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Check out the helmet that pilots of the F-35 are going to wear. It has two built in 1280×1024 projectors that reflect off the visor.

This morning Bruce Schneier posted a fascinating article on the psychology and economics of buying bad products. The example that he uses is a “secure” USB keychain drive called Secustick that was, supposedly, commissioned by the French government, tested and approved by a French intelligence service, and is apparently in use all over the world by governments and major corporations in the financial services industries.

A week ago a review of the Secustick was posted on Tweakers.net. They loaded the software on the stick into a debugger and learned that all someone had to do was place a breakpoint after a function called VerifyPassWord(), alter the return code from a 0 to a 1, and voilà! (Pun intended.) Anybody could get access to the contents of the drive.

It’s generally my belief that the free market is efficient. However, Bruce’s essay brings up a good point. Shoddy products like the Secustick have an advantage in the marketplace. Namely, they cost less to produce. Normally this isn’t an issue because the consumer has the skillset and the ability to evaluate that the clothing they are buying from Walmart isn’t as high a quality as what they would buy from JC Penney’s. How are you supposed to know when it comes to something like the Secustick? Or a firewall? Or a virus scanner? Or a <insert any suitably complicated technology>?

This afternoon I had the pleasure of seeing Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters.  It is, quite possibly, the greatest cinematic achievement in human history.

I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but since I know some people who didn’t wait until after the credits when they saw X-Men III, make certain that you wait until the credits are over.

Do you think I would fit in a Mini Cooper?

A few days ago I posted this link to a piece by Scott Adams questioning whether violating someones copyright is theft. Yesterday Poncelet took the opportunity to post a reply. The really amusing thing for me is that Adams had already posted a response. According to Adams the first piece was an experiment in generating cognitive dissonance in the responses. One of my favorite examples of cognitive dissonance from Poncelet’s post:

When you “buy” these underpants, some of that money goes to the person who designed them. The rest goes to the company that mass-produced them and the company that shipped them. Some of that money finds its way to entities who are preparing to sue you for wearing your underpants improperly.

In other words:

1. Money from album sales goes towards the labels and the RIAA who might sue me.
2. When I violate copyright I’m stealing from the artist who created the music.
3. It’s okay because I’m hurting the labels and the RIAA worse than the artist.

As I mentioned before, my favorite April Fool’s day prank was the 8-bit tie available at ThinkGeek. Turns out that they are going to make it after all:

Hey! You! Quit emailing us to make this for REAL already ; ) We promise, we’ll make it. In fact we are already working on it. You’ve just forced our hand! Click the ‘email me when available’ link above to get notified! Thanks! I guess the joke is on us this year :p