Opinionated news exctraction for all by that geeky accountant type guy...

Thursday, December 23

Machiavelli: non-commie advice from an italian

Power should be free but it aint. Work hard, or just do what Machiavelli did...

Monday, December 20

eBay item 5544696274

Ever wanted to drive a rally car. Well now you can. For the small fee of $2000 you can test out the 2005 GroupN N4 Subaru WRX STI in preparation for the 2005 ARC season. And if you are the best. (or the only one that turns up...) Then you get to drive the thing around Australia (not literealy of course...).

Unused Zeplin Hanger Begins mutating

Just kidding... They planeted a few tress etc in a giant hanger. Supposed to be the biggest.

Todd McFarlane Broke!

Just shows that even if u draw comics and are successfull, doesnt mean you are rich...

Saturday, December 18

Have you had your 'Polymeal" Today?

Dining regularly on a "Polymeal", devised with ingredients to boost the health of the heart and blood vessels, could cut the risk of cardiovascular disease by more than three-quarters, researchers claim.

They say feasting on fish, garlic, almonds, fruits and vegetables, dark chocolate, all polished off with a glass of wine could substantially reduce the risk of problems such as heart attack when compared with the general population.

Oscar Franco, a public health scientist at the University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and his colleagues suggest the "Polymeal" as a natural alternative to the "Polypill".

This wonder pill - a cocktail of six existing drugs - was proposed in June 2003 as a preventive pill which might slash the risk of heart attack or stroke in people over 55 years old by as much as 80%. The proposal was underpinned by an analysis of over 750 trials of the existing drugs.

"The point we are trying to make is that it is not only through pills that you can prevent disease," says Franco. "The Polymeal is a natural alternative." He says that by eating the prescribed food within a balanced diet, along with exercise and not smoking, a future of "pills and medicalisation" could be avoided.

Tongue in cheek

But Nicholas Wald, at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, University of London, UK, who led the work on the Polypill concept, is less than impressed. He told New Scientist that the "tongue in cheek" paper published in Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal is "designed to amuse and should be taken in that vein".

He does however say that "buried in it are some things that are sensible", such as fruit and vegetable consumption. Wald adds the paper may help focus attention on eating a healthy diet, which helps improve cardiovascular health.

Franco and colleagues devised the "Polymeal" by searching the medical literature for ingredients. They then used mathematical models to analyse the effects that regularly eating certain foods could have on the cardiovascular health of a population.

The team based their models on a long-running heart health study, called the Framingham study, which has followed a population in Massachusetts, US, for 46 years.

The results suggested that the Polymeal could reduce cardiovascular events like heart attack by 76%. On average, men eating the meal could boost their total life expectancy by 6.6 years, and women by 4.8 years, the study estimates.

Body odour

But Wald points out that the scientific evidence to back some of the Polymeal ingredients such as dark chocolate or garlic, is far from established. for example, the recommendation that dark chocolate enjoyed daily can cut blood pressure stems from a research letter on work conducted in just 13 elderly patients.

And some crucial dietary factors for cardiovascular health, such as eating less saturated fats and salt are also not mentioned in the paper, notes Wald.

But Franco told New Scientist that the Polymeal would be likely to have fewer adverse reactions than taking the Polypill. However, bad breath and body odour could pose a problem with garlic, he jokes, unless everyone takes part.

"We do not recommend taking the Polymeal before a romantic rendezvous, unless the partner also complies with the Polymeal," the team writes.

Journal reference: British Medical Journal (vol 329, p 1447)

Thursday, December 16

Got anything stuck in your ass before?

Well if you have been so stupid enough to ram something up your behind hole. Or for some unkown reason had someone else stick something up there. Or was just born with your head there.... Then you might enjoy this site.

Note: its a medical site so its safe for work

Tuesday, December 14

Get Pumped Drinking

Normaly you have to get your stomach pumped after you drink too much. But this man did the opposite. In a skulling competition he attached an electric pump to his drink. The consequense was his stomach exploded...

Productive priorities

By Andrew Heathcote
BRW. 25 November 2004



Productivity is a constant but commonly misunderstood challenge for accounting firms. In its research into the Top 100 firms, BRW has found the biggest priorities of the country's most productive firms. Each provides pointers to what makes a successful firm and where the best performers spend their time and money.

