Links for 16-11-2007
The web as the future of television, D-Wave – quantum computing snake-oil?, real cops in virtual worlds, solar satellites, StupiFilter …
-
1 – Victor Keegan: MySpace – your new web TV station
“The new web-only … soap that started on MySpace at the weekend, Quarterlife, could prove to be a Trojan horse that will change the media landscape.” Intriguing.
-
2 – Have commercial quantum computers finally arrived?
“… other scientists are dubious because D-Wave won’t publish the results or discuss them in depth, and that’s anathema in a world that prefers to progress by peer review and independent replication …”
-
3 – NEC helps Big Brother watch foreigners in Japan
“… for now at least, the xenophobic government seems content to invade the privacy of millions of law-abiding foreigners who live, do business, visit and study in Japan each year.”
-
4 – Real Police Cross Over Into Virtual World Again; Arrest Teen For Theft Of Virtual Furniture
“So what if the users decide that “theft” is a part of the gameplay? What if some users decide it is and others don’t? Bringing real world laws and real world cops into virtual worlds is guaranteed to cause problems.”
-
5 – Billboard Q&A: Gene Simmons
KISS man don’t like free. “… that’s not a business model that works. I open a store and say “Come on in and pay whatever you want.” Are you on f*cking crack? Do you really believe that’s a business model that works?”
-
6 – Marvel Comics puts its superheroes online
“While the company’s stable of superheroes has drawn an unprecedented audience in recent years, fuelled by the success of the Spider-Man film franchise, that interest does not translate into sales of the humble comic book.”
-
7 – How and Why You Should Transition to Online Freelancing
“… today, I write exclusively for online publications. I’ve completely transitioned from print, and I couldn’t be happier. Why did I make the transition?”
-
8 – THE ZOGBY/LEAR CENTER SURVEY ON POLITICS AND ENTERTAINMENT
“Out of 15 musical genres, conservatives were more likely than the rest of the respondents to listen to only two of them: country and gospel.” No shocks there, then.
-
9 – floppy office – a tiny free portable software collection
“Floppy Office is a complete free portable software collection of small, self contained no-install freeware office applications …” Could be handy – stick it on yer thumb-drive, innit?
-
10 – Should Solar Powered Satellites Be Built Over Land Or Over Water?
“While launching and building one of these satellites in space may have its own engineering and problems above, constructing the receiving rectenna on land may provide even more nightmares below.”
-
11 – StupidFilter
“… an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines.”
License
This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales License.
November 16th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Dwave already has $44 million in funding. They dont’ get anythnig else unless they makes systems that have superior performance for problems customers are willing to pay for. There is no economic motivation for fraud.
November 16th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
I’ve been casually following the story since you first flagged it Brian, and I have to admit it all sounds very promising. But as pointed out, the lack of peer review is worrying, and isn’t doing them any favours. Believe me, it’s something I’d really like to see come off – but Steorn was a reminder that there are still scammers about.