He's talented and not afraid of controversy and his part in the infamous "jet carts" episode from Scrapheap Challenge is excellent. I always thought he had a point about this one.
btw. I always though IE D from the article was a very misleading term - many of these devices are NOT improvised the insurgents pack them out on a factory line and some of them are relatively advanced in the design and detonation system - as far as I can tell from the news reports.
and once credibility is tainted or the finger of suspicion is pointed then nobody will trust it again. as trust is like love, in that it must be built up over a period of time - but can be destroyed in an instant.
if they wheeled a filing cabinet full of records out into the parking lot and left it to be stolen then I would expect them to be punished, I would expect this to be no different.
I used to work in China quite alot and found the only way I could get decent Internet access and get things done was to VPN back to the UK office and then surf from their gateway - the slight delay was quite alot better then the local service.
I got used to shitty performance, websites suddenly dying for no reason, 30 second delays on some sites and others almost instant.
As with most things Chinese, we may see this at dodgy behavior - to them it is a normal business practice. As I once stated on a thread about Chinese knockoffs the problem is not to "stop them doing it" but is rather "to make them understand they are doing something wrong in the first place".
you'd be expecting hushmail to turn up on fuckedcompany.com soon...
...if the website was not currently fucked.
Really though, come on. A firm that sells privacy as a feature and then gives it away to anybody who asks is about as crooked as your doctor telling your friends about your medical records on request. I had a hunt for the hushmail T&C to try and see if this was mentioned in any legalese but had no joy locating it.... The Internet being notoriously unforgiving on such matters I would not give too hoots for hushmail's future business regardless of whether they claim they had no choice or not
Weird, must be the way my brain works - but I immediately thought of a "brainCap"(tm) - slap the little cap on somebody's head and hear their thoughts.
then I went off on a tangent... and imagined what people would do with a device that could do that. Slap it on somebodies head and listen to the words they are mentally thinking...
"hold him, down lads, lets slap a brainCap on him and then he'll tell us where the diamonds are!"
"you say you are thinking of me only when we mave love darling? put on a brainCap next time so I can hear it and be sure.."
"hmm, you are having a bad dream - lets slap on a brainCap and hear what you dream about"
"so you say you want to work as a teacher and you love children? well for you first day somebody will be monitoring your thoughts"
given human nature, I think we don't want a device like this.
the first time a robot goes wrong and rips the head off an unsuspecting customer is when this theme park dies.
reminds of one of the early robot demonstrations - somebody else can track down the reference, I need to do some work - it was in the 60s/70s and "robot" was a very loose definition. what it did was replay programmed movements - there was no intelligence or decision making. they had programmed it to open a fridge and get a bottle of drink and offer it to the customers. all was well, until on day the wind blew the fridge door shut. the robot then easily punched his "hand" through the door of the fridge and offered the customer the whole fridge having simply picked it up instead. being offered an entire fridge by a 6 ton hydraulic arm was not the amusing, hi-tech spectacle the customer had been expecting...
the moral is, something always goes wrong. always. with most automation in factories the worst that will happen is a badly built car and a delay on the production lines whilst they remove the ford fiesta with ten doors. add humans to the mix and people will get hurt. or sue. or both.
Reading these comments you'd think we're a bunch a sad obsessed geek tosspots always looking for a cheap laugh. Sheesh.
On a more serious note, congratulations to the team for a real achievement and kudos for the excellent movie.
If only they had aligned it slighter further to the right we could of seen the giant "Kilroy was here" on the darkside of the moon, now that would of been cool..
1. Not going to happen. What I find funny is the ">1hr commute both ways." I'm from Arkansas. The average commute of my friends in the Little Rock area is around 20-30 minutes. (one way.) Those that few that I'm aware of that do have hour or more commutes seem to all be from NY or CA and live an insane distance away from where they actually work. I'm amazed that they could afford gas with the wages in this state, but they love living here just because they live so far from where they work. Stupid NY & CA are the problem... I live about 15 minutes away from where I work.
Good points, I'll toss another into the mix that I should of thought of in my original post - telecommuting, working from home. Many jobs do not need you in the office, and the technology is all there. Goverment tax rebates or some other incentive to kick start this?
