What A Chucking Feat!

Japanesse boffins at Tokyo University have build a robot hand that is apparently unbeatable at Rock-Paper-Scissors. While this may seem like a remarkable feat in AI programming, all is not not as it might appear. 

Far from caclulating the odds, cranking through a complex algorithm that takes account of all the human opponent's previous moves, pulse rate, breathing, eye movement, endorphin levels, brain wave patterns and a range of other metrics that might have been lifted from a cyberpunk yarn, this tin wanking spanner is nothing more than a cheat. Apparently it uses a camera (seen behind the human hand in the video) to monitor the shape being formed and then plays the corresponding winning move. 

It's all done very fast, in milliseconds (which is a second with a lot of legs) so perhaps we should be impressed, but I can't help but think it's nothing more than cheating, albeit carried out rather quickly: quite literally, it's simply pulling a fast one.

 

The Applicant

A playable job application by Marius Fietzek.

Greasemonkey fix for Outlook OWA

I don't know anybody who says "I love Outlook" or "I really like the web-based email client at work". Most people hate it. It would be better if there was a system that allowed users to run their preferred client (like Thunderbird, or whatever) which, given the right settings, would function with work email.

But there's not.

It is possible to set up forwarding, however, so it's not all bad. But there are times when one doesn't want to reply to work emails using a separate Gmail account.

Every now and again, one has to actually open Outlook Web Access in order to send a reply. However, there is no "mark unread" function so if one clicks the wrong thing, there's no easy way to unclick. Googling for a fix, I stumbled across a Greasemonkey script which fixes OWA!

Here's the script:
http://david-burger.blogspot.com/2008/07/firefox-greasemonkey-outlook-web-access_19.html

Obviously, the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox will have to be installed first, and then click on the link in David Burger's blog post to download the script http://www2.hawaii.edu/~dburger/demos/owax.user.js

Install the script when prompted. Under settings, add the URL of the OWA page. Restart OWA and there are several new text buttons: select all, select nore, mark read, mark unread

I've never really used Greasemonkey before, so I'm very pleased to find I can use it for something useful and that my first attempt to use it actually worked!

Hardly Workin'

It's Thursday, so shut up ...

Bursting Bubbles

After watching this short TED talk on the personal bubbles that the web creates, I thought that maybe it's time to go back to Alta Vista, quondam search tool du jour, but then again, if people actively choose to get their news and information from one search engine, or from a single entity news site like Yahoo or CNN, and don't supplement it with LiveLeak, Ogrish, etc., then they're asking for a partial, blinkered view ...

Eyeball Massage / Mental States

There are two exhibitions showing at the Hayward Gallery at the moment, Pipilotti Rist's "Eyeball Massage" and George Condo's "Mental States". Visitors are free to take pictures or make video recordings of Rist's installations, but not of Condo's stuff. While there are signs in the Condo show in the upper gallery warning visitors against touching the exhibits (the "don't take pictures" signs are fewer, and more discreet), there's nothing in the downstairs gallery telling people that they can take pictures, nor anything to warn against touching. I had to point this out to an "invigilator" who objected to my pulling Pipilotti's swimsuit aside in order to get a better look at the video screen within.

ACTA

Say NO to ACTA!

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