This is possibly the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen. I mean sure she’s got skill, but I’m honestly a little unsettled by the fact that other countries will see this too. Talk about reinforcing stereotypes. Anyway, here’s the clip:
This just blows me away. Though not in the way that gun would. Why do regular people need assault rifles anyway? Will the next video show her younger brother arming a Claymore?
Somebody send this girl a doll or a Wii or something. Clearly the toy to gun ratio in that house is off kilter.
Shortly after 12:00 PM PDT today, Google released the beta version of its new web browser, Google Chrome. Currently it’s only available for Windows Vista and XP, and only in 32-bit. I downloaded it and took it for a test drive.
Whenever I install software on Windows, I always customize the installation to eliminate the desktop icon, if that option is provided. I wasn’t disappointed:
Note that Chrome can import your settings from Firefox and others. I thought it was interesting that “Make Google Chrome the default browser” was not checked by default.
Here’s the default start page, which includes your most visited sites and recent bookmarks:
As you can see, Chrome uses tabs like other browsers, but it doesn’t use tabs like other browsers. According to the story, each tab is a separate process (which I verified in Task Manager). You’ll note also that each tab gets its own address bar. I was relieved to find that Ctrl-T opens a new tab, just like in Firefox.
I found it odd that Chrome overrides my Windows theme and chooses its own rendering for the containing frame (I’m using the Vista Basic theme, which should have colored the frame in a graduated gray-blue. It’s not annoying, but it’s a “does not play well with others” feature.
There is no separate “search” box in Chrome. Rather, you use the address bar, which Google calls the “Omnibox” (maybe for omniscient). For instance, when I type “google chrome” in the Omnibox, I get:
The suggested results include not only recently visited sites that mention “google chrome”, but also popular Google search results for “google chrome” and an explicit “Search Google for chrome”. No more remembering which box to type into.
First impressions: fast. Much faster than Firefox. There are several possible reasons. First, keeping each tab in its own process allows for a cleaner memory management model.
Second, Google has kept this product very simple so far. Alas, that means there is no facility for extensions short of downloading the open source and adding what you need. Simple is also why they chose the Apple WebKit rendering engine.
Finally, they’ve created their own JavaScript engine called V8, which provides the following speed improvements:
Multi-threading. I’m not sure what challenges that may pose for existing single-threaded code, or how to make use of multi-threading explicitly.
Dynamic compilation to native code. Zoom.
Hidden class transitions: optimizing for repetitive composition of similar classes.
“Precise” garbage collection. They keep better track of pointers to objects, and release them as soon as they are no longer referenced.
I ran Mozilla’s own benchmark test for JavaScript at dromeao, comparing various browsers. Depending on the operation, Chrome could be roughly 2 to 20 times faster than Firefox or Safari (Internet Explorer 7 kept timing out on me, so you can assume it’s much worse). You can peruse the hard numbers if you’re curious for Google Chrome beta, Firefox 3.0.1, and Safari 3.1.2, but here’s a visual (shorter bars are faster):
Since Chrome boasts of its memory management model, I decided to load up the same four sites in both Chrome and Firefox to compare. Firefox’s one process consumed 84 MB. Chrome’s six processes totaled 91.5 MB. As I closed the tabs down to one, however, Firefox dropped only down to 75 MB, while Chrome’s three processes totaled 49 MB. Reloading the same three pages I just unloaded bumps Firefox up to 88 MB, but Chrome only came back up to 89 MB total. Firefox users are all too familiar with Firefox’s memory creep syndrome to fail to appreciate this difference.
The options dialogs are pretty straightforward as what you would expect to find, but I was impressed by the built-in developer features:
View source automatically comes up in a new tab instead of a separate window (nice). I haven’t figured out how to use the JavaScript debugger yet, but the JavaScript console appears to have some nice features:
Another feature that deserves mention is “incognito mode” (New incognito window, or Ctrl+Shift+N), which opens a new browser that will save none of your personal information — aka “porn mode”. As they warn in the Learn more link, this will not prevent web sites you visit from gathering information from your session, however.
Overall I’m really impressed with this browser. The one thing I’d miss most if I switched would be my beloved Firefox extensions. But the speed difference is impressive.
On the other hand, Shelley Powers expresses concern over how well Chrome will support emerging standards, like HTML5 and the new ECMAScript standards. She also questions Google’s motives for introducing yet another combatant into the browser wars. Obviously Google wants to increase its influence on the web, and perhaps building their own client may add leverage to their applications. Will we come to a point where Google can say, “best viewed with Chrome” and let other browsers fend for themselves? Will future standards be dictated by what Google wants? At least the project is open source, so other browsers can learn from Chrome if they so choose.
But just how revolutionary is this browser, anyway? In an email to me before Chrome was released, Shelley quipped: “Hard to say, all we’ve seen is a comic book. Other comic books bring us people who can fly and spin webs–what Google promises with Chrome could be just as far fetched and fanciful.”
If you’re looking for a grand new design for the client side of the web, then you’d be expecting too much. What Chrome provides is more of the same paradigm, but more efficient and arguably more user-friendly.
