Thursday 29 November 2007

One giant leap forward for science fiction writers

The number of science fiction writers who have posited a form of external brain storage, external interface, neural net that replaces your biological brain when it starts to die off at age 30 (unfortunate but true fact, there) etc., is immense.

The number of working computer models we have of an entire brain, which would enable this, is, um... 0. But give it time, give it time.

We've made the first step.

I can not stress enough how extremely cool I think this is. What they haven't said here is how far this will go towards diagnosing and treating deficits resulting from neurological injury, which is my current professional interest in the matter.

We'll get there, we'll get there.

Tuesday 27 November 2007

Guaranteed ways to fuck with your productivity...

Find that 1300AD are now trading as Brothers At Arms, and find their website. There is sooooo much that I want...

Sunday 25 November 2007

Telcos are idiots.

Why are telecommunications companies so incompetent at website design? If you log into Vodafone, you get a page called "My Vodafone" (Microsoft has a lot to answer for, and Memnoc himself could not devise a sufficient punishment) extolling all the things you can do, like pay your account online (ooh! innovative!) or manage your voicemail, or stuff like that.

Here's the thing:

None of the icons, and none of the list items, are links. You'd think, wouldn't you, when faced with a website, that clicking on an icon that said "My Account" would take you to said page, wouldn't you? No. Apparently not. Apparently Vodafone haven't heard of user interface enhancements like that, and don't like their customers. So you have to go to the unfriendly, badly designed menu list on the left and find the appropriate entry just so that you can navigate through the unfriendly, badly designed website.

Virgin Mobile are looking really attractive right now.

Ha! I can predict the future!

Well, not really.

But back on Thursday, July 12, in my post "The Great Global Warming Swindle Swindle", I wrote this paragraph:

"I'm not quite sure, these days, what to make of the Australian Democrats. They're consistently less unworkably extremist than the Greens, but as minor parties go they appear to have fallen into the trap of not being controversial enough to be visible."

Now what happens? They nosedive out of political life, losing both seats, if my news feeds this morning are anything to go by. I'm sorry to see Andrew Bartlett go (the only openly goth MP in Australia), but I can't help but think that they bought it upon themselves by, well, not bringing success upon themselves.

Which disappoints me, but I generally like the Democrats. Liked.

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