BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25099262]Sony files patent for 'SmartWig'
--
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

If the marriage had been any more martial it would have been a war. The architect, the woman known as Vendor hovered at the rear of the proceedings, her success tugging her fatigued face into a subtly satisfied saturnine smirk as she observed her cleverly orchestrated hybrid of sincerity and jocularity play out like the brainchild of a fervid trinity of Wagner, Tolkien &  Von Clausewitz. The real beauty of it was that the visual opulence and business actually distracted from a ceremony that was purposefully built to be straight forward enough as not to require the dress rehearsals that were impossible given the tighter than tight schedule ; and that wouldn’t have been possible without the whirlwind deals with Time LARP, Cake Space-Walk Caterers,  and the unsolicited borrowings from Shakespeare in the Void. She’d been a very busy dame.
Brynhildr Wandblume,  escorted up the aisle by a father Wotan trying desperately not to look tickled by his role and thus comporting himself in a grandly godish fashion, reflected on the event as her marital metals reflected the event that it was so much cooler than the mundane marital method that would have gone down if her wedding hadn’t been co-opted by the Patrol. Certainly her volks wouldn’t be nearly as in to it as they were in their roles as Germanic gods. As the pair’s promenade proceeded beneath a gently swaying canopy of heraldic guidons, the slow build majesty of Fugue State’s rendition of Das Rhinegold’s Prelude swelled electric guitar and ondes Martenot throughout the hall.
Before the sword stabbed Yggdrasil stood the Weld ethereal in flowing white Galadriels--cutout cleverly inserted--and down and to the side, cyan Siegfried, his tartan Highland clan...well his parents, anyway ; and his best, deeply hooded & cloaked, mystery-man.  
At the tree alter, at the final dying thrum of the martenot, the Weld commenced to prove that she was an exceptional love weld with an impromptu service incorporating a neat synthesis of all the patchwork paramilitary pomp.
“Marriage isn’t a scrap, a fracas, a battle.  It is a war.  A holy war. A  crusade.  A glorious struggle to preserve, to survive, to hold fast to the one truth that has brought you to this hallowed moment : that singly your lives were incomplete, partial, cursory, weak ; but together you will be fulfilled, total, thorough, unassailable.” The weld flung her arms outwards to embrace the assembled. “And that not only applies to the lives of Ramona & Donald but also to those of the Wandblume & Van Loan tribes. For a wedding is more than  the binding of couples : it is the uniting of tribes :  It is the inking of treaties : It is the forging of alliances : it is the fortifying of families. marriage is the true weaponized potential of love!” She considered the main participants with an ethereal gaze worthy of Cate Blanchett.
“ Are you, Ramona Wandblume prepared for general bliss alongside your martial counterpart?”

