I have no idea what they were smoking… but the developers of the Wordpress blogging software took a working editor and turned it into something highly unusable.

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It’s usually the case that software projects do not finish on time. There are many, many reasons for this, but we shall not go into those reasons just now.

Inspired by the strange idea-particles floating around the Large Hadron Collider, I shall now offer you an ingenious solution, a magic bullet of magic bullet; the methodology to end all methodologies.
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This perhaps explains it… :)

Tony Howlett gave a presentation in Defcon 16 about the “cashless society”; why, what it means and likely developments. It’s a very interesting read, especially the point made about card payments - what happens when there’s no electricity?
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Bell Labs is pulling out of basic physics research. They will focus instead on “networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software”.

It’s like peeing your pants to get warm in the winter. It helps for a short time, but then you’re much colder than before.

And what have the people of Bell Labs invented, then? Well, nothing much, just some obscure and unused things like information theory, the laser, UNIX, C programming language, silicon-based transistors, and so on. And they got only 6 Nobel prizes for research done at Bell Labs too.

Maybe they could continue if they had invented perpetual motion and had managed to get 5000 Nobel prizes. Yeah.

… Umm, okay. All hail SA_Steve for that highly weird picture.

My friend asked to recommend some good books I’ve recently read. So here’s a list with some.
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I was in Helsinki during the recent “Night of the Arts” event, and visited a fully packed bookstore. All books were on discount, so after quick scouting I grabbed a “No.1 New York Times bestseller” from the shelf: Lone Survivor, written by Mr. Marcus Luttrell, a US Navy SEAL. It turned out to be just about the worst book I’ve ever read.
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As the Earth is warming up, arctic ice cover is melting away at an increasing rate. Estimates have been given that around 20% of Earth’s yet untapped resources are within the Arctic Circle.

In order to illustrate the geopolitical risks behind nations claiming parts of the arctic as their own, a map has been created by the good people of Durham University.

The map can be seen here. The power players are Russia, Denmark, USA, Canada and Norway.

Due to increased phishing attacks against banks with bad security procedures, banks have been forced to re-think their situation. To be fair, the Swedish branch of Nordea fixed their internet bank procedures somewhat after these problems.

Anyway, my bank (Nordea) recently sent me a Todos Argos Mini II USB smartcard reader, to be used with the Nordea internet bank. It’s actually quite simple to use.
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