Random Developments

Sometimes I think that the best argument against having kids is the behaviour of some parents. I mean, it does look like having kids turns you into a raving lunatic — at least for some people. Case in point: an ad for Hyundai was pulled from Australia TV after stations received complaints from parents. The ad shows a very young kid (two, maybe three years old) driving a Hyundai SUV, picking up a girl of the same age on the side of the road and going to the beach to surf.

The parents complained because, among other things, the ad — get this! — promotes under-age driving. Now, I can’t imagine that a 12 or 13-year-old, who might be physically able to actually drive a car, will be compelled to do so after seeing a toddler driving on TV. And a toddler just won’t be able to drive! Not that a toddler will fell inclined to do so, anyway.

Now, to be fair, part of the problem, supposedly, is that the kid is shown wearing a seat-belt, instead of the obligatory child-restraint seat (well, duh! how would he be able to drive from the child seat?) and that contravenes the advertising rules for cars. But it’s a two-year-old driving! How much less real can you get?

The ad is still running in New Zealand, apparently. And, of course, it’s in YouTube (that’s the NZ version; the Australian one was identical except for the URL, the voice-over and the sign the girl was holding — it read “the beach” here). And, as far as I know, no one complained about a toddler going into the sea unsupervised.

P.S.: SWMBO thinks that the parents who complained might have a point, as a slightly older kid (say, 5 or 6) might be encouraged to at least ask his parents for a chance of driving after seeing a toddler doing so; I remain unconvinced.

P.P.S.: then again… Toddler driver pins mum to wall

In 1964, an IBM 1401 computer was delivered to Iceland; it was one of the first large computers in that country. Now, 43 years later, the result of that event is this:

That’s a segment of the stage performance of “IBM 1401, A User’s Manual”, by the Icelandic musician Jóhann Jóhannsson. It has to be seen to be believed. The CD of his work has titles such as “IBM 1403 Printer” and “IBM 729 II Magnetic Tape Unit”. More details at his web site.

And, this, kids, is why Google always launches its products little by little:

Still, Yahoo! Pipes seems like a cool service. I’ll try it out next week.

Good news… ABC (that’s the Australian ABC, not the American one) plans to follow the lead of the BBC and open its archive of TV and radio shows for download. They now offer several shows as podcasts and video podcasts and, reportedly, more than 2 million files are downloaded every month.

The possible catch is that they may charge for old shows; that would be a way to improve the financial health of the network, which is fully supported by taxpayers at the moment (ABC broadcasts no ads in any of its TV and radio stations, but it’s been exploring the possibility of displaying ads in its web site). The BBC does charge for downloads of shows that have been broadcast more than a week ago, but I don’t know how much money they’re making out of it.

MAKE Magazine published, almost a year ago, one article on how to make “throwies”, small devices consisting of a battery, a LED and a magnet and intended to be “released into the world” as a sort of “tech grafitti”.

I couldn’t help but think of them when I read about the recent “incidents” in Boston. I honestly can’t think of a better punch line to the whole “terrorism” paranoia that has affected US officials (and, to a not-much-smaller extent, Australian ones). In fact, I was listening to the Penn Jillette radio show on the subject and a listener actually called in to talk about these devices.

The best comment in the whole story was made by Penn Jillette, by the way, referring to this passage in the news report:

“The appearance of this device and its location are crucial,” [Assistant Attorney General John] Grossman said. “This device looks like a bomb.”

Some in the gallery snickered.

According to Jillette, the fact that some people snickered is a disgrace to the United States. What the report should have said was “everyone in the gallery laughed loudly; a few people wet their pants”. Come on! Does this look like a bomb? If you wanted to hide a bomb somewhere, would you cover it in bright LEDs? And if you were tasked with protecting a city, should you be proud of that fact that it took you three weeks to notice the “suspicious” devices?

As someone else said, it’s way too easy to be a terrorist nowadays; all you need to do is to put a blinking light somewhere.