Archive for February, 2008

We are not used to think of them this way. We don’t see robots or machines as a threat, more as a tool to complete our tasks. But this my friends, is about to change. In fact, it may have already changed, the beginning of the end may have begun. Machines deliberately killing people – can that really be?

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.

As technology, processing power and sophistication of software is ever increasing, it should come as no surprise that the military of the big players in the world encourage their researchers to pursue the development of new kind of technology, which might also be used in warfare.

Autonomous machines.

Robots, designed to perform a certain task, but it lies in their hands what happens next. It is up to their ‘mind’ how to proceed, even if it shall kill a human being if so required. Welcome to the Cold War 2.0, the arms race for robots in the military. Many robots are already used for espionage and all these things, even armed robots. But there’s always someone in the loop, someone who then decides whether to pull the trigger or not. This someone is about to lose his job, the machine will be doing that for him now, making the decision for him. The decision to kill a human being is up to “just lights and clockwork” (Spooner’s opinion about them in ‘I, Robot’).

According to Professor Noel Sharkey, these killer robots pose the latest and ultimate threat to all mankind, and an arms race in that direction might be on its way, if not already occuring.

But if you think that so far nothing has gone wrong and everything is under control… Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14.

Other reports have suggested a computer error might have been to blame. Defence pundit Helmoed-Römer Heitman told the Weekend Argus that if “the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found.”

And there is another incident of a machine mysteriously firing on people.

All machines are man-made. So if they really outsmart us at some stage, we brought this on ourselves. “No fate but what we make” – John Connor.

Come with me, if you want to live.

Danger, Inc. is the company who invented the Sidekick Smartphone. I have seen it, it’s pretty nifty I have to say. That’s probably what the Borg must have thought (from now on: The Borg = Microsoft) when they saw this and wanted to assimilate the technology to further “perfect” themselves. The similarities between the fictional super-enemy from Star Trek and Microsoft are indeed quite striking at this point. The Borg have announced their acquisition of the Sidekick makers.

Apparently NOT Vista capable. Wow.

So that’s another company gone off the map for competitive landscape. It seems as if the map looses more and more companies, the region of the Borg gets bigger and bigger. They are no longer far far away in the Delta-Quadrant. I can only hope that Yahoo modulates the shield frequencies to hold ‘em off, or otherwise a great company will ultimately loose its competitive standing.

Ballmerus of Borg. Maintaining a human appearence, he is linked to the central core of the Borg hive and serves as bridge between the collective and mankind. Taken inside a Borg Cube, inside which it is – as usual – 37.9 degrees celsius

By now you should have all heard about the thing going on out there. Here’s the short version: Microsoft makes a public announcement and says ‘Alright Yahoo, here’s 44.6 billion dollars, we wanna buy your company!’. Yahoo sees the bid (correct term: unsolicited offer) and says plainly ‘No… thanks’. Later on they add ‘We’d rather go with Google’, stabbing a knife in Microsoft’s heart.

The Borg Collective is nonetheless moving forward and is preparing an assimilation (correct term: hostile takeover) of the company. A now publicly posted email prepares workers worldwide for a merger with Yahoo, but also urges the employees to see Yahoo as competitor as long as the deal has not yet closed.

In a message to employees, Microsoft platform and services division president Kevin Johnson shared “a perspective of the process going forward.”

If Yahoo capitulates, the transaction would likely close in the second half of this year, according to Johnson.

Funny thing is, that this quote is posted on Yahoo.com. Curious.

If you wanna read the full message to the Borg hive, well, here it is.

At least this would be my guess. It’s called PicLens and takes viewing pictures on the Internet to the next level. Say, you browse a Flickr gallery of a friend, but the page only displays so many pictures at once. What if, you could seem ‘em all, at once? Well PicLens allows you this, Apple TV style. Remember the ads Apple was running with this kind of wall of TV shows in the background? Well like this, only in 3D and with live imagery from the web.

Get the picture. Apple TV style.

You can click and drag, the wall moves with you in 3D. If you have looked for images on Google, the wall keeps extending itself with the search results. I’m serious. It just builds itself. And if you wanna get a better idea of an image, well, just click on it.

A preview of a selected image, in full quality

Ah yes, and if you wanna see the image in full glory, double-click it. It zooms in and gives you slideshow controls and a filmstrip on the bottom.

Boom!

iPhoto, anyone?

All of this is, amazingly, free and is supported on Mac OS X and Windows, works with Safari and Firefox. It installs itself as a plug-in and requires the browser to restart. It works with nearly every major site that hosts and displays images, such as Flickr (obviously), Google Images, DeviantArt, Picasa, Facebook, Yahoo, and many more.

In Firefox, in your toolbars you should see a new button, a blue rectangle with a white play button. Press this whenever you are at a one of those sites and you wanna see all images. Especially great on Flickr and DeviantArt!

My guess is that this or something like it comes to OS X 10.6 (and I think it’s named Cougar).