55 years of - you decide

I would like to dedicate this blogpost to all those who have done and continue visiting my blogs. Its been a funny old year. It began with high hopes that change would come about in the UK with the election in May and all supporters of the Freegary were delighted to see the back of Labour – a party which had been eroding Citizens rights by bowing to USA demands when it came to Extradition. The election of two men into Government who had stated publicly they believed the Extradition of Gary mcKinnon was wrong – gave Garys family and his supporters hope for change. Unfortunately – despite the case being brought up with Obama personally while David Cameron was on a US visit – both leaders have done nothing substantive. Yes – the Home secretary has halted the extradition – but only to allow for a re-assessment of Garys health and that assessment is to be carried out by a doctor who has NO full understanding of Aspergers – thus – its like sending an electrician to mend a hole in a ...

Dear Gay Teens September 30th, 2010 Jeff Rago 21 comments Share 95 Photo by Tina Phillips My heart is breaking right now. A piece of my soul has died. Another shining light in our future has gone dark. With the news of the 4 th LGBT youth committing suicide in September , we are on the road to an epidemic that I am having a hard time wrapping my head around. I did not personally know these young men but I do know them.  I know their confusion. I know their longing for acceptance. I know their fear. Lives are being lost as religion and politics struggle to define what is acceptable in our society. Twelve years ago next week, Matthew Shepard was beaten to death for being gay. Beating has turned to bullying. Both lead to the same outcome. This is unacceptable. Gay. Straig...

31 December 2010 Last updated at 10:49 Share this page Facebook Share Email Print Hackers crack open mobile network Security researchers have shown how to eavesdrop on any GSM call Continue reading the main story Related stories Users lax about mobile security How easy is it to hack a mobile? Call to check on mobile security Mobile calls and texts made on any GSM network can be eavesdropped upon using four cheap phones and open source software, say security researchers. Karsten Nohl and Sylvain Munaut demonstrated their eavesdropping toolkit at the Chaos Computer Club Congress (CCC) in Berlin. The work builds on earlier research that has found holes in many parts of the most widely used mobile technology. The pair spent a year putting together the parts of the eavesdropping toolkit. "Now there...

via bbc.co.uk

31 December 2010 Last updated at 11:31 Share this page Facebook Share Email Print Australia: Queensland floods spur more evacuations There are major concerns for the town of Emerald, now largely cut off by water Continue reading the main story Related stories In pictures: Floods hit Australia Australia floodwater still rising Australian PM calls for flood help Thousands more people are preparing to evacuate their homes as one of Australia's worst floods continues to inundate the state of Queensland. Forced evacuations are being planned in Rockhampton as rising floodwaters threaten the town of 77,000. Australian PM Julia Gillard has visited flooded Bundaberg, and flew over Emerald as evacuations there continued. The floods have affected about 200,000 people over an area larger than France and German...

31 December 2010 Last updated at 12:09 Share this page Facebook Share Email Print NI Water examines its response to the crisis First Minister Peter Robinson says the response of NI Water has been "shambolic" Continue reading the main story Related stories Latest NI water information Belfast emergency meeting called Water crisis hits health services The board of Northern Ireland Water will meet later to reflect on how the company has handled the ongoing water supply crisis. They will report their findings in the coming days to Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy. About 5,000 homes remain without running water. NI Water has said that 20,000 properties will have an on/off supply, all of them in the east of Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, former Northern Irel...

via bbc.co.uk

2 November 2010 . Researchers from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid's Facultad de Informática have developed an application capable of human emotion recognition from automated voice analysis. The application analyses the sound measurements of a conversation, output by another purpose-built program. Then, based on the rules described in the new application, it is able to identify the emotions hidden in an expression and determine whether the speaker is sad, happy or nervous. Even if the emotion is unclear, the application is able to specify how close the speaker is to each emotion in percentage terms. The application was presented by Susana Muñoz Hernández at the First International Conference on Fuzzy Computation, held in Madeira, Portugal, in 2009. The application is based on a new tool called RFuzzy, implemented in the Prolog programming language. Prolog is able to represent and operate with what is known as fuzzy logic. Prolog is used primarily in artificial i...

