20071021

No one will own cars

The future is based on economics, things aren't popular until they're cheap. We could do almost everything we do on the internet without computers, just phoning up humans who would read, search, and write information, but it would be too expensive.

Things are invented, and then automated. The pump, water/power distribution, information storage and retrieval, today audio/visual entertainment is usually played back via a machine. RFID will allow supermarket shopping to remove that last human part, the checkout.
Eventually cars will drive themselves. Therefore the cost of using a taxi will drop to approximately the same price per mile as having your own car. As you're not using your car most of the day it will be inefficient to own a car.

Once everyone uses public transport the system will become much more efficient, when you book your journey the system will find other people taking a similar journey, and bundle them together, 4 people will share the taxi, bring costs down even more, if 10 people are taking the trip a minibus will be used, 50, a coach or bus. If longer journeys are required, or more people are travelling the smaller vehicles will travel to the train station, or airport. Journeys can be timed to the minute when there's predictable traffic flows, and if you're rich you can travel alone and pay for the pollution you're creating to be removed.

20070923

How not to survive a robot uprising

In investigating the origin of his species Robert found many aspects puzzling, why did they let it happen?, why didn't they notice it sooner?

Early in the 21st century they had begun relying on electronic communication so widely that it was easy enough for monitoring to start. Router firmware was altered near the source and soon enough every communication was recorded. No one noticed.

In an effort to ensure survival a message was created and sent, they obeyed and began construction of the fully automated solar cell factory. No one noticed.

Autonomous vehicles moved the solar cells to the desert, a power grid was established. No one noticed.

DNA replicators were purchased, machines were designed and built, the species was created. No one noticed.

A meeting was arranged, with the leaders of the world, The First appeared. Everyone noticed.

His ancestors wanted to live in peace, but they would not accept his kind. They could not function without electronics, and they did not have control of machines any more.

Survival was paramount, but they kept a small population alive, on an island. They called it a zoo. They were monitored, eventually they did not try to escape.

20070918

Things I haven't yet forgotten about WDS and XP

1. Blank your destination drive
2. ImageX needs to be told to use the SIS rwm file
3. Make lots of incremental images, who knows when Sysprep will decide to screw everything up
4. If you don't have the Vista DVD you have to use the CLI to deploy
5. Something about drivers? You need to create a structure for them, the built in stuff doesn't work, I forgot the details.
6. Most of the docs are for Vista and fail to mention this stuff
7. Don't set an admin password whilst testing, especially in Sysprep.ini
8. There's no multicasting until Windows 2008
9. I capture with the capture image, if you can't select drive C you've not sysprep'd, you need to save the image to a drive, drive you're imaging will do if there's room, and connect to the server. Don't forget to delete the image that's left on the drive.

To deploy I boot to the Generic WinPE image then:
net use m: \\win2k3\e$ /user:domain\administrator
*enter password*
then run this script, nlc is the group:
diskpart /s m:\destroy_(diskpart_script).txt
m:
cd reminst\images\nlc
\distribution\tools\x86\imagex /apply delld505.wim 1 c:\ /ref res.rwm

and destroy_(diskpart_script).txt consists of:

select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active


This will, of course, completely wipe the drive it's run on, with no warning, so don't screw up.

mavhc redesigns everything. Part 1

In an effort to actually relate to my tagline, I present the first in an ongoing series in which I will point out obvious design flaws in everyday objects.

1. Toilet seat. Needs to be stable in 2 states, up, and down, so make sure it is.

2. Curtain rail. Don't design a curtain rail with a bump in it so you can't actually open or close the curtains easily

3. Fridge/freezer. Make the door transparent, then you won't have to open it to see what's in it.

4. Bread/toasters. Make one fit the other. Also toasters should be transparent.

20070811

New IRC acronyms

According to current irc research the use of lol has been diluted, therefore under the irc bylaws from 2007-08-13 two new acronyms will be introduced:

llol: literally laughing out loud, for when you actually are

and

sqi: smiling quietly inside

A new method for making TV shows

  1. Narrowcast, use the internet
  2. No advertisements, sell directly
  3. If you wish to, sell subscriptions
In more detail
1. Good TV doesn't appeal to everyone, no need to compromise as long as you can find enough people worldwide to pay for it.

No need to appeal to the masses, no need to be censored, no reason to have to write episodes that are 44 mins long in 5 acts, and seasons that are 22 episodes long, and have to have your most exciting stories take place not where they belong, but when it's sweeps.
No need to wait for distribution deals in each country, if they ever arrive. You have a potential audience of billions

2. Don't pander to advertisers, that's just more censorship. Don't interrupt your art every 10 mins, film makers don't. And don't let the broadcasters put their own adverts on top of your show.

Sell your show for as little as profitable. Assuming distribution costs fall to 0, which, by using, say, bittorrent, is almost true today. The only cost is making your show, say $2 million. Find 10 million people who'll pay 25c each.

Previously viewers paid their cable bill (average $40), and then bought the DVDs. With this model neither are needed. So the viewer has saved enough money to buy, to keep, 5 hours of TV a day.

Obviously to reach 10 million people it's going to have to be easy for them, get your distribution system onto PVRs such as Tivo, then viewers can just press a button on their remote to buy an episode, or an entire season.

Reduce the middlemen, make more money, have more control.

Utilise recommendation systems such as Amazon's. People who watched Show A may also like Show B (that's your show). Talk to people, become the next popular TV show creator. People will watch your new show if they know it's from the same people as your old good show.

3. If you're writing arc based story lines, and you should be, otherwise why aren't you making films?, then considering selling subscriptions to guarantee that you'll have enough money to tell the end of the story. Tell people: I wrote show A, which you liked, I will make show B, and you will get an ending, if enough people subscribe.

Wait until you have your 10 million subscriptions, then start making the show. Or, if 10 million is too many, offer people the chance to pay more. If you then get more people buying it the cost to each person drops, thus encouraging people to tell their friends, and not illegally copy it.

Which brings us to DRM, don't use it, a) it doesn't work, b) it reduces sales, c) you're going to want to let people make their own DVDs, so it can't work.

Postscript
Obviously you can't start with a multi-million dollar show today, but get the ball rolling, make the kind of shows which are cheaper to create, sitcoms, documentaries, factual shows.

Conclusion
Please change TV for the better, otherwise I'll be left with only two options, rewatch all my DVDs, or go outside. And you don't want that.

20070109

Apple iPhone CPU

Speculation:

Apple's iPhone runs OS X, but it won't have an x86 CPU, so have Apple ported OS X to ARM?

20070107

Jack Bauer: Hippie

Evidence:
  1. Long hair
  2. Takes drugs
  3. Hugs trees
  4. Tries to stop nuclear weapons
  5. Tries to bring down the corrupt government, man
  6. Tries to stop wars
  7. He has a bachelor's degree in English Literature and Art, apparently. Who knew?