Gun control, Houston style

Great letter from gun-ho Texan in the Economist last week:

SIR – While agreeing that people sometimes misuse guns, the same can be said for knives, baseball bats and cars. Gun control has been tried in the past. The Nazis took away a right to weapons in Germany and then led millions to the slaughterhouse. That is why I support the private ownership of guns without any regulation including, especially including, registration of the weapons. My idea of gun control is: breathe, aim, squeeze.

David Bush

Houston

Like the guy for his 'lack of guns leads to ethnic cleansing logic'; love him for his last line. Wish I could do the accent.

That russian download site is dead, love live that russian download site

The pay system for allofmp3.com is now well and truly dead, shut down by some spiky music industry execs, no doubt. This has cast many of us to into a painful world of paying full prices for music.

However, salvation from honesty is at hand. Those lovable russian rogues have given us a fully working, credit-card-taking $1.40 an album music site. Rejoice and go forth to fill that back catalogue.

www.mp3sale.ru

Real-world avatars?

Intersting story in the Guardian last week.

It talks to the creator of a robot that is designed to be a perfect body double for its creator. The theory is that if the robot looks lifelike, people will react to it naturally. When the creator has full control over movement and speech, he or she can effectively be in two places at once. With sensors increasing in sophisticaton, they can even have the full sensory experience of being elsewhere.

What if, rather than the robot being a perfect reproduction of the user, it was a representation of who they wanted to be; A real physical-world avatar. It's kind of the ultimate plastic surgery. Your old, boring, physical body stays home wired up. You, with all senses firing, are out into the world in your new body. Of the sex, appearance and dress of your choosing. You could even have different bodies for different days, or occasions....or partners.

Maybe, in fifty years or so, this will be so sophisticated and commonplace that we really won't think of it as any different to slipping on a new pair of jeans. Or, a bit more permanently, changing your name?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2065580,00.html

I thought you booked it?

The perils of running ad campaigns without checking the URL is booked first...

(report nicked from b3ta.com)
Graffiti promoting a new film included a URL
that the ad agency forgot to register. Or had
they? We linked it last week, and reader Mark
Laughlin got in touch and gave us the real
story.

"It was me that registered it and, yes, that
really was a complete balls-up on the part of
the ad agency.

"I saw the stencils last Friday just off
Tottenham Court Road whilst on me lunch. Got
back and tried the URL - and good lord it was
unregistered. So 8 quid later and 20 minutes of
pissing about I've got a site up and running
and started my game of 'wait and see'.

"They spent the earlier part of this week
getting narky with me and generally panicking
before offering to buy the domain for the same
price I bought it for... After the word spread
across the internets on Friday they got rather
more desperate and way keener to settle it
quickly.

"I could have been a brat and held out for a
lot more, but I elected to take the quick win
before inevitably Fox and the bigger guns got
involved.

"I'm not telling how much they wound up having
to pay me. It's almost certainly less than you
think. Let's say - enough for a nice holiday or
a shiny new telly (and considerably more than
the £8.99 I paid for it)

"PS. Ad agency in question was "The Creative
Partnership'"

So there you have it. Unless, you know, he's a
marketing agency plant.