2. I'm for cheap solar, but not for mandating it. Why? Better designed housing with geothermal heating/cooling and other features can reduce the normal required energy need by alot. I'd rather that was required than solar being required.
Good point again, I'll rephrase my original note to mandating energy efficiency and enercy self sufficiency - which ever tech is used.
4. I'm not sure that'll ever happen.
In the UK you can get grants for micro generation projects,
5. Most of that we have now. I want to know if "smart houses" actually save any money through the long run. I've seen many home automation setups, but I wouldn't want to go through the hassle of doing it myself. They seem like stupid little tricks to show off more than any energy saving.
They really do. In the UK there is a move to create efficient houses (led by TV programs like Grand Designs) and building control is heavily promoting iy with ever tougher regulations. it really is much much cheaper to run a new build on these lines then an old house like mine (130+ years and leaks heat like a sieve). I try to improve it little by little, I've manages to reduce my gas/elec by >50% bu buying CR equip carefully and actually turning it off.
Near where I work (New Forest, UK) there is a new housing development going up, and I happened to notice that they are having solar thermal fitted into the roofs as standard. I did idly wonder if in a few years time all houses would have solar panel roofs as standard and electric cars would automatically recharge when not being used. I don't know, you park the car up pops a small wind turbine and the entire top surface of the vehicle is covered in photo voltaic paint? Park it in the garage or near the house and up pops a cable to connect it to the house power wind/solar array.
Now, I realize that I am in Sci-Fi could cuckoo land here, but bear with me. There are some things that need to happen.. well I would like to happen..
1. Reverse the trend of people living 80miles from their workplace and seeing a >1hr commute both ways as normal. I realize this would require a society change - but if conventional cars cost too much and there is no reliable public transport infrastructures then this could happen.
2. Cheap, High efficiency solar cells mandated on all new builds.
3. Energy efficiency mandated on all new CE devices and proper OFF switches as standard.
4. Micro generation being normal, and grid "top up" being extra.
5. Smart housing that automatically switched off lights, water heating on demand from stored power, low power devices.
Sorry, I'll get off my soap box before I get carried away....
But there are many reasons why this game is so good, some of them quite subtle.
1. It is self levelling. In the fact that the simple penalty structure, robbers, 7 rolls are all biased to pick on the leader by simple social engineering. This means the losers get a chance to catch up and the leader finds it harder to win.
2. As a consequence of 1, most games all ends with everybody all "about to finish" - in this respect its commanding social game as nobody is left out and its normally a rush for the end.
3. There is a strong element of trading and persuasion in the game - this further enhances to social element of play
4. Statistics. It has been wonderfully designed - from the probabilities of the cards, the probabilities of the game to present a darn good game with numerous tactics you can use to win.
5. Simple. Its a game anybody can learn in their first game and be competent on their second.
If you have not played it there are stand alone player vs. PC versions around (a fantastic DOS version which puts up a fierce challange) and multiuser 'net versions notably Sea3D.
But best of all buy a real board version and play with some friends and a few good drinks, you'll be hooked.
Rather then attempt to clear her name shed escaped from jail and started a new life - a felony in itself.
On one hand you take the argument that they system has an appeals system designed to right injustice so if she believed she was innocent she should of tried to clear her name, on the other hand you have a possibly inept defense lawyer who seemed not to be dong their job and the possibility that left on her own she would rot in jail.
It is clear that the police have significant evidence to pin the crime on her, and the original jury clearly thought so. And we only have to facts as stated from TFA that make her seem like a saint based on the new life after the original murder.
And a justice system only works if all judgments and laws are upheld.
I am slightly disturbed by the final comment about this database "But there also were other clues that he said he could not talk about." - WTF? has this person never heard of conspiracy theorists? give them a single clue like that and they can invent ten secret organizations by lunchtime.
