* Posts by carey pridgeon

10 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Feb 2007

Twitter tells you what twits' where

carey pridgeon

I can see what happens next

So the next big thing will be location spoofing, so that spammers can target twitter users as they move around in response to real world events.

Probably this could be easily acheived by renting servers at locations around the world, so your spam could be inserted at the correct geolocation when required.

BBC calls DRM cops on iPlayer download party

carey pridgeon

remember the H2G2 Tertiary phase series?

They put all the episodes up on day one, and they could be downloaded simply by making your own page of links and incrementing one number per link.

Ah yes, great security.

For me this removed the worry of missing an episode, since I was due to be away for one week of the show. Didn't stop me buying the CD version the day it came out though.

Vatican updates list of mortal sins

carey pridgeon

how handy

How handy that we have all these old men to decide what would upset a supposedly omnipotent being.

Interesting though, that an omnipotent being would get so upset, yet only these few people, of all those on earth, are privy to it. Remakable you might say....

Has your shifty foreign neighbour got 16 mobes?

carey pridgeon

Very Red Dwarf

Betray your family and friends

Fabulous prizes to be won!

If I recall correctly, the Nazi's succeeded in establishing control over their society by encouraging german civilians to spy on their neighbors and report anything suspicious.

Ok, it probably isn't the same thing, but how long does it have to go on before it is the same? I imagine the germans who did report people felt they were doing a public service. Alas the quickest way to radicalise people is to make them feel like the society they live in regards them as suspect and 'different from us good people' (for a given value of good...).

Microsoft rejects Yahoo! rejection

carey pridgeon

Translation

Balmer to Yahoo:

Please accept our offer because MSN has failed abysmally, and if we don't buy you, we will have to admit that Microsoft can't produce a viable internet based service.

Scientists warn on climatic 'tipping points'

carey pridgeon

Its perfectly safe

After all, the Earth has got over far worse in the past.

Well I say safe, safe for the Earth, not safe for us. In fact it was a disaster for all living things when the Poles froze in the first place. I can't see the inverse being any less traumatic.

Space brains resign over efforts to attract ET attention

carey pridgeon

its a bit late

As Carl Sagan already pointed out, the first visual images beamed into space were a broadcast of one of Hitlers speeches.

If any race followed that one up and watched our signals for a few more years, chances are they'd never come near us.

Greenpeace slams next-gen consoles

carey pridgeon

I'm sorry, what?

Let me see, there are whole, irreplaceable rain forests being destroyed, there is fossil fuel being burned at an unsustainable rate, and the level of waste production worldwide is greater that at any previous time in human history, and they're stressing about gaming consoles?

If ever there was a time for a solid beating with a reality stick, this is it...

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's

carey pridgeon

what a terrible shame

I do hope he manages to keep going for a few years yet. I worked with Alzheimer's patients for many years, and I know they can manage to do well for a long time with the right treatment.

He has my sympathy. I do hope he manages to keep going with the books, after Douglas Adams he's my favorite author.

Darwin Mr Popular again in Kansas

carey pridgeon

avoiding another sputnik

America's last major push against creationism started when Sputnik flew overhead, causing the government to realise that they had let the teaching of science slide, and putting them behind in scientific advances.

If ID is allowed to get a significant foothold, then the future for america is bleak. A refusal to accept Darwin leads inexorably to a rejection of the scientific method, which in turn leads people to reject the kind of education required to make further advances.

It is to be hoped that ID fails, not because religion should be rejected, but because the active seeking of blissful ignorance is bad for a population that wants to be competitive in the future.

The main hurdle to be overcome is that a lot of people have garnered significant power over segments of the US population through pushing science as the enemy. This in itself is a hypocrytical aproach, since those very same people use the products of science, the internet, mobile phones, cars, electricity and so on, whilst simultaniously renouncing the very sector of society responsible for such advances.