Posts by Mark Barratt 1

Moller Skycar to finally crash and burn?

hover versus hoover

At first, I thought that people on this forum just had the usual spelling-blindness that seems to infect 90% of all web users, but then I looked at the pictures, and realised that this device might actually be useful...

A Google monopoly today means packet snooping tomorrow

""there’s precious little privacy on the Internet"

No shit? Not like last year, then.

DARPA: Can we have a one-cabinet petaflop supercomputer?

Piled higher and deeper...

Greg Fleming wrote:

"["fail" graphic] And here's the reason why:

http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm"

Abstracted from that webpage:

[my proposal] will not only result in an improvement of several orders of magnitude in productivity, but also in programs that are guaranteed free of defects, regardless of their complexity.

Sorry, I stopped reading after that. Did anyone get further?

Funniest thing in weeks

You know, whenever I meet a young aspiring programmer, I tell them "get into AI - it's a job for life".

Lol, I can already give you the core code for Darpa's "self-aware OS". It looks like this:

switch (machinestate) {

case (state1)

dostate1();

break;

case (state2)

dostate2();

break;

...

...

default:

do_something_sensible_given_the_circumstances();

}

Now, if DARPA can just get one of their bright youg things to write the simple do_something_sensible_given_the_circumstances() function, I will happily code the rest of their OS for free.

Bottled water, anyone?

Copyfraud: Poisoning the public domain

Paranoia

I think this is just paranoia. The vast majority of "products" are mere hype and packaging - go to the supermarket and you can buy a litre of "healthy, natural" water for 1,000 times its actual value. What's the difference between this and an idiot paying money for falsely labelled public-domain stuff?

And don't be so sympathetic about (thick) academics being exploited - students and teachers regularly, persistently and knowingly breach real copyright. The photcopiers in the university library may be strictly controlled, but every university campus has at least one flourishing photocopying shop nearby.

Copyright is, I think, not affected by any claims made for it in the published material, so it's really no more relevant that a book claims to be "copyright somebody 2009" than that a bottle of water claims to be "healthy". That fools are convinced by either claim is not, I think, a matter of great public concern.