Its been a while, and admittedly I’m starting this post at 1:30am, but theres been so much in the news in the past 48 hours that I haven’t covered, but wanted to. :-) So I’m going to post a few cool little items that I think might very well be of interest to a bunch of people. Everything from fast computers, to new toys (except The Toy, covered already) and on to things like the new Rambo IV movie thats just been announced. :-) Oh, and a bunch of other stuff as well.

Normally, I’d put a break here, but Blogger doesn’t support it. So this post is going to make you all scroll for a mile just to read the next one. ;-) Or maybe we should be using an aggregator? ;-)

George Dyson recently visited Google and had some very impressive things to say of the experience. He likened it to visiting a 14th Century Cathedral, during the 12th Century. :-) Thats a pretty impressive endorsement of the forward looking people that work there. :-)

My visit to Google? Despite the whimsical furniture and other toys, I felt I was entering a 14th-century cathedral — not in the 14th century but in the 12th century, while it was being built. Everyone was busy carving one stone here and another stone there, with some invisible architect getting everything to fit. The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air. “We are not scanning all those books to be read by people,” explained one of my hosts after my talk. “We are scanning them to be read by an AI.”

When I returned to highway 101, I found myself recollecting the words of Alan Turing, in his seminal paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, a founding document in the quest for true AI. “In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children,” Turing had advised. “Rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”

Edge: TURING’S CATHEDRAL by George Dyson

Everyone should know by now that I’m a google fanboy. I can’t think of any other company in the 21st century that has achieved so much so quickly. Their rise to dominance was faster than Microsoft’s and was entirely legal. Even more impressive than that, their products are so simple, so useful and so elegant that even technophobes know how to use them. More than that, they give back huge amounts to many communities. Not only OpenSource (with their Summer of Code program) but also with their new Google Foundation and google.org initiative. Sure, they’ve made mistakes, but they were honest ones and once people stop treating them like sellouts for going corporate and realise they didn’t have any choice, I’m sure things will get back to how they were 18 months to 2 years ago.

New photoshop contest over at Worth1000.com and its a great one. Some of the entries are fantastic.

This contest askes a simple question: If the renaissance took place in more recent times, and the models were famous movie monsters/aliens, what would the artwork have looked like?

The rules of this match are thus: You are to submit an entry in which you depict a hollywood movie monster/alien as the subject of a work of fine art. As always, quality is a must. We will remove poor and offtopic entries no matter how much we like you. You will have 48 hours for this contest, so make your submission count.

Worth1000.com | Photoshop Contests | Are you Worthy™ | contest

My personal favourite would probably be this one, but I’m sure that Emma would prefer either this one or this one :-)

Have you noticed that your computer starts to slow down over a period of time as you use it? Its most problematic on Windows machines, but it can happen to others as well. Its very easy to resolve in the *nixes, but given the design of Windows, not so easy there. In fact, sometimes trying to resolve it can exasperate the problem.

NewsFactor Network has an article running on Yahoo! that explains some of the problems and offers some useful tips on mitigating, or even resolving, some of the issues that cause this slow down of your PC.

A new computer right out of the box is an engineering marvel. Programs and files load with lightning speed. Unfortunately, computers do not remain in this pristine condition very long. You do not notice it at first, but usually sooner rather than later that peppy performance is gone.

Why do computers slow down? There is no single answer; a combination of factors contributes to the gradual degradation of a computer’s performance. The causes fall into three categories. The first is hardware design. The second is virus and spyware infiltration.

What’s Slowing Down Your PC? – Yahoo! News

It seems like every online company except Google has an online calendar service at the moment. Yahoo!, MSN and others are all offering to host your daily calendar for you. Just so you can access it any time. But its not easy to get the content of your calendar from outside of their web-based applications.

A new player in the market has stepped up to the plate. Planzo.com are offering full calendar hosting, but with a lot of ways to get at it. RSS, a full API, SMS, an AJAX web interface, XML and more. This thing is pretty impressive. You can even publish calendars on your own website or blog if you want. In much the same way I have the bloglines link list on this one. I’m thinking I might put a calendar up here for all the racing events at Meremere and around the various North Island race tracks this season. Or maybe just the events I’m likely to attend myself. ;-)

Either way, its definitely a create new service that could become a new benchmark in online calendar services.

One of the things about Windows that has kind of annoyed me in the past is how poor desktop management has been. For example, in Gnome I can have multiple virtual desktops (currently 4) on which I can have any number of windows/apps running in each. My current set up is that I have a my communications windows (email, IM and so on) open on one desktop, blogging tools on another, coding apps on another desktop and then a misc desktop space to work in. It makes it easy for me to keep track of what apps are where and it reduces clutter on my taskbar significantly. But Windows offers only a single desktop and even with grouping in the taskbar, start loading up a number of applications and it gets pretty full, pretty quickly. Definitely not the easiest to manage or switch between. Alt-Tab is slow as snails if you’re searching through 20 icons.

