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Things 41: Microsoft Future (revoked), Identification by humming, Watermelon Carving

(Originally sent February 2009)

Last week’s Things got out of hand, so I will try to be concise this time.

Video
Microsoft present a vision of the future somewhat obsessed with wafer-thin touch-screens, and unlike a lot of visions of the future I only think some of it is ridiculous and impractical:
http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/the-future-is-haptic.html

[Video is no longer available, and I can’t seem to find it elsewhere on the internet. Perhaps Microsoft changed their mind about the future. – T.M. 3rd April 2011]

Quote
I saw a great film this week, here’s a quote that shows you how great it was:

[on the phone] “Hello? Cobra Bubbles? Aliens are attacking my house. They want my dog! Oh good, my dog found the chainsaw.”

I’ll name the film next week, for those that don’t know and don’t want to Google.

Link
Crowdsourced song identification. Sing / hum / play 10 seconds of a tune you need to find the name of into your computer microphone on this site, and people will listen to it and send you their suggestions. More fun (if you don’t have a microphone and a song in mind) is listening to people tunelessly humming tiny fragments of songs at widely varying volume levels with a strange echo (because they have their speakers on) and trying to identify them:
http://www.namemytune.com/

Puzzle
A famous bit of trivia that has been passed around for years holds that over the course of 7 years, every cell in your body will have been replaced with a new one. Are there any simple ways to disprove this?

Pictures
Watermelon carving has been taken to an extremely high level.