Topics pertaining to science and technology, current or future.
On Sunday evening, after a hard day’s work on Project X, I decided to poke around the Ubuntu web site a bit. The new version wasn’t scheduled for release for another half-week, and I knew from experience that I wouldn’t be able to download it for several days after that, due to web site congestion. …
Continue reading ‘Ubuntu 9.04: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly’ »
Whenever I see unproven fear-based reports like this one, I’m reminded of all the fear-inducing reports in my childhood. Comic books were warping our fragile little minds, so when I was six, my mother threw away a huge collection of Bugs Bunny comic books that I’d been given by our neighbors before I could read …
Interesting idea. I can see how this would be a lot harder for hackers to work around, at least for the moment. But it won’t do anything against spambots that use other people to get around the problem, directly or by trickery.
Have you ever heard about MessagEase, the extremely fast and efficient text-entry method for small devices? Probably not, even though it’s been around for a long time. And why not? I firmly believe that it’s because of the learning curve — it takes at least a few hours of practice to see any real speed …
(For the British-challenged in the audience, “boffin” seems to mean “scientist.”) Why, when I read this, do I get a mental picture of a modern-day Paul Revere, buzzing through the streets on a moped, yelling “The Singularity is coming!”? 🙂 Despite the rather alarmist tone of the article, I really don’t think it’s going to …
Continue reading ‘“Boffins invent automatic net-hookup roboffinry machines”’ »
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you a virus… enslave it to build things for you. 😉
Wow, I didn’t realize that today’s hardware was already intelligent enough to dislike U2. 😉 (I happen to like U2’s work, at least the stuff I’ve heard, but the joke was too good to pass up.)
“Ushers in open-source era“. Um, “oops.” 🙂
An interesting concept, especially the idea of using it to detect and prevent counterfeit documents and currency.
Sometimes you’ve just got to ask yourself what some would-be criminal “mastermind” was thinking. This is one of them. Nine thousand?! I’m the first to agree with the phrase “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” but even I have limits. And the stupid-stick apparently whacked Apple here too — did no one there notice …
Continue reading ‘“Scammer shuffles Apple out of 9,000 iPods”’ »