technology

Unlimited Membership

In a survey by the political party I’m a member of (GroenLinks), I was asked to estimate the local membership. Admittedly, my answer wasn’t very intelligent, but the response of the survey system beats all. Political Party Survey – Question 16 Q16. In your estimation, how many members does the local chapter of your political […]

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High Dupefactor

There are a lot of commercials for High Definition TV on regular TV these days. These commercials try to sell us on the idea of the much higher image quality of HDTV. Is it just me, or is that the same as advertizing CD audio through a bullhorn?

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I Want To Live In South-Korea

It’s not a new thought that we’re living in the age of science fiction. But there’s a huge gap between knowing this and reading about it in a feature article in our newspaper. The piece–fronted by an artist’s impression of a city of giant green cat scratching poles–describes the wild pipe dreams of Dutch architect […]

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Top-Ten Things Picasa Sees Faces In

An exciting new feature in the latest version of Picasa is the ability to recognize faces in your photographs. This enables you to automatically tag every single photo in your database with the names of everyone in it. Even better, after having been taught the identity of a couple of faces, Picasa learns their features […]

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Navigation Mafia

There is a conspiracy afoot to thwart my attempts at acquiring navigation software for my new smartphone. A year ago, I learned of the upcoming TomTom 7 navigation software. Screenshots and descriptions sounded utterly cool, so I decided to see if I could get my hands on a (legal) copy. TomTom customer service was less […]

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Job Opening At Help Desk Call Center

Marvelous job opportunity for the outrageously obnoxious and terminally thick! Have you been fired as drugs mule? Been found too stupid and anti-social for the gang life? Failed as child pornographer? Apply now! Job tasks include: blindly assuming all callers are idiots deliberately misreading, misunderstanding and misconstruing every word in each caller’s question in discussions […]

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How To Write Eight Books A Day

It is a well-known fact that truth is stranger than fiction, but to paraphrase George Orwell, some truths are more strange than others. For instance, there is a man in Paris who has written 86,000 books. Assuming extreme precociousness, and assuming he is around 45 at this time, that number amounts to about 8 books […]

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You Know Technology Is Advancing Rapidly When…

… you pass the time during a long flight by playing games, and are defeated at chess by the reclining seat in front of you.

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Iceberg Technology

Waiting for a bridge to close on my way home today, I realized there is a class of technology of which we see only a little bit in our daily lives. I’m not thinking of devices we don’t see at all, underground or secret installations or such, but machines of which the bit we see […]

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Always The Last Place You Look

My computer display was acting up. After unscrewing upwards of 20 tiny screws and spending 15 minutes with my arms shoved up to the elbows into the display innards, I ended up fixing the problem by shoving a folded-up card between the on switch and the casing. From the outside. But do I feel frustrated? […]

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