In the rant attached to the last QC, in which the mysophobic Hannelore buys a Roomba, the cartoonist says "Truly we are living in the future." I know it's becoming something of a cliché these days to say that (not to mention being semantically dubious), but it did make me realise: not only do we now have things comparable to PADDs, tricorders and communicators from Star Trek (PDAs and mobile phones), all of which seemed terribly futuristic at the time, we are improving on them by merging their functions (smart phones). But the robotic hoover seems the clincher to me, considering it's one of the many tiny details in Deus Ex which gives the game a "futuristic" atmosphere. Ironically, the one technology that is arguably most characteristic of the "futuristic" era, the most socially and politically disruptive technology ever, is the one thing the sci-fi authors never predicted, at least in the form it now takes. (Footnote: Of course, if anyone can point me towards an SF author predicting the international, egalitarian, democratic Web in a similar form to what we have now — not to mention the FLOSS movement, which I consider an integral part of the whole thing — I'll happily retract that statement. Note to self: read some William Gibson.)

This must be the funniest bug report ever.

If this is a good idea now, then why won't it still be a good idea in a year? A decade? After all, terrorist plots will always exist in potentia (can you prove that no terrorist plots are hatching at this moment?) Until they handcuff us all nude to our seats and dart us with tranquilizers, there will always be the possibility that a passenger will do something naughty on a plane (even then, who knows how much semtex and roofing nails a bad guy could hide in his colon?).

Cory Doctorow (from Boing Boing) on the recent ban on hand luggage on UK flights. I'm glad I didn't book my flight for any later or I'd have had to leave half my luggage behind!

I'm writing this from Munich Airport's internet room, and being forced to use IE. Gah.

Stupidly it doesn't even have Java, so I can't log into Milliways :( Internet my arse, what you really mean is Web, and not even much of that.

Anyway... as you might have guessed, I'm finally coming home today, after over 3 months in Germany. Woot. My flight leaves at 21:15 local time (20:15 UK time iirc), so I have lots of time to kill. I'm not going to do it here though - the internet time costs far too much (€2.50 for 30 minutes).

I'm going to be spending at least some of that time reading an Asterix comic I bought yesterday. This is a special edition (I think it's called Asterix and the Roman Agent in English) where the Gauls speak in Bavarian dialect and pretty much everyone else (at least the Romans and the pirates) in standard German. Just the contrast between the two is amusing. But of course you have to carefully figure out what exactly they're saying, because the spelling is totally different.