Ad for cloning?

I know about cloning pets or 'engineering' babies, but are we seriously at the point in time where there's an ad for cloning ourselves? I just saw this ad next to a YouTube video and i made a screen capture:

P.S. I'm against cloning, so not enthusiastic about this stuff at all, on the contrary.

Google Wave is the new wave

Recently i dived into 2 emerging worlds: Chrome extensions and Wave robots. Today i'll talk about the Wave thing =] You probably already know what Wave is, so i'll only link to the robots i've built:

Search-y (search linking robot)

News-y (news linking robot)

CodeBot (code formatting robot)

Btw, i've got 3 Wave invites for the first 3 people who comment on this post. If you have any suggestions for robots you may find useful, please tell me. See you later!

Thoughts on climate change

The only clear thing to me about this is that climate is changing. I don't know if it's getting warmer or colder - temperature-wise i've found all the years i've lived to be similar. And because i can't formulate an opinion i'll just write some random thoughts about climate change that came to me over time:

• I don't think there should be any 'democracy' in establishing what should be done about this in the sense that opinions of ordinary people shouldn't matter where science should. They should establish once and for all whether climate change exists, if and how it affects us, what are the causes and what, if anything, should we do about it.
• In my opinion, at least a small part of 'global warming' is pushed on all media to 'excuse' the adoption of alternate technologies that aren't based on oil. Even though this is profit driven, i would excuse it because it at least reduces pollution and really is more efficient.
• In the Dune saga, they control climate through special satellites - Frank Herbert made it sound so easy i can't help wonder (not if we have it already but if we should - then again they had all these planets; until we have just one, maybe we should pass on that :D).
• Wildfires are incredibly annoying because every year i see them on TV, but i don't see any measures being taken so we can be one step ahead. I know something more can be done, we can't just be fixing the effects every single year.

This post is part of Blog Action Day 2009.

Wireless Bombardment - We Need To Define Green Wireless

When i go into an eatery, it's cool to have a hotspot. Or at the mall, or places like that. Or maybe when you go to your university, school, etc. What happens though with the buildings we live in?

It's a stampede of wireless networks, all set to maximum speed, maximum power, non-stop, with no regard to power consumption or health risks. This is only the beginning, and lack of standards and research in the 'green' part of these things will lead to something bad. I'm not a hardware expert, but i know enough about these things to have the opinion that it isn't effect-free.

I've switched back to hard lines, having more than one laptop (i don't use desktops anymore :), so one is for strictly personal use. Yes i know the phone emits too, but at least i know of a few standards there that keep me calmer. I'm more concerned with the 24/7, full blast usage of wireless routers some practice - while we sleep, they function - some even leave them turned on when they go on vacation. Wtf is that? When we become aware of the fact that commerce has a great impact on how wireless devices are sold, used, designed and preset for maximum performance in the eyes of the buyer, but not always the person, we can impose future standards ourselves by acting accordingly and with common sense.

P.S. I've said stuff like this before, but wireless fans just dismissed it as crazy talk. I'm not against wireless; i'm just saying that before there is some perceivable health standardization of wireless development, expansion and even power consumption, i reserve the right to be skeptical about widespread and untamed adoption.

P.P.S. Here is an optimization i discovered in the past and which you can apply to your laptop's wireless adapter transmit power.

Fast evolution of the social web

You might have noticed that i'm not blogging as often i used to. The thing is, Twitter is to blame. Sure, Twitter is growing like nothing else - but what does this mean for other things, like for example Blogger (which recently turned 10 years old i think). Is micro-blogging stealing buzz away from normal blogging a general trend? What's obvious for me is that thoughts that are normally too 'unimportant' for you to find the way to the blogging interface find their way to Twitter a lot easier, especially with an explosion of various Twitter clients. This also taps into the power of mobile, since you'd think (and you'd probably be right) that it's easier to tweet on a phone than to blog on a phone.

Another evolution (or involution) i'm seeing is Digg disappearing. Where is the avalanche of Digg links that once used to flood your chat window? A lot of this is now 'stolen' by Facebook and by Google Reader, which implemented cool 'Like' and sharing features. These 2 also attempt to 'digg' into Twitter, by emphasizing a big text box in which you can write your 'status'. Sometimes the plethora of features is bothering though, since you can almost touch their desire to imitate what's working for the competitors, but lack of simplicity works against a lot of things...

From my point of view, it's easy to deduce what will happen. As with all things designed to be competitors, services will have to rely mainly on intrinsically added value or they'll fail. Google will always be the best in search, just as Bing is a joke. Microsoft will always be the best in offline operating systems (Windows 7 is a gem btw), just as Google will tap into the online system area, which isn't seriously implemented by anyone at this point, and will become the best. Twitter will prosper and introduce ads, Facebook will become the only truly international social network and Google Reader will follow its trend to become the top feed reader, but it's actually the sharing platform that will make it big. Of course, at one point, one of these companies will be bought by another. My bet is Twitter will be bought first :) When that happens i'll surely post my thoughts, which will be longer than the 140 character limit imposed for every tweet.

Until then, here's a question. What symbols would an alien see carved on the walls of every cave?

Windows 7 Review - Tips & Tricks & What's new?

