Tag: technology
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World’s First Room-Temperature Plastic Magnet
New Scientist reports that researchers at the University of Durham have created the world's first plastic magnet to work at room temperature (previous plastic magnets worked only at extremely low temperatures, typically measurable in double-digit Kelvins).
I'm sure I'm likely to be corrected on some minor point by any of the physicists who read this blog, … -
Troma Night Website Integrates With Abnib
Woo and indeed hoo! I'm really starting to enjoy programming RSS feeds into my web sites now. I've just done a little bit of recoding of the Troma Night website to allow the newly-relaunched Aberystwyth weblog aggregator, Abnib, to syndicate it. Now, Abnib will show the details of the next upcoming Troma Night... and not …
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Abnib’s Back!
(much thanks due to Gareth)
Abnib, the Aberystwyth Weblog Aggregator (bringing you niblets of the best of Aber's weblogs) is back online, after months of absence. Take a look and see who you recognise.
Haven't quite gotten around to putting everybody's 'mugshots' in there (as I'm having some difficulty with semitransparent PNGs), but Gareth's made a good … -
Belt Buckle Shows Highlights Of Crazy Search Results
This is just crazy. Some mad geeks have adapted a Pocket PC into a hip 80s-esque belt buckle, such that it displays a scrolling list of popular web search terms of the last 24 hours, live... at your crotch.
I have no idea what the purpose of this is. -
How Google Could De-Throne AIM, And Other Geeky News
There's an article on how Google could overthrow AIM/ICQ (link removed; apple-x.net now seems to be occupied by domain squatters), and perhaps even MSN Messenger, from their dominant positions in the instant messenger market, and improve internet standards usage and accessibility, by releasing their own instant messenger tool powered by the (wonderful) Jabber protocol. It's …
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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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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 … -
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 … -
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... -
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 …
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Ferreting Out Piracy
CNet News has a story on the BSA's attempts to educate children that copyright evasion and piracy is wrong, with the help of their new cartoon mascot - a ferret (shown).
And yes, I've used the picture of their new mascot without their permission. <wink>
Is a ferret really the best mascot they could think of...? -
Thrashing
Thrashing is a computer science term referring to an undesirable occurrence in multiprocessing systems.
When a processor is given multiple jobs to do, it services them a little each in a round-robin fashion (assuming that no priority system is in effect), until each is done. This is, of course, actually significantly less efficient than doing each … -
How To Keep Up With The Latest Happings On Scatmania (or What Are All Those Pretty Buttons?)
If you're looking for a way to keep up-do-date with the latest Scatmania happenings, it's now really really easy. I've enhanced my weblog with a heap of useful syndication tools that make keeping track of my latest activities a doddle, even for those of you who are unenlightened and can still be caught using an …