The main priorities are marketing, raising profitability through internal efficiencies, finding staff, client service and developing new services. The table on page 71 lists the proportion of firms that rank each area among their top four priorities, and separates the most and least productive of the Top 100 - on a fees-per-person basis - to indicate how priorities differ between good and very good firms.

The managing director and sole practitioner of the Sydney firm Bell Partners Accountants and Business Advisors, Anthony Bell, runs the most productive firm in the country, on a revenue-per-partner basis. He recently returned from London and the United States. "I went there to find out about the best accounting firms in the world, their services and the products they offer," Bell says. He agrees that productivity is integral to running a successful accounting firm but believes that is not always understood by accountants in this country.

A partner and chairman of Forsythes, Hugh McKensey, has been working in the accounting profession for so long that he describes himself as a "bit of a dinosaur". (Forsythes is the only regional firm to rank in the top 10 most productive firms, which appeared in BRW in July.) For most of his career, McKensey assessed productivity in terms of chargeable hours but says he now looks at it very differently. "At the end of the day, productivity is a measure of the outcome you have achieved against the outcome you expected," he says.

McKensey says he was forced to reassess the way he looked at productivity two to three years ago by the young accountants who had joined his firm. Their work habits forced the firm to take a more holistic approach to how it assesses productivity and take into account factors such as work quality and client satisfaction. (In the BRW Top 100 Accounting Firms, Forsythes was the top country firm and the 10th most productive.)

Occupational advisers agree that one simple gauge is insufficient for firms to accurately assess whether they are operating productively. Rob Nixon, a director of Business First, a practice-management consultancy, says there are five key performance indicators that provide a good starting point for assessing productivity: time charged, write-offs, work-in-progress days, debtor days, and the average hourly rate billed.

"The vast majority of firms measure productivity in terms of time charged," Nixon says. "Consequently, firms often focus on having a high volume of charged time but that can cause inefficiencies. If partners have the drum out wanting more chargeable time, then time sheets are fudged and write-offs occur."

The managing partner of the New South Wales division of Deloitte, John Meacock, says non-traditional productivity measures have become crucial to running a successful practice. Deloitte and the other Big Four firms dominate the most-productive list. "We apply the usual productivity measures around chargeability and so forth but we also spend a lot of time on customer satisfaction surveys to make sure we are solving our clients' issues," Meacock says. "I think that is the key non-financial productivity measure and it is one we look very closely at."

Monitoring is one thing, but what are the country's best accounting firms doing to improve productivity? Sixty-six per cent of respondents to the BRW Top 100 survey say marketing is one of their four main strategies. Marketing is an important part of running a successful accounting practice but few successful firms see reliance on advertisements as the best way to go about it.

Anthony Bell says "effective" marketing can provide important insights into productivity. "The best marketing is word of mouth. It can act as a barometer. If you are getting new work from referrals, you know you must be doing something right by existing clients. The problem with more traditional types of marketing is that you might get new work but it does not say much about the quality of your work if someone has just read an advertisement or signboard."

Nixon of Business Fitness says 99% of all new clients to an accounting firm come from referrals. "But there are very few firms that have a referral program in place as a marketing initiative," he says. "So most of the money that firms spend on marketing is ineffective because they have not developed a process to get referrals. Accountants are pretty lousy marketers, but they should be very good at it because they are the last trusted advisers on the planet."

A director of the practice management firm FMRC Business Development, Andrew Geddes, says there are several things accountants can do to make sure they are referred new work from existing clients. "You have to profile yourself," he says. "You should be seen with your good clients at their events. You can also run a breakfast club and invite 12 clients to breakfast once a month and provide specialist education activities. Marketing accounting services is not about putting an ad in the Yellow Pages. It is about relationship development, profiling and positioning."

Geddes says the reputation gained with good clients comes from whether accountants are accessible, timely, understandable and willing to take initiative. To this end, having the right staff is crucial. Good staff are always hard to find but the task for accounting firms is becoming even tougher. The Commonwealth Department of Employment and Workplace Relations recently put accountants on the list of immigrants' occupations in demand.

McKensey of Forsythes says his firm has the most luck with staff recruited straight from university. "The best ones are those we get from the beginning that have had the chance to grow and develop in our culture," he says. "Staff are becoming increasingly important. People used to be part of the equation. In my view they are now all of the equation."

