Year: 2004
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A.I. For Deluded Nutcases
Some goon (sorry: Californian counsellor) has patented Inductive Inference Affective Language Analyzer Simulating Artificial Intelligence (including the Ten Ethical Laws Of Robotics). It's nothing but unintelligible babble, interspersed by (inaccurate) references to artificial intelligence theory. The author (who also writes a book on family values with a distinct evangelic slant, from which most of the …
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Burny Burny Firey Goodness
Gareth came over this weekend, and he, Bryn, Paul, Claire and I decided to have a bonfire and a barbeque on the beach. Sadly, Matt - who's in town for resits - couldn't join us, as he's busy revising (best of luck to you, Matt!).
In any case, the food and the beer and the company … -
What If Windows 98 Had Activation?
Or: Yet Another Reason Why 'Activation' Is Bad
There are already loads of articles out there explaining why 'product activation', which made it's first appearance in a piece of Microsoft software in their release of Windows XP, is a bad thing. Product activation, which you may already have experienced, works by making a 'fingerprint' of the … -
Troma Night Becomes Locally Famous
While doing a few errands around town, Bryn and I stepped into Pier Video to check whether Paul had already rented the three videos we're planning to watch at this evening's themed Troma Night: Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, and - …
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This Weekend : Nudism For Dummies
Following the theme of Parachuting For Dummies, last weekend, this weekend Claire and I spent the day at Morfa Dyffryn, a naturist beach between Barmouth and Harlech (about an hour and a quarter's drive away - would be less, but Barmouth's roads are comparable to Cambridge in their narrowness and complexity).
Which was an experience. And … -
Schoolboy, 12, Performs Armed Robbery And Is Placated With Crisps
Article on the BBC. A schoolboy holds up a shop and demands money, using a sawn-off shotgun.
My favourite bit: Mr Guliani said there was no money in the till and, on instruction to load the bag with cigarettes instead, told the boy he was under age. The retailer later offered him sweets and crisps instead. -
Teleportation Goes Long-Distance
The BBC have an article about Australian researchers successfully teleporting photons a distance of 600m, advancing upon their first efforts in the field, over two years ago.
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Bush’s Foreign Friends
There's a new googlebomb out, abusing the way that the popular Google search engine works. To see it in action, go to Google and enter "Bush's foreign friends" (including the speechmarks) as the search term, and hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
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On The Importance Of A Firewall
This is a graph showing the average amount of time between port scans against Windows boxen, and it's change from last year to this year. It's down from 40 minutes to 20 minutes over the last year.
If we take this and assume a few things:
(a) There will always be Windows security vulnerabilities - not an … -
Where Do They Make Balloons?
So I come home from work on Monday evening to find my flat full of balloons. WTF??? -
The ActionScript Jabberwocky
This made me smile: The Jabberwocky in ActionScript (Macromedia Flash's scripting language). It's another one of those that you'll really need to be a proper geek to appreciate, but it's really quite good.
Perhaps you need to be a Lewis Carrroll fan, as well... -
One Thousand, Two Thousand, Three Thousand… Check Canopy!
Wow: a most memorable weekend. As you'll remember, I spent the last weekend on a crash-course in parachuting in Lancashire. Having spent plenty of time in light aircraft or coasting around in a paraglider, I thought I had it sized: but it turned out to be even more spectacular (and scary) than I could have …
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1000... 2000... 3000... Check Canopy! (Claire's take)
This repost was published in hindsight, on 11 March 2019.
Claire wrote:
Yesterday I spent about 8 hours watching Dan and his Dad learn how to parachute. They did their first jump at about 6pm. It was a very comprehensive course, and I think that I could probably have jumped out with them, had I the … -
This Weekend : Parachuting For Dummies
The good news is that the weather looks fantastic for my parachuting trip this weekend. I can't think of a better thing to be travelling for on a Friday 13th.
The downside is I haven't spent more than a few consecutive minutes off the phone this morning talking my work colleagues through the code I've left … -
Executable Stenography… With A Difference
Somebody's come up with a program that hides secret messages in executable programs. Well... that's not so impressive - we've all hidden secret messages in JPEG files before by using programs to 'flip' certain pixels (example). This works by changing the image in subtle ways that the human eye won't detect, but that the descrambling …