“Ja, ich bin!”
Are you, Donald Van Loan  prepared  to be Ramona’s ever faithful biumvir?”
“Etiam!”
Assuming that both replies meant ‘yes!’, the Weld continued : “Then by the power of the Love of the Cosmos, I hereby weld your two lives, your two pneumas, your two selves into the greater whole of the beautiful mutuality of matrimony! Seal the pact with the traditional  osculations!”
It was quite the kiss.
***
Ramona’s baby sister, all adorable six years of her packed into the cutest Rhine maiden  outfit ever thrown together in six hours, strew flower petals along with an almost equally adorable nix Pitchy as the newly welds paraded under the saber arcade of a Prussian hussar honor guard to the tune of Fugue State’s stately Metal rendition of the Wagner’s Treulich geführt.
***
The reception was a mad mishmash of Oktoberfest & Robbie Burns Day. Schnitzel & haggis fed the guests ; schnapps & single malts watered them ; alpine horns, bag pipes and Fugue State entertained them. None of it would have been possible without the considerable resources--human resources that Vendor  had at her disposal. Her operatives, with the exception of Starling and Lecter--she’d been busy enough with the Doe, and he’d been busy enough keeping her out of too much trouble ; and now they were actual wedding guests--were the waiters, bartenders, disc spinners, and caterers.
The only significant role outside of Vendor’s control was the best man. He he had emerged unbidden exactly at the moment, six hours ago, that Vendor had realized that all of her attempts to secure best men had come to naught. It was very odd, but then the Fen normality baseline was insane in the Dane membrane. So she ran the stranger, who never once removed his deeply hooded hood, through the best man test ; he  passed with the sort of knowledge that only a lifelong friend or family member could possess ; and Vendor hired him for the key role. And as she watched him perform, she was damn glad that she had...even though she still had no idea who he was.
Strider, the name Vendor had granted him, was, indeed, the best man. He commenced the revelries with a fantastically astute and pithy periodic tabulation of the groom that was as hilarious as it was touching. The maid of honour, an eleventh hour whisked-away Teachers’ college friend of Ramona’s, turned in a competent performance but even A. Lincoln & O. Wilde would have found the best mystery man a hard act to follow.
Then he was seemingly everywhere ensuring the fulfillment of his duty as the couple’s champion until at exactly the time that consensus had been reached regarding his de-hooding, he was nowhere to be found. He had vanished ; completely, concisely and compendiously.
Van Loan, busily agitating the dual antennae zones of Black Betty, his prized theremin, in concert with Fugue State’s speed waltz variant of the Blue Danube, was oblivious to the exit of his baffling benefactor.
The two fathers who had been deep in boisterous agreements regarding the virtues of pils over pale ales, hockey over football and hand tools over power tools leant as a unit in the direction of the newlyweds sitting across from them at the table of honour to direct the final potentially parentally perplexing problem : each queried his particular offspring with almost exactly the same terse question.
“Blue?”
“Grün?”
Within Ramona’s purse and Donald’s pocket the simplest gag imaginable had been prepared exactly for this inescapable moment. With a dramatic flourish, both he and his wife uncovered streaks of pink skin tone underneath the obviously blue & green makeups with pocket hankies.  With this final bit of clarification clarified, the obviously totally relieved patriarchs returned to the process of extending the new forged family knowledge base.
Donald whispered in Ramona’s ear, “I learned that trick from Jack Nicholson!”
She looked a trifle confused but it didn’t mess with her relief of having cleared--for now--the onerous task of attempting to explain ‘Wavium mutation to family that had already borne more than a few familial shocks.
***
That ‘night’, in the midst of Converse Cowpoke , Ramona figured it out : “The Joker! You learnt it from...” She couldn’t quite finish the thought for the activity.
A trifle breathlessly, Van Loan, below and mostly horizontal, giddily replied, “Ja, Herr Witzbold!”
The chemistry was superb. 

My graphics card seems to have given up the magic smoke, this time for real. I'm managing to limp by thanks to Intel's CPU-integrated graphics, but I've been looking into replacements. Since the system is now three years old, most of the components have since been discontinued; most Graphics cards these days are using PCI-e 3. While I could just get one and stick it in the older PCI-e 2 and pretend everything's fine, it's probably best I take the opportunity to upgrade the old things. If I were to get a new motherboard that runs PCI-e 3, I'd also have to I update my CPU to work with the new LGA1150 socket.
So the current items I'm looking at are:ASUS Z87-A mobo
Intel Core i7-4770K CPU
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 GFX (likely from EVGA)
Anyone here have suggestions, horror stories, nerdgasms or other comments to add?
---

The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

A bit of an unusual post. To cut a short story shorter I picked up a 42 year old Minolta Hi-Matic E rangefinder in Washington DC about 3 weeks ago, and managed to get it working. I have, quite frankly, never used such an item before in my life, but I boldly went forth, confirmed that it was working and brought it it Eirtakon this last weekend to see what'd happen.

The results, as promised are Here on imgur. With the Doctor below as a sample.



They are - to be polite - not perfect. I'm not so much a photographer, as a fan of technology. There was no flash with the camera, so it was auto-adjusting its own exposure out a bit and some of them got a bit shaken. I also goofed on the focus from time to time. In my defense, it's my first time with anything like it - even film is a first-time for me.