RIAA/MPAA/**AA are trying to legislate against P2P
They have several key bitTorrent devs in their pockets
They are promoting a new *better* protocol
How long before this is a negotiating tools to the powers that that control the legislation - on the lines of "yes, P2P has legitimate uses, but the new protocol will safeguard those interests whilst protecting copyright" or something on those lines. In other words this could be an initial step towards the long term goal of a legal P2P system that is easy to police/control content. These people plan a long way ahead, I would not be surprised if something like this is brewing...
Mind you I like the concept of packet obfuscation to thwart ISP throttling mentioned in TFA.
I don't know about you, but my first reaction was..
what. the. fuck.
OOXML is a awful standard, filled with numerous little features that seem purposely designed to make it difficult for anybody but MS to implement. Icaza is NOT an idiot, so he must know that this response will be flamed to a crisp across the community - so why is he doing it?
What does he stand to gain from backing this? What have I missed?
200x faster net access, that's remarkable if its true.
On a related note, I note that hospitals are quietly getting ready to increase their budgets for coping with an influx of wrist related repetitive strain injuries and severe myopia. Not to mention a lack of sleep.
It is well known that dogs keen sense of smell can detect illness and cancers. Lets hope this thing can be turned into something sensitive enough and cheap enough for widespread medical use. This could save lives.
Slashdot Mirror
on the subject.. remember Bruce Simpson and his DIY cruise missile that various governments stamped on?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3302763.stm
http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/
He's talented and not afraid of controversy and his part in the infamous "jet carts" episode from Scrapheap Challenge is excellent. I always thought he had a point about this one.
btw. I always though IE D from the article was a very misleading term - many of these devices are NOT improvised the insurgents pack them out on a factory line and some of them are relatively advanced in the design and detonation system - as far as I can tell from the news reports.
and once credibility is tainted or the finger of suspicion is pointed then nobody will trust it again. as trust is like love, in that it must be built up over a period of time - but can be destroyed in an instant.
burp.
Good! Trip over the power cable quick and we'll never be bothered by those annoying creations Bungle, Zippy, Aunty and Telltale ever again.
Though in hindsight that might of made more sense to the UK readers.....
if they wheeled a filing cabinet full of records out into the parking lot and left it to be stolen then I would expect them to be punished, I would expect this to be no different.
sounds entirely reasonable to me.
and of course, mandated encryption as well.
No surprise.
I used to work in China quite alot and found the only way I could get decent Internet access and get things done was to VPN back to the UK office and then surf from their gateway - the slight delay was quite alot better then the local service.
I got used to shitty performance, websites suddenly dying for no reason, 30 second delays on some sites and others almost instant.
As with most things Chinese, we may see this at dodgy behavior - to them it is a normal business practice. As I once stated on a thread about Chinese knockoffs the problem is not to "stop them doing it" but is rather "to make them understand they are doing something wrong in the first place".
you'd be expecting hushmail to turn up on fuckedcompany.com soon...
...if the website was not currently fucked.
Really though, come on. A firm that sells privacy as a feature and then gives it away to anybody who asks is about as crooked as your doctor telling your friends about your medical records on request. I had a hunt for the hushmail T&C to try and see if this was mentioned in any legalese but had no joy locating it.... The Internet being notoriously unforgiving on such matters I would not give too hoots for hushmail's future business regardless of whether they claim they had no choice or not
Weird, must be the way my brain works - but I immediately thought of a "brainCap"(tm) - slap the little cap on somebody's head and hear their thoughts.
then I went off on a tangent... and imagined what people would do with a device that could do that. Slap it on somebodies head and listen to the words they are mentally thinking...
"hold him, down lads, lets slap a brainCap on him and then he'll tell us where the diamonds are!"
"you say you are thinking of me only when we mave love darling? put on a brainCap next time so I can hear it and be sure.."
