One of the more amusing stories from Slashdot talks about an academic paper in computer science, which was accepted to be presented at a conference. The catch: all text, figures and references were randomly-generated and are completely incoherent (see Web site). Will a randomly-generated talk be delivered as the guys at MIT promise?

I took a glance at a desk this morning when I saw this Orbit Professional pack of gum. It is shocking that Orbit have gone as far as wrapping gum as if it was some powerful prescription drug. Is that what they mean by “Professional”? [sarcasm] Gum can apparently have an effect enormous enough to justify a dosage. [/sarcasm]

While on this issue, it is worth noting that two-thirds of an Easter egg pack comprises packaging material.

The more technologically-inclined keep old computers somewhere around the house. They are emotionally attached to them, most probably. But why not have a little bit of fun?

Some major news have just been released:

Jerry Seinfeld announces that he and the cast of Seinfeld plan on making 23 new episodes starting this fall. NBC expects to premier the new episodes in 2006.

n relation to the previous item, research in MIT has produced a small application which turns English into computer code.

This small milestone can have an effect on the entry bar for programmers. However, one would argue that this the strand of work is pointless. Ambiguous languages can now (supposedly) turn into (ambiguous) code, which cannot be trusted. Will one be able to rely on translated ‘code’ of this kind? It’s the equivalent of sending E-mail from speech-to-text recognition without prior proof-reading.

A little sarcasm of mine; click image to view

Fun stuff with transparent screens has recently hit the Web. Go view the full gallery.

This beats the hell out of the previous item, which briefly mentioned transparency in KDE.

A few hours ago I was listening to BBC Radio 1. I heard a conversation which made me smile:

Radio Host: “Here is the tie-breaker question: In the year 2000, how many people lived in Miami? Not the whole of Florida, just Miami.”
Caller: “Ummm… 42 million?”.
Radio Host: “Well, according to you, Miami is just a little smaller than England”.