Unemployed

It's back to job hunting for me.

I'll miss those classic announcements at King's Cross Station like "...the underground ticket office is at street level" and "...a light for the institute of the blind."

I had better to update my CV and get it back into circulation.

Another light dusting.

There was a bit more snow last night, not enough to use as an excuse to stay home though. (Not that I'm complaining... It's my last week and I can do with all the hours that I can get)

Old Maids

Technology loss syndrome identified

Now we have a name for that feeling

By Nick Farrell: Wednesday 23 February 2005, 07:30

SHRINKS HAVE come up with a name for that feeling we get when we are parted from our mobile phones or internet connection.

According to the Current Bun, Mobile and Internet Dependency Syndrome (MAIDS) is that feeling of concern when your mobile phone is out of batteries, or lost, or you lose your internet connection.

According to a survey conducted by Lloyds TSB, nearly two thirds suffer from Maids if they left their mobile phone at home and three per cent even said they felt "freaked out and panicky".

The poll of nearly 1,000 people noted a similar attachment to the internet with 72 per cent going spare if they couldn’t check their emails for a day.

I feel better now just by knowing that I'm not alone...

Snow

I thought we may get through the winter without seeing any snow in London but we had a light dusting of the white stuff last night.

Train Surfing

T-Mobile to offer wi-fi broadband on trains

Richard Wray
Wednesday February 16, 2005
The Guardian

Commuters stuck on the 8.02 from Brighton to London will soon be able to fire off an email to the boss of Southern Trains complaining about the service or surf the web while trundling through Sussex.

Mobile phone company T-Mobile has put broadband internet access points along the line and has wired up a fleet of trains to allow laptops to use wi-fi broadband over the air service while on board.

In specially designated carriages anyone with a device that can use wi-fi, which is standard on most new laptops, will be able to connect to the web as if they were sitting at their desk. The company claims the service should even work in tunnels.

I think I'll look for my next contract in Brighton!

More PSP News

Sony Movie Unit to Issue Films for PSP Game System
Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:27 PM GMT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The home video unit of Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it will release four movies in April on a new disc format designed for Sony's PlayStation Portable handheld video game device.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment said it will release "XXX," "Hellboy," "Resident Evil 2" and "One Upon A Time in Mexico" on April 19 in the Universal Media Disc or UMD format, with additional monthly releases in the future. The unit did not set a price for the movie discs.

The small UMD holds 1.8 gigabytes of data, three times the capacity of a CD-ROM. It was designed as a vehicle for games and other media on the PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America will release the PSP in North America on March 24, with a bundled copy of the movie "Spider-Man 2."

In unveiling the PSP for the U.S. market in January, top Sony Computer executives said they would probably wait a few months after the PSP's release before seriously pushing movies in the new disc format.

But earlier this month, when Sony set the launch date and price for the PSP, executives said the strategy had changed and that there would be movie releases within a month of launch.

Cool. I wonder if Blockbuster will be stocking UMD disks as well and how the price will compare to regular DVDs.

Sony Playstation Portable

OK, Amazon now has the release date as 29 April... So a safe guess would be that we should see them around June.

Delicatessen

I watched a nice romantic French movie last night... Delicatessen. Perfect for Valentine season.

This evening, on the other hand, I watched Citizen Kane... not what I was expecting at all. I suppose I should have known when I noticed it was by Orson Wells and not H.G. Wells.





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Longhorn Beta

Microsoft: Longhorn beta will arrive by June
Published: February 7, 2005, 1:00 PM PST
By Ina Fried
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft is on track to release the first full test version of the next major Windows release by the end of June, a Microsoft executive told CNET News.com on Monday.

The company has said publicly that Beta 1 of Longhorn would arrive by the end of 2005, though internally, the company has been aiming for a release by midyear. The final version of Longhorn is slated for the second half of next year.

"There will be a beta 1 of Longhorn...happening in the first half of this year," John Montgomery, a director in Microsoft's developer division, said during an interview at VSLive, a conference devoted to the company's Visual Studio .Net toolkit. The release will be primarily aimed at developers, Montgomery said. "I do, however, expect that you will find IT departments starting to look at it, kick the tires, figure out what's in it and what's not in it."

Oi, what happened to XP 64-bit?

We're jammin'

IDF to treat shell shock with cannabis
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

The IDF will soon begin using cannabis to treat soldiers suffering from combat stress, the military said Wednesday.

