It sounds like a good idea to me. 🙂
“As the Internet evolves, is there a place for spam?”
Apparently not:
In the late 1990s Robert Soloway made $20,000 a day as a spammer. He drove fancy cars. He wore Armani clothes. He was, by all accounts, one of the most successful spammers on the planet. But if he were starting out today, he’d find some other line of work. In 2011, spamming just won’t pay the bills.
It seems that spam filters have just gotten too good.
I, for one, am not going to complain. 😉
“Dumb users vs Dumb design”
The great computer security debate: what is the biggest problem in computer security, the software or the users? It’s important because the answer determines what we do to try to fix it. Two experts (and a mass of ZDNet readers) weigh in on the subject.
My opinion (and a pretty strong one) is that both are part of the problem, and any solution must involve both as well. Users cause more of the problem these days than they did in, for example, 1998 — but that’s at least partly because the software is a lot more secure these days and there are a lot more non-technical computer users.
“Life-size Lego assault rifle really works”
Some things, when I read about them, make me very envious that I didn’t make them myself. This is one of them.
“Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?”
Free will? Yes and no. Even if people are nothing but “moist robots” (quite possibly true), and everything that has ever happened or ever will was predetermined by the state of the universe in the moments after the Big Bang (which I have my doubts about), free will still exists as most people understand it. And if you believe in it, you’ll be more free too.
“IKEA cuts ribbon on ‘I’ve Got A Screw Loose Street'”
There isn’t much I can add to this, other than shaking my head in disbelief and amusement.
“Tumblr users fight SOPA with 87,834 calls to Congress”
It wasn’t just Tumblr users, either. Demand Progress delivered over seven hundred thousand e-mails as well, including mine.
Sorry, music and movie industries. The people won’t stand for such draconian and heavy-handed attempts at censorship to protect your outdated business models. You’re going to have to do what every industry eventually does: adapt or die.
To everyone else: they’re not going to give up. No matter how many times they’re defeated, they will continue trying to twist the laws of every country to suit themselves. We’ve got to keep a careful eye on them, and block anything and everything that they attempt that isn’t fair and balanced to everyone. Something they obviously don’t even consider when dictating their legal “suggestions” to their bought and paid-for politicians.
“Detecting Psychopaths by their Speech Patterns”
This is a little worrisome. As Schneier says at the bottom, “I worry about people being judged by these criteria. Psychopaths make up about 1% of the population, so even a small false-positive rate can be a significant problem.”
On a complete tangent, the statistic that 1% of the population counts as psychopathic is disturbing. According to at least some people who’ve studied the phenomenon, people with autism only make up about 0.5%, one person in two hundred. Considering the number of other people with HFA or Asperger’s Syndrome I’ve met, I shudder to think what that implies about the number of psychopaths out there.
“Laser display could mean 3D sans screens”
If anyone is looking for a holiday present for me, one of these would be REALLY appreciated. 😉
Think of the possibilities… this could eventually eliminate the need for a screen entirely! Add a way for the computer to understand subvocalized commands, and you could have a full-powered general-purpose computer and entertainment center with you all the time!
Obligatory science fiction link, in case the ones in the article aren’t enough: at the beginning of the near-future series The Sex Gates, before the appearance of the Gates themselves, people are using their mobile phones — charged maybe once every week or two — as a personal general-purpose computer, recorder, communications device, and entertainment center, with essentially unlimited storage, but they have to be (wirelessly) linked to an external display for anything that requires more screen than a handheld device can provide. By the third book — maybe a decade later, I don’t recall for sure — revolutionary theoretical advances inspired by the arrival of the Gates have lead to tiny voice-controlled devices, often worn as jewelry, which generate holographic displays of any size comfortable for the user. Very similar to what I described above.
“UN set to dump GMT for tech-friendly Atomic Time”
Computers have been the center of my world since I discovered them when I was eleven. Now they’ve become the center of everyone else’s too, in a way, as shown by the fact that the UN is seriously considering changing the whole way that we (as a race) keep time, just so it’s easier for computers and programmers to work with.
If only the general populace could become so logical in such a short period of time. 🙂
(Actually, I think it is possible, and I even think I know the path to it. But that’s a subject for a different article, one that I’m gathering information on now, and plan to write about early next year if all goes well.)