These kinds of readings irritate me. They present a wonderful picture, but only when everything goes right. When all the automated thingies in the environment can correctly anticipate your next action. When you don't do the unexpected, or the unexpected doesn't pop up somewhere in the surroundings.

Who's life is that? Not mine. In the above scenario: 1) the alarm clock would wake me up on my day off because I forgot to notify it; 2) the Internet is down and I can't connect outside my house; 3) my arm is in a cast so making decent gestures at my desktop 'computer' is real chore, if not impossible; and 4) my wife is extremely pissed at me for not being able to fix a damn thing in our house. Then a major storm tears through the neighborhood, my roof is half torn off, rainwater gets everywhere and all the electronics go absolutely apeshit.

Tell me what happens when things go wrong, not right. At least a little bit, to provide some much-needed reality.

Skimming the front page, looking for a headline that looks interesting.

"Hitachi Develops Boarding Gate With Built-In Explosives"

Hey! That looks promising! Oh, wait...

From TFA:

Summing up, Vixie says: "These victims seem to feel that [they] have more important things to worry about. My gut feeling is that they're wrong, but I can't seem to prove it. My other gut feeling about all this is that we, as a digital society, are doing this all wrong."

My gut feeling is that International Business Times didn't really have a useful article but needed some more ad space, so they wrote this thing.

For the few of you considering actually reading the article: There is nothing new to see there. Move along.

Now scientists think they have found a tropical lake — some 60 kilometers long and 40 kilometers wide, and at least 1 meter deep ...

What other bass fishermen out there read that of the summary and immediately thought, "Topwater!"

(I'm going on a fishing vacation all next week. All I've been doing this week is planning rod setups, and posting to /. of course, to the detriment of my real work.)

As someone who also works with large amounts of data every day, I know exactly what I'm talking about. You may want to reread what I actually wrote.

Hadoop is a decent technology and is one approach to dealing with "Big Data" problems. There are other products out there, and for the most part they have all been around a lot longer than Hadoop. The problems all these products address have been around for quite some time, as most people know.

So what is the difference at this point in time? Did everyone's data suddenly get fat or something? No. What has happened is that Google published their version of a map and reduce algorithm (with ideas for dealing with associated things like storage), someone else built an open source engine around it, and some other people started publicizing it. There is no problem with any of this.

But then some companies mistakenly believe that their one-million-row MySQL database is "Big Data" and get their IT staff to adopt this shiny -- and it is shiny, you know, compared to the older systems -- technology for their OMG Huge Database. This is what I was talking about. This is a misapplication of technology. It's as bad as using a poorly-tuned Oracle RAC on true "Big Data" databases. Sure, it works. But it's the wrong solution and eventually the company pays a much bigger price than they originally thought.

My bet is that most of Hadoop's growth is due to the marketing and "me too" effects rather than true technological need.

From TFS:

Research firm IDC recently predicted that worldwide revenues from Hadoop and MapReduce will hit $812.8 million in 2016, up from $77 million in 2011.

Notice that the revenue is directed toward the few companies supporting and extending Hadoop. If you're working for one of those companies, congratulations. If you're working for one of the companies that is spending its money on this new shiny thing, you're probably in for a ride (one way or another). The technology is definitely good, I'll grant you that. But it is not the solution (or, not a very good solution) for many of the problems IT/data shops have. It really seems that a lot of people are jumping on the Hadoop bandwagon because "everyone else is getting it" and not because it will solve particular, concrete, existing problems. Or, it will solve exactly one relatively small, concrete, existing problem while erecting a complex infrastructure that must be supported for several years, making it more of a PITA than a solution.

Anyway, back to my original point: I think this revenue citation is more of an indication of a technology bubble and successful marketing than anything else. The price IT will pay for that bubble will probably far exceed the original cost.

"The whole advertising industry, which in many ways still resembles the Mad Men-era old boy's network, simply may not be equipped to cope."

Or vagina.

