2013 — 27 May: Monday
This is the first time I've actually heard Eric Schmidt1 who's being gently roasted on BBC Radio 4 as I start the week. "No computer scientist would design a global tax system that is as complicated... We don't actually use the data you give us in particularly heinous ways... Parents are going to have to have the 'online' talk long before they have the 'sex' talk..." But then, I suspect he would say all of that, wouldn't he?
Meanwhile, reading the current 'Private Eye' with its long piece on UK "hollow shell" corporations operating largely free of oversight all round the world2 offers a disheartening view of the state of the relationship between me, my guvmint, international corporations, international finance, armed conflicts, drugs... all the nastiest aspects of modern life.
There are irritating...
... differences in the user interface of the Kindle for PC application on BlackBeast and the corresponding Android Kindle App on my Tablet PC. Although synchronisation of my reading progress on a given book works well enough across both devices, for example, there seem to be a few unnecessary hurdles between getting a book that I've downloaded on the PC across to the Tablet in the first place, whereas getting one downloaded initially on the Tablet over to the PC is straightforward.
There are three "lost sheep" on the PC that have yet to manage the cyberspatial hyperspace jump across to the Tablet — where I can more easily read them in bed! (Mind you, I've received dire warnings about how much a Tablet hurts if it drops on to your face should you happen to fall asleep 'under' it.)
Stick with this...
... to the end and you even get a snippet of opera from a cosmologist. (Link.)
Later
Good books, good music, even good weather. A perfect Bank Holiday. Makes a delicious change. Even the balsamic salad dressing — a first for me — was palatable :-)
Fantastic and funny interview with Tony Garnett. A real, and rare, treat. Good man.
Later still
I've just heard (a bit of), been enchanted by, and now downloaded, the (whole of the) album "Rapsodia" by Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Whatever next, I wonder? [Appreciative pause] It's a wonderful album, though I have heard almost none of the music before. Amazing stuff.