Steve

IBM creates a computer that simulates the cerebral cortex of... a cat. Mind you, it's a pretty intellectually-slow cat given that its "neurons" only fire at 1% the rate of a live cortex's, but recreating in silicon the brain of the most sociopathic creature on the planet is just another step towards SkyNet.

-- Steve just hopes that when the inevitable felinoid Hunter-Killer drones come for him they can still be distracted by a rolling ball of yarn or a laser pointer.

There are times when I'm proud of the human race, amazed by what we can accomplish within the limits of our minds and bodies. And then there are times when my perspective shifts, and I'm appalled at what these turd-stuffed meatbags pull off.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/community/?userid=16917218&plckUserId=16917218

Case in point, this ongoing yammerer in the comment section (yeah, I know) of the Globe & Mail pulling Stupid Statistical Tricks and cherry-picked citations to raise a ruckus about the adjuvanted flu vaccine in use in Canada. This willing, indeed eager, mutilation of reason drives me squirrelly... but, alas, I'm ill-equipped to demolish his points as I'm only good enough statistics to smell when they're being fudged but not good enough to formally prove it. (He didn't like my bringing up the Dunning-Kruger Effect, though.)

This flu isn't the terror we feared last spring, but it's not "just" the seasonal flu either. Anybody working to undermine the pandemic plan is, in my opinion, shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre.

-- Steve'd leave it alone better if it weren't happening at the Globe, which he holds in (likely unwarranted) great fondness ever since his days delivering the ol' rag.

http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/

Looks like Google is experimenting with its image search technology.

-- Steve likey.

No buses today. Dammit. The Amalgamated Transit Union, despite their promise of last month, has walked out after rejecting a last-minute offer from the London Transit Commission last night. Grumble.

What good news I can salvage from this is that I'm on my late shift this week so it should be easier for me to get a cab to work today. However, it's a damned expensive bit of good news.

-- Steve hopes this doesn't last long.

Man recovering from being run over receives a cybernetic arse. He required extensive pelvic reconstruction and, in earlier times, would have required a permanent colostomy as a result of the damage. However, by taking muscle tissue from his legs and implanting it (and control electrodes) in the appropriate places surgeons were able to construct a workable replacement anus. This does mean having to use a battery-powered remote control in order to void his bowels, but it beats carrying a colo-bag around for the rest of his life.

-- Steve's uncertain why the article says the muscles need replacing every five years, unless the report actually intended to say that the electrodes did.

Paul Krugman brings to light a very old form of cloture motion.

-- Steve's hindbrain finds it tempting, but his forebrain realises the world is better off without restoring this ancient practice.

Happy birthday, Sesame Street!

-- Steve thinks that Big Bird looks rather dignified at 40.

Thought I'd remind/inform folks that Halo Waypoint is now available on Xbox Live for everyone, and not just participants of the Dashboard beta, for the low-low price of Free. You'll need to download the app (~100MB) for it, link for which should be in with the other "what's new" stuff. Once downloaded, you can launch it out of your Games library.

Waypoint acts as an "Achievement" aggregator, looking at all the 360-based Halo games (so far Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Wars) and showing what Achievements you've attained so far in all of them; then, based upon the number of Gamerscore points you've gotten from them, will unlock Avatar awards. (Again, for no charge.) My Avvie is sporting an ODST t-shirt and has a pet Monitor now.

Waypoint also acts as a news aggregator of sorts for Halo stuff, though that's still in the early stages.

Most urgently, though, Waypoint will also grant free viewings of some of the episodes from the upcoming Halo Legends anime collection DVD/BR... but only for 24 hours each Saturday. Today the short "Babysitter" is running, in which an ODST team acts as support for a SPARTAN-II on a mission behind enemy lines. Next Saturday, a "behind the scenes" documentary on "Babysitter" will run. Saturday after that, another short, then another "making of" doc, and so on.

So if you want to see the video you'll have to download Waypoint really soon.

-- Steve's looking forward to seeing the vid when he gets back from work.

This 14' shark was caught "smiling" for the camera in the waters off of Mexico last Autumn.

-- Steve just thought he'd share.

Photo cribbed from the Daily Mail website.

Well, I just saw the first episode of the "V"-make. It didn't outright suck.

It did, however, seem to be rather rushed and the reveals as a result were less surprising/shocking than they could've been. The previous miniseries profited from moving a lot slower (albeit throwing in some Contras at the start to help the action-hounds stick through the hour of stage-setting and character development that followed) to build tension; this show's going to have trouble in future episodes because they pushed 9 months of in-story chronology into the first 44 minutes in order to get to the action-y stuff.

-- Steve also gets a whiff of BSG-isation of this version, which isn't bad in itself but does warn that this may not be the freshest of takes on the series' themes. Also, though he can't fault the writers for sniping at Neo-Cons, doing so does cheapen the script.

Well, I paid for yesterday's indolance by putting on the house-mouse big-time today. A big grocery run, the monthly bills paid (including sacrifice to the Gods of Credit), two loads of laundry done, some long-delayed recycling put out, and now a pot of beef stew bubbling away on the stove, to which I'm going to have to add the diced vegetables in about fifteen minutes.

It's long-past due to make that stew, too, as given my plague-month my freezer reserves have dropped to basically nil. In truth, I should've made the stew yesterday and be making some other large meal today to portion out and freeze... but yesterday it was all I could do to order in some BBQ chicken. Oh well, I'll just have to make up that pork tenderloin in BBQ sauce tomorrow or Wednesday.

