Various amusing or interesting topics, or things that shock and appall me. Kind of a miscellaneous bin.
I never thought that I’d live to see a working Star Trek-esque medical tricorder, but it seems that I might… at least a poor-man’s version of one, that requires placing a sample on or in the device. Even better, the smartphones we’re toting around today might already have all the hardware needed, if I’m reading …
Continue reading ‘“iPhone doc will detect cancer, diabetes – boffins”’ »
As someone who’s dealt with horse-flies, this seems to be a questionable honor. 🙂
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. 🙂
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.
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”’ »
In honor of the year’s first Friday the thirteenth: it’s not bad luck when you bring it on yourself. 😉
I’m a hard-core geek, but even I am just shaking my head in bafflement.
Twenty years ago, headlines like this one wouldn’t have even been imaginable.