Of course those of us who drink massive quantities of coffee won't die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, or infections. We'll die by lunging at the coffee machine early one morning, slipping on the wet floor, then failing to catch our jittery selves because we're busy protecting the ceramic mug our child gave us fifteen years ago.

My favorite barten^h^h^h^h^h^htherapist always used to say that Goldschläger worked wonders. Now I know why.

If you replace 'the bonobos' with 'management' and make other, similar simple changes to the summary, you'd get a fairly accurate description of the office where I work.

"Ken Schweller, a computer scientist and psychologist, and also the chairman of the Business Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, has a vision: He wants to put wireless Android tablets in the hands of management. The Business Trust Sanctuary is home to seven managers, including the world-famous Kanzi, and two MBAs. So far the Sanctuary has focused almost exclusively on language, with management and the Board of Directors communicating through lexigrams on a touch-screen TV. Now Schweller wants to go one step further and outfit management with wireless tablets running custom Management Chat software, allowing the managers to communicate with their keepers (and other managers!) from anywhere in the Sanctuary, and to remotely control devices such as vending machines, doors, and the RoboManager. If all this wasn't weird (cool?) enough, the RoboManager is even outfitted with a water cannon (so the telepresent managers can play "chase games" with the staff) and Schweller is trying to fund the whole thing with Kickstarter. If you're a big fan of managers (or Darwinism), be sure to donate."

It's uncanny, I tell you. I wonder if those security cameras are something other than what they seem?

Three or four months ago, my wife told my 16-year old stepson to call and see if the person that cuts his hair was working that day. There was a big to-do that day about him not wanting to do anything for himself, and one of the results of that was the need for him to make this call rather than relying on his mom. Anyway, after some typical teenage bitching he went off to his room to call the place with his cell phone. A few minutes pass and comes out again.

Him: "The phone isn't working."

Us: "It's not working. Really. Did you dial the right number?"

Him: "Yeah! Of course I did! I'm not that stupid. It's just making some weird noise."

Us: "What number did you dial?"

Him: [He told us.]

I got my cell and called that number. [beeeeep] [pause] [beeeeep] [pause] [beeeeep]

Us: "That, son, is a busy signal."

Him: "A what?"

Umedachi modeled his latest version on the 'true' slime mold, which has been shown to achieve a 'human-like' decision-making capacity through properties emerging from the interactions of its individual spores.

Are we absolutely certain that some slime molds achieves 'human-like' decision-making capacity rather than some humans achieving slime mold-like decision-making capacity?

Sorry. I probably shouldn't bring U.S. politics into the discussion so early in the threads.

No, your excuse should be, "I had no malicious intent." This is apparently different from, "It was an accident."

Willfully performing an action, or willfully not performing an action you are supposed to perform, with a smile and a wave translates into a Stay Out Of Jail And Retain Your Job card.

I wish I would have known that when I was a teenager.

From Claim 1 of the patent filing:

A method of controlling a portable electronic device including an image capturing device, the method comprising: detecting, via the image capturing device, motions of an object over the image capturing device; determining a type of the detected motions using timing information related to the detected motions, the timing information comprising duration of at least one of the detected motions; and controlling the portable electronic device based on the determined motion type.

Claim 2 then says:

The method of claim 1, wherein the type of the detected motions comprises single tapping, double tapping, hovering, holding and swiping.

Then there is a lot of refinement, talking about edge detection, direction of movement, the usual definition of a computing device with memory, and finally kicking off predetermined actions based on recognized motions.

But look at Claim 2: "... comprises single tapping, double tapping, hovering, holding and swiping." To me, this patent seems to be a simple extrapolation of the gestures Apple made popular with their mobile UI, with the addition of "hovering" (assuming I understand the definition of that word, here). Same gestures, different input control.

Is there a significant difference between, say, swiping across a phone's screen and making the same gesture a few inches away? (I'm thinking that if the device interpreted motions from a larger distance then the only thing that will reliably happen is a serious of hilarious DoS attacks via interpretive dance.)