A new player on the market has decided that its time to address this issue. And they’re doing it in a novel way. Called Deskloops, it allows you to manage your running apps by placing them all side by side on a big virtual loop. Heres how they explain it…

Deskloops software enables computer users to handle and have open all the activities and streams they require simultaneously and within the limited space of a single screen.

Deskloops does this by arranging windows along a virtual horizontal loop. At any one time, you’ll see window open on screen as usual, but in fact any number of other windows, set on that loop, can be rotated in from left or right. A strip of thumbnails on top of the screen maps the loop’s full content.

This how Deskloops solves the increasingly pressing problem of limited screen space and does so by means of a new and intuitive way of re-organizing windows and applications and effectively thereby the computer’s entire work environment.

Xilokit Deskloops PC Beta

I might actually check this out. I have to boot in to windows sometime soon to make a movie of the current Halloween celebrations in Guild Wars, so I might check this out when I do so. :-)

Probably the biggest geek news of recent times has to be the announcement that Blue Gene/L has beaten its own record and is now sentient and about to launch preemptive strikes on all mankindTerrorists.

The Blue Gene/L supercomputer has broken its own record to achieve more than double the number of calculations it can do a second.

It reached 280.6 teraflops – that is 280.6 trillion calculations a second.

The IBM machine, at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, officially became the most powerful computer on the planet in June.

The fastest supercomputers in the world are ranked by experts every six months in the Top 500 list.

Blue Gene’s performance, while it has been under construction, has quadrupled in just 12 months.

Each person in the world with a handheld calculator would still take decades to do the same calculations Blue Gene is now able to do every second.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Supercomputer doubles own record

This is so exciting and absolutely terrifying at the same time. :-) I love that we have now got a computer that powerful. I’m absolutely terrified that part of its role is to simulate nuclear explosions based on the current US arsenal of WMDs. I’d much rather see this thing attempting to predict Hurricane Gamma’s path when its still just a low that barely registers on the barometer. But then, who’d have a use for something like that? :-P

C|Net has some good pics of them putting Blue Gene/L together over here. I really wish my server rooms were that tidy. Glad I’m not the one that had to run all the cabling though. ;-)

Now, here is something that really does make me shudder.

Rambo is back in business. Sylvester Stallone will reprise his role as gun-toting John Rambo in the upcoming “Rambo IV,” said Ben Nedivi of Millennium Films, which is producing the project with Emmett/Furla Films.

The 59-year-old Stallone also intends to bring boxer Rocky Balboa out of retirement. He will write and direct “Rocky Balboa,” the sixth film in that franchise, with shooting set to begin next year.

Sylvester Stallone to Revive Rambo Role – Yahoo! News

Rambo AND Rocky? FFS! Just run for Governor of some obscure state and get it over with. A 60yo Rambo? Whats he going to do? Gum them to death? Won’t Rocky need his walking frame? Or is he going to keep them at bay with his thick glasses?

To me this just smacks of competition with the Gubinator. Arnie did a T3, so now Sylvestor needs to try to catch the Tweetie again by doing a Rocky 6 and a Rambo 4. Just to go one (or 2) up. :-\ Sorry, but old men should be directing, not acting in action roles like this.

Okay… Sorry, but I wanted to get that out of the way before I started talking about cool stuff again. ;-)

Lately news floating around the web has contained a lot about the vulnerability of VoIP networks. Not a specific vulnerability (or though there certainly are those too) but more about how fragile the VoIP networks are at the moment.

Well, thats as good a time as any to announce a new security tool specifically for VoIP networks I guess. ;-)

VoIPshield Systems Inc. has just launched a new voice over IP (VoIP) vulnerability assessment solution that will allow organizations to respond to threats before they affect IP telephony systems and services.

Based on a continuously updated threats database, VoIPaudit is both comprehensive and highly scalable. It can be set to scan continuously or periodically and provides support for a wide range of VoIP protocols, including session initiation protocol (SIP), International Telecommunication Union (ITU) H.323, Cisco Skinny, Nortel Unistim, and other proprietary protocols. VoIPaudit also support wireless VoIP services IMS and dual mode mobile phones.

According to VoIPshield, VoIPaudit features and easy-to-use interface with a range of analysis and reporting tools. Its reporting features allow use to do a complete vulnerability analysis or produce a quick security summary.

InformationWeek > VoIP > VoIP Risk-Assessment Tool Launches > October 28, 2005

If it does even half as much as they claim, thats still a good thing because as far as I’m aware, theres bugger all out there doing anything like this right now. With a few vendors currently scrambling to patch rather serious security holes in their systems, something like this is bound to be a godsend for companies offering VoIP services. In fact, personally I think that any organisation that uses VoIP in any serious capacity should be looking at this seriously. Or something like it.

Something that might very well be important for us all in the next few years is a new study that has shown that a particular gene that fought off the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century also has a similar effect on the HIV pathogen.

Local Eyam lore tells befuddling stories of plague survivors who had close contact with the bacterium but never caught the disease. Elizabeth Hancock buried six children and her husband in a week, but never became ill. The village gravedigger handled hundreds of plague-ravaged corpses, but survived as well. Could these people have somehow been immune to the Black Death?