"hmm, you are having a bad dream - lets slap on a brainCap and hear what you dream about"
"so you say you want to work as a teacher and you love children? well for you first day somebody will be monitoring your thoughts"
given human nature, I think we don't want a device like this.
the first time a robot goes wrong and rips the head off an unsuspecting customer is when this theme park dies.
reminds of one of the early robot demonstrations - somebody else can track down the reference, I need to do some work - it was in the 60s/70s and "robot" was a very loose definition. what it did was replay programmed movements - there was no intelligence or decision making. they had programmed it to open a fridge and get a bottle of drink and offer it to the customers. all was well, until on day the wind blew the fridge door shut. the robot then easily punched his "hand" through the door of the fridge and offered the customer the whole fridge having simply picked it up instead. being offered an entire fridge by a 6 ton hydraulic arm was not the amusing, hi-tech spectacle the customer had been expecting...
the moral is, something always goes wrong. always. with most automation in factories the worst that will happen is a badly built car and a delay on the production lines whilst they remove the ford fiesta with ten doors. add humans to the mix and people will get hurt. or sue. or both.
Reading these comments you'd think we're a bunch a sad obsessed geek tosspots always looking for a cheap laugh. Sheesh.
On a more serious note, congratulations to the team for a real achievement and kudos for the excellent movie.
If only they had aligned it slighter further to the right we could of seen the giant "Kilroy was here" on the darkside of the moon, now that would of been cool..
1. Not going to happen. What I find funny is the ">1hr commute both ways." I'm from Arkansas. The average commute of my friends in the Little Rock area is around 20-30 minutes. (one way.) Those that few that I'm aware of that do have hour or more commutes seem to all be from NY or CA and live an insane distance away from where they actually work. I'm amazed that they could afford gas with the wages in this state, but they love living here just because they live so far from where they work. Stupid NY & CA are the problem... I live about 15 minutes away from where I work.
Good points, I'll toss another into the mix that I should of thought of in my original post - telecommuting, working from home. Many jobs do not need you in the office, and the technology is all there. Goverment tax rebates or some other incentive to kick start this?
2. I'm for cheap solar, but not for mandating it. Why? Better designed housing with geothermal heating/cooling and other features can reduce the normal required energy need by alot. I'd rather that was required than solar being required.
Good point again, I'll rephrase my original note to mandating energy efficiency and enercy self sufficiency - which ever tech is used.
4. I'm not sure that'll ever happen.
In the UK you can get grants for micro generation projects,
5. Most of that we have now. I want to know if "smart houses" actually save any money through the long run. I've seen many home automation setups, but I wouldn't want to go through the hassle of doing it myself. They seem like stupid little tricks to show off more than any energy saving.
They really do. In the UK there is a move to create efficient houses (led by TV programs like Grand Designs) and building control is heavily promoting iy with ever tougher regulations. it really is much much cheaper to run a new build on these lines then an old house like mine (130+ years and leaks heat like a sieve). I try to improve it little by little, I've manages to reduce my gas/elec by >50% bu buying CR equip carefully and actually turning it off.
Near where I work (New Forest, UK) there is a new housing development going up, and I happened to notice that they are having solar thermal fitted into the roofs as standard. I did idly wonder if in a few years time all houses would have solar panel roofs as standard and electric cars would automatically recharge when not being used. I don't know, you park the car up pops a small wind turbine and the entire top surface of the vehicle is covered in photo voltaic paint? Park it in the garage or near the house and up pops a cable to connect it to the house power wind/solar array.
Now, I realize that I am in Sci-Fi could cuckoo land here, but bear with me. There are some things that need to happen.. well I would like to happen..
1. Reverse the trend of people living 80miles from their workplace and seeing a >1hr commute both ways as normal. I realize this would require a society change - but if conventional cars cost too much and there is no reliable public transport infrastructures then this could happen.
2. Cheap, High efficiency solar cells mandated on all new builds. 3. Energy efficiency mandated on all new CE devices and proper OFF switches as standard.
4. Micro generation being normal, and grid "top up" being extra.
5. Smart housing that automatically switched off lights, water heating on demand from stored power, low power devices.
Sorry, I'll get off my soap box before I get carried away....
Indeed yes, we play it in the pub regularly.
But there are many reasons why this game is so good, some of them quite subtle.
1. It is self levelling. In the fact that the simple penalty structure, robbers, 7 rolls are all biased to pick on the leader by simple social engineering. This means the losers get a chance to catch up and the leader finds it harder to win.