Still, there is something of an eternal charm there that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's just because I did it, or because 'analogue' or I don't know. Even when scanned off the prints at 300dpi because my scanner software breaks above that. They'll be around and viewable - if properly stored - long after any harddisk has corroded or mini-SD card has been eaten by the dog. And they look a lot better in person.

The real fun for me however was using a 42 year old piece of technology and having it work like a charm all day. I just went out there with the aim to use it as anyone would, ambling around taking a few shots and putting it to work for the first time in maybe a decade or more. There may be a dozen things wrong with these, but none of them can be blamed on the camera. It did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Getting some interesting pictures out of it was a bonus.

I'm glad I did it.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

Don't say zone alarm, it now automatically defaults out of being a truly bidirectional firewall every time you do an update and given it's current user interface it can take up to an hour and at least one reboot to force it's setting back into actually watching outgoing and incoming internet activity.

I live with a satellite link for internet access and must monitor my bandwidth use closely and in the past year or so I've had a near doubling of the amount of bandwidth used and now add to that I've had unexplained slow downs I've managed to link to extra internet activity, with little to no change in my use of the internet. Needless to say I've been overboard with virus and malware checks and even tried a second computer with a fully clean install, which gave much the same pattern of bandwidth usage.

Today I think I found out what has been going own. To paraphrase one of zone alarms techs "zone alarm isn't designed to stop what should have access to the internet and won't stop it."

In other words for you that are familiar with or use zone alarm it doesn't matter if you place all "X's" on a program if zone alarm's programmers have determined the program should have access to the internet it will have full access to the internet.

Check for yourself. If you use Zone alarm firewall and have the latest updates then try this.

Before you start a web browser go and block off all parts of that browser in zone alarm with all "X's" and see if that actually stops it from accessing the internet.

EXPLANATION
When I was first forced over to "orbital" internet back in 2010, my bandwidth usage was very high and I clamped down with zone alarm and after about a week of carefully watching what wanted access to the internet I discovered that several programs including parts of windows 7 itself was doing a large number of downloads mostly advertisements for the multimedia programs and update checks that would surprisingly often result in a significant download. The 2010 version of Z. A. allowed me to control that and safely reduce my bandwidth usage, but that looks to have changed or started to change some time last year, even in the free versions of Z. A.

So I'd really like to hear recommendations from the members that use different firewalls.

hmelton

God Bless

One of Google's projects is a set of balloons used to cover a very large area with wi-fi capability. Their name for it: Project Loon

Coincidence, or subtle homage? (I'm betting on the former, but one never knows with the Google techs...)
--
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

