Surreal numbers →

December 24th, 2011

I followed a strange trail of articles, starting with a discussion of surreal numbers, and what it is that makes the system elegant. I ended up reading about a fully definable, but uncomputable number from the computing world.

Sadly, I didn’t understand all of what I read. I haven’t done enough pure maths education.

Brew methods →

December 24th, 2011

So many ways to prepare coffee!

a free telnet/ssh client →

December 17th, 2011

Dan Benjamin:

You need this because Windows doesn’t come with the ability to SSH or SFTP. I’m being serious.

lol

Universal Music claims it has a private deal with Google to take down YouTube videos it doesn’t own →

December 16th, 2011

This is the start of censorship, and why we have to be careful about companies and government having easy tools that can be abused for censorship. They will try!

Many of us were baffled that Universal kept telling YouTube to take down this video, even though it was clear they didn’t hold a copyright to it — a fact reinforced by artists like will.i.am, who insisted that he hadn’t authorized Universal to send the takedown notice.

Now, a court filing in the matter from Universal claims that the takedown wasn’t issued because Universal claims a copyright in the Mega Song, but rather, they claim that they have a private contract with Google giving them the power to take down videos they dislike, regardless of whether they are the rightsholder.

legal and policy issues related to robotics →

December 8th, 2011

The next generation of robots will be in homes, offices and hospitals, not to mention driving cars, flying around as drones, and, yes, working as prison wardens. Robots will be programmed to learn, and will exhibit emergent behavior not necessarily contemplated by their designers. What happens when good robots do bad things? Who is responsible? And what ethical and legal constraints should be considered at the design stage so that the robotics industry does not become the next full employment opportunity for lawyers? What kinds of public policies should we put in place to encourage the smart deployment of robots, striking the right balance between encouraging innovation and safety? These are the kinds of questions to be examined at We Robot

A conference is planned next year, to discuss legal issues around robotics, such as who’s responsible if a learning robot does something bad.

I think, we should just get on with it, and give robots individual rights and responsibilities.

Hey, this is an interesting topic of discussion they have planned!

Relevant differences between virtual and physical robots.

CNet Is Bundling Open Source Software With Malware →

December 7th, 2011

The way it works is that C|Net’s download page (screenshot attached) offers what they claim to be Nmap’s Windows installer. They even provide the correct file size for our official installer. But users actually get a Cnet-created trojan installer. That program does the dirty work before downloading and executing Nmap’s real installer.

Whoa! Avoid download.com

via Daring Fireball

Epic post about tea. From 1946 →

December 6th, 2011

A Nice Cup of Tea

By George Orwell

Evening Standard, 12 January 1946.

What children →

December 4th, 2011

I love these pictures, although they make children seem to have a dark imagination.

The need to understand how a computer works vs how a car works →

December 1st, 2011

John Graham-Cumming discusses the discussion on Radio 4 about teaching computing in schools.

Here’s a taste:

The computer is not a machine like a car with a single purpose, it’s a meta-machine. A machine that can masquerade as other sorts of machine. … A car does one thing: moves. You need to know how to operate the movement. Well, a computer does one thing: lets you program it to do things.

If you teach someone to operate a word processor (as is done in the UK’s stupid ICT classes) you are not teaching them to use a computer at all. You are teaching them to use a word processor…

Little Printer →

November 29th, 2011

Pretty