2. As a consequence of 1, most games all ends with everybody all "about to finish" - in this respect its commanding social game as nobody is left out and its normally a rush for the end.
3. There is a strong element of trading and persuasion in the game - this further enhances to social element of play
4. Statistics. It has been wonderfully designed - from the probabilities of the cards, the probabilities of the game to present a darn good game with numerous tactics you can use to win.
5. Simple. Its a game anybody can learn in their first game and be competent on their second.
If you have not played it there are stand alone player vs. PC versions around (a fantastic DOS version which puts up a fierce challange) and multiuser 'net versions notably Sea3D.
But best of all buy a real board version and play with some friends and a few good drinks, you'll be hooked.
In a highly litigious culture, about a sport which borders on an obsession, about access perceived as a right...?
I predict the big winners in this one will be the lawyers....
thats a mighty slippery slope we are approaching that skirts perilously close to that line that we should not be crossing.
and so it begins.....
Tricky one.
Rather then attempt to clear her name shed escaped from jail and started a new life - a felony in itself.
On one hand you take the argument that they system has an appeals system designed to right injustice so if she believed she was innocent she should of tried to clear her name, on the other hand you have a possibly inept defense lawyer who seemed not to be dong their job and the possibility that left on her own she would rot in jail.
It is clear that the police have significant evidence to pin the crime on her, and the original jury clearly thought so. And we only have to facts as stated from TFA that make her seem like a saint based on the new life after the original murder.
And a justice system only works if all judgments and laws are upheld.
I am slightly disturbed by the final comment about this database "But there also were other clues that he said he could not talk about." - WTF? has this person never heard of conspiracy theorists? give them a single clue like that and they can invent ten secret organizations by lunchtime.
Thats great, now they just need to give out a load of free pin ups pics so they can all get to work cranking up a good charge to power their gear.
Hmmm.
I dont want to be paranoid, but...
RIAA/MPAA/**AA are trying to legislate against P2P
They have several key bitTorrent devs in their pockets
They are promoting a new *better* protocol
How long before this is a negotiating tools to the powers that that control the legislation - on the lines of "yes, P2P has legitimate uses, but the new protocol will safeguard those interests whilst protecting copyright" or something on those lines. In other words this could be an initial step towards the long term goal of a legal P2P system that is easy to police/control content. These people plan a long way ahead, I would not be surprised if something like this is brewing...
Mind you I like the concept of packet obfuscation to thwart ISP throttling mentioned in TFA.
they are always labeled a "test". what exactly were they testing?
..or they they could go one step further in a foolish session of bloody pointless political brinkmanship?
that they can make a bloody big bang?
what the after effect were?
I always thought with nuclear weapons, that really after a certain size there were precious little point is making it more powerful.
I don't know about you, but my first reaction was..
what. the. fuck.
OOXML is a awful standard, filled with numerous little features that seem purposely designed to make it difficult for anybody but MS to implement. Icaza is NOT an idiot, so he must know that this response will be flamed to a crisp across the community - so why is he doing it?
What does he stand to gain from backing this? What have I missed?
Who'd of thought Rowan Atkinson has a Masters in Electrical Engineering?
The thought of Mr. Bean with a soldering iron makes me shudder. Yikes.
the vultures got tired of circling then? gliding into land....
no doubt it will be a buy, slice, dice and sell operation. its doubtful there is a long term viable business there anymore.
bit of a fall from grace though, SCO used to be well respected back in the day. heyho.
if counter strike makes you go blind, then yes.
..but nobody ever warned me you could go blind from too much gaming. :-)
200x faster net access, that's remarkable if its true.
On a related note, I note that hospitals are quietly getting ready to increase their budgets for coping with an influx of wrist related repetitive strain injuries and severe myopia. Not to mention a lack of sleep.
by which I can assume there is still a lot of money to be made from music that is clearly beyond copyright?
after all I would hazard a guess this is all about money, not copyright.
well done Project Gutenberg.
It is well known that dogs keen sense of smell can detect illness and cancers. Lets hope this thing can be turned into something sensitive enough and cheap enough for widespread medical use. This could save lives.
for the interested: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html