It's all about HOW you think!

I remember when I first started to play chess seriously I spent many hours reading all kind of books on every aspect of the game. One of the things that struck me when I read it was a study about Grand Masters (people that have achieved a coveted title for their prowess in the professional chess world) and other players. The common thought before this study was that GM's somehow just "saw" a lot further then anyone else did in the same position. That is that there were able to evaluate say 50 positions in a second rather then 3 or 5 that a normal player could. What the study proved through a variety of methods was that in fact that is completely untrue, a GM can see or evaluate slightly more positions then a rank amateur per second, but an identical amount to that of any semi serious club chess player or above. So what was the difference? It turned out it was simply HOW they evaluated the positions. A GM will simply only consider lines (lines is a synonym for "possibilities" in chess lingo) that are strong, whereas a normal club player will often consider moves that are quite simply much weaker. In other words the GM is able to achieve more with an identical amount of processing power because of HOW they think. I never thought of this being relevant in IT until I read this comment.

Survival

Today there was a lucky american tourist with a camera on safari, he managed to catch this amazing footage, showing survival at it's best. Check it out here.

Porn

I read a very interesting blog recently about the observations of a female clerk in a video store that had a porn section. It was really quite an interesting read on a number of levels, firstly it was an insight into the female perspective of porn, something that I don't often get much of an insight into. The author has quite a humorous style which helps with such a topic, but also some very interesting insights into porn, it's role and it's downsides in society. Unfortunately I can link directly to the section in question, but if you click on this link and scroll to the entry labelled "Men and Women and Porn" you'll see what I consider to be one of the better explanations of porn and it's usage and the differences of perspective between sexes.

On an unrelated note but still in the realm of things you don't talk about in polite company here is a list of swear words as sorted by the British publics impression of how offensive they are and what's more they have the same swear words ranked over time! Check it out here.

a giant leap for mankind

Well I just finished watching 2001: A space odyssey again and as usual it left me thinking. One part of my thought process I'll sit down to write soon, was about the paucity of decent movies coming from Hollywood (everywhere?) in recent times, but the other was about the future and our achievements.

When I look back at the last 100 years or so, I can almost mark every 15 years by something completely revolutionary coming along. Machine guns, Airplanes, Atomic bombs, space flight, television and so on it goes, and then I look at what my generation has contributed and I'm starting to run out of contributions. It seems that what my generation is particularly good at is refining everything else, we take something and we just refine it, so much so that in some fields you could even argue that it is refined so far past it's original inception as to almost be a massive jump, but still, it doesn't feel like it. Maybe it's just my ignorance on matters, but it really does seem that we, as a generation have stopped taking giant leaps, or even looking in many cases. Is it really the case that we have taken all the large steps that can be taken? Is there really no more massive leaps that can be found, are all the advances that are to be made in our society from here on in to be made incrementally? It's feasible I suppose, but it doesn't sound likely to me. So I wonder what am I missing, where have we been making the giant steps? Or have we, as I suspect, not been making any for some time? What causes such a gap in our technological (or otherwise) evolution? When we will once again be driven forwards in all the disciplines of our society by visionaries who look beyond our current limitations. People that aren't afraid to challenge Einstein's theories because they're Einsteins (ok yes it's not that simple, his theories stand because either they are correct, or we simply can't disprove the hypothesis, but I often feel people don't even TRY). I'm looking forward to our next giant leap for mankind.

Privacy and darknets

Today I've spent most of the day researching darknets and the technologies that enable them. Long since gone is the environment in which the original napster was created and now, in these days where the RIAA and it's ilk are constantly suing people the geeks have been brought out in force to combat them. The plethora of available technologies is fairly intimidating, even for a geek like myself it took a number of hours to read up on all the different protocol specs and get to the hard facts about various implementations and the real pro's and con's of each. The question I imagine most of the non geeks ask, is why bother? Bruce Schneier wrote this essay which I think fairly well elucidates why privacy is important to me. I often find myself holding views that are fairly unconventional and in many situations that can actually be a serious hazard to my health, but most importantly it impacts HOW I think. If we are all concerned about how our own thoughts, words or expression could be misused or interpreted then the very fabric of freedom is torn asunder. So I'm going to build myself a darknet, if you're interested you can see my thoughts on what i've read here.