People issues

Of the respondents to BRW's survey, 65% of the more productive firms plan to make staff a top priority, compared with 50% of the less productive firms. The general manager of CCH Benchmarking, Ian Brown, who assisted in the collation and analysis of the productivity trends of the Top 100 firms, says it could be argued that the "highly productive practices better understand the importance of their people and so put more focus generally on people issues".

Bell says he likes to be on the side of caution when it comes to staff numbers. "In terms of our talent management, I tend to overstaff and keep more people on than necessary," he says. "We have had a growth rate that is pretty high so I would rather make sure quality assurance is high. You don't want staff to be stressed or for clients to say you are too busy when they are trying to reach you on the phone. Reducing overheads and other costs are things we constantly look at but we can take on added expenses with staff because we keep costs low in other areas, such as marketing."

Bell also believes it is becoming increasingly important to offer a range of services to clients. "To be productive you have to offer a total solution stream. We are finding a real pattern where clients want to engage our firm in a number of areas."

Of the Top 100 respondents, 56% of the most productive firms say they are focusing on developing new products for clients, compared with only 29% of those in the bottom half of the list. This gap is bigger than in any of the other priority areas.

Brown of CCH Benchmarking says this suggests that the highly productive firms "seem to be willing to explore new areas for clients as a way of growing the top line".

Geddes says offering new services is an important part of "deepening a relationship with clients". This is most effectively achieved by putting staff into teams that offer a variety of skills. Geddes believes it is often more appropriate to assess the productivity of a team rather than individuals. "A group might be a partner, a client service manager and a few accountants. Within that work group I suggest weekly production meetings where key performance indicators are assessed collectively. What we are talking about is open-book management; the setting of profit and production targets within the group and then meeting once a week to see if they are being met."

The chairman of CPA Australia's public practice committee and a director of the Canberra accounting firm Everalls DFK, John Mann, says quality assurance is an area where several firms can improve the way they operate. "Many smaller firms don't have documentation in relation to procedures. The how-we-do-it-here concept. At a lot of firms this won't be written down but it is far more effective when it is and available to all staff. Access through an intranet is a good way of doing it because they won't have to waste time asking someone else."

BRW

Lord D

Want to be a lord?

Monday, December 13

Holigraphic Display thingy

It really works... It just gets better and better

Friday, December 10

Sssshhhh

"From Coudal.com, "After reading a story in the NYT, Jim's wife Heidi decided that maybe there was a way to fight back against the obnoxious cell phone users that we all have to deal with in stores, restaurants, trains and pretty much everywhere else. Can design ride to the rescue? Jim and the incomparable Aaron Draplin think it can. So, as a public service, we introduce the reasonably polite SHHH, the Society for HandHeld Hushing.

- - - -

That's right. We're tired of having to listen to your loud, obnoxious conversations. We don't care about yer new haircut or what "he" might have said to you the night before. (We couldn't believe it either!) It doesn't interest us in the least whether or not you are going to attend the company Christmas party or when you need to pick up yer ugly kids from soccer practice. Nope. Don't want to hear it.

We're fighting back.

Simply download this PDF, cut 'em out, and "politely" hand them out to whoever is "spinning a yarn" next to you in the checkout line."

Tougher copyright laws passed

Being an audio artist could not of been at a better time. Now Australia also have laws which stop internet folk from copying stuff on a commercial level. Commerce being the pursuit of money. But wait "sharing" isnt about making money...

The bill, which passed the Senate last night, will enable people other than copyright owners to force internet service providers to take down material allegedly infringing copyright.

The internet industry raised concerns in a brief inquiry held overnight that the changes could bog down the industry with automated copyright claims.

A number of criminal offences were broadened to target copyright breaches for financial gain or commercial advantage and significant infringements on a commercial scale.

Make your own Headcrab.

As if playing the game wasnt real enough. Now someone has decided to make their own hugable Headcrab. They arent selling it... so in true geek style you goto make your own.

Thursday, December 9

WARNING: Multiple Browsers Window Injection Vulnerability

When checking how little money you have in your bank account (secure website) you shouldnt have other browsers open at non-secure website. Its bad for your change...

Wednesday, December 8

Daycare Creches For Men

I think its a great idea.

WOMEN fed up with their menfolk moaning while out Christmas shopping can now leave them to play in their own in-store creche.

