The Register: Artists install Monty Python silly walk signs in Norwegian town
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

For the first time in a very long time, an anime has triggered a WTF reaction from me in the first few minutes... and not in a good way.
The anime in question is Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls... and it starts out with a statement that many countries have tried to conquer Japan for its 'beauty'... and then shows American B-29's inbound for Japan... only to have them sliced and diced by a bunch of cute girls while the narrator proclaims them to be guardians.
I have to know... does this show go into any detail at all for the reason for the war?  I already get the idea that it's AU, but I'd still like to know the nuts and bolts before I invest more time in this anime.  Really, I know Americans can be total douchebags sometimes, but I've got my patriotic pride, and it feels like it's been pricked here.

Okay, this is a kind of silly thing to ask people to brainstorm, but hell, I've been turning it over and over in my head and can't come up with a good answer by myself.
What would be a good term for the magical equivalent of a classic pre-1996 computer hacker?  Someone who discovers what the Universal Theory of Magic lets them do and then recapitulates the entire hacker evolution from larval stage to guru, only for magic?  The two most obvious neologisms, "spacker" and "macker", just sound silly.  I don't want something so alien sounding that the correspondence between magic and computers is completely missing, but ...   I'm having a critical imagination failure here and I need help.
This isn't something immediate -- I won't need it for a few chapters yet -- so you have lots of time to argue nomenclature. 
Thanks!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/fi ... oop-n62266
Astronomers are suspecting that there is at least a shepherd moon that is keeping the rings sharply defined. A moon(let) around an asteroid.?
Edit: Blasted url insert!
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

We've all heard a version of the expression "Create new ways of doing things, but don't reinvent the wheel."
Clearly, the folks behind Common Core didn't take that little pearl of wisdom to heart, and tried to reinvent freaking subtraction.
And here's how one Math and Internet savvy dad responded.
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/c ... 41158.html

To cut a long story short, a house party escalates until the police are called at 7:30 in the morning. The cops ask for the party to stop and the kid running it gives them lip. So an hour later they arrest the whole lot, and prosecute the kid for allowing people to smoke drugs in the home...

And if he'd just shut the party down... he'd never have even seen a judge.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/co ... 23285.html

Quote: Gardai searched 68 people and made four arrests in a drugs bust at an out of control house party in south Dublin that has been described as "every parent's nightmare".

The owners' son, Chris Bent, refused to stop the post-Leaving Certificate bash despite complaints and ordered gardai off his property unless they had a warrant. The officers returned 90 minutes later with one and raided the house.

The 20-year-old was prosecuted for permitting his family home to be used for drug offences.

Dublin District Court heard his parents had been away on holiday and told him he could "have a few friends over" but word got around that he had a free house and things got "totally out of hand".

His father Eugene Bent -- the communications and retention director at Dublin Chamber of Commerce -- attended the hearing last week.

When asked if he wished to comment on his son's case, Mr Bent told the Herald: "I don't want to say anything about it."

His son, who is now a film student, pleaded guilty to three counts of permitting the possession and smoking of cannabis as the occupant of the house, and permitting the sale, supply or distribution of dimethoxybromophenethylanine.

The offences happened at Kenilworth Square, Rathgar, on July 28 last year.

Judge Michael Walsh adjourned sentencing in the case for nine months.

He noted that Chris Bent was not accused of taking or supplying any drugs himself. He said he would be lenient if he undertook some voluntary work as a token of his remorse.

Sergeant Zita Woods said gardai were called to the house at 7.30am following complaints from neighbours that the party had "got out of hand", with bottles being thrown around.

Officers saw men smoking what they suspected to be cannabis and asked to speak to the person in charge.

The accused came out and the gardai asked him to stop the party.

"He demanded that the gardai get off his property without a warrant," Sgt Woods said.

The gardai returned at 9am with a warrant under the Misuse of Drugs Act and entered the house. A total of 68 people were searched, as well as a room in which cannabis had been smoked.

Several empty bags that had contained drugs were recovered and four people were found in possession of controlled substances and arrested.

