Hello again everyone! Let's feed some squishy eyeballs some superfood. :). First off, in piracy news, it seems a judge has noticed that IP addresses are not like fingerprints and can't identify you in person. This is important as it raises the bar ever so slightly on those organizations who would like to launch mass copyright infringing lawsuits based on an IP address alone. In reality, getting an IP address should be the start of an investigation, not the end of one, similar to getting the license plate of that truck tells you who the vehicle was registered to, not who was driving.
In other legal news, it seems that a court in Colorado is letting persons go for what was once illegal, but now legal possession of marijuana. While it seems like the right thing to do, this only seems to apply to those who had a small amount who were appealing their case when the law legalizing it was passed. Good job Colorado for treating its citizens like human beings.
In additional law enforcement news, it seems that not following policy, that's policy, not law mind you, can get you arrested. That's what reportedly happened to a mother of a student in St. Louis county after she was called in to take care of her son and didn't sign in. She was eventually taken to the police station on trespassing charges. I'm not sure what the whole story here is, but arrested for trespassing when you're invited to pick up your child is just insane. This is probably a case of people mindlessly following procedure and not having a perspective on what the procedure is there for.
Speaking of bureaucratic procedure, according to an article over at the Washington Post, the U.S. government processes retirement benefits of its workers by hand on a huge amount of paper. It seems they tried to automate it over the years, but whoever the I.T. contractors were, they couldn't get a system that actually worked under the stress that was required.
In news of government working too quickly (who would have thought that would have ever been a problem?) across in Egypt, a court has sentenced 528 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi to death. What's especially unusual about this is that the conviction of the 528 people happened over two court sessions, one of which was the sentencing session. Hopefully Egypt ends up with someone a bit more sane in office to help them get through this very troubling period.
In additional news of learning the hard way, some researchers from Vanderbilt university show it's possible to improve how you learn by zapping your brain. While transcranial direct current stimulation is not that new, I'm going to wait for it to become a bit more mainstream before I decide to strap one on.
Speaking of altering your state of mind using science, Neil deGrasse Tyson is hosting a re-boot of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" on PBS, a series once hosted by the legendary Carl Sagan. This would be enough to be newsworthy, but it seems that the unexpected popularity of a series on science has thrown some for a loop as Creationists are demanding that they receive the opportunity for equal airtime on the show. This is so silly I am almost at a lost for words. Almost. First, if you would like to broadcast your opinion on something, you don't try to hijack someone else's show, you make your own. Oh wait, there's a whole industry devoted to broadcasting religious views all over the planet. Second, it makes sense your beliefs are not on a science show, because it's not science. Would you expect to see someone cooking a soufflé in the middle of a basketball game? Finally, to turn the argument on its head, imagine giving scientists equal time on all the religious programs out there, where they discuss scientific topics and point out that, quoting Neil deGrasse Tyson, "when different experiments give you the same result, it is no longer subject to your opinion".
In different news about creation, did you know Google was working on creating an advanced humanoid robot? Neither did I until an article on the verge pointed out that Google doesn't want any direct military funding and the military doesn't want to fund them. DARPA did give us the Internet and GPS, but Google gave us Google, so I'm not sure who to root for to get a humanoid robot working first. From what I can tell though, DARPA threw some money at some small companies to invent some important pieces of a robot they could probably send into war, and Google has gobbled them all up. Advanced robotics isn't exactly a common skill to have.
Speaking of upgrades, Microsoft is getting a bit desperate for you to stop using XP, going so far as to offer USD $100.00 credit on buying a new PC through their store. For many XP is good enough and upgrading is unnecessary. Microsoft doesn't know how to compete against itself and it's starting to show more and more. I wonder how many support tickets they're going to get once they officially stop supporting XP.
Finally, in news of a different type of ticket, a Texas teen turned the tables and gave a police officer parked in a fire lane, a USD $10.00 ticket. The officer had a good sense of humor on the whole situation and even gave the teen a gift card.
Well that's it for this installment, I hope you enjoyed it and remember to keep those eyeballs squishy!
Monday, March 24, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Origins of the universe, roaming, war, water, worms, trust, rich, Tesla, Guinness!