Marks and Spencer, the venerable British department store chain, said Wednesday it was creating playpens for men in six of its stores, fully equipped with everything to keep the guys entertained for hours.

The lads will be able to settle back in sofas and watch a selection of films and TV programmes such as The Best of Monty Python and Football's Greatest Ever Matches.

Each area will also boast a Scalextric slot-car racing set, remote-control quad bikes and walkie-talkies.

The creches open at Marks and Spencers' flagship store at Marble Arch in London, and at selected outlets in Edinburgh and Aberdeen in Scotland, Cardiff in Wales, and Sheffield in north-central England.

GM cocaine concern

Consumers of cocaine are worried about the effects of Genticly Modified (GM) cocaine which is begining to come onto the market...

Some Colombian drug growers are using genetically modified coca "trees" to boost cocaine production dramatically, government officials say.

Anti-drug operatives say they found new strains with yields eight times higher than normal coca plants.

Higher yields could help explain why cocaine prices have stayed low despite US and Colombian air attacks on farms.

Colombian scientists and US officials expressed doubts, claiming extra growth could be achieved using fertiliser.

The coca "trees" can stand over 2m tall (6ft 6in) and produce four times as much of the alkaloid active in cocaine, according to a dossier seen by Britain's Financial Times newspaper.

Although official Colombian figures claim that the area under coca cultivation has halved since 2000, evidence suggests that coca planters have managed to maintain a net level of cultivation.

German Manga, an assistant to the Colombian vice-president, told the BBC that planters were using new and sophisticated technology to maintain their levels of production.

Fertiliser theory

The leaked dossier said a new variety of coca plant had been discovered by anti-narcotics officers in the remote Sierra Nevada region of northern Colombia.

"In their search for greater profits, drug-traffickers appear to have entered the world of genetically modified crops," the dossier said.

Among the coca plants judged to have been genetically enhanced is one variety which grows up to 2.7m (9ft) tall - double the usual size.

Foreign agronomists have helped the coca growers to develop the new strain of plant, which is resistant to many commonly used herbicides and can yield as much as four times the regular concentration of cocaine, the Financial Times said.

But a Colombian toxicologist, Camilo Uribe, told Reuters news agency there was no evidence that the plants had been genetically modified.

The coca plants' excessive size could be because of "an excess of fertiliser", Mr Uribe said.

A spokesman for the US embassy in Bogota said there was "no scientific proof" that "transgenic coca" had been developed, although rumour of its existence were rife.

Government crackdown

The BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Bogota says the new discoveries threaten to undermine the gains made on the war on drugs in Colombia.

If the drugs trade cannot be destroyed, then the warring factions that earn up to $1bn a year from narcotics will be a lot harder to defeat, our correspondent adds.

Under the government of President Alvaro Uribe, elected in 2002, Colombia has attempted to crack down on cocaine production across the country.

He is an enthusiastic supporter of Plan Colombia, a US initiative to train Colombia's security forces and provide them with equipment and intelligence to tackle drug traffickers and destroy coca crops before they can be processed into cocaine.

Under Plan Colombia the country has become the world's third largest recipient of US military aid.

Are you afraid (and a parent)

Well be afraid no longer. As a new product called Babycage.net has arrived to a store which seels baby things near you... Basicly its a cage to put you new human into. Not only does this obviously stop it from hurting it self but more importantly it stops it from hurting you.

Lefties are Killers

Scientists have proven another well known fact...

Left-handed people may be better equipped for close range mortal combat than those who rely on their right hands, according to researchers.

Charlotte Faurie and Michel Raymond of the University of Montpellier in France examined the number of left-handed people in unindustrialised cultures as well as the homicide levels within each culture.

They discovered a correlation between levels of violence and the proportion of the left-handed population – the more violent a culture, the higher the relative proportion of left-handers. The cause for this, the researchers suggest, is that left-handers are more likely to survive hand-to-hand combat.

The news could provide comfort for those who routinely struggle with right-handed scissors and can-openers, but some experts are unconvinced by the link.

Left-handed people are more prone to some health problems, suggesting the trait ought to disappear naturally over many generations through natural selection. But left-handers continue to make up a small proportion of the human population, hinting there could also be some evolutionary advantage to being left-handed.

And the ratio of left-handers to right-handers is higher in successful sportspeople than it is in the general population, suggesting there is definite advantage to favouring the left hand or foot in competitive games, such as tennis.