Bent was detained and admitted knowing people were taking drugs in his house. However, he told gardai he thought it was only in the one room and that only cannabis was involved.

He was also not involved in selling or supplying drugs to anyone.

Bent had just finished his Leaving Certificate and his parents were away on holiday at the time, his barrister Kate McCormack said.

"Word spread that there was a free house and things got completely out of hand," Ms McCormack said.

Ms McCormack said: "The facts read like every parent's nightmare, and he is suitably ashamed of treating the family home in that way."

Bent's own behaviour had been appalling and the fact that he had been drinking was no excuse, she said.

As well as film studies, the accused was involved in music and composed his own tracks.

His barrister said a drugs conviction could have a major impact on his life and career and "every window of opportunity could be firmly shut" in terms of travel.

Judge Walsh adjourned the case to a date in December.

The term 'Integrated Graphics' is something of a bogeyman. Anyone who can remember the older Intel parts from 5-10 years ago will especially have flashbacks. (Like taking seconds to render a single screensaver frame)

I don't know about you, but the latest Kaveri APU's from AMD seem to be set to turn that on its head. At least partially.

I celebrated my first paycheck ia few weeks ago by buying and building a brand new desktop centred around one of AMD's A10 processors. (A 7700k). I didn't spec a dedicated GPU because I didn't expect to use the system for gaming, just for playing films and the like quietly... and maybe some BD ripping. I used the money I saved on an SSD, and some faster RAM (2400mhz).

For shit's and giggles, I loaded up an older game that I remember giving my last desktop some troubles, STALKER... and was amazed at how well it ran on a system that was still technically 'Integrated graphics'. It ran smooth and crisp on near maximum quality. Maybe that says more about the march of hardware, but I remember it being a challenge to run for a long time.

Even Metro 2033, which - although 4 years old at this stage - is still a pretty hefty graphics muncher, looks amazing and plays amazing on a system that doesn't have a dedicated graphics card.

Needless to say, lighter games like Source games run well enough - while I haven't exactly tried anything more modern because I'm not that much of a PC gamer, the fact that it manages so well even with older games is nothing short of amazing. For a 140 euro part, doubly so. I'd say it's definitely better than an Intel i3, and cheaper than an i3 with a dedicated cheap graphics card.... it blows anything from the Leixlip chocolate factory in it's price band out of the water.

And yet, it seems woefully under-appreciated. Most people just don't buy AMD parts anymore. I think I'm almost unique amongst the people I know in having an AMD system.

Which is a shame because the new Kaveri series definitely deserve better than being relegated to the bargain bin. For such a cheap part, it's more than exceeded my expectations as to its capability. It'[s definitely something to look at if you're on a tight budget. And if the OpenCL API becomes more common, it could be a force to be reckoned with.

The only dowsides are a slight tendancy to eat power, and being very sensitive to RAM speed. Fast RAM makes a lot of difference to the performance of the system, far more than an Intel system, because the graphics are integrated.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/25/showbiz/n ... n-overture]Neil Gaiman has written his first new Sandman material in ten years, and it comes out tomorrow.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

You know, there's a canon Harry Potter character whose name fits the http://twitter.com/user/status/406894139746172928 for naming a RWBY character...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

I discovered this from it being mentioned in the blog associated with Dresden Codak:

http://www.portlandmercury.com/Blogtown ... t-be-black]Why Batman Can't Be Black
Posted by Bobby Roberts on Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 12:54 PM

The article makes some good points about just how ... shall we say "conservative" ... fandom can be in our assumptions. Objections and rebuttals:

• "You can't just change somebody's skin color willy-nilly!" If Batman was a real person, that would have merit - but Batman is fictional. You can re-imagine him with the stroke of a pen, and many writers have re-imagined Batman.
  
• "Bruce Wayne has too much back-story - you can't make him black." DC reboots every decade or so - what back-story?
  
• "Why can’t you just create a new character?" Because most readers know new heroes usually don’t gain much traction - so this is actually saying "just create a completely separate black superhero, and put them in their own book, because that way I can easily ignore them."