The point of IG Nobel prizes is that it is about (academic) research which has no use. I was thinking more of a prize for stuff that is too hard to use (but could have a use anyway).
Some of the past results would have made great slashdot stories, how about: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for
inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower."
I think that initiatives like the Darwin award and the Ig Nobel prize are great. Maybe it would be a good idea to introduce such a prize for software that is too faulty or insanely difficult to use, or code that is too unreadable. Ermz, I am preaching for the wrong choir here, since some people actually like making unreadable code:)
Of course, the next series of credit cards are Uranium. A small green card with glow-in-the-dark feature, and if you every lose one, just use a Geiger teller.
I knew someone would eventually find a way to make all those fancy CEO's give their laptop the finger.
Btw: for all the l337 hackers suggesting cutting off fingers: proper finger recognition systems can sense whether the finger being scanned is attached to a living body by checking for temperature, pulse etc. So instead of just stealing your thumb and laptop, they will have to steal you as well.
This may be one bend on a long road, but it is a bend into the good direction. I am glad to see things like this appearing in the EU, especially since the possibilities of sueing and/or punitive damages are much smaller and less likely to scare spammers. Not that I expect that every spammer will immediately stop, since hell is still as hot as an AMD chip, but it is nice to know that EU legistlation is kind of going the right way when it comes to internet related stuff.
Here's a picture of netpad. (http://www.fieldworker.com/HPC_Pics/netpad.jpg for those not interested in goatse.cx) Finally safely browsing from the bathtub.
A very cool tool, but looking at the specs, I got the feeling that everything has been added because it can, not because it could be useful for a PDA. I mean: a 5 button joystick interface? If they would have integrate cell-phone functionality, then this would really rock. Anyone got any ideas on how long such a battery will last without recharging?
I am very glad to read a sane reaction to something which could easily have become a huge anti- WPost flame. Now let's hope that this influences all the other people who are discussing encryption at the moment (read government), to get a somewhat more sensible discussion about privacy and encryption instead of a fear-driven hype against terrorism.
The following link points to a hilarious mpg with this situation, expect with the teacher having his content shown to the rest of the world. Quite funny:-)
Such a thing already exists for the netherlands, where eynstein is a computer shop without support, other then email. As a result, they assemble and sell what you want, at prices that indeed are 10% lower at least.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Eynstein, just a very happy customer.
What kind of nonsense is this? Fascisme is rascisme with a single leader. The point of discussion here is certainly not about rascisme, but about the general rights of everyone.
Designed for the Earth's weather, the computer should be able to predict climate for the entire planet for thousands of years in a short amount of time."
It is good to see that the climate for the coming millennia can be predicted in a short amount of time, since the calculation will have to be repeated every 4 to 5 days. Chaos is such a party pooper.
Scary though: Imagine getting new weathercasts each day, predicting for the coming millennium. That weather girl had better be pretty gorgeous to keep it interesting.
penetration devices without cables.... Instead of waiting for the (conservative) corporate world, I think we can expect more really cool things from the pr0n industry.
yet, thinking about the (theoretical?) possibility of anti-matter, you could postulate the existence of a white hole (i.e. black hole made of anti-matter). Given similar (anti-)mass, such a white hole ought to remove a black hole.
Indeed it is fairly safe to say that SW isn't hard ScFi, but cool to read anyway. The best thing, which keeps it soft scifi, is that the authors do not pretend that the technological advances are possible and try to convince me by overloading me with pages of possible explanations of future tech bits. I want that that, I'll read J. Verne:-)
>Pity really, it sounds like a good plot for a SciFi story.
Check out the relatively unknown SciFi series called Star Wars. The newer books, telling the story approximately 20 years after the death of the emperor, already include using black holes as offensive and defensive weapons. Quite interesting, since it is suggested that these holes can also be controlled sizewize. Not impossible *if* you know how to extract energy from a black hole. Interested? Check out the "New Jedi Order" books.
Ok, I can see a certain (vast) amount of coolness in building a black hole, but what I interested in is practical applications of this. How about:
Your own little black hole instead of a trash can.
Placing your black hole between you and your mother in law to suck in the boring conversation.
No more standing in line in shops or outside disco's.
A good excuse when your boss comes complaining about all the budget you are eating: "It wasn't me, it was the company black hole!"
Besides the suspects mentioned in one of the links, (3 mentioned: Palestinian group, Iraq, Osama), I think a fourth should not be ruled out in advance. Right extremist americans (i.e. T. McVeigh followers).
What a nonsense. Seeing that America was attacked 3 times using (hijacked) planes, you don't wanna suggest a missile defense shield to shoot all planes down?
Or in similar terms: Othello/Reversi. A board game that is very simple to learn, also not too hard to become quite proficient, but takes forever to master even though you keep improving. Plus it has very nice practice programs for free (as in beer).
For more info: www.othello.nl/indexuk.html and for the program: use google with keyword wzebra.
Slashdot Mirror
The point of IG Nobel prizes is that it is about (academic) research which has no use. I was thinking more of a prize for stuff that is too hard to use (but could have a use anyway).
Some of the past results would have made great slashdot stories, how about: Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for
inventing an automobile burglar alarm consisting of a detection circuit and a flamethrower."
I think that initiatives like the Darwin award and the Ig Nobel prize are great. Maybe it would be a good idea to introduce such a prize for software that is too faulty or insanely difficult to use, or code that is too unreadable. Ermz, I am preaching for the wrong choir here, since some people actually like making unreadable code :)
hehe, I thought I would get corrected for leaving out Muller, but you are 100% correct too.
Of course, the next series of credit cards are Uranium. A small green card with glow-in-the-dark feature, and if you every lose one, just use a Geiger teller.
I knew someone would eventually find a way to make all those fancy CEO's give their laptop the finger.
Btw: for all the l337 hackers suggesting cutting off fingers: proper finger recognition systems can sense whether the finger being scanned is attached to a living body by checking for temperature, pulse etc. So instead of just stealing your thumb and laptop, they will have to steal you as well.
This may be one bend on a long road, but it is a bend into the good direction. I am glad to see things like this appearing in the EU, especially since the possibilities of sueing and/or punitive damages are much smaller and less likely to scare spammers. Not that I expect that every spammer will immediately stop, since hell is still as hot as an AMD chip, but it is nice to know that EU legistlation is kind of going the right way when it comes to internet related stuff.
Here's a picture of netpad. (http://www.fieldworker.com/HPC_Pics/netpad.jpg for those not interested in goatse.cx) Finally safely browsing from the bathtub.
A very cool tool, but looking at the specs, I got the feeling that everything has been added because it can, not because it could be useful for a PDA. I mean: a 5 button joystick interface? If they would have integrate cell-phone functionality, then this would really rock. Anyone got any ideas on how long such a battery will last without recharging?
I am very glad to read a sane reaction to something which could easily have become a huge anti- WPost flame. Now let's hope that this influences all the other people who are discussing encryption at the moment (read government), to get a somewhat more sensible discussion about privacy and encryption instead of a fear-driven hype against terrorism.
The following link points to a hilarious mpg with this situation, expect with the teacher having his content shown to the rest of the world. Quite funny :-)
Such a thing already exists for the netherlands, where eynstein is a computer shop without support, other then email. As a result, they assemble and sell what you want, at prices that indeed are 10% lower at least.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Eynstein, just a very happy customer.
>fascist dictatorship..
What kind of nonsense is this? Fascisme is rascisme with a single leader. The point of discussion here is certainly not about rascisme, but about the general rights of everyone.
Then stick to Lego, since it is short for Leg Got, meaning good toys.
Designed for the Earth's weather, the computer should be able to predict climate for the entire planet for thousands of years in a short amount of time."
It is good to see that the climate for the coming millennia can be predicted in a short amount of time, since the calculation will have to be repeated every 4 to 5 days. Chaos is such a party pooper.
Scary though: Imagine getting new weathercasts each day, predicting for the coming millennium. That weather girl had better be pretty gorgeous to keep it interesting.
You don't need to: beer low, vegetables high.
penetration devices without cables.... Instead of waiting for the (conservative) corporate world, I think we can expect more really cool things from the pr0n industry.
I am sure that there are some bad puns regarding penetration devices out there. Now if I could *just* insert those martians in there somewhere....
yet, thinking about the (theoretical?) possibility of anti-matter, you could postulate the existence of a white hole (i.e. black hole made of anti-matter). Given similar (anti-)mass, such a white hole ought to remove a black hole.
Of course, I could be wrong....
Indeed it is fairly safe to say that SW isn't hard ScFi, but cool to read anyway. The best thing, which keeps it soft scifi, is that the authors do not pretend that the technological advances are possible and try to convince me by overloading me with pages of possible explanations of future tech bits. I want that that, I'll read J. Verne :-)
>Pity really, it sounds like a good plot for a SciFi story.
Check out the relatively unknown SciFi series called Star Wars. The newer books, telling the story approximately 20 years after the death of the emperor, already include using black holes as offensive and defensive weapons. Quite interesting, since it is suggested that these holes can also be controlled sizewize. Not impossible *if* you know how to extract energy from a black hole. Interested? Check out the "New Jedi Order" books.
Your own little black hole instead of a trash can.
Placing your black hole between you and your mother in law to suck in the boring conversation.
No more standing in line in shops or outside disco's.
A good excuse when your boss comes complaining about all the budget you are eating: "It wasn't me, it was the company black hole!"
Besides the suspects mentioned in one of the links, (3 mentioned: Palestinian group, Iraq, Osama), I think a fourth should not be ruled out in advance. Right extremist americans (i.e. T. McVeigh followers).
What a nonsense. Seeing that America was attacked 3 times using (hijacked) planes, you don't wanna suggest a missile defense shield to shoot all planes down?
Or in similar terms: Othello/Reversi. A board game that is very simple to learn, also not too hard to become quite proficient, but takes forever to master even though you keep improving. Plus it has very nice practice programs for free (as in beer).
For more info: www.othello.nl/indexuk.html and for the program: use google with keyword wzebra.
But we've got CowboyNeal!
I wonder if these effects will cancel each other