Posts by Matthew Barker

US denies entry to security researcher

Mind control helmet

You can probably most accurately view this country if you see the structure of the government and the corporate aristocracy as a sort of "mind-control helmet" overlaid on an otherwise normal populace.

Most of the readily available avenues of information in and out of the country (and the public minds), and thus the bulk of the opinions held by the populace, are largely controlled by the corporate media - and the government.

Those same corporations are now starting to take control of the public schools in order to cultivate compliant corporate citizens (the 3 Cs).

Marketing rules the US. Long live marketing.

Boffins build miniature robot Jesus

I soilt me clothes laughing

Good perspective from Boffinology standpoint.

I think there's a future for Lewis in either stand-up comedy or in Boffinology as a formal study.

Cheers,

Matthew

MySpace users snowed in by new blizzard of spam

I think i see the problem....

In the first case of vandalism, the saboteur(s) were probably blondes "getting even" for the slight implied by the group name.

Cheers,

Matthew

Microsoft super sizes multi-threaded tripe

Lore?

The trouble with "lore" is just that it's lore. It's word of mouth and it stays around in our brains, inaccuracies growing with age and repetition.

Linux doesn't choke on 4 CPUs any more. It hasn't in a long time.

I know better than that and I'm not even particularly fond of Linux.

Some of the server vendors who bought into Linux worked hard on this point.

SGI sold a 10k processor machine to NASA. It was running Linux. True, the single-system image pieces of it were only 512 processors.

But you can run either pthreaded or OpenMP or MPI code on Linux with that many processors.

Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think anyone's done that with Windows yet. They probably will someday, since money will buy the necessary engineering time to solve the problem.

Cheers,

Matthew

California is America's Cyberia

Texas?!

"Why isn't Texas mentioned?" That's because Texas is the part of the country's anatomy usually covered by "unmentionables".

*snort*

*chuckle*

*BANG* "auuuugh!"

"That'll teach him to mess with Texas! Nobody messes with Texas."

If whales can communicate by telepathy, why can't humans?

As has been said...

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Note: this is only a humourous reference to a Monty Python sketch...I'm drawing a parallel, but only for a sense of mirth and merriment. Fiddling in my

house while Science burns down around me.

Please remain calm...

I'm frankly amused by the angry flames licking at the web page with

Dr. Juan's article.

Why so much anger? Has someone been killed by Dr Juan?

Raped? Robbed? Their house burned down? Has Dr. Juan

defrauded little old ladies, the weak and infirm?

I don't see bibliographies posted either by Dr Juan or by any of the

correspondents who have preceded me. "What? Of course they

don't do that! It's preposterous" I think it's called proof by vigourous

assertion. "You're wrong because I say so and I'm willing to go all incoherent to make my point."

What I find usually works best is to resort to calm discourse. Something

like, "Gee, Dr Juan, I'm a little puzzled because I've never heard of

whales using ESP. Could you tell me where you got the information?"

Since science is always making new discoveries (you do know that Bell's

theorem was said to have been proved, don't you? Apparently the speed

of light is no longer the ultimate...you did know that, didn't you?), it would

seem sensible to take the approach of scientific inquiry.

When one starts off with a sentence like, "Dr Juan, you're wrong

and you probably eat babies dipped in ketchup because you say such

useless things!", then I don't think we get to find out if there're any

new or real scientific studies behind the statements.

For instance, maybe there have recently been noted levels of

communication unaccounted for by low frequency sonar. Perhaps

someone has posited the possibility of ESP or perhaps it's been

put forth as the only imaginable "hypothesis" (you will have heard

of those as well, I expect).

==========================================

NOTE TO THOSE WITH NO SENSE OF SUBTLETY: THIS IS ONLY

AN EXAMPLE. YOU WILL HAVE HEARD OF THOSE OF COURSE.

I AM NOT SAYING WHALES ARE PSYCHIC. I'M ALSO NOT SAYING

THEY AREN'T. I'M LEAVING THE WHALES ASIDE AND ADDRESSING

THE ATTACKS ON DR JUAN.

==========================================

Summary: Why don't you ask Dr Juan about where he got the information? It's OK to start a "dialogue". They're what happens

when both sides communicate civilly. Usually someone even

learns something.