Posts by Andre Alessi
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
From Twitter:
It seems everyone making iPad jokes has forgotten that the best selling game console in the world is straight-up called the Wii.
-
I find this ultrasegmentation of the computing device market a little insane. This thing doesn't make phone calls, right? And why not? It's like they all want to be a bit of everything, but not all of everything, because god forbid you shouldn't have to buy at least five different ultraportable devices. Which then taken all together make a bundle, of course.
While I agree with your general point (I still think that OS incompatibility is the way of the future) it shouldn't be too hard to set up VoIP on the IPad. You might need a plug in microphone, but that's about it.
-
Unless it can play Mass Effect 2 at 1900x1200 on ultra high settings with 7.1 surround sound, do not want.
On the other hand, the e-reader aspect of it (along with the price) actually makes me think it might be worthwhile for my girlfriend at uni. Not too sure about the tiny HD space though, I start sweating when my PC gets down to its last free TB.
-
An interesting article in a recent New Scientist magazine used brain scans to show that when you were thinking about God's view of certain issues the same areas of brain were used as when you were thinking about your own views. However, if you thought about the views of someone else different areas of the brain were used.
Well, I found it interesting ...
Gah, I cannot begin to express how much I dislike that sort of neuroscience research. It's like someone who doesn't know anything about computers trying to describe semantic relationships between the contents of Word docs by the pattern of read/write activity on the hard drive.
Until we have a clearer idea of how brain activity corresponds at a concrete level to the content of thoughts and beliefs, studies like this are simply one step up from phrenology. The location or otherwise of brain activity may or may not have implications for how we understand how different kinds of mental states interrelate, but right now we really don't know enough to say what those implications are.
It's particularly stupid and pointless when used to try and "prove" obviously controversial theories (e.g. "God's opinions and my opinions are closely related in my brain") because there isn't enough hard science behind it to defend, so anti-science bigots end up with an easy target for takedown, allowing them to ignore genuinely problematic findings while they do. And let's not even get into the massive unspoken assumptions inherent in the interpretation of results (e.g. that a person's understanding of "God's opinions" wouldn't be identical to a person's own beliefs anyway...)
Sorry about the rant, but this is one sort of "research" that always gets my goat.
-
@Matthew: I still quote I'm Alan Partridge at parties. "Will you stop saying you threw your monkey in the sea! It's really disturbing..."
@Steve
What gets me is the continuous "Think of the Children" waffle that people come up with about this sort of thing, hey, the kids they interviewed were all "yeah, cool, tits" But perhaps these kids have had a fair bit to do with tits in a nutritional scenario. Are these people worried about a feeding frenzy?.
Fair warning, I am going to steal this and tell everyone I came up with it. Too good not to.
-
Yes, although I tend to think that correlation does imply causation, it's just unclear in which direction, or to what extent, what other causes there are. A better one might be "DON'T CONFUSE CAUSE AND EFFECT". Although in this case, it's pretty clear that crime doesn't cause summer or full moons. So a correlation (if there is one) does actually suggest something noteworthy is going on.
You also run into the ambiguity of the word "imply": the technical sense (X therefore Y) and the informal sense (X suggests Y). One of the main reasons "Correlation does not imply causation" comes to be so misused is that the first meaning is usually intended, but the second is usually read.
-
Summer would also team to be a good time for pitch-fork wielding Waikato farmers to throw their weight around and teach those townies a lesson or two.
I have all sorts of memories of similar events, though on a smaller scale, when I worked for Telecom. There seems to be something in the water in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty that makes farmers say "Sure I'm stopping people from getting their services back by refusing access, but at least I'm free! Or something..."
It was particularly rich when the damage to the network was caused by said farmer's post-hole digger, etc in the first place.
I find it interesting that Transpower is required to keep trees, etc clear from their lines themselves-other networks tend to place that particular requirement on the landowner.
-
I'm surprised by the amount of violence that happens daily in the Hawkes Bay. The crime per capita rates down there must have been crazed last year.
As someone who grew up in Hastings, I can report that it's always been far nastier down there than is commonly believed. I was at school when Kirsa Jensen and Teresa Cormack went missing, and a guy in my fifth (?) form class was convicted of the murder of his off-site remedial reading teacher.
Hawkes Bay is very good at projecting an image of laid-back sunny provincial utopia, but the reality is you have very, very poor areas right next to upper middle class 'burbs (and domestic violence running rife through both.) It's no different to the rest of the country in that regard, it just looks that way.
-
FFS, Andre -- you didn't watch the television news last night, did you?
Does anyone?
-
I decided not to even wish I had gone to the BDO this year, unlike the last couple of years of claiming to have wanted to go, then not. I realised pretty early on that the only reason I even want to go anymore is to be able to tell stories about who and what I saw afterwards-the music itself has become almost peripheral for me.