Apple released their mysterious tablet computer, called iPad.

The marketing slogan used for it is “Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelieveable price”. Indeed, it is revolutionary in the business model it represents.

The hit products which Apple has made recently include the music player iPod, the smartphone iPhone, and now the table computer iPad. What do all these have in common? Snazzy UI, yes, but also the closed hardware and the tight lock-in with the Apple App Store (and iTunes for media content).

On a more abstract level, every single one of those devices give the vendor more or less exclusive control over what you can and cannot run or view in your device.

Is this the magical and revolutionary new way of the future? If so, count me out.

When the weather gets cold, the tough whip up a warm soup.

This one is slightly thai-influenced in its taste, and extremely quick and simple to do.
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BBC reports that “The head of Russia’s federal space agency has said it will work to divert an asteroid which passes near the Earth in the 2030s.”

The asteroid in question is 99942 Apophis, which currently stands at 1:250000 odds of smashing into Earth on 2036. 99942 Apophis also has a close fly-by on Friday, April 13th, 2029.

I am delighted that such a high-level instance is speaking so strongly in favor of asteroid protection.

Indeed, Apophis could be a good candidate to practise deflection, since we already know it’s coming and know the orbit relatively well too. Plus, there is enough time to act.

Some previous posts about the asteroid threat and why it is important to do something about it are here and here.

Today is the day when my native country, in 1917, stopped being a Grand Duchy of Russia and started being an independent nation.

For Finns 6th of December is a very important day. Flags fly, and there’s a traditional military parade in some city. People light (usually blue-white) candles to remember the independence and most importantly the people who died defending the independence.

Another big tradition is the President’s Independence Day reception at the Presidential Castle in Helsinki. They air that on television, and most of the nation (something like nearly half!) sits and watches who is invited, how the movers and shakers are dressed, and who, if any, will cause a scandal this time.

A nice thing is that the reception is streamed on the Internet too, and therefore can be seen from abroad too. So my plans for today are to make some nice food, tuna fillets with leek-onion white wine & parsley sauce and mushroom-leek risotto, open a white wine and watch the reception via Internet!

So I got a discount voucher, and went to a Subway restaurant and grabbed a sandwich.

They gave me a freebie to go, a little bag of potato chips.

Normally, potato chips are made of 1. potatoes, 2. oil, 3. salt. That’s it. How boring.

Luckily this one was barbeque flavored one!

Here’s the list of stuff contained in the barbeque flavor – a handy list if you wish to barbeque-flavorize your morning yoghurt or your living room rug, although it might be wisest to not try to make it at home, unless you possess a meth lab in the basement:

• sugar
• whey powder (from milk)
• rusk (from wheat)
• flavour enhancer (monosodium glutamate, aka. MSG)
• flavourings (contains wheat, soya, lactose)
• colour (paprika extract, caramel)
• sweetener (aspartame)

How could they fit all that into that tiny 27,5 g bag? Well, it was tasty, though.

An interesting read: “A life in the day: David de Rothschild“. Yes, he’s one of those famous Rothschilds.

He’s planning to sail a catamaran created from recycled plastic junk to an area in the Pacific Ocean, where all kinds of plastic junk is circulating and destroying the wildlife.

We’ll sail through some of the world’s most ecologically threatened regions, including the Great Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, where currents converge and marine debris — 90% plastic — gathers. As this debris consists of microscopic fragments, it’s getting straight into the food chain.

The Google Chromium OS is open sourced.

In the world of Chromium OS, applications will be web apps. Access to the applications will be through the web browser. The web apps live in the cloud, i.e. in a bunch of servers somewhere in the Internet.

In light of this, let’s talk about cloud computing. More specifically, let’s talk about the security and privacy trade-offs of non-cloud and cloud computing.

Do you trust the cloud?
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A battle took place, at a narrow sea-shore lined track at Thermopylae, about 2500 years ago. The defenders fought valiantly against the Persians but were ultimately killed to the last man.

Simonides of Ceos wrote about it with these words:

Go tell the Spartans, you who read:
we took their orders, and lie here dead.

There comes a time in each man’s life that he can’t even believe his own eyes.

A new programming language has emerged from Google. It’s called Go.

And one thing is certain, someone’s responsible!

These people are Rob Pike, Ken Thompson (of the Plan 9 fame), and Robert Griesemer.

I’ll bet my badge right now we haven’t seen the last of those weirdies.

(You might want to read this also.)

Thanks to Christophe-Marie, who sent me a link of a very interesting video of a UI concept where the mouse is no longer relevant. Instead, multi-finger touch is used, with quite natural gestures.

Here’s the 10/GUI video by C. Miller.

Why do I like it?
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