Ever though celebrities were a bunch of know-nothing morons? Well, Ironic Sans has used Google’s new patent search feature to discover that many patents have actually been filed by celebrities. The smartest was Hedy Lamar who was actually a brilliant mind in the world of Cryptography. However, her equally good skills at acting caused most not to take her seriously. It was only recently that she has received the attention she deserves.

This is from my brother, Dan, who went to Japan last summer.

Hey all,

I went walking with no apparent destination and, about 6-10 miles there and back later I found myself home and with impressions of Japan that I figured I’d share. Pretty much, I’m gonna take myths about Japan and debunk or support them. Here we go…

Myth: Everyone in Japan knows English.

False! Everyone in Japan knows English about as much as everyone in the States knows Spanish or French or Italian…they might be able to understand what you’re saying, but most can’t speak it to any degree of proficiency (at least in Okinawa). Luckily, with Okinawa’s large American base presence, road signs are in English and most restaurant menus in Japan have pictures on them, have English, or both English and pictures. Don’t expect the locals to understand too much of what you have to say though, especially if it isn’t rudimentary.

This morning I watch the Diebold documentary, “Hacking Democray”, on HBO or one of its affiliate networks. The basic information in the documentary was not news to me. Since I currently live in Maryland, the news that Johns Hopkins had obtained the source code to the voting machines was all over the place. I knew, even as I did my civic duty of voting this November that it was possible my vote would not count. I had also seen “Man of the Year”, a movie which has a similar theme as its main premise.

Joystick.com reports that judges are finally starting to make some rulings that make sense! We all know (if from nowhere else, than from this blog) that the DMCA is evil. It allows all kinds of restrictions to be placed on you, even though you were a good citizen and bought the content legally. For example, the DMCA makes it illegal to rip a DVD to your computer because that would entail breaking the copy protections on the DVD. This may have killed a HUGE surge or video iPod-like devices. Sure, you can buy video from the iTunes store, but why do that if you already own the movie?

Here’s a quote from O’Reilly:

I don’t own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod… If this is your primary focus in life - the machines… it’s going to have a staggeringly negative effect, all of this, for America… did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them? …I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They’re not playing the video games. They’re killing real people over there.

We have a tradition in the USA in which we allow the user the right to purchase technologies which can be used both legally and illegally. For example, a camcorder can be used to film a documentary, a child’s first steps, or a birthday party. It can also be used to sit in a movie theater and film the movie to then illegally distribute it on the internet. So is the solution to ban all camcorders? No, that would be silly and there are plenty of legal uses for a camcorder. The correct solution is to police movie theaters to make sure that such persons do not gain entry. In fact, in the Betamax case, the judge ruled that VCRs were legal because although they could be used to bootleg movies, they could also be used to watch legally purchased movies and time-shift programs, allowing the user to watch television on his or her own schedule. VCRs can also be used to copy tapes which the owner has the right to copy - such as his own footage.

Newegg.com has begun selling them and they have a Plextor brand Blue Ray burner for $835.99. Sounds similar to how much a DVD burner would have set you back just a few years ago. Now they are selling for $60 and less. So I’m predicting that Blue Ray technology burners will be about this price in 3-5 years. Also, there was a fiasco with DVD+R and DVD-R just as there is now Blue Ray and DVD-HD. Yet burners now burn both DVD + and - so it may end up the same with the newer technologies.

BitTorrent - up until now, mentioning legal uses of the program was likely to garner snickers from your audience. Afterall, it’s just for downloading music and software illegally, isn’t it? Actually, for the past few years, it’s been the way that most people download their completely legal copies of Linux operating systems. In fact, for Linux distribution companies it has been a HUGE load off of their ISO servers to allow people to be able to use BitTorrent to download their software.

See the Firefox 2.0 press release here!

If Microsoft thought they would have the IE 7.0 release to gloat about for long, they were wrong. Firefox 2.0 is due to debut this afternoon. I’ve provided a nice little link over to the page to download Firefox, but I don’t expect it to be updated to Firefox 2.0 until this afternoon when the new code will hit the mirrors. Lots of new code for me to play with today!