiative will be launching a national awareness campaign in September as part of National Preparedness Month. Part of this campaign will include a poster that will include first responders and people with disabilities photographed together, as "partners".
There will be approx 100,000 posters sent across the country. Pretty cool!

The photographer was a guy called Earl Dotter who is apparently a rather famous photographer. I’ll post some pics when I get copies from the shoot. It was pretty damned fun then.

Special thanks to Jessica and Kymber who came with me – we needed more 1st responder chicks in uniforms.

Gang 9

it seems that a bunch of us from my firestation have bikes. So our chief thought that we should pose for a picture. So we did. Unfortunately not everyone showed us with their bikes. But this is what we have - oh - click on the pic for a bigger copy.

and yes, i know there are more people than bikes, but the other guys we kind enough to help us clean the engine and such, and we're all on the same team etc etc - we took the pic together.

Notional Identity

The 4th of July just passed – a big celebration of freedom and independence. As a dual citizen of Canada and the UK, living in the US during their Independence Day is always interesting. But hey, I live here, I love it, and as they say in those tacky Louis Lamour westerns, “I ride for the brand."

From what i remember about history, the American Revolution was about freedom. So I got to thinking – what is freedom to an American?

Well in the US – there are 3 basic documents that hold the tenets of freedom:

United States Constitution
Declaration of Independence
Bill of Rights

There is a deeper question here though – Freedom to do what? Or Freedom from whom?

I personally believe that a person should be free to do as they desire, so long as their actions don't impede the freedoms of another. In other words – what I do in my own home is my business. Most Americans would agree with this philosophy I think (despite the legislation on drugs and such – but that's a topic for another time).

So if what I do in my home is my own business, this begs the question then Freedom from Whom?

The obvious answer is freedom from government intervention. The American Revolution was also based on the Great Awakening and ironically the Enlightenment. In many ways, these were mutually exclusive belief systems, but then this is the idea of freedom right?

Either way, the concept was one of freedom from Tyranny.

So what's Tyranny?

In the original Greek meaning "tyrant" carried no ethical censure, a tyrant was anyone who overturned the established government of a city-state, usually through the use of popular support, to establish himself as dictator, or the heir of such a person.

But today it seems to mean:

The term now carries connotations of a cruel despot who places their own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population of the state over which they govern.
Upon reading that definition – it got me to thinking about some of the issues that are going on right now that deal with freedom.

For example, back in the UK, there's a lot of debate going on about the UK's National Identity Card programme. (More information is available here, and opposition information here)

Aside from the huge cost (according to the LSE it will cost approx $500USD per ID card – and each person pays for their card.

Why is a National ID Card a good idea?

ID Cards don't prevent terrorism
ID Cards don't prevent Identity Theft
ID Cards aren't cheap
ID Cards can be forged
ID Cards make us less secure

Here is some some funny flash animation that also helps explain the issues.

What does this have to do with those us of living the US? Tons actually.

A US National ID card was recently slipped into a “must pass" appropriations bill. This means that soon a US National ID card is coming to you.

So looking at the big picture...

National ID Cards
warrant-free 'sneak and peek' law enforcement investigations
road surveillance cameras being installed everywhere
clandestine biometric surveillance
Patriot Act II – who needs judicial overview anyway?
Echelon
Carnivore
RFID Tags in passports
No Fly Lists
RFID Tags in consumer goods


Hmm... There's a pattern here, but I can't seem to find it.