ScienceDaily (Nov. 8, 2010) — Researchers from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid's Facultad de Informática have developed a computer program capable of human emotion recognition from automated voice analysis. See Also: Matter & Energy Robotics Research Engineering Technology Computers & Math Artificial Intelligence Robotics Computer Modeling Reference Robot calibration Industrial robot Artificial intelligence Robotic surgery The application analyses the sound measurements of a conversation, output by another purpose-built program. Then, based on the rules described in the new application, it is able to identify the emotions hidden in an expression and determine whether the speaker is sad, happy or nervous. Even if the emotion is unclear, the application is able to specify how close the speaker is to each emotion in percentage te...

via fastcompany.com

Another day, another Kinect hack, but this one really gives us a taste of a sci-fi-esque future: Kinect can now directly control the limbs of a humanoid robot. Yup--those Evangelion or Avatar dreams now seem a little more possible. Taylor Veltrop is a software engineer and robot tinkerer, and his latest impressive feat is to link up a Microsoft Kinect via some custom software and a wireless link to his Kondo KHR-1HV kit robot. Essentially Taylor's code takes the data feed from Kinect's motion and body sensing systems, and works out what position his limbs are in before beaming that data to custom software he's installed in the robot's ROS operating system. Check out the results below: (Taylor explains his project at the start, and the good stuff happens after 1:20) Impressive stuff--even while it's only mapped onto the robot's arms for the moment. From the experiment we can see how quickly the mapping between Taylor's gestures and the robot's hap...

Hacktivists have struck a blow against the regime in Zimbabwe by attacking a number of government websites in what appears to be a move in support of newspapers who published secret cables in the ongoing WikiLeaks saga. Grace Mugabe, wife of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, was recently reported to be suing a newspaper for $15 million after it published a WikiLeaks cable that claimed she has benefited from illegal diamond trading. As news spread amongst the loosely-knit group of Anonymous hackers who support WikiLeaks, websites belonging to the Zimbabwe government and Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party were hit by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and, in the case of the Finance Ministry, defacements. The Zimbabwe government's online portal at www.gta.gov.zw and the official ZANU-PF website continue to be offline, and the Finance Ministry's website now displays a message saying it is under maintenance. A statement published on an Anonymous web...

The Sun has owned up to what I guess we in the journalism trade realised the moment we saw it - its splash about the pre-Christmas live episode Coronation Street being targeted by al-Qaeda was false. On 9 December, it carried this front page story (which still appears on its website, incidentally) claiming that "cops" were "throwing a ring of steel" around the studios in Manchester after being "tipped off" that the show "could be hit by a terror strike." It had that familiar Daily Star -ish ring of complete nonsense, and so it turns out, as yesterday's page 2 "correction" admits: "Further to our article about increased security at Coronation Street's studios for their live 50th anniversary episode... we would like to make clear that while cast and crew were subject to full body searches, there was no specific threat from Al-Qaeda as we reported. We apologise for the misunderstanding and are happy t...

Ultra Hal Assistant is your digital secretary and companion. He (or she depending on your character preference) can help you be more organized, he can help you use your computer, and he can entertain you. Ultra Hal has many animated characters to choose from and he speaks to you through your sound card with his own voice! You can also speak to Hal with Hal's speech recognition engine, or you can type to him if you wish. All you need to know in order to use Ultra Hal is to speak English! Ultra Hal can understand natural English language, after all he is an artificial intelligence program. Read on to find out how Ultra Hal Assistant can help you. Or you can download a FREE trial version of Ultra Hal Assistant now. Ultra Hal can hold conversations with you Have you ever thought that you could chat with your computer just like you would with a human being? Well, you can. Ultra Hal Assistant can chat about anything you want. Ultra Hal Assis...