Mr Mist’s Blog

As expected, we see the US and UK have found holes in the Iraqi document [news.bbc.co.uk]. Gee. There’s a surprise. Precursor to war anyone? Why does this seem all too obvious? But hey, apparently we’re not going to war. Yeah, not before Christmas…

I quite liked this .. You make up your own state then govern it.. Heh.. Take a look at Nation States”.

My nation’s summary reads…

The Republic of Moovania
Motto : “Moo”

UN Category: Tyranny by Majority
Civil Rights: Some Economy: Reasonable Political Freedoms: Excellent

Location: the Pacific
The Republic of Moovania is a tiny, environmentally stunning nation, remarkable for its compulsory military service. Its hard-nosed, intelligent population of 5 million enjoy great social freedoms and frequent elections, where the majority of the populace regularly votes to increase its benefits at the expense of various hapless minorities.

The large government devotes most of its attentions to Law & Order, with areas such as Social Welfare and Commerce receiving almost no funds by comparison. The average income tax rate is 28%, but much higher for the wealthy. A large private sector is led by the Gambling, Information Technology, and Pizza Delivery industries.

Crime is moderate. Moovania’s national animal is the cow, which frolics freely in the nation’s many lush forests, and its currency is the moosian pound.

BBC news has a review of the Google statistics for last year [news.bbc.co.uk] and comments on how they are (maybe?) likely to mirror more and more exactly what the population is interested in as more people go online. It’s already possible to track the popularity of certain things from country to country mirroring how they move outside of the web. The full list of google for 2002 can be found here [www.google.com].

As my house buying thing happens (really really slowly) some analysts predict a 30% fall in prices over the next year [news.bbc.co.uk]. That would be just my sort of luck, though most folk reckon that that would be the extreme case.

You can sign up to this site and periodically it will check if you are dead or not [www.diedonline.com]. That way if you ever die then your internet friends will be able to check on the site and find out. That’s reasonably clever. I’d often wondered about how you would know if someone you only knew online died. It’s a mystery of sorts.

It must be a time for news articles reappearing. First off they give us a rehash of the old digital technology doesn’t provide records for the future [news.bbc.co.uk] debate. This time it looks at the digital Domesday Book, nearly unreadable 16 years after its creation whilst the book itself remains usable almost a thousand years after it was made. The technology is simply changing so fast that the equipment to read the 16 year old disks didn’t exist (until it was specially recreated.)

I’m sure that this is, to some extent, true, though you could say that the interests would be preserved if whoever was looking after the disks - or whatever the storage medium is - updates them properly when things change. Paper is only valid because it has not moved on past the stage where we can read. If everyone were to take on a new form of language then it could be said that that would become obsoleet too.

There’s also the thing about digital photos not providing archives. This is more true, but do we really need the mountains of naff photos produced just because people had to finish a film? Or do we just need the choice ones people keep because they meant to?