2010 — 15 April: Thursday
Blimey! It's now 02:04 — I arrived home with 20,016 miles on the "clock". I think I'll celebrate by turning in. The night's two (excellent) films were Personal Effects and the 1997 version of Great Expectations. I shall buy my own copy of the former in a minute or so.
G'night.
It was chilly enough...
... last night to count stars and put the plasma fire on for the duration, but it's bright and sunny at the moment (09:42) as I munch through the breakfast concrete mix. The proportion of milk can make a critical difference...
In an online world where I can buy a Blu-ray imported from the US for less than £10 (including shipping) I do wonder1 why HMV wastes money by printing price tags of double that amount and sticking them on the same discs in its High Street outlets. But with the closure (in Soton, at least) of Fopp, Virgin, Woolies, and the silver disc shop in West Quay I see they face no serious competition. Isn't capitalism marvellous?
Next scheduled2 excitement: my chum Ian's arrival and adventures galore.
What's a minute worth?
Somewhere between zero and infinity, I guess:
... if the approximately 200 million US adults who go online earned twice the minimum wage, a minute of their time each day equals about $16 billion a year. Therefore, for any security measure to be justified, each minute users are asked to spend on it daily should reduce the harm they are exposed to by $16 billion annually. It's a high hurdle to clear.
Worth a couple of minutes to read, certainly. The comment from "JoshyR" made me smile: As an IT support dude this is one of the main reasons why I have my job — resetting users' passwords and cleaning out spyware; such a great job I have! I'm also bemused, in places like "PCWorld," at the shelves laden with virus scanners, spyware scanners, etc. As Thomas Landauer queried 15 years ago, "where's all the productivity we were promised?"
The good news...
... is that wiser heads have finally prevailed at the British Chiropractic Association, but that still leaves Simon Singh with a bill of over £100,000 which is neither right nor fair. (Source.)
The bad news...
... is that we're all going to have to wash a plume of Icelandic ash off our cars. (Source.)
Come on, Ian. I'm getting hungry! It's 12:18 dammit. (But still sunny enough for a pub lunch.)
Somewhat later
I evicted the poor lad at just before 21:00 after an extended natter and lunch (in my case) at Brambridge. I got the impression he likes the plasma screen and associated surround sound system. He was quite taken with the iMac that was on duty as a giant iPod. And he introduced me to this before taking me on a tour of a couple of the web sites he's developing (one for Wonder Woman Tuppy Owens).
The marching morons
What's going on here?