Automator is ok for most tasks (great for joining, not so good for splitting), but I had a hellva time slicing and dicing PDFs this morning. The following tips worked a treat:
Listening to: Can I Have It Like That - Pharrell featuring Gwen Stefani
Tangerine! was released as version 1 last week… to say “thank you” to bloggers and beta users Potion Factory sent out free registrations. I downloaded v1 and had a bit of a rifle through the help docs and found this:
I love this sort of thing… salting documentation with gems of lateral thought.
amend the provision relating to technological protection measures—
so that the prohibition against the making, importing, hiring, and selling of devices, services, or information designed to circumvent “copy protection” be expanded to cover devices, services, or information that circumvent technological protection measures that protect all rights provided to copyright owners (including communication, not just copying); and
to facilitate the actual exercise of permitted acts where technological measures have been applied:
introduce an offence (carrying a sentence of a fine not exceeding $150,000 or a term of imprisonment of up to 5 years, or both) for commercial dealing in devices, services, or information designed to circumvent technological protection measures:
provide protection for electronic rights management information that identifies content protected by copyright and the terms and conditions of use, but not for the tracking functions associated with this technology:
introduce an offence provision (carrying a sentence of a fine not exceeding $150,000 or a term of imprisonment of up to 5 years, or both) for commercial dealing in works where the electronic rights management information has been removed or altered:
It hasn’t worked in the States… why on earth do they think it’s going to work here? This is one of the approaches to the problem that has the words “Will Back Fire” written all over it.
The solution to this problem is one that enables services that embody the concept of giving consumers the content they want at a price that makes sense.
Drop the Hon Judith Tizard an email and tell her that this approach is more of a problem than a solution.
Over the past few months I have bumped into a number of references to designing products that age beautifully (you know, like the person you love) - that the damage they sustain through use actually contributes to their aesthetics. Here is a great example - tea cups designed to stain:
NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.
Again, another of these really exciting finds that are busting open a lot of the assumptions we have about our solar system… love it!
UPODATE 2: On a related Mars note… the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back a bunch of images of other Mars landers:
New images have been released of past and present US landing craft on the surface of Mars taken by Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe.
The Spirit rover, which touched down in 2004, as well as both Viking landers, sent to explore the Red Planet in the 1970s, can be seen in the new images.