Hello there all you hungry squishy eyeballers. Here are some stories that I found interesting. The first in an article from over at the BBC that says that researchers have shed more light (pun intended) on the origins of the universe, supporting the big bang theory. Now I'm not an astrophysicist, but from what I understand, the researchers have found evidence supporting something called the Inflationary theory about what happened right after the big bang. The theory has been around for some time and had quite a bit of indirect evidence to back it up, but this has been the first set of direct evidence that our current model of what happened right after the creation of the universe (when the universe was estimated to be about 10-32 seconds old) is correct.
Speaking of shining light to make things clearer, the E.U. parliament is considering legislation that will significantly cut roaming charges, well for people in the E.U. anyway. Roaming data has always been a significant cost well over the regular data packages, but evening the playing field between roaming and non-roaming calling and data charges brings an interesting side effect into perspective. If this goes through, in the E.U. it may no longer be necessary to get a "local" phone contract if the cost of roaming with another carrier is cheaper than the local carrier's cost. This may be one of those rare, unicorn type sightings, of government regulation actually encouraging competition.
Over in Ukraine, they're preparing for an entirely different type of charge as the government there says they're preparing for war. While I doubt they would be able to do anything other than saber rattle, I send my best hopes for the innocent people of Ukraine and Russia and hope that Russia's seizing of Crimea doesn't lead to war. It's easier for the politicians to say that their troops will fight, but it's easy to be patriotic when you're not surrounded, outnumbered, technologically outmatched and lacking support from the local population.
I would be more understanding of the whole situation if the war was over a necessity, like water. According to Unicef, about 768 million people don't have access to clean water. That's a huge number who need something that most of us reading this take for granted every day. Access to clean water is especially vital for children and researchers from the University of East Anglia have linked the availability of clean water to absenteeism from school. Education is important in the development of a society and the elevation of citizens from poverty. With less absenteeism the children would have a greater chance to succeed.
In other news of succeeding where one would expect failure, a worm has decided to one-up biotech engineered corn designed to kill it, by evolving to eat it anyway. It seems the scientists studying the engineered corn warned that this may happen and trusted the seed companies, farmers and even the government to do the right thing and follow their recommendations, which they didn't.
This is not really a surprise, especially as a study from the University of Oxford indicates that more intelligent people are more trusting. I'm not too sure what to think of this study though, but I think it's reasonable to think that if you weren't too smart to begin with, you would be less trusting because people would be trying to take advantage of you all the time. Negative trust experiences would make people less trusting. This could be also related to the environment, as persons with a lower socio-economic status may have to have less trust to survive versus people who have a more trusting environment (i.e. rich) to grow and live in.
Continuing on the topic of the rich, it turns out financial inequality is pretty bad in Britain, where the five richest families there are worth more than the poorest 20% of the population. These types of articles are usually sensationalist because they tend to include university students (who have lots of loans and hence a negative net worth) into the equation. If this was the case, then as the students got jobs and bought land, houses and other assets, the problem would go away by itself. It seems however, there are large swaths of the population that have little or no assets, regardless of age.
In related rich people news, from the things-I-can't-afford department, it seems that Tesla is 'poaching' Prius buyers. The current Tesla Model S is approximately three times as expensive as a Prius though, so I'm not sure poaching is the right word to use there. If Tesla made a Model S like car that was much cheaper (which from what I understand is the plan), then there I could see extensive poaching taking place. All we need to happen after that is the self-driving car and then hopefully we see a lot less deaths on the road due to drinking and driving.
Finally, in related drinking (but not driving) news, we end with an article from the Chicago Tribune reporting that Guinness, the well known Irish brewer, is pulling their support for the St. Patrick's day parade over the parade's ban on gays. While it is my understanding that the parade is run by a private group, I find it difficult to believe in this day and age the group doesn't see the hypocrisy that much of the Irish history has to do with fighting against oppression and here they are, essentially oppressing people in a parade celebrating (among other things) the fight against oppression. Hopefully next year, with a major sponsor like Guinness pulling out, they think about who they want to exclude.
Well, that's all for now folks. I hope you had a good read and remember, keep those eyeballs well fed and squishy!
Speaking of shining light to make things clearer, the E.U. parliament is considering legislation that will significantly cut roaming charges, well for people in the E.U. anyway. Roaming data has always been a significant cost well over the regular data packages, but evening the playing field between roaming and non-roaming calling and data charges brings an interesting side effect into perspective. If this goes through, in the E.U. it may no longer be necessary to get a "local" phone contract if the cost of roaming with another carrier is cheaper than the local carrier's cost. This may be one of those rare, unicorn type sightings, of government regulation actually encouraging competition.