I'm generally a Google/free stuff fan, but i have to admit Windows 7 was an OS i was waiting for and it didn't let me down. Just got my hands on the final, official release. I'll start with the summary: there aren't any chapters that got worse compared to Vista, it only stayed the same or got better. Anyway, i'll list all the positive and negative points below, as i ran into them:

+ Installation without a lot of nonsense. I literally took a shower when it started and it was done before i was dry.

- Why can't we have all the drivers installed automatically through the internet? (This is a question for all operating systems). In my case, i had to install the chipset and videoboard drivers before i could rate my system performance properly and have the Aero look (you can do this by typing 'Performance' in the upper-right search box in the Control Panel and clicking on the first result). I guess the smoothness of this whole step depends on a lot of factors...

+ Windows Media Player now rules! I was able to play some movies and watch DVDs without installing something extra. Kudos!

+ I won't talk about the new taskbar, probably heard enough of that already, but it's definitely a plus (if you're wondering where the 'Show desktop' button went it's the thin, right-most button in the taskbar. They could have made it thicker if you ask me, but i guess the fact that it's in a more accessible position, like a corner, compensates).

- There still isn't a complete security solution included, to be exact an actual antivirus, even though there were rumors a while ago. I'm sure this will be fixed in the future though, but i don't like that the security center is bugging me with this problem when i also have something like Windows Defender installed.

- The boot info, like which partition is default or other similar settings can still only be done in the command line (from what i could figure out). It's done like in Vista.

+ Some bundled apps where made optional by taking them out of Windows' setup, like Movie Maker or the messenger. They are now part of Windows Live Essentials (free).

+ Sticky Notes: this was a nice surprise. It's a new app which allows you make smaller or bigger notes on the desktop. Intuitive and easy to use, pinned it on my taskbar already :) (see below)

+ If you right-click the desktop and then click Personalize, you'll find some comprehensive Aero themes, including wallpaper slide-shows and contrast themes.

+ Paint is a lot smarter and Office-like, it's a lot of fun to check it out yourself:

• Most apps, if they work on Vista, should work on Windows 7, but this isn't a rule.
• At the moment i'm writing this post, AVG is a cool and free antivirus solution which explicitly supports Windows 7. Apps that do this are a bit of a rarity now, but i'll update the post in the future.
• I think the organizational features and default decisions of Win7 are better, so a good move can be pinning the Libraries location to the taskbar. You have all the important stuff there and if you generally let the OS choose the save locations for you, the downloads, documents, pictures and other files will be neatly organized and easily accessible. Just open My Computer, click Libraries on the left, then right-click the corresponding button from the taskbar and pin it.
• What i generally like to do is to prevent indexing and restore points, since i found them pretty useless in the past (some people find them useful though, so unless you have an extensive experience using these it's better if you left them alone). You can do this by right-clicking the drive you want to disable indexing on and clicking Properties - bottom option (for indexing) or by checking out System Protection in My Computer's properties (for disabling System Restore on certain drives).

If you have some tips you want to share yourself, feel free to comment.

Michael Jackson in 4 minutes

Warning. Shocking and real.

This post will contain some shocking stuff about animal exploitation around the world. There are a lot of cool animals that are endangered, partly because of humans, but this post isn't entirely about them. Here are some of the most shocking ways (for me) to exploit animals. I think that, put together, they are one of the lowest limits of our existence on this planet.

I recently found out about this and i was appalled. Dogs being used as bait for sharks.

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This is a more known problem: seal clubbing. That's exactly what it sounds like - hitting seals with clubs. Saw some horrifying images on the internet these last few years, but there's no point in posting them here.

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Did you know bears are milked for their bile? Even though there are modern substitutes for this, some practitioners still prescribe it. Quotes from the Wikipedia article:

"While this allows for easier access to the abdomen, it also prevents the bears from being able to stand upright, or in some cases move at all. Living up to twenty-five years in such confinement results in severe mental stress and muscle atrophy"

"According to the Humane Society of the United States, the bile is usually extracted twice a day through an implanted tube, producing 10–20 ml of bile each time; the process is believed to be painful, as the bears can be seen moaning and chewing their paws while being milked. Other methods include pushing a hollow steel stick through the bear's abdomen. The use of metal catheters has been banned, though HSUS writes that bile bears are still seen with catheters in them."

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Even if this is more of a 'classic', whaling is still beyond my understanding. Here's a video of some people who took it upon themselves to stop whaling, at their own risk.

I thought i'd materialize this 'activist' side of me somehow by joining an organization of some sort, and i found that PETA is pretty cool. I have to admit i didn't have the highest opinion about it because of the wacky ads and all :) but lately i realize the situation isn't good at all and needs fixing, including through wacky measures.

Open-source "is nigh"

Last few weeks have been hectic. I got my Bachelor of Engineering degree and was admitted into the Software Engineering master studies.

I'm beginning to realise the power of companies in this field, one person can't do it all. My own Tag-ToDo-List app for Android is huge now (from a development point of view). And user requests are piling up much faster than i can implement them. Faithful users can see how this is a different "to-do experience". The thing is, i have many new ideas but heavy feature implementations are time consuming, so as i promised last year, i will open-source the app. People will be able to enhance the app to their needs according to the development philosophy i've defined for it and which will be available in the project wiki as well. But more details will be posted on the Tag-ToDo-List blog. The future looks great with Google Tasks synchronization coming up, so get ready and let's make this the best open-source project for an Android app!