An army statement said the military medical corps and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem would begin treating victims of post-traumatic stress - commonly known as shell shock - with THC, the active ingredient in the cannabis plant. It said the treatment would begin on an experimental basis.

"The use of THC as part of the treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder was approved by military and civilian committees relevant to the subject," the statement said.

An IDF spokesman said treatment would be given to both conscript soldiers and reservists.

Since September 2000, the Israeli military has been conducting day to day operations against the Palestinian terror infrastructure in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

During that time many soldiers have been treated for combat stress following service at military checkpoints and in military operations.

The IDF continues to ban the use of all drugs on a leisure basis, including cannabis derivatives marijuana and hashish.

I can't help but think that if they treated politicians with cannabis there would be less soldiers getting shell shock in the first place.

Sony PSP

Sony names US PSP launch date, price
By Tony Smith
Published Friday 4th February 2005 12:00 GMT

Sony has at last come clean and said when it will ship the PlayStation Portable in the North America. Yes, 24 March will be PSP Day.

There's still no official word on the European debut, but the day after, the 25th, has in the past been singled out for attention in documents sent by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe to local distributors and retailers. That said, company insiders appear to be anticipating a delay, possibly into April.

In the US, the PSP will retail for $250 - $100 more than the Nintendo DS, but then Sony is pitching the handheld as more than a games console, and is targeting an older, more affluent customer-base.

The Sony price also includes a copy of Spiderman 2 on the PSP's Universal Media Disc (UMD) optical medium, along with a number of accessories, including earphones, remote control, carry case and a 32MB Memory Stick. This Value Pack may well be joined by a standalone PSP at a lower price point later in the year, though Sony's keeping quiet about its plans for the product.

The electronics giant says that 24 titles will be released in the two weeks following the launch, including FIFA 2005, Metal Gear Acid, Need for Speed Rivals and Twisted Metal: Head On.

Read the full article...

I saw my first PlayStation Portable in the wild at the pub on Friday night and I've been really tempted to get one. Amazon.co.uk already has them available for pre-order with the price in Pounds coming in at a little more than $250 dollars though (we seem to pay more for everything here).

*sigh* Yet another toy to add to my shopping list for when I get my next job.

PSP Review (with loads of close up pics.)

Sex and the single robot

Sex and the single robot

Jonathan Watts, East Asia correspondent
Wednesday February 2, 2005
The Guardian

Scientists have made them walk and talk. There are even robots that can run. But a South Korean professor is poised to take their development several steps further, and give cybersex new meaning. Kim Jong-Hwan, the director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre, has developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing. He says the software, which will be installed in a robot within the next three months, will give the machines the ability to feel, reason and desire.

Kim, a leading authority on technology and ethics of robotics, said: "Christians may not like it, but we must consider this the origin of an artificial species. Until now, most researchers in this field have focused only on the functionality of the machines, but we think in terms of the essence of the creatures." That "essence" is a computer code, which determines a robot's propensity to "feel" happy, sad,
angry, sleepy, hungry or afraid. Kim says this software is modelled on human DNA, though equivalent to a single strand of genetic code rather than the complex double helix of a real chromosome.

Kim said: "Robots will have their own personalities and emotion and - as films like I Robot warn - that could be very dangerous for humanity. If we can provide a robot with good - soft - chromosomes, they may not be such a threat."

Although he admits his ideas sound fantastic, Kim is no crank. In the mid-1990s, the professor launched the robot football world cup, which has since become one of the most popular means for robotics researchers to measure their progress against competitors from around the world.

A scene from Futurama (I think it was Futurama) springs to mind of a
robot running out of a burning building shouting "Why? Oh why was I
programmed to feel pain!"

*Edit* It was the Simpsons and not Futurama.... my bad.

MSN Search

So MS have finally released their search engine. The URL isn't as catchy as Google's but I guess if they have their 404 error pages redirecting to it from IE they should be able to round up some traffic.

They have ranked my sites quite highly on their results pages though (Not sure if this is an indication that their ranking system needs a little more development) which sort of makes it worth the fact that I get more hits from their bot crawling my sites than all the others combined.

Congratulations!

My brother got his first job since he's been here. That should keep him off my PC during the day and mean that there should be some more gadgets appearing in our house after his first paycheck!

Bluetooth Woes

After fighting with BT on one of the laptops for a few days I've decided to give in and buy another small hub.

I just can't seem to be able to get access to the LAN via BT. I only am able to see the actual machine that I'm connecting to.

In other news.... I'm starting to miss the sun... so I got Far Cry over the weekend *grin*.