Posts by Simon Goodwin

Australian man killed by suicide robot

cunning

cunning plan by the robot that! writing a letter supposedly by the owner, maybe the robot gets all his money from the will?

there out to get us...

Nokia blings up Prism fashion phone with synthetic gem

The kind of thing

This is the kind of thing that we will laugh at as being hideously 2000's garbage

BlackBerry gets fruity with Lotus

So?

"IBM's Lotus Connections will allow corporate users to work together on projects and share ideas through the BlackBerry handset."

Just like phoning someone or sending email then?

I bet Paris will be hanging on every second

Lightsaber voted top movie weapon

Disproved

"in a recent show "The Science (not)of StarWars" they essentially disproved nearly ever single future technology that science dope George Lucas "proposed" in every foolish scene of all the StarWars "episurd" (pun) - ESPECIALLY the light-saber. (also author, learn how to spell light-saber)"

In what way disproved?

Disproved in that some know all scientist says it cant be done right now? duh!

Its meant to be a future technology, unless of course we are going to say, everything that there is to be discovered, already has been discovered?

Cops admit CCTV no use in deterring drunken violence

Not the Point

CCTV is not there to catch criminals, it is the forebearer of CCTV in your street (for your safety), then in your home (sorry what have you go to fear, are you a paedo or something??).

Tin foil hats everyone

Hasbro fires off legal letters over Scrabulous

why bother?

why bother, kill scrabulous, develop your own facebook app, ship it out, no need to buy out the developers

Messenger skims past Mercury

No stars

I knew the answer was because they were so dim, when looked at it in comparison to the nearer brightly lit object but thought I had better confirm. Looked it up in google :)

Taken from an astronomers Q&A (about why pictures taken by astronauts dont show stars):

The stars are there and the astronauts can see them if they look away from the sun. The reason that the stars do not show up on the film is that the stars are so dim that the camera cannot gather enough of their light in a short exposure. Our eyes are a lot more sensitive to light than photographic film. A good example of this is when we take a picture with a camera that is back lighted. The photographer can plainly see the features and colors of the object(usually a relative), but when the picture is developed, only the shadow outline can be seen of the person without any features.

Any picture that you may see of stars are from time-lapse photos. To take a time-lapse photo of the stars, the shutter must be left open on the camera in order for the lens to focus enough light on the film for the image to show up. Longer times allow more photons to enter the camera and record the image. The image is built over time from the total number of photons striking the film. The dimmer the object, the longer the film must be exposed because there are fewer photons per unit of time reaching the camera than for a brighter object.

Facebook CEO capitulates (again) on Beacon

SPAM

Syd: Well, I don't know much about much when it comes to Facebook, but I *DO* know that the office-girls in the pub last night were complaining about spam in their Facebook in-boxes. So, while it might actually be something they have inadvertently opted-in to, they certainly saw it as spam... and if it quacks like a dog...

-----------------------------------

I have never had any spam yet, honestly. I can only imagine they have added fake friends. If they are getting spam simply reporting the user (using the report button), will probably result in that account being immediately closed.

If you think google or yahoo are facist, facebook make them look plain cutesy, I know people who have had accounts closed for submitting "dodgy" ads according to facebook, no appeal, no warning. By dodgy I am talking about things like the ad linking direct to an affiliate merchant.

Sign up, do a search for your old school, old friends/colleagues/family and see how easy it is. Don't take your opinion from journos and elitists on the net.

As mentioned facebook is very different to myspace, give it a try. Now if only I could monetize my posts!

You Really Don't Get It

Unfortunately you guys are showing a lack of understanding of why people are attracted to facebook, and how many people use it in the real world.

Of course you would rather listen to what some journos tell you, and rather than joining up and putting in minimal information to see why people go there you would rather harp on about how superior you are.

Facebook is the phenomenon it is not because of some belief that these people do not have a life, but rather because of the lives we now live, and because most people are fed up with the dump that has become the internet.

Facebook provides (or should that be provided) a safe haven from the rest of the internet. Whose email account doesn't get spam? Who isn't fed up of pop-ups, ridiculous flashing banner ads, etc?

Facebook avoids this simply by allowing only people you confirm as friends to contact you, and it does this in an incredibly simple way, especially if you compare with white and black lists for email (which don't work anywhere near as well).

Facebook approve individual ads they do allow, and are incredibly tight on what they will allow, I know from people who are at the leading edge of this the hoops they jump through.

Facebook also makes sharing photos with your friends extraordinarily easy, hence the reason that current estimates are that there are now twice as many photos on facebook as all of the other photo sharing systems put together.

Noone can see your pictures unless they are your friends and you allow them, compare that you any other photo sharing method around and you will see why it is so popular.

I have personally used it to contact family members I haven't spoken to in a long time. Facebook allows you to search by name, school, city, etc and then you can ask them if they would like to get back in touch. I would never have been able to do that in the "real" world, without a ridiculous amount of effort.

As far as "sharing" your personal details on their, well despite what no nothing journos tell you it doesn't happen. Again the only people who can see your details are people you allow to do so. Of course some people are friend harvesters, but in my experience they are few and far between, most people I come across have 50 or 60 friends at most (most like my wife have 20 or so).

Plus the number of shared details are pretty low in all honesty, the most "private" probably being your birthday.

The secondary and most "sad" level as you guys put it is the social elements, this is where friends can share their lives. You can put up a status saying what you are doing, share videos you have found, invite friends to groups (such as school reunion sites), and even share the silly apps that tend to go around. Again however this is all permission based, and as I have said this is where facebook is gaining traction.

So now maybe you can see why Beacon kicked up such a stink, this is an "application" that wasn't permission based. However a bigger fuss was made of this that needed to be, there were only a few people allowed into the Beacon testing. However it was foolish to epxect a community based on permission, to just accept this kind of "forced" or opt out setup.