My next post will be in a new thread.  Since the old thread was locked before anybody else could respond, I've reposted this post to the new thread.  I'd been intending to lock the old one in two days, when it came time for the next segment, but this also works. ^^
Tennie:  Yes, and I don't know why.
Rob:  Wow.  Just when you think you know music...
CD: 
Quite... though the parallel wasn't intentional.  I was basically
asking myself "Given Jail Scaglietti, what sort of work would it take to
support him in a (slightly) more fleshed-out universe?"The answer
ended up being something like "Lots".  That, and Uno really needed some
depth.  She was basically Mission Control and window dressing in
StrikerS- there had to be more to her than that.
**********
I shook my head.  "Should I assume that that's an understatement?"
She
turned to face me, and flicked a window over to hover in front of me. 
Reams of data scrolled past my eyes- packed with statistics and
programming code.  "This is the weekly review of the automated
manufactories."  Another five windows joined it, each one full of
coordinates and specifications.  "These are the materials purchase
orders for next week's production."  Another large window, this one
looking much more familiar, pushed them out of the way.  "This is the
budget for all the doctor's enterprises, adjusted for the recent
decrease in patent licensing fees.  And this-"
I waved my hands
in front of me in surrender.  "No more, please.  I understand."  I swept
the windows she'd sent me up, squeezing them into a form I could handle
one-handed, and tossed them back to Uno.
She spread them back
out, exactly as they were before, and went back to work, a slight smirk
on her face.  "As you can see, I'm responsible for far more than just
'helping him work'.  Think of me as Doctor Scaglietti's secretary,
assistant, and seneschal- as well as the administrator of this
facility.  Even with Flawless Secretary, I have much to do."
"Very true."  After a second, something Uno said hit me.  "...wait.  The doctor has patents?  On what?"
She
rezzed up a new window with a thought, flicking it over to me without
breaking her rhythm.  "As of last week, I've submitted eight hundred and
sixty-four patents across one hundred and twelve false identities,
covering everything from office equipment to medical procedures."  Uno's
small smile grew- I've never seen her this pleased before!  "Not
only have I made Jail Scaglietti profitable, but I'm saving a projected
fifty thousand lives every year... including roughly eleven thousand
children.  It... feels good, honestly, to know that."
Hmm.  On
the one hand, she's loyal to Doc Bastard- she'd say or do anything that
advanced his cause.  This might be disinformation.  On the other hand, I
always did wonder how the doctor afforded all those wonderful toys. 
TSAB backing couldn't pay for everything- not under the table.  I'll
believe her for now- but check it when I get access to independent
sources.
I moved forward, standing right in front of Uno, and looked right into her eyes.  "The doctor doesn't know about this, does he?"
Uno
snorted.  "I love my father, Imma, and I will serve him until the end
of my days, but the man couldn't balance a checkbook to save his life. 
He doesn't care about anything but his ambitions, his family, and the
sciences.  Even if he knew, he wouldn't care."  She sounded dismissive,
but I could see a momentary flicker of something- Doubt?  Fear?- in her expression.
I
waited a few seconds, just to set the mood, before gently smiling. 
"Why should he know?  The doctor has a lot on his mind- worrying about
things like money and patents would just get in his way."
Uno's expression didn't change much, and she didn't stop working, but I could see gratitude in her eyes.Instead
of leaving, though, I just stood there, deep in thought.  Spells need
testing.  Real-world experience best- missions too infrequent- need to
find battles elsewhere.  Bounty hunting?  Freelance vigilantilism? 
Either way, can't go as Imma.  Can't be linked to JS.  Ford Prefect
identity known to TSAB, older than I am right now.
"Hey, Uno?  I've been thinking about something I can do, and I was wondering..."

If no one has any objections, I'm interested in absorbing and expanding the stub Kusanagi character and the even stubbier Section 9 in my ongoing Shegomania storyline. 

It's mostly seen when I try to open my webcomic bookmarks as a block. Even dividing then into two groups only helps a little. It's also intermittent.
What happens is that the pages partially open, stopping partway through getting everything. Usually I have some simple pages completed, some with nothing and most with bits and pieces. Then, although the active loading symbol on the tabs is still active everything stops loading.
What makes this really annoying is that it stops me for successfully opening up other pages. They just fail to load. It also continues even if I close Firefox and try a new session. And yes, before you ask, I do automatically delete the cache and history when I close the program.

You might want to fire wall off from the internet your network ready TV, especially LG TVs.
-------------http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technolo ... e15543631/-------------
It looks like LG network aware TVs  are sending data packets back to LG websites with a full log of the channels you watch, even when you think you have opted out and then adds injury to this insult by going several steps further by also sending home any file names it can find on external drives plugged into it's USB port.
How many want to bet, given that all these packets are unencrypted, that LG TV's have easily compromised poorly thought out network security that allows nearly any one to reprogram them via this unencrypted internet link and send not only file names, but the full contents of any drive connected to them.
I'd recommend using your network firewall to fully isolate your network aware TV and for that matter any other network aware device from having any internet access just on general principals, even if the device is currently considered trustworthy after all how many actual security updates do you think your going to see sent out for a TV or other internet aware device.
hmelton
God Bless