Over in Ukraine, they're preparing for an entirely different type of charge as the government there says they're preparing for war. While I doubt they would be able to do anything other than saber rattle, I send my best hopes for the innocent people of Ukraine and Russia and hope that Russia's seizing of Crimea doesn't lead to war. It's easier for the politicians to say that their troops will fight, but it's easy to be patriotic when you're not surrounded, outnumbered, technologically outmatched and lacking support from the local population.
I would be more understanding of the whole situation if the war was over a necessity, like water. According to Unicef, about 768 million people don't have access to clean water. That's a huge number who need something that most of us reading this take for granted every day. Access to clean water is especially vital for children and researchers from the University of East Anglia have linked the availability of clean water to absenteeism from school. Education is important in the development of a society and the elevation of citizens from poverty. With less absenteeism the children would have a greater chance to succeed.
In other news of succeeding where one would expect failure, a worm has decided to one-up biotech engineered corn designed to kill it, by evolving to eat it anyway. It seems the scientists studying the engineered corn warned that this may happen and trusted the seed companies, farmers and even the government to do the right thing and follow their recommendations, which they didn't.
This is not really a surprise, especially as a study from the University of Oxford indicates that more intelligent people are more trusting. I'm not too sure what to think of this study though, but I think it's reasonable to think that if you weren't too smart to begin with, you would be less trusting because people would be trying to take advantage of you all the time. Negative trust experiences would make people less trusting. This could be also related to the environment, as persons with a lower socio-economic status may have to have less trust to survive versus people who have a more trusting environment (i.e. rich) to grow and live in.
Continuing on the topic of the rich, it turns out financial inequality is pretty bad in Britain, where the five richest families there are worth more than the poorest 20% of the population. These types of articles are usually sensationalist because they tend to include university students (who have lots of loans and hence a negative net worth) into the equation. If this was the case, then as the students got jobs and bought land, houses and other assets, the problem would go away by itself. It seems however, there are large swaths of the population that have little or no assets, regardless of age.
In related rich people news, from the things-I-can't-afford department, it seems that Tesla is 'poaching' Prius buyers. The current Tesla Model S is approximately three times as expensive as a Prius though, so I'm not sure poaching is the right word to use there. If Tesla made a Model S like car that was much cheaper (which from what I understand is the plan), then there I could see extensive poaching taking place. All we need to happen after that is the self-driving car and then hopefully we see a lot less deaths on the road due to drinking and driving.
Finally, in related drinking (but not driving) news, we end with an article from the Chicago Tribune reporting that Guinness, the well known Irish brewer, is pulling their support for the St. Patrick's day parade over the parade's ban on gays. While it is my understanding that the parade is run by a private group, I find it difficult to believe in this day and age the group doesn't see the hypocrisy that much of the Irish history has to do with fighting against oppression and here they are, essentially oppressing people in a parade celebrating (among other things) the fight against oppression. Hopefully next year, with a major sponsor like Guinness pulling out, they think about who they want to exclude.
Well, that's all for now folks. I hope you had a good read and remember, keep those eyeballs well fed and squishy!
Monday, March 3, 2014
Porn, coffee, Russia, HIV, Dinos, Disney, Fish, Dogs, Apps!
Hello again all. Let's get right into it, shall we? From the who-didn't-see-that-coming department, across in the U.K. an aide to David Cameron (the current U.K. prime minister), Patrick Rock, has been arrested on child pornography allegations. If that wasn't bad enough, Mr. Rock was involved in drawing up the policy on child pornography and other Internet pornography filters. One has to wonder if he would claim he was 'studying it so he could fight it better'. Well, at least we know the Internet filters are working, but no-one seemed to notice until just now that it was being filtered straight into Mr. Rock's office.
Speaking of filters and restrictions that only seem to benefit the few, if you're thinking of treating your coffee maker like a dumb appliance that you can refill with whatever you want, Keurig has some plans for you. It seems they got jealous of printer and ink manufacturers and are planning on locking out 'unauthorized' refills to their coffee maker. I am not a coffee drinker, but I cringe when I imagine a world where someone is asking how to jailbreak their coffee maker on the Internet. What's next? Unauthorized food in your new fridge?