Homicidal tendencies

"Because of the advantage in sports we thought there could be a similar advantage in fights," Faurie told New Scientist. The theory is that right-handed competitors are less accustomed to facing left-handers, making them a more difficult proposition.

Faurie and Raymond studied several unindustrialised societies with varying rates of homicide, using their own fieldwork and ethnographic literature. They excluded industrialised cultures due to a lack of data and because, they argue, use of firearms is unaffected by handedness.

At one end of the scale, their sample included the Dioula of Burkina Faso, where just 3.4% of the population is left-handed and there are only 0.013 murders per 1000 inhabitants each year. At the other end of their sample spectrum, they studied records of the Eipo of Indonesia, where 27% of the population is left-handed and the homicide rate is considerably greater - three murders per 1000 people each year.

The strong correlation between the proportion of left-handers and the number of homicides in each culture suggests that left-handers are more likely to survive a fight, they say. "It could be one of the reasons left-handedness has survived," Faurie says. "Though there may be other reasons too."


Brain differences

Daniel Nettle, an expert in human evolutionary history at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, is intrigued. "The results quite surprised me," he says. "But I can't think of any reason why they might be an artefact [of the study design], so it looks like an interesting finding."

Brain differences

Daniel Nettle, an expert in human evolutionary history at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, is intrigued. "The results quite surprised me," he says. "But I can't think of any reason why they might be an artefact [of the study design], so it looks like an interesting finding."

However, Chris McManus at University College London, who has researched handedness, is more sceptical about the link. "I'm far from convinced," he told New Scientist. "I don't think it is anything as simple as this."

McManus says the sample data is too small provide firm evidence of a connection between handedness and fighting prowess and says data from western societies should also have been included.

He believes the success of left-handers may be largely due to differences in the brain. "It may be that sometimes their brains assemble themselves in combinations that work better for certain tasks," he says.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb/2004/2926)

"Dude" Defined

Consultation of the dictionary leads to scientific discovery and news story...

DUDE, you've got to read this. A linguist from the University of Pittsburgh has published a scholarly paper deconstructing and deciphering the word "dude," contending it is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers.

An admitted dude-user during his college years, Scott Kiesling said the four-letter word has many uses: in greetings ("What's up, dude?"); as an exclamation ("Whoa, Dude!"); commiseration ("Dude, I'm so sorry."); to one-up someone ("That's so lame, dude."); as well as agreement, surprise and disgust ("Dude.").

Kiesling says in the autumn edition of American Speech that the word derives its power from something he calls cool solidarity - an effortless kinship that's not too intimate.

Cool solidarity is especially important to young men who are under social pressure to be close with other young men, but not close enough to be taken as gays.

In other words: Close, dude, but not that close.

"It's like man or buddy, there is often this male-male addressed term that says, 'I'm your friend but not much more than your friend,"' said Kiesling, whose research focuses on language and masculinity.

To decode the word's meaning, Kiesling listened to conversations with fraternity members he taped in 1993. He also had undergraduate students in sociolinguistics classes in 2001 and 2002 write down the first 20 times they heard "dude" and who said it during a three-day period.

He found the word taps into nonconformity and a new American image of leisurely success.

Anecdotally, men were the predominant users of the word, but women sometimes call each other dudes.

Less frequently, men will call women dudes and vice versa. But that comes with some rules, according to self-reporting from students in a 2002 language and gender class included in the paper.

"Men report that they use dude with women with whom they are close friends, but not with women with whom they are intimate," according to the study.

His students also reported that they were least likely to use the word with parents, bosses and professors.

Historically, dude originally meant "old rags" - a "dudesman" was a scarecrow. In the late 1800s, a "dude" was akin to a "dandy," a meticulously dressed man, especially out West.

It became "cool" in the 1930s and 1940s, according to Kiesling. Dude began its rise in the teenage lexicon with the 1981 movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."

"Dude" also shows no signs of disappearing as more and more of our culture becomes youth-centred, said Mary Bucholtz, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"I have seen middle-aged men using 'dude' with each other," she said.

Thank you Associated Press

Man confuses real life with GTA:SA

An assertive man.....

POLICE believe the same man to be responsible for a string of carjackings and robberies across Brisbane's southside.

