Why Johnny doesn't call Sally

Spam

2008-11-08T16:28:00.003+01:00

I'm not getting a lot of spam, since Gmail takes good care of intercepting it, but some of it does get through from time to time. As did this one:

Dear One, Good Day,
Compliments of the season to you and family good a thing to write you. I have a proposal for you this however is not mandatory nor will I in any manner compel you to honour against your will. I am Linda Morgan age 24years old and my younger sister Liza two of us is the only children of our late Chief and Mrs David Morgan, our father was a highly reputable business magnet (A COCOA and Gold & Diamond Merchant) who operated in the capital of Ivory Coast Abidjan during his days. It is sad to say that he passed away mysteriously in France during one of his business trips abroad on 12th.Febuary 2007.Though his sudden death was linked or rather suspected to have been masterminded by an uncle of his who travelled with him at that time.But God knows the truth.

My mother died when I was just 8 years old,and since then my father took me and my only younger sister Liza so special. Before his death in the hospital bed in France he disclosed to me secretly that he has the sum of Sixteen million,seven hundred thousand British Pounds Sterlins.(Ł16.700,000) left in fixed deposit account in one of the leading banks in Abidjan Cote d ivoire Africa.
He further told me that he deposited the money in his name,and finally made a written agreement with the bank that the money in question should not be released to me in case of death not until when l am at the age of 26yrs or in any immargency case that an experiance foreign investor whom i will choose to provide as the next of kin i am, will be the new foreign beneficiary and the money can be transfer into his bank account oversea's for onward investment of the money with immediate effect as i am the next of kin. I am just 24 years old and really don't know what to do.Now I want an account overseas where I can transfer this money.

This is because me and my younger sister have suffered a lot of set backs as a result of incessant political crisis here in Ivory coast. The death of our father actually has brought sorrow to our lifes. I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in this regards also your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded. Now permit us to ask these few questions to you.
1. Can you honestly help and take us like your Children?
2. Can we completely trust you?
3. What percentage of the total amount in question will be good for you after the money is in your account? Please Consider this and get back to us as soon as possible.

Thank you so much.
My sincere regards,
Linda & Liza Morgan.

Immediately, Ze Frank came to mind.

No time. No will.

2008-10-13T19:55:00.002+02:00

No posts. Simple, is it not?

But I'm still alive, if any of my (1 + 5^1/2)/2 readers care.

Time is by my side

2008-09-26T18:15:00.003+02:00

If I wanted to be cool, I'd say I was expecting this to happen.
So it turns out I actually have about 6 months. And the laziness prevails once more!

LHC

2008-09-09T22:10:00.005+02:00

Image via Wikipedia So, LHC will run for the first time tomorrow. I have no fear of black holes or other end-of-the-world ideas - no one will be left out if it actually happens.

With the LHC starting, and the real deal going on in October, I promised myself to learn as much as possible about physics of particles, and eventually reaching the level at which I would know, what's happening. I assume it will be fun, educational, but probably tough. Still, challenge is set, and I want to overcome it. Little over a month is the time I have.

BOINC and a recipe for massive extension of it

2008-08-30T16:29:00.008+02:00

Image via Wikipedia BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is a distributed computing system that uses CPU power of your computer while you're not using it. What it uses that power for? Science.

In gQuigs' blog post, two problems are presented. I, however, will try to solve only the first one - increase the market share. I found the second one extremely hard :).

So, just in few words, BOINC works like this - you download the software, choose a project of your flavor from the list and get assigned to it. Software downloads packages, from which the data will be taken for computing. When you go idle from computer, CPU power does not go to waste - BOINC takes it and uses it for computing. When the computation is done, BOINC sends the results to the servers and you get credit.

However, there is a drawback - with an increased use of CPU, so is increased the use of electricity (well, yeah, but it's for science :)).

Now, two words with which you'll see, where I'm aiming - automotive industry.
According to the Wikipedia site, 72 million automobiles were sold in 2007. That's a lot. Why shouldn't there be a BOINC client on some of them?

There are technologies in use that bring internet to cars through the EDGE network. Enhancing cars with computers, dedicated to the use of and contribution to BOINC system should not be a problem. After that, it's simple. Download the data through EDGE, compute it, send it back. Electricity is there for free, the computer would shut down when you turn off your car.

Or is it? (simple)
The CPUs should not be too powerful, as that would come to an increased use of electricity. This computer wouldn't be the only thing that runs on electricity in the car, so it could cause problems if you put a high-end processor into action and want to use it at the maximum.
With CPUs not that powerful, tasks would take more time to complete. Maybe too much. This could be solved with reducing the size of tasks - they would subsequently take less time to complete.
Another problem is the use of EDGE network - in the article, to which the link is posted above, it is said that BMW charges the use of that network, 15 euros/month. Because it is science we're talking about, some solutions can be applied - organisations that would sponsor the network use for BOINC data, or perhaps free transfer of BOINC data.

Until then, feel free to join the BOINC community - download the software, join a project and let the machine compute - it's for science.

First post, waste of time?

2008-08-18T00:45:00.008+02:00

Image via Wikipedia This post is mostly coming from pure boredom. It's 1 a.m. and I'm tiring myself to sleep. This will result in a more or less quality sleep until 12, thanks to holidays.

I'm posting this from Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4. October is too far away, and I'd like to get to know Crystal Space, even though I'm already past the phase of designing my own World-of-Warcraft-like PVP arena game, that would turn out to be a complete and utter failure and waste of time. But it was tempting, while it lasted. Anyhow, I'm having some ideas that I'll made publicly if I found them interesting and not being a waste of time. And yes, I know, why not building Crystal Space from source? For me, it's a pain in the ass. I also started to hate the Jam build system because of that.

I'm wondering how long I'll keep up writing this blog. How long until it's revealed to be a waste of time.