The Null Device
2009/11/13
The BNP has announced that it is forming an alliance in the EU with other nationalist parties. The European Alliance of National Movements will include the likes of France's National Front and the Hungarian neofascist group JOBBIK, though has fallen short of being an EU-recognised formal political grouping, mostly because the Tories' "European Conservatives and Reformers" group has cherry-picked most of the far right MEPs.
Anyway, I give them six months before the whole thing implodes with members accusing each other of being racially inferior and/or subhuman.
A few years ago, Yamaha released the Tenori-On, a radically designed electronic musical instrument in the shape of a tablet covered with a grid of lighted buttons. The problem with was the price: at US$1,200 (or around £700), it was only affordable to those with deep pockets.
Now, Yamaha have announced a more affordable Tenori-On. The TNR-O (the 'O' is for 'orange') differs from the premium model in that it lacks the grid of lights on the back (so your audience can't see the nifty patterns of light it's making), and the magnesium casing has been replaced by a moulded orange plastic case; otherwise, it does exactly the same thing.
How much more affordable it will be is not yet known, though rumour has it that it may not be much cheaper. Perhaps someone can persuade Yamaha to port it to the iPhone or some similar gadget (the rumoured Apple tablet would be a natural platform), in the way that Korg have ported their MS-10 modular synth to the Nintendo DS.
A man arrested as a suspect in a mugging case has had charges dropped against the court found an update posted to his page at the time the crime was committed; Facebook verified that the post (which read merely "where's my pancakes?") was made from an address far from where the crime was committed.
The moral of this story is: if you must commit a crime, learn some UNIX skillz beforehand and rig up a cron job to post to Facebook (or Twitter or your blog) in your absence.