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Seti@Home was a wonderful idea – a chance for thousands – maybe millions – of people to participate in the search for alien intelligence. What a cause to fire the imagination! THe principle was simple too. Thousands of thousands of computers can work their way through computer files much much faster than one really large one – hence members of the public take on the job of processing odds and ends of data in their computer down-times.

Fight AIDS @ Home would initially look like a similarly wonderful idea. Using the same basic concept as Seti@Home, almost infinite amounts of different drug designs can be tested over hundreds or thousands of computers. Except there is one crucial difference. This one isn’t done for the good of humanity – it’s done for the good of Entropia. They even go so far as to state:

Entropia is a for-profit corporation. In our view, profit is as necessary as oxygen for longevity; while oxygen is essential for life, it is not the purpose of living. Likewise, Entropia’s Internet computing service represents “profit with a purpose.” Some of the time, Entropia’s software will be running commercial tasks on your computer.

A few comments:

• Many Universities undertake public domain research for free (hence profit is NOT essential for the life of research).
• Many people would rather the information on how to deal with HIV and AIDS was public domain (cheap generic drugs instead of exorbitant branded ones) – particularly as the parts of the world most affected by HIV are also the poorest parts.
• And particularly, many people I believe would be affronted by the possibility that the software itself might start to run commercial tasks simply to make money in between bits of AIDS research.

This is a tremendously powerful model for enhancing research, and I suspect one we will see a great deal more of over the next few years. You could contribute to the curing of huge social ills simply by allowing people to invisibly use your computer when you are not. But let us wait until the model is taken up by the not-for-profit institutions – because we should all contribute to a better world, but there’s no reason to make some multi-national even more absurdly rich in the process.

Text message sent:

“If you don’t reply to my e-mail I will mulch your pets.”

Text message received:

“Oi — keep your hands off my doggie!”

However, no e-mail as yet received. Perhaps he didn’t think I was serious. (eyebrow slowly arches)

Person I should talk about more often: Katy Darby.

Person that I wasn’t expecting to think is attractive: Breckin Meyer. Films that Breckin Meyer has been in include: Roadtrip, Clueless and Go.

I was in a bar called Escape last night (after Mel’s birthday party) and a video for some wonderful old disco classic came up. The video was made up of excerpts from 54, which of course stars the inimitable Ryan Philippe of “I wish I looked like Ryan Phillippe” infamy. The film’s full of half-naked men, and one of them was Breckin Meyer. Eyebrows over forehead in surprise. Time to go rent it, I think.

Just a reminder, in case anyone wasn’t aware – that the bloghop ratings thing on the left works on the principle that green is good and red is bad. So let’s just try that again, eh? Rate me: .

I picked up my tickets for New York this morning. Everyone from Time Out who started at the company before January has been invited to the fifth birthday party of Time Out New York, to be held next Friday.

We come in as normal on Thursday morning, do a bit of work, have a bit of lunch, go to the airport, hop on a plane, and then mooch around drinking, buying and sleeping with stuff until first thing on Sunday morning, when we grudgingly reboard our huge plane and fly homewards – to return to work on Monday morning “fresh”, “invigorated” and not at all exhausted and hungover. I’m trying to work out how many movies I can fit in if I don’t sleep at all.

I need to build something really badly. Or destroy something. I need to effect change. I want some help. And I want to help everyone else. I have a fire within me today – a tremendous intellectual, emotional, political, passionate fire that has crept up on me during the day, and I want the fire to spread. I want it to spark and catch each and every person who reads this. I want it to creep into your heads and generate energy and light up some dark musty parts of your head. Throw the doors and the windows open. It’s time to remake the world.

I want everything to be in a perpetual whirl. I want the world to speed up. I want sex and drugs and love and death and energy and music and anger and passion and everything I’ve seen in the movies. And I want you all to have it too. I want desire and fantasy to spiral around and overwhelm the world, crush all opposition and bring a little non-corporately sponsored wonder into everything again. We deserve more magic than we have. We all deserve the world. Who’s for freedom?

A quick question for you all. What kind of person does this for fun and profit?

“Cockell and his colleagues put about a dozen different species of insects, including roaches and ants, in a large vacuum box and sucked the air out.”

Find out at Wired.com…

Blasphemy. It’s a funny matter. I’m an atheist. Have been since I was about thirteen. It was brought into major definition for me when my brother was born. I adore my brother – I always have – so don’t think I treated his appearance into the world as a clear sign of the non-existence of god. Because that just wouldn’t be true.

What really made me think about it was when he was Christened. I had never been Christened – my parents just hadn’t thought about it. It seemed to them like a strange thing to do, particularly as my mother was (at best) agnostic. But when my brother was Christened, there was a lot of pressure in my family for me to become the indentured bitch of the almighty alongside him. I was really quite resistant and I couldn’t figure out why. I sat down and I thought about my thoughts on god carefully and reasonably, and came to the conclusion that I didn’t believe in god at all. Not even a little bit.

I had to be Christened in the end. And a strange affair it was indeed. I’ve never been really very comfortable with it, and slightly resent being forced to do it, although I don’t blame my parents at all.

All of this, by the way, is by way of an extended excuse to link to Jesus Dress Up! – which is clearly blasphemous and entertaining and a bit dodgy.

Could everyone who knows me who reads this damn pile of crap click here and send me a quick e-mail. Doesn’t matter what relationship you might have with me, whether it be work, friendship, if I’ve met you once in a pub or if we did something that my mother wouldn’t approve of. I’m just bizarrely interested. People who don’t play will be hunted down and shot.