Depth Charge 3D

Ferrari F430

And so, I quite naturally visited the BBC’s Complaints page. I was greeted with a page whereby I had to start adding my details (It said step 1 of 7). I thought all i wanted to do was complain, I haven’t got that much time to start giving all my details and so I didn’t complain and left the site even more upset by the way the BBC was handling complaints. How many other people didn’t register their dismay?

I was annoyed enough that I set up My BBC Complaints a site whereby you can quickly and anonymously (if you prefer) complain or voice your concerns about anything related to the Public Broadcaster the BBC.

If you have an opinion about the BBC then post it here and see if others agree with you.

My BBC Complaints
http://www.mybbccomplaints.co.uk

I’ve seen a lot of cash flow calculators on the web. A lot of them either don’t work or they’re not comprehensive enough. This one however works and provides output that is both useful and prints well.  Useful if you wish to take your new business proposals to a bank for finance etc.

It’s quite interesting if not a little disconcerting to try the Family Finance cash flow chart to see where all your money goes!

Try them out for yourselves

CLICK HERE

You must think of a web site as not just a contact page but as another platform for selling.

A professional web site design must not only look good but also be geared to attract the correct visitors to the site.

With great foundations the marketing of your web site becomes so much easier and cost effective.

http://www.directfx.co.uk

Joke Robot

A good example of the potential benefit of a concrete AI challenge problem is the recent success of Deep Blue. Deep Blue is the result of a research