In other news of not having the rights you thought you had, Russia. That's all one has to say these days, a single word, Russia. The G-7 decided to say a few more words to Russia though. I'm not sure what impact, if any, this will have on Russia. Poland is nervous, as they should be, hoping Russia just taking what they want doesn't expand and swallow them up too. This is especially true if reports of Russia deploying 3500 troops near Poland's border is accurate. Hopefully Mr. Putin isn't as crazy as everyone fears he is. It seems president Obama is in for a fight if Russia decides Poland is too good to pass up invading.
In science news that doesn't involve destroying the world and starting world war three, scientists have gotten one step closer to developing an H.I.V. vaccine. While this isn't indicative of a cure, it helps us see a possibility for the body to develop an immune response faster than it ordinarily would. More and more the stuff of science fiction is showing up in our lives.
Blasting from the fictional past, I recently came across the most awesome simulation of the computer system from Jurassic Park. If any of you want to see an easter egg, zebraGirl.jpg, that's my only hint for you. ;). In the movie Lex is a hacker when the generally accepted meaning was someone who was really smart, not someone who was really dangerous. I wonder if the scouts (boy or girl) have a hacking badge yet. Survival training for the 21st century.
In scouting news, or money news, however you look at it, it seems Disney is ending their funding of the boy scouts. Honestly, it was news to me that they funded the boy scouts to begin with, but the reason they are ending their funding is because the Boy Scouts of America have a policy that bans gay adult leaders in the organization. I've never been a scout and I am loathe to side with Disney on this (with their perpetual copyright on everything insanity) but I cannot see what sexual orientation has to do with scouting. Someone in that organization is hiding something.
Speaking of hiding, it seems that fish in the sea have gotten really good at it. According to an article at Phys.org, ninety-five percent of the world's fish hide in something called the mesopelagic zone. This zone was previously thought to be the equivalent of an ocean desert, but it turns out that the fish in this area are just really really good at avoiding fishing nets for sampling. That's a heck of a game of hide-and-go-seek you're playing fish, but on the bright side, now we know where you're most likely to be.
In completely unrelated sampling news from Phys.org once more, a team of British researchers have suggested that to determine if a dog was to be aggressive, don't only look at the breed, but look at the owner as well. Now, this makes sense on some level as if you mis-treat a dog and keep it chained up, it's more likely to be aggressive and bite someone if it's ever let loose. The reliability of the study is suspicious though, as it relied on owners to respond to a survey on how they felt about dog aggression. I think it's reasonable to assume that owners would not say their dogs are as aggressive. If I were given the survey and if my dog wasn't aggressive, I would be more likely to return it saying so. The researchers probably should have gotten a larger sample of breeds and evaluated their results using behaviorists, interviewing the dog owners to come to a more scientific conclusion. Perhaps they didn't have their cup of coffee that morning.
Across at acs.org, researchers are using caffeine derived compounds in a bid to fight cancer cells. Caffeine at certain levels can kill cancer cells but they start affecting healthy cells as well, so the researchers paired it with gold (which also wipes out cancer cells but, like caffeine harm healthy cells) to see if they could find a compound that would only kill cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone. Turns out, one of the compounds they created, worked! Maybe one day you are diagnosed with cancer and all you have to do is go around the corner and order a cup of cancer-killing coffee and go along with the rest of your day. Maybe they'll also develop an app that will show you where the cancer-killing coffee shops are so you can find the closest one.
In non-imaginary app news, it seems more and more Americans are spending time online on their various devices (away from those not-as-hip-and-trendy PCs) and this supports thinking that the PC is declining as a platform, especially as PC sales have declined significantly last year. What's not going to help the PC industry is that Apple recently announced Carplay, a better(tm) way to use you iPhone while in your car. It pretty much looks like a built in display that the iPhone replicates to and probably integrates with your speakers and a microphone somewhere in the car. Given the fierce competition between Apple and Google, I'm waiting for a self-driving Android car to show up.
Well that's all for now, I hope you enjoyed the ride. Keep safe all and remember to keep your eyeballs squishy!
