Category: technology

Have Steorn actually discovered a way to harness a free, renewable and plentiful energy source which will completely change the world? If it’s a hoax, it’s one of the most compelling of all time. If their serious and IF (very BIG IF) the technology is feasible it would bring about a fundamental shift in technology and geo-politics. Energy generation from natural resources is such a fundamental part of the balance (or unbalance) of financial power among the World’s nations that such a discovery would irrevocably change that. Just think, Enron II could be a network of imaginary companies pulling real world energy from an imaginary void, only kidding. Seriously though, I’m interested to see if this proposed innovation correlates with that other “energy from the void” proposal of a few years ago, Motionless Electromagmetic Generator or MEG. I’m not saying for a minute there’s will never be an established scientific basis for this but I’m surprised that no report I’ve read has mentioned the two ideas in the same breath where there appears to be a clear relationship in terms of the the technology used to realise the generators and its net effect, if you pardon the pun.
Incidentally (perhaps), steorn is an anagram of “no rest”.

Excellent article from the Reg about MS’s Windows Genuine Advantage programme. A few things mentioned that I wasn’t aware of (shame on me). WGA collects a lot more information than you think, uses some questionable identifiers to determine the legitimacy of your system (including the harddrive serial number. Therefore if you need to replace the harddrive in your machine WGA will flag you as a pirate. In summary MS is making it more difficult to update a computer OS that they’ve sold you in full knowledge that it has KNOWN security issues unless you enroll in a scheme whereby they gather information about your computer that COULD be used to identify you later on. Quel surprise?

Is it just me or does the Linden Script Language and Second Life in general remind them of the Oop! company and programming tool in Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs book? It’s just a thought but having had a look at second life I’m impressed by it’s technology and capability but it’s still a bit “geeky”. Interacting with virtual life objects using an OO scripting language is wonderful in theory but it needs some good UI building tools I suppose. Still, this digital microcosm is hugely successful at the moment with an economy alledgedly worth millions of dollars. Let’s not think about the liquidity issues just yet.

Just last week I used this very nifty site to reliably trace a piece of SPAM I had. It’s a very interesting application of Google Maps and beta’s the kind of self-rolled apps we can expect to be built upon Google’s powerful range of APIs and services. Apart from that, it looks very cool indeed 🙂