Upcoming Canon lenses

Interested in superiour telephoto lenses?

Warning: these will not be available at amateur prices. We are talking thousands of dollars.

The press release says: "A Product Report required by 21.C.F.R.§ 1002.10 has not been submitted to the United States Food and Drug Administration for this product. This product is not, and may note be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until the required report has been submitted."

The Food and Drug Administration? Huh?

Wireless ebook

Free TidBITS ebook on wireless networking.

A modest proposal

As you know, there are two kinds of people, those who divide people into two groups, and those who don't.
I'm the former.
And one of my favorite divisions is: those who want to control other's lives, and those who don't. I'm the latter.

A good example is the German cannibal case. Some people see it as an obvious great immorality to eat a human, even if you have his consent, and think this should be stopped by law. I don't see why. People's lives are their own.

Of course it should be clear that subject must be in his right mind and consenting. I guess it's a sticky point because most people can't reconcile "right mind" with "consenting to be eaten". But we'd all do well to not equate "abnormal" with "sick" or "sinful", and particularly not with "must be illegal".

I can't imagine why anybody would want to be eaten or to eat somebody. But it's a great big world out there, and personal liberty is one of our holiest ideals, and should be defended even in the face of things we may consider repugnant.

;-)

Rip-off warnings

Fool.co.uk article on scams, number one and two.

Drawn Together

From the very, very "adult" animated TV show Drawn Together, how to spout Asian gibberish. The show is far out, and often very funny. If you like South Park, you'll probably like it.
I wonder if all that is on the DVDs was also on TV. They actually have nudity (of cartoons, OK, but still). In the second season, including penises (peni?*), but interestingly, no vulvas. I guess society as a whole finds a vulva more offensive than a penis. (Note: most would erroneously call it "vagina", but that is the internal tube only.**)

Entertainment Weekly gave the show an F and said: "This is TV so bad, it's bad for you." You can't buy reviews like that.

*That's a joke, folks.
**Pedantic? Nah. Words are there for a reason. You wouldn't call a car a bicycle.

Personal outsourcing

Outsourcing: not just for corporations anymore.

Quote:
"Rajesh Shah, the 27-year-old president of Global Solutions, tells his clients to call him anytime, even on his cellphone at 3 a.m."

Isn't that insane? What kind of job would merit that?
How long can you live like that?

"Some labor experts are skeptical that this kind of outsourcing will ever go beyond a small group of enthusiasts. One issue is being able to trust a worker thousands of miles away with projects of a personal nature."

How's that different from trusting a worker five miles away?

Final commented:
"Eolake, I'd suggest that your DOMAI business is probably something that can be reliably outsourced. I'm sure there are regular daily or weekly chores that are quite repetitive, including billing and collections, and rotating images on the site."

This is something I've looked at occasionally for a few years. You'd think so. But interestingly, I'm unable to see very much which could be outsourced. Billing is already outsourced to CCBill, and I have very little paperwork. I do, and want to do, very little to the images themselves. I like them to look real, not Playboy-airbrushed. The biggest "labor" is the near daily selecting of the images to put on the members' site. And... I may be kidding myself, but I think only I can do it. I feel there are many, many things to judge images on, and it has taken me years to be able to do it quickly and reliably. There are subtle qualities which I doubt any other editor would be able to pick up on, like exactly how much "sexiness" one can leave in a set without ruining the innocence/happiness which makes the site special.

Iron Man and Filter

I was not aware that there's an Iron Man film coming. The trailer looks promising. I think the armor-action sequences convey more about raw power than any Superman film I've seen. Very nice.
And the suit is beautiful.

And I was tickled to hear they use one of my fave one hit wonders: Filter's Nice Shot. I call it a one-hit wonder because it was the only song of its class in the CD I paid good money for. But what a song.

The next Batman also looks promising. Maybe it will be a bit more edgy than the first one (of the new series), which seemed to me to be a little... bland. But from the new trailer, it seems they understand that the Joker is not funny, but can be one of the scariest villains ever. As he was in The Dark Knight Returns, the classic Frank Miller comic from which this film seems to get its title.

Alan Moore article

Alan Moore article/interview.
"The basic stance that we were taking in Lost Girls is that the sexual imagination cannot be policed, you cannot shut areas of it off and I think that if you do, it actually becomes dangerous."

"I did Voice of the Fire, which was set in the county of Northamptonshire. But with Jerusalem, I thought that that was probably far too cosmopolitan and far-reaching and that I ought to concentrate upon a couple of square blocks of Northampton, where I actually grew up. This is a half-million words, so the next book is obviously just going to be a couple of million words long; it's just all going to be about one end of my living-room. I suppose it's having started out with fantasies about the farthest reaches of space and time and the human world, I suppose it's a gradual realisation that the actual place where I'm sitting is about the most fantastic spot in my universe."

Voice of the Fire was unreadable. I don't think I'll even buy Jerusalem.

I wonder why so many good writers get into a state where their works get longer and longer and longer, and harder and harder and harder to read?

Fairy tales

Neil Gaiman on fairy tales for adults.

Coincidentally, I'm just reading Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies, in which fairies are nasty, murderous, and sadistic. A Granny Weatherwax story, gotta love that.

Sinatra

Famous article about Frank Sinatra, from 1966.

It's interesting how a very young Harlan Ellison figures in the article. If anybody could match Sinatra in the ferocious-ego department, it would be Ellison.

Quote:
"It was reported then that the paparazzi had made Sinatra a collective offer of $16,000 if he would pose with Ava Gardner; Sinatra was said to have made a counter offer of $32,000 if he could break one paparazzi arm and leg."

Now that's funny! I can understand him.

Though it must be said I don't get the appeal of his music. And I have a hard time respecting a man, no matter how successful and well dressed, who is so much into fighting, on so many levels.

Hybrid airship

This is interesting.
But I think it will be awfully victimized by weather, no? Not only does it not fly above the weather like jets do, but it is also bigger and slower.

Aeros' page on the craft.

X-Wing

Biggest Star Wars toy yet?