The Register: “‘Team Warrior’, a killer robot manufacturing alliance led by General Atomics of San Diego, CA, announced yesterday that its Warrior Extended Range/Multi Purpose Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System (ERMP UAS) would enter production for the US Army, another step in the US forces’ ongoing effort to automate most military activities….The Warrior will carry a relatively limited weapons payload, typically a quartet of Hellfire II missiles. It will be able to destroy no more than four tanks or buildings before reloading. However, its new General Atomics stablemate, the evocatively-named MQ-9 ‘Reaper’ can manage up to a tonne and a half of varied ordnance, or as many as 14 Hellfires.”
Category / Technology
BBS Door Games
1. A history of Trade Wars.
2. Play Legend of the Red Dragon online.
3. Global War.
This will mean nothing to you if you did not come of age during the BBS days.
We Pause for a Moment of Geek
The new workstation went operational at 2 AM. Three bottles of beer were consumed during the course of its construction.
My previous motherboard, whom I had referred to occasionally as “Fred,” had fried. And the reason it took so long for me to replace it was because I discovered that SATA had replaced IDE, PCI-Express had replaced AGP, LGA775 had become the standard Intel configuration (with the pins now on the mobo, instead of the CPU), DDR2 had replaced DDR (and more pins had been added to the memory sticks). Even the needs of the motherboard had changed. Not content to merely process bits of data, there was even a voice recognition jumper just behind the DIMM banks that allowed me to order Thai food.
All this over a matter of three years.
In short, after a fruitless search for a replacement motherboard (“Out of stock,” “You’re still using that chipset?,” et al.), I was forced to start pretty much from scratch. The good news is that this new system will probably last me about eighteen months before it goes completely obsolete.
The new box I built is equipped with a snazzy Asus P5B Deluxe, a 3.4 GHz PentiumD*, and 2 gigs of 800 MHz memory. This probably means nothing to you, but it means a good deal to me. I can’t be content to have someone else assemble a system for me. My tactile contact with the insides might allow the computer to understand me and not crap out on me so much. I took Fred’s death very personally. Who knew that our love affair would end in his suicide? I treated Fred very well. I even sang to Fred. And he decided to fizzle out. Perhaps he couldn’t handle my MP3 collection.
But the new box is much faster. It accesses the Internets. I need to tweak a few things, but it currently recognizes two of my three hard drives (and there’s room for six more). I still miss Fred, who now sits collecting dust in my closet with other obsolete computer parts, but I’m hoping that Natasha (the name I have applied to the motherboard) will provide me with a few years of comfort in the late night hours.
The upshot is that podcast production will begin anew very soon because of these developments.
* — If you think I’m shelling out more than $200 for a Core 2 Duo when the price will bifurcate in a matter of six months, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
But Somehow They Can Still Find Porn
Inside Higher Ed: “Overreliance on Google is only one of many technology problems facing college students. A new report released Tuesday by the Educational Testing Service finds that students lack many basic skills in information literacy, which ETS defines as the ability to use technology to solve information problems.”
To the San Francisco Speakers
Dear San Francisco Speakers:
Hi there! You and I have had a pretty good relationship over the years. I’ve done my best to let pals know that one should not devalue your status in the dictionary, which is often placed just below humans who deliver lectures in front of a crowd. I’ve always thought this definition class was unfair. And I’ve had the sense over the years, with your tweeters and subwoofers and your tendency to surprise me with your performance when I feed something to you that’s too loud, that there was perhaps some consciousness at work.
Preposterous, I know. You’re just a manufactured construct. And it’s unseemly for a nonreligious man to think these things. I know there’s thousands of you being sold at Best Buy every day, sometimes constructed inside small radios, but all of you pretty much the same. Bless the free market and mass production.
And yet I can’t help but wonder. Over the past four days, I have heard snippets of Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” about twenty-seven times. I’ve heard it drifting out of a speaker in somebody’s apartment. I’ve heard it in cars that pass by. I’ve heard it in cafes. I’ve heard it in bars, seeing a tattooed man’s eyes mist up.
Now certainly there are worse songs in the world than this now more than two decades old ballad, a sincere though aloof attempt at sentimentality. But why are you going out of your way to play me this song? Why is it that every time I set foot outside, I hear a speaker playing this song. I simply cannot believe that the entire city population listens to KOIT all the time or that, further, KOIT plays this song endlessly in a four-song rotation or that the majority of my fellow San Franciscans really like Foreigner this much.
So I must believe that it is you who are the culprits and that there might be a great speaker conspiracy. Perhaps there are secret meetings that go on. Perhaps speakers walk away from their cabinets when I sleep and contrive plans to terrify me in dim alleys. Perhaps this is a first wave of sentient speakers unleashed by the government and I’m simply unaware of and it’s all part of a plot to condition me to be a good consumer. Perhaps you communicate on a sound spectrum that I cannot hear, letting another speaker know that I am about to walk by. I really don’t know.
But if you are communicating with me, are you employing this song to tell me that you, the great speaker population of San Francisco, want to know what love is? Are you trying to impute that you want me to show you?
Look, don’t take this personally. I’m really flattered by your attention and you’ve been really nice to me, but I’m involved with someone. Further, even if I weren’t involved with someone, I’d have no idea how to make love with you. Would I need to rip open your fabric with a Leatherman Wave and create an orifice? I know love conquers all, but I suspect this would be uncomfortable for me. Or is the Foreigner song an indication that you don’t know what love is? Perhaps this is your way of communicating that you’ve been neglected.
If so, I understand and I will do my best to whisper sweet nothings in your ears. You’re just going to have to tell me where I can find the auditory meatus.
Very truly yours,
Edward Champion