Police said the offences began at 3.15pm (AEST) yesterday when the man stole a Mazda utility from a driveway in Fifth Avenue, North Marsden.

The thief threatened the ute's owner with a knife as he drove away, dumping the car in Marsden bushland a short time later.

Just before 4pm, the man then used the knife to steal a Honda sedan from four men at a real estate business on Trinity Way, Drewvale.

Not long after its theft the car was believed to have been driven into the rear fence of a Sunnybank home, before being taken to a nearby garage which was robbed at knifepoint.

Pursuit abandoned

Police tried to intercept the Honda nearby but said they had to abandon the pursuit when the man began driving the car on the wrong side of the road.

At about 4.30pm police received a report of a man using a knife to steal a Holden Barina from a woman in Blakeney Street, Highgate Hill.

He man abandoned the vehicle after crashing it into road maintenance equipment at the intersection of Vulture and Stanley Streets.

At about 5pm the man apparently began assaulting people in the carpark of the Mater Hospital, trying to obtain money.

He was chased from the carpark, but not before stealing a briefcase and the keys to a car from two elderly women.

Finally, at about 5.20pm police were called to the Rocklea Hotel bottleshop where a man had left a car with its engine running.

Enquiries revealed the car have been stolen earlier from a smash repair business in East Brisbane.

Police are investigating the rampage.

Potatoe Recipes

I like potatoes. They are simple and always taste the same. But you can add different flavours to them. Kinda like water... Anyway theres this company called western potatoes (potatoe conglomerate...) and they have recipies. Recipies for potatoes.

mmmm potatoes

Sunday, December 5

Trebuchet Challenge

This is a cool trebuchet game. Basicly you get to set the specs of the trebuchet and aim for distance, accuracy and power. See if you can use your knowledge of physics into something practical. Like this virtual trebhuchet game...

"Poisin Fucked my Face."

UKRAINE's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko says he is determined to find out the facts behind a suspected poisoning attempt in the lead-up to the country's election.

His face remains disfigured as a result of a mystery illness that struck during the bitterly-fought campaign.

"Soon the world will know what happened," he said from his office in Kiev yesterday.

"I will reveal all the details of what they gave me to look like this."

The Opposition leader said he fell ill after attending a dinner hosted by the Ukraine's secret police in the weeks leading up to the election.

Doctors who treated Mr Yushchenko in Vienna found it difficult to find the cause of the condition - which was severe.

Poison or just a bad hair day. See what happens when you try and use something other than head and shoulders...

Car Explodes

A car that explodes was caught on camera

Chinese Proverbs

  • Virginity like bubble: one prick, all gone.
  • Man who run in front of car get tired.
  • Man who run behind car get exhausted.
  • Foolish man give wife grand piano, wise man give wife upright organ.
  • Man who walk through airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok.
  • Man with one chopstick go hungry.
  • Man who eat many prunes get good run for money.
  • Baseball is wrong: man with four balls cannot walk.
  • War does not determine who is right, war determine who is left.
  • It take many nails to build crib, but one screw to fill it.
  • Man who drive like hell, bound to get there.
  • Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement.
  • Crowded elevator smell different to midget.
  • Thursday, December 2

    G Drive

    Remember a few years back, and the whole uploading files to a virtual drive on the internet was cool, but you only got like 25megs and was basicly shit. And then they started charging and everyone stoped using it for some reason... Now Think about that whole gig of unused space in your Gmail account.... or atleast close to it (in anycase there is still a shit load of space left...) So if you combined these two things you would get G Drive. G Drive is not an official google product so it might get shutdown, but while its there why not upload some warez and send them to you friends...

    Anyway you can download the virtual drive program for you computer from this link. And give your self somewhere safe to put all of that porn.

    I have gmail invitations if needed [beancounting at gmail dot com]

    The rule has been broken

    You know the rule about robots. The one how they arnt supposed to harm humans or let harm come to humans (ok well its mainly for ai but robots have ai...) anyway, looks like all is already lost and no one gives a shit.

    The stupid fucks in amarika have decided to make robots that have a M249 machine gun cradled in its mechanical grip...

    Wired

    RLANDO, Florida -- Hunting for guerillas, handling roadside bombs, crawling across the caves and crumbling towns of Afghanistan and Iraq -- all of that was just a start. Now, the Army is prepping its squad of robotic vehicles for a new set of assignments. And this time, they'll be carrying guns.