What do you think of Google Chrome? Have you download it yet?
Is there such a thing as ‘ethical computer hacking’? Abertay University in Scotland seems to think so because they are now offering a course to postgraduate students in the subject.
They are already teaching undergraduates a course in ‘Ethical Hacking and Countermeasures’. But now they are going further with a course to the postgraduates – but only if they pass the strict vetting procedures to make sure that they are doing the course for the right reasons. The university doesn’t want any potential criminals learning the secrets in order to turn rogue.
“In the industry we refer to people with white hats and black hats, which comes from the old Westerns,” he said. “But realistically we’re very careful about the people we take onto the program.
“We have a strong vetting procedure – in the UK we use things like Disclosure Scotland to ensure that people that we’re taking on aren’t coming from a criminal background. “We’re very careful to make sure that the people who are coming through are doing it for the right reasons.”
Instead they think that people who do the course for the right reasons could be doing jobs in the industry for a minimum 55,000 pounds ($100,000).
It seems that computer viruses are now boldly going where no computer virus has gone before – the International Space Station.
The virus, otherwise known as “W32.Gammima.AG” to his buddies, was found on laptops which the astronauts use to email Mission Control in Texas. However NASA was at great pains to stress that the virus-infected computers were at no time linked to the internet or the space station controls. So no sensitive information was apparently passed through the virus back to its creator on planet Earth, nor was there seemingly any danger of the ISS malfunctioning and plummeting to Earth.
It has been assumed that the virus was first put on board by an infected USB stick from one of the astronauts. Nice going Buck Rogers!
In this new digital era that we’re all living in, a lot of people who think they aren’t geeks actually are. Just look at the following illustration by David Armano and you’ll understand right away.
Directed by John Moore and featuring Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, the movie adaption of Max Payne – the game, will apparently be released on October 17, 2008.
If the movie is as any good as the trailer looks, I think we’ll be in for a great time at the big screen. What do you think?
Where Anchorman left off, Goodnight Burbank picks right back up and keeps rolling. In the show, a bunch of ornery, crazy, and sometimes lovable news anchors try to keep it all together while just barely reporting the news. Goodnight Burbank‘s quirky style and entertaining banter has built it into a solid online show with a full cast of characters.
One of the recurring themes of the show is the constant “struggle” between biased individuals in the news. Some of the reporters are hardcore conservatives with a clear agenda behind everything they report. The others are mostly liberal-minded, dismissing the concerns of the religious while preaching tolerance for all. The humor is bold and blatant. In fact the actors only wear kid gloves when they need something from someone else. It sounds despicable, but writing does a good job of tying everything together.
Here’s a taste of the show:
Recently it was featured along with another show, Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary (it’s not what you think…fairly work safe), on Epic-Fu, where Zadi interviewed Hayden Black (the show’s genius creator). Also, if you’re wondering why there haven’t been any new episodes recently, never fear! I have a quote directly from the electronic lips of Hayden Black himself:
“We’re on hiatus right now but Season 2 is being prepared for.”
Hopefully they’ll be back sooner than later, but in the mean time you can catch up with all the old episodes on iTunes or their site’s archive section. Let us know what you think in the comments!
Edit (03/09/2008): We’ve just published a full review of Google Chrome. The article includes installation steps, features, and some speed benchmarks. Check it out!
The rumors that Google has been secretly working on an industry-changing browser have been circulating for years – I made similar comments about this on this very blog just a month or two ago – and now it appears that the legend was true, as Google has announced that their new browser, titled Chrome, will be released tomorrow (September 2, 2008).
An Italian priest who was planning an online beauty contest for nuns has been forced to cancel after saying he was “misunderstood” about the whole venture.
Father Antonio Rungi had set up a blog (which now seems to have been taken down) and it was his original intention to have the nuns on the blog who could then be voted on, based on attributes such as “spirituality, social awareness, charity and other qualities”. No word on what those “other qualities” would have been but since the nuns would have been fully clothed, it wouldn’t have been on their ‘physical attributes’.
But his superiors were not happy. His concept appeared in newspapers all over the world as “Sister Italy 2008” and he was told to shut the plan down.
Such a pity. It would have been interesting to see if any of them were as stupid as Miss South Carolina :
A lot of “World of Warcraft” gamers apparently don’t want to go through the huge amounts of time needed to build up the gold to initially create their characters. Either because they can’t be bothered or because they have day jobs which stop them from gaming all day. So to cut a few corners, they go online and buy the gold they need from “gold farmers” in the Far East.
These “gold farmers” are people who spend vast numbers of hours in front of a computer screen, building up huge amounts of gold who then sell it to Westerners who have the money to buy it. The practice is forbidden by the gaming companies who will cancel the gamer’s account if they find out – but it is not criminally illegal.
But is it ethical? Leaving aside the fact that you are cheating, it seems there is evidence that these gold farming schemes are being infliltrated by organised crime and the farmers themselves exploited. So while you’re getting a fine gaming character with a nice sword, shining armour and plenty of gold, someone real on the other side of the world is suffering.
Have you ever bought gaming gold online? Do you consider the practice of online gold farming ethical and proper?
Where 