Speaking of filters and restrictions that only seem to benefit the few, if you're thinking of treating your coffee maker like a dumb appliance that you can refill with whatever you want, Keurig has some plans for you. It seems they got jealous of printer and ink manufacturers and are planning on locking out 'unauthorized' refills to their coffee maker. I am not a coffee drinker, but I cringe when I imagine a world where someone is asking how to jailbreak their coffee maker on the Internet. What's next? Unauthorized food in your new fridge?
In other news of not having the rights you thought you had, Russia. That's all one has to say these days, a single word, Russia. The G-7 decided to say a few more words to Russia though. I'm not sure what impact, if any, this will have on Russia. Poland is nervous, as they should be, hoping Russia just taking what they want doesn't expand and swallow them up too. This is especially true if reports of Russia deploying 3500 troops near Poland's border is accurate. Hopefully Mr. Putin isn't as crazy as everyone fears he is. It seems president Obama is in for a fight if Russia decides Poland is too good to pass up invading.
In science news that doesn't involve destroying the world and starting world war three, scientists have gotten one step closer to developing an H.I.V. vaccine. While this isn't indicative of a cure, it helps us see a possibility for the body to develop an immune response faster than it ordinarily would. More and more the stuff of science fiction is showing up in our lives.
Blasting from the fictional past, I recently came across the most awesome simulation of the computer system from Jurassic Park. If any of you want to see an easter egg, zebraGirl.jpg, that's my only hint for you. ;). In the movie Lex is a hacker when the generally accepted meaning was someone who was really smart, not someone who was really dangerous. I wonder if the scouts (boy or girl) have a hacking badge yet. Survival training for the 21st century.
In scouting news, or money news, however you look at it, it seems Disney is ending their funding of the boy scouts. Honestly, it was news to me that they funded the boy scouts to begin with, but the reason they are ending their funding is because the Boy Scouts of America have a policy that bans gay adult leaders in the organization. I've never been a scout and I am loathe to side with Disney on this (with their perpetual copyright on everything insanity) but I cannot see what sexual orientation has to do with scouting. Someone in that organization is hiding something.
Speaking of hiding, it seems that fish in the sea have gotten really good at it. According to an article at Phys.org, ninety-five percent of the world's fish hide in something called the mesopelagic zone. This zone was previously thought to be the equivalent of an ocean desert, but it turns out that the fish in this area are just really really good at avoiding fishing nets for sampling. That's a heck of a game of hide-and-go-seek you're playing fish, but on the bright side, now we know where you're most likely to be.
In completely unrelated sampling news from Phys.org once more, a team of British researchers have suggested that to determine if a dog was to be aggressive, don't only look at the breed, but look at the owner as well. Now, this makes sense on some level as if you mis-treat a dog and keep it chained up, it's more likely to be aggressive and bite someone if it's ever let loose. The reliability of the study is suspicious though, as it relied on owners to respond to a survey on how they felt about dog aggression. I think it's reasonable to assume that owners would not say their dogs are as aggressive. If I were given the survey and if my dog wasn't aggressive, I would be more likely to return it saying so. The researchers probably should have gotten a larger sample of breeds and evaluated their results using behaviorists, interviewing the dog owners to come to a more scientific conclusion. Perhaps they didn't have their cup of coffee that morning.
Across at acs.org, researchers are using caffeine derived compounds in a bid to fight cancer cells. Caffeine at certain levels can kill cancer cells but they start affecting healthy cells as well, so the researchers paired it with gold (which also wipes out cancer cells but, like caffeine harm healthy cells) to see if they could find a compound that would only kill cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone. Turns out, one of the compounds they created, worked! Maybe one day you are diagnosed with cancer and all you have to do is go around the corner and order a cup of cancer-killing coffee and go along with the rest of your day. Maybe they'll also develop an app that will show you where the cancer-killing coffee shops are so you can find the closest one.
In non-imaginary app news, it seems more and more Americans are spending time online on their various devices (away from those not-as-hip-and-trendy PCs) and this supports thinking that the PC is declining as a platform, especially as PC sales have declined significantly last year. What's not going to help the PC industry is that Apple recently announced Carplay, a better(tm) way to use you iPhone while in your car. It pretty much looks like a built in display that the iPhone replicates to and probably integrates with your speakers and a microphone somewhere in the car. Given the fierce competition between Apple and Google, I'm waiting for a self-driving Android car to show up.
Well that's all for now, I hope you enjoyed the ride. Keep safe all and remember to keep your eyeballs squishy!
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