    As early as March or April, 18 units of the Talon -- a model armed with automatic weapons -- are scheduled to report for duty in Iraq. Around the same time, the first prototypes of a new, unmanned ambulance should be ready for the Army to start testing. In a warren of hangar-sized hotel ballrooms in Orlando, military engineers this week showed off their next generation of robots, as they got the machines ready for the war zone.

    "Putting something like this into the field, we're about to start something that's never been done before," said Staff Sgt. Santiago Tordillos, waving to the black, 2-foot-six-inch robot rolling around the carpeted floor on twin treads, an M249 machine gun cradled in its mechanical grip.

    For years, the Pentagon and defense contractors have been toying with the idea of sending armed, unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs, into battle. Actually putting together the robots was a remarkably straightforward job, said Tordillos, who works in the Army's Armaments Engineering and Technology Center.

    Ordinarily, the Talon bomb-disposal UGV comes equipped with a mechanical arm, to pick up and inspect suspicious objects. More than a hundred of the robots are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, with an equal amount on order from the UGV's maker, Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm Foster-Miller.

    For this new, lethal Talon model, Foster-Miller swapped the metal limb for a remote-controlled, camera-equipped, shock-resistant tripod, which the Marines use to fire their guns from hundreds of feet away. The only difference: The Marines' version relies on cables to connect weapons and controllers, while the Talon gets its orders to fire from radio signals instead.

    "We were ready to send it a month ago," Tordillos said. Navigating the Pentagon bureaucracy and putting together the proper training manuals are what's keeping the Talon stateside, for now.

    Back in December 2003, the Army's 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division tested an armed Talon in Kuwait. Now, the brigade wants 18 of the UGVs to watch the backs of its Stryker armored vehicles.

    Four cameras and a pair of night-vision binoculars allow the robot to operate at all times of the day. It has a range of about a half-mile in urban areas, more in the open desert. And with the ability to carry four 66-mm rockets or six 40-mm grenades, as well as an M240 or M249 machine gun, the robots can take on additional duties fast, said GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike.

    "It's a premonition of things to come," Pike said. "It makes sense. These things have no family to write home to. They're fearless. You can put them places you'd have a hard time putting a soldier in."

    It's the same goal Army-funded researchers are keeping in mind as they develop an unmanned ambulance. The Robotic Extraction Vehicle, or REV, is a 10-foot-long, 3,500-pound robot that can tuck a pair of stretchers -- and life-support systems -- beneath its armored skin. The idea is for battlefield medics to stabilize injured soldiers, and then send them back to a field hospital in the REV. But the REV also carries an electrically powered, 600-pound, six-wheeled robot with a mechanical arm that can drag a wounded fighter to safety if there isn't a flesh-and-blood soldier around.

    Ordinarily, it takes two to four men to get the wounded out of harm's way. Patrick Rowe, with Applied Perception of Pittsburgh, said he hopes the REV will cut that number, maybe by half. The firm is scheduled to show off prototypes of the robots to the Army's Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center in March.

    But this early version will be limited, Howe said. Ideally, the REV would drive around on its own, with no help from human operators. In practice, the robot would either be driven by a person with a joystick, or it would get around by itself by sticking to carefully preplanned routes. As the limited performances in the Pentagon's robot off-road rally in March showed, unmanned drivers are still pretty lousy at handling open, unknown terrain.

    That's one of the reasons why iRobot's new UGV will still have a steering wheel inside, so it can be driven by a human, too. The company -- best known for its Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner and the PackBot UGVs that the Army has been using to clear bombs and explore suspected terrorist hideouts in the Middle East -- is now working with agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere to build a cargo-hauling robot.

    The M-Gator is a six-wheeled, diesel mini-Jeep that soldiers use to schlep about 1,400 pounds of gear. IRobot wants to have a robotic version ready by next year, so it can show it off to the Army and try to get funding for a full line of the vehicles, which would work as mechanical pack mules. The company hopes to be in production by 2006.

    By then, the armed Talon will have been in operation for about a year, if all goes according to plan. And for those of you who might be worried about the robot getting loose with a "runaway gun," Tordillos orders you to relax.

    "The thing is not shooting on its own. You've got to have these," he said, waving a set of small, silvery keys, which fit into a lock on the Talon's briefcase-sized controller. A single switch causes the robot to reboot and return to safe mode.

