iPad EULA leaked

This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose and Apple Inc. specifically does not warrant, guarantee, imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person, entity or deity with respect of any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object or by any attemps to destroy it by hammering it against a wall or dropping it into a deep well or any other means whatsoever and moreover asserts that you indicate your acceptance of this agreement or any other agreement that may be substituted at any time by coming within five miles of the product or observing it through large telescopes or by any other means because you are such an easily cowed moron who will happily accept arrogant and unilateral conditions on a piece of highly priced garbage that you would not dream of accepting on a bag of dog biscuits and is used solely at your own risk.

Admittedly this is not the iPad's end-user license agreement but that of a fictitious personal organizer from Terry Pratchett's The Truth, and the real EULA might not even have been written yet, but I'm guessing this is pretty close.

Concert Photography

Nifty piece by Jeff Spirer about Photographing Bands and Musicians on photo.net. It's full of really good tips and tricks that you can find out by yourself by shooting a few dozen shows, but if you're just starting out it might save you quite a bit of time.

I was (pleasantly) surprised at how close his gear list recommendation matches my own:

• DSLR (either a Canon EOS 1DMkIII or Canon EOS 40D)


• 35/2


• 50/1.4


• either a 20/2.8 or 85/1.8


• 580EXII flash


• spare camera battery


• extra rechargeable batteries for the flash


• memory cards (at least 8GB)


• business cards


• earplugs


• clear lens filter and lens hood on every lens

I have the "old" 1DMkII, and I substitute 24/1.4 and 100/2 for his 20/2.8 and 85/1.8, but apart from that this is pretty much my list. Except I really need to get some business cards.

Everyday tech tends to stick around...

John Brandon writes in TechRadar about tech we won't use in a decade. It's an interesting read, and some predictions seem fairly safe, but overall I don't think the times are moving that fast.

If you were already using computers a lot in 1999, the striking thing is how little things have changed since then. Maybe we weren't online all the time, but basically we used our computers in much the same way. Web-based email, IM, photo editing, computer-based video editing, etc. all existed and worked reasonably well.

Obviously I don't deny that things are improving. Syncing files between computer used to be a huge pain, and now it's just a little pain. Sharing things online is a lot easier. A home network can now be set up in less than two weeks, and it can be expected to actually work. Laptops are thinner and batteries last longer. Backupping cell-phone data on a computer isn't reserved to top coders and mad scientists anymore.

But, despite numerous predictions to the contrary, the keyboard is still there, the mouse is still there, and the basic concept of the general-purpose personal computer is still very much alive. I really doubt that this will change substantially in as little as a decade.

However, there's definitely one thing missing from the list: TV as we know it, with 100+ channels broadcasting lukewarm reruns 24h/day and a business model that requires people to tune in at 8:25 and not leave the room during commercials. There's no way that can survive another ten years.

Just In: Tasty Food Keeps You Thin

While roaming the web for news bits on the health-care reform debate in the US (which can be hysterically funny or very sad, often simultaneously) I stumbled upon a report on various health care statistics in OECD countries.

For me the most interesting part of this report was the last graph, which charts obesity levels across countries. These seem to inverse-correlate perfectly with how good I find the food there. The thinnest countries are those with either superb meat and produce (Switzerland), awesome cuisine (France), or both (Japan). The fattest are those where good food seems rare and wicked expensive (the UK and US).

Obviously this is just my own perception, but how great would it be if there was some general law hidden in there, so that each time you had a really good meal, you could tell yourself that in all likelihood it must also have been really healthy?

Black Holes are Kewwwwl

Scientists at the Israel Institute of Technology managed to create an acoustic black hole. This is pretty neat in and of itself, but the real value lies in prompting Wired to make all those lists of things they want to throw at it ;-)