Dr. Stephen O’Brien of the National Institutes of Health in Washington D.C. suggests they were. His work with HIV and the mutated form of the gene CCR5, called “delta 32,” led him to Eyam. In 1996, research showed that delta 32 prevents HIV from entering human cells and infecting the body. O’Brien thought this principle could be applied to the plague bacteria, which affects the body in a similar manner. To determine whether the Eyam plague survivors may have carried delta 32, O’Brien tested the DNA of their modern-day descendents. What he found out was startling …

Secrets of the Dead . Mystery of the Black Death | PBS

Seriously, if this is the case, more than anything I’d very much like to get some gene therapy. ;-) I’d be able to avoid not only HIV, but also Bird Flu at the same time. ;-) Not to mention many other possible killers. I’ve seen similar studies done where people that survived the Spanish Flu of the early 20th century were discovered to have a gene that gave them immunity and apparently fought HIV in lab animals as well. They may be the same studies, but I can’t find any links to them. However, they were definitely related to the Spanish Flu, not the Bubonic Plague of the 14th century.

Thats a seriously great discovery if it works out though. :-)

In gaming news, there is so much to discuss. But I think the one thing on most peoples minds at the moment (or at least 4 million or so) is that some of the details of the World of Warcraft expansion have been released officially by Blizzard, and they confirm a lot of the rumors.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is the exciting new expansion to Blizzard’s award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It expands the game by tremendous bounds, adding new races, lands, Battlegrounds, professions and items, and more. Here is just a partial list of what you can expect from the World of Warcraft expansion:

  • An increase in the level cap to 70
  • Two new playable races, including the magical Blood Elves
  • New starting zones in Quel’Thalas and beyond
  • The entire new continent of Outland, reachable through the Dark Portal
  • Many new high-level dungeons to explore in Azeroth, Outland, and elsewhere
  • New flying mounts in Outland
  • Many new and dangerous monsters, including epic world bosses
  • Hundreds of new quests
  • Hundreds of new items
  • A new profession: Jewelcrafting
  • Socketed items
  • And much, much more…

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

I have to admit, I’m not as excited by this as a lot of other people are. For several reasons. But the biggest reason is that they’re going to make you buy the expansion, even though you’ve been paying the $15 a month to play the game. Sorry, but the $15 a month should cover the expansion as well. Its an addition to the game, not a whole new game. :-\

I much prefer the way Guild Wars is done. You don’t pay a monthly fee, but you pay for the expansions themselves. Any game developments done inside that time are still free, but the new content in the next chapters are not. Basically, its the same deal as Warcraft is going to force you to accept, but without the monthly fees.

That Guild Wars is a better game anyway helps too. ;-) I’ll be recording 2 videos of the Halloween decorations in Guild Wars on Sunday so that you can all go “Wow! Amazing! Oooh! Ahhh!” ;-)

But anyway….

In game sex in an MMORPG! Its a pretty contentious topic. There are very sexual based MMORPGs out there (no, I won’t link to it) and then there are the majority. In Everquest 2, the characters actually kiss (and its animated) when you tell them to /kiss. In WoW they just blow a kiss but without any animation. In Guild Wars there is no /kiss because you’re supposed to be /kill’ing. ;-) But lately it seems that a lot of women actually want sex in their gaming and that one of the better ways to attract more women to a game would be to have a romantic side to the game.

“I’m on a perpetual hunt for a sex game targeting women,” says Brenda Brathwaite, a game industry veteran and featured speaker at this week’s Women’s Game Conference in Austin, Texas.

She’s not the only one.

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is “where can I find good cybersex?” And one of my answers is games, with the caveat that you shouldn’t join a MMPORG just for sex. Rather, games are places to meet other people who share at least one interest with you, and sometimes the relationships that arise lead to flirting and cybersex. Sometimes they don’t.

Yet we’re finally glimpsing games on the horizon that support relationship building and sexual interaction as part of the game play. What’s more, these game developers recognize that a crucial part of attracting gamers is to appeal to all gamers — not just the half of the population with penises.

“The Sims is hardly the ‘No. 1 sex game,’ but that game is all about relationship formation,” Brenda says. “It’s no surprise it’s a huge hit with women.”

Wired News: Coming Soon: Online Sex Games

The early Leisure Suit Larry games even get a mention as being a popular game with the ladies. Hell, if I’d known that when I was at high school, I’d have been trading games with the girls more often! :-)

One of the things I find intriguing about the article is that its women that seem to be pushing for more adult sexual content in games. They also make up approximately 43% of all online gamers. And here I was thinking that naked night elf dancing in Ironforge for tips was just a 17yo teen boy getting his jollies watching her dance. ;-)

But then, how on Earth would you add that sort of content in to this game? :-)

There is so much more to cover off, but its now after 3am. I’ve been at this over 90mins now (too much reading and IM chatting) so I’m going to cut this all short. I think theres plenty there to keep you all going. ;-)

Hmmmm…. Maybe I should go get me a pre-release of this. ;-) Next-gen online dating for the recluse ;-)