    GlobalSecurity.org's Pike isn't worried about the Talon going haywire. He's concerned about what the armed UGV represents for the future.

    "This opens up great vistas, some quite pleasant, others quite nightmarish. On the one hand, this could make our flesh-and-blood soldiers so hard to get to that traditional war -- a match of relatively evenly matched peers -- could become a thing of the past," he said. "But this might also rob us of our humanity. We could be the ones that wind up looking like Terminators, in the world's eyes."

    Spotting psychopaths at work

    How do you spot the psychopath among your work colleagues?

    Professor Robert Hare, of the University of British Columbia, is a world expert on the "snakes in suits" who scale corporate ladders with consummate ease.

    He is due to deliver a public lecture on psychopaths at work in Belfast on Wednesday, in the run-up to a two-day conference organised by the British Psychological Society (BPS).

    "Corporate psychopaths" use arrogance and superficial charm to scale the top of the ladder, knocking off whoever gets in their way, Prof Hare explained.

    "White collar psychopaths will defraud people of their life savings, then quite happily go to the Mediterranean, have a villa and never give it a thought."

    He estimates that one in 100 people in North America are psychopaths. You do not have to be Hannibal Lecter to fit into the profile.

    "People might say he or she is charismatic, high profile or 'gets things done'. We have a whole series of euphemisms for the individual who may be self centred, grandiose, lacking in empathy and does not give a damn about everybody else," he added.

    Predators

    "Think of Robert Maxwell who destroyed thousands of lives," he said.

    Such people are social predators who do not get bothered by ordinary social anxieties. They are self serving individuals, he explained.

    Their only concern is food. They see the world as one large watering hole. Their resources are sex, power and money.

    With New York psychologist Dr Paul Babiak, Prof Hare has developed a new 107-point questionnaire to identify which desks those smooth-talking "snakes in suits" might be hiding behind.

    The "B-Scan", which stands for Business Scan, was designed by them.

    It follows on from the "P-Scan" which is now considered to be the standard test for detecting criminals with psychopathic leanings.

    The test involves interviewing people working with the person concerned to get a so-called 360 degree assessment of their personality.

    The two experts' book, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work, is currently with the publisher and should be finished by the end of this year.

    The two-day Belfast conference was organised by the NI branch of the BPS. Its theme is: Protecting the Public - The Assessment and Management of Dangerous Offenders.

    So what you gona do about it...

    500 years of testing brings Ornithopter to life

    Over 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci conceptualized a self-powered flying machine that would achieve both lift and thrust with flapping wings alone and named it the “ornithopter”. Since ancient times, mankind has envisioned themselves in flight, much like a bird. However, until now, most attempts to fly by flapping wings, either using human muscle or mechanical power have failed.

    oooh flight.... like that hasnt been done before...

    Man cycles "across" Australia on penny farthing in sherlock holmes costume

    British fund-raiser Lloyd Scott has finished a 50-day ride across Australia on a penny farthing cycle to raise money for child leukaemia sufferers.

    The 43-year-old, from Rainham, Essex, who recovered from leukaemia, cycled 2,700 miles from Perth to Sydney while wearing a Sherlock Holmes costume.

    He cycled 12 hours a day, finishing at Bondi Beach, and raised £60,000.

    His previous stunts include recording the slowest time in the London marathon - in an antique deep-sea diver's suit.

    He finished his Australian trip by ceremonially dumping his cycle at Bondi Beach.

    "As well as being my best friend, I suppose it's also been my worst enemy," Mr Scott, told the BBC.

    "Every morning having to get up and spend 10, 11, sometimes even 12 hours in the saddle.

    £1m aim

    "But towards the end when it looked like we were going to do it, it became a good friend.

    "I'd already made my mind up it was going to go in the sea afterwards, to emphasize the point we'd got here," he said.

    Mr Scott is aiming to raise £1m for child leukaemia sufferers.

    Earlier this week Mr Scott narrowly escaped serious injury outside Sydney, when a lorry's tyre burst near him.

    A year ago he undertook the world's first underwater marathon - walking 26 miles at the bottom of Loch Ness, Scotland.

    Hope he had a new saddle though...

    Wednesday, December 1

    World's first diamond cricket ball

    The shinest cricket ball has arrived in Australia. HOWZAT!

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