Whilst I can’t take credit for the plugins and additional things that I have bolted on (I can take credit for making them play nice together) I have got rid of the sociable plug in the favor of a prettier system that has abit of the web 2.0 about it. Its Share It! Link Also icons from http://shareicons.com/
Now its even simpler to get the content you like from here to wherever you want, I think I will try and do something similar with the RSS syndication stuff if I Get chance.
We are entering a time were computers run our lives, we put blind faith into them (do you take a regular backup?) and also are starting to increase the amount of transactions we take online, with the populisation of internet shopping and internet banking in no small contributed by eBay and PayPal.
We (depending were you read this blog) live in countries with few or no laws on how to protect ourselves online, fair enough there’s the DPA in the UK which goes somewhere near but there is no clear definition of what constitutes hacking or any other cyber-offence.
It stupidly simple to get access to a computer that you don’t own that its scary. You can take a standard off the shelf USB stick, push it in a computer it will create you a Administrator account a remote user account and give you the password to anybody who logs into that machine. Many homes now are switching to wi-fi indeed BT offer there Home Hub which is wireless with all there packages, albeit with a very simple 64-bit encryption assigned to it, but who’s responsibility is it to secure there wi-fi, I am firmly in the camp that if you leave it open its fair game to anybody, but just think about what you do online in a particular day and how much somebody could find about you it just a few hours on your network. Its enough to steal your Identity and rob you blind, yet many people just don’t understand the scope of the problem.
It’s all well and good knowing that these things are problems but how do we stop this from happening in the first place. As yet I haven’t been able to come up with a single thing that could be feasibly enforced, or surrendering our own privacy to some higher power (which I don’t think anybody in there right mind would be comfortable with. This is a problem that is almost as big as Global Warming if we manage to survive what ever apocalyptic event we make. Yet, we continue for the most part ignoring the fact it is a problem and how it would effect you if your identity was cloned and bank accounts cleaned, not a particularly nice thought.
Something to get that christmas cheer going:
Download “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” (mp3)
from “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer”
by Dr. Elmo
Laughing Stock
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at eMusic
Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
Buy at Karma Download Stream from RealNetworks / Rhapsody
Parallels have release a new BETA of there Virtualization Application for mac os x with many updates, the biggest of which being “Coherence” this things rocks, so much its untrue.
How about Windows Taskbar at the bottom of the page and mac os x everywhere else, thats right the holy grail of being able to run everything you could ever want has been acheived. Apples’ decision to switch to intel seems all but justified now.
Running windows apps as if they were mac apps without have to have a separate window open is genius, how the hell they manage to do it is beyond me. What I do know is Macs are most definitely going from strength to strength and a actually think Parallels would be a welcomed acquisition for Apple, because Leopard could take this stuff and run to such a level were you can no longer tell you are virtualizing windows. For example download a file with safari that happens to be an .exe, double click it and windows opens it. Simple elegant and apple all over.
Come apple this is certainly a feature i would love to see in Leopard (if it isnt already in there)
I have dabbled in many office applications google’s offerings microsoft open office and some i cant even remember.
I am amazed at ThinkFree Office it is exactly what a web app should be and the learning curve is 0 cos it looks just like office on you desktop. Wel done guys, and ThinkFree Office is my default Office of choice.
And I got this from 5 minutes using it.
I though I would take a break and post something else that really gets me.
We all know that piracy has ended up as a monumental PR mess for the record industry, and it is a undisputed fact that the industry in general were far too late and couldn’t adopt the same model they do in the shops so invented DRM (lets not go any further into this)
I love music as much as the next man, but when a consumer thinks their being ripped of they will always find a new way, the internet provides such a way. So when Napster and Kazaa came along the consumers went there instead of going to the local music store, by the time the industry realised just how big this was they had only one option left to sue everything and everybody related to this P2P software. As a resulting pissing off there next generation customers and the ones they already had, and along the way giving themselves and P2P developers bad press.
I have been doing plenty of writing about AI and Artilects but have yet to explain what AI really is/what I thing AI really is.
Artificial intelligence (also known as machine intelligence and often abbreviated as AI) is intelligence exhibited by any manufactured (i.e. ) system. The term is often applied to general purpose computers and also in the field of scientific investigation into the theory and practical application of AI. Wiki
While this definition is valid I think it is far too compliated, AI is quite simply a program that learns nothing more nothing less. So what is learning exactly.
Continue reading “What exactly is AI?”
I thought I would give Snap Preview Anywhere a go on the blog, now when you however over any link you will see a preview of the page on the other-side.
Provided You have javascript switched on.
This is a continuation of “The Rise of the Artilects”
Artilect: Artificial intelligence (also known as machine intelligence and often abbreviated as AI) is intelligence exhibited by any manufactured (i.e. ) system. The term is often applied to general purpose computers and also in the field of scientific investigation into the theory and practical application of AI. Wikipedia
An Article that dropped into my feed reader at the beginning of the week, describes a system devised by Hitatchi which monitors the person haemoglobin levels in the Brain (Optical Typography) The use of this is very limited now but could have a large impact on the way we intereface with technology but also for people who are paralysed, a clear example of converging technologies.
Continue reading “The Future 2056”