-- Steve'll now return to catching up on the LJ (and his Guiness) until the timer beeps again.

Interesting. The upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 was almost a no-brainer installation... save that immediately after reloading and setting itself up the video driver pooped out and left me staring at a black screen until I decided that enough was enough. Rebooting into "safe" mode and reinstalling the Catalyst utilities solved that problem. I'm wondering if the installer choked on my CrossfireX setup, though it's running beautifully now.

The system does feel snappier under Windows 7, and the memory footprint is down by about a quarter. I'm also noticing a lot more multi-core activity in routine work, though I'll admit that may be from me watching for it.

Oddly, though, upgrading means a demotion in my Windows Experience ranking... not because my hardware's running slower (it's most decidedly not) but because MS raised the bar on their rankings. Overall the system rates a 5.9 out of 8... but only because I didn't RAID the hard drive or use an SSD or something. Ignoring the drive read/write speed the system would be a 7.3 out of 8. For reference, Vista also rated my system a 5.9... out of 6.

The taskbar previews are very handy, and fast too. I'm definitely going to enjoy the "pin to taskbar" feature. IE8 renders extremely quickly, as well.

-- Steve's off to explore the Internet a bit more now with this thing to see what surprises await.

I'm about to take the plunge and upgrade to Windows 7.

Firstly I have to uninstall some software; two Catalyst utilities from ATI, and OneCare. (The latter is the biggie, as that's my antivirus at the moment. I'll have to download Security Essentials after the upgrade.)

Then insert Win7 disc into drive and faithfully obey all directions.

Then reinstall the Catalyst utilities and download new antivirus software.

And then check this sucker out.

-- Steve'll triumphantly post back when the upgrade is complete... or will post with wailing and gnashing of teeth if it duds outs.

Again thanks to Wikipedia, I am reminded that today is the 48th anniversary of the largest human-generated explosion in history over Novaya Zemlya. The fireball was 8km across, and the resulting ground shock wave was the equivalent of a 5-5.2 (Richter scale) earthquake.

-- Steve's glad we don't monkey with our atmosphere so badly now, but man that would've been a sight to see.

In a discussion on james_nicoll's blog the subject of radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) came up, and a little Wikipediaing caused me to stumble upon an absolute marvel: the Stirling radioisotope generator.

Think of it as a closed-loop steam engine, but instead of using boiling water heated by burning coal it's using compressed helium heated by radioactive decay. Apparently that model generates 55-60W initially from it's 1.4kg (3lb) fuel bundle, though that'll drop off over time; plutonium-238's half-life is 87 years. NASA wants it to power deep space probes.

-- Steve just wants it.

Desire Munyaneza got twenty-five to life in Montreal today for his role as mastermind behind the Rwanda genocide of '94. Munyaneza attempted to immigrate to Canada in 2004 as, ironically, a refugee claimant and was arrested under Canada's new war crimes statute. He is the first of hopefully many to be sentenced under the statute.

-- Steve doesn't think that Canada should be the world's policeman, but certainly thinks we should bust the crooks we do find.

I arrived home to find my upgrade copy of Windows 7 in the mailbox. I won't fire it up tonight, but I'm firing up the backup now and pushing the files off to my external hard drive.

Tomorrow night I'll do a full virus sweep and clean up... and then I think I'll wait until the weekend to do the upgrade itself.

-- Steve wants plenty of time as the upgrade advisor recommended uninstalling some pretty important utilities (including my ATI control utility) before upgrading.

There's a miniature figure out for Sergeant Schlock of the Schlock Mercenaries webcomic. The linked figure comes painted, but you can also get it unpainted or in an antiqued pewter finish.

-- Steve's brain is still pondering what game system would support fielding the good Sergeant.

One of the guilty pleasures in which I endulged yesterday was testing the Zune Marketplace function on the 360 by downloading and/or streaming episodes of The Deadliest Warrior. It's a rather silly show, really, attempting to combine Mythbusters with alternate history to figure out which of two combattants in an ahistorical duel would win.

One pairing, though, was intriguing; a match-up between a Viking raider and a Samurai warrior. Their mathematical modeling gave the Samurai slender edge, something like a 60/40 split IIRC, from his more advanced armour and the accuracy of the yumi bow. (The katana proved highly disadvantaged, though, as it couldn't defeat even a modest coat of ring mail... a problem the Danish great axe didn't face.)

A pity that there isn't an historical way to get these two to face off... a Viking raid on Hokkaido Island would make for a fascinating story setting. (Or is there a scenario I'm not seeing?)

-- Steve'd love it as an explanation for the Ainu, though that doesn't seem to be borne out by DNA evidence.

Ontario's new law banning handheld cellphone use while driving comes into effect tomorrow. And it's about bloody time.

In my opinion, when in a vehicle you are either driving or you are not driving; driving consists of having both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road. If you are doing anything else, such as drinking coffee or gabbing on a cellphone or adjusting the radio or whatever, then you are not driving... and either someone else should be driving or the vehicle is without a driver and should be at a complete halt.

(Don't talk to me about multitasking; studies show that most people who think they're good at multitasking, particularly behind the wheel, are examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect and that matches by my personal observations on the roads.)

So I welcome this new law, and hope that the roads will become ever so slightly safer as a result.

-- Steve has barely escaped disaster caused by distracted drivers more than once. This is a serious issue.

PS: It would've been nice to nuke hands-free devices too, but I gather that'd be all-but unenforceable.