Peter’s blog

For years I’ve been wanting to buy the “Tour De France” CD by Kraftwerk but here in Australia it has always been copy controlled. I never buy CDs with copy control on them as a matter of principle.

In a recent buying binge, I got the complete works of Kraftwerk from Amazon and surprise surprise “Tour De France” had no copy control on it. So if you are like me and want a copy control free version of it, head over to Amazon and grab a copy.

“Tour de France Soundtracks” (Kraftwerk)

Technorati Tags: copy control, music

Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria was an engineer who lived in Alexandria around 10 - 70 AD and was the first person to experiment with steam power and to use programmable self regulating feedback systems to control his devices.

The picture shows his “aeolipile” which was a steam powered toy invented by him. More information on it can be found at the museum of ancient inventions. Unfortunately he was not able to make the leap from toy to steam engine and so the industrial revolution had to wait another 1,600 or so years. I guess the abundance of free slave labour meant that labour saving devices were not that important so he just did not think of it. Imagine what might have happened if the steam engine was invented in the year 50AD?

Some of his other inventions included automatic temple doors and automatic scenery change for theatre.

More information on Heron can be found at:

The technology musuem of Thessaloniki
Wikipedia entry
Information on Heron
Heron’s automatic temple doors

Technorati Tags: ancient Greece, ancient technology

A few weeks ago I popped over to Fox Studios Cinemas in Sydney to catch War of the Worlds. There were 40 minutes of advertisements and trailers before the actual main feature started. And if that was not enough, there were product placements everywhere in the movie. A week later I popped into a movie theatre to watch Batman Begins. Same thing, 40 minutes of adds and trailers.

Ads have also found their way into my Foxtel paytv subscription. I pay AUD$110.00 per month for the privilege to watch ads. That is taking it too far, so tomorrow I am cancelling my Foxtel subscription. Buying DVDs and watching them whenever I please seems much cheaper and better.

Is it just me or is advertising showing up everywhere? I don’t mind advertising, as long as I am not paying for it.

UPDATE: 18 August 2005. My Foxtel subscription has been cancelled. “Asta la vista baby”

Technorati Tags: advertising, paytv