This entry could almost have come from Geek Drivel: […] I remember reading a science fiction story about a computer worm that searched for people this way: going from computer to computer, trying to identify a specific individual. I immediately thought of The Adolescence of P-1, one of my teenage favorites, and I was tickled …
Continue reading ‘“Authentication by ‘Cognitive Footprint’”’ »
Remember the SOPA drama last week? It has given MPAA not-quite-lobbyist Chris Dodd a bad case of foot-in-mouth: he publicly threatened politicians who’d taken MPAA money for not doing what the MPAA wanted. On national television, no less. Un-freakin’-believable. And just this side of actually criminal. Dodd is a former senator — he should know …
Considering the poor accuracy of professional science fiction authors even in “near-future” SF, this guy‘s track record is nothing short of amazing. Too bad he can’t be around to enjoy his success, but when you’re making predictions for a century hence, that’s a bit problematic. 🙂
Wow. I didn’t expect anything like what happened, and apparently neither did anyone else — including the MPAA. From the e-mail I received from FightForTheFuture.org: The MPAA (the lobby for big movie studios which created these terrible bills) was shocked and seemingly humbled. “‘This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,’ MPAA …
The offending tweet: I wouldn’t fancy the bed next to Gareth Thomas #padlockmyarse Does this mean that the tweeter would climb into the bed of any female sleeping in the same room and have his way with her, even if she didn’t want it? Because that’s what it sounds like he’s saying. If not, then …
Continue reading ‘“Footie club sacks striker for homophobic tweet”’ »
A medical breakthrough in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria! In a nutshell, these things render such bacteria vulnerable to antibiotics again, and it looks like bacteria have no way to defend themselves. 🙂 This is the kind of science I love to hear about.
As you may have noticed, this site — along with thousands of others — was blacked out today, to protest the SOPA and PIPA bills. If you’re an American Internet user and haven’t heard of them before, what rock have you been hiding under? Go find out what it’s all about (this page might help), …
People can get pretty creative when it comes to marriage proposals (I know I spent a great deal of time planning mine out). Women seem to really like that stuff too, so I don’t see the practice dying out any time soon. This is a good example of the genre, as well as pretty amusing.
As mentioned previously, I use a 13″ mid-2009 MacBook Pro as my development machine, with virtual Linux and Windows machines running under Parallels. All was mostly well, except that I’m doing a lot more compiling in the last few months than I had been previously, and the IOWait problem on the Linux VM — always …
Continue reading ‘Linux compiles and massive IOWait delays’ »
So you’ve got an unmanned flying drone with deadly weapons, controlled by ground stations that could be hundreds or thousands of miles away. Of course you run it with the most popular and least secure operating system on the planet! I mean, what could possibly go wrong? I’ve said it before, in all-caps and bold …
Continue reading ‘“US killer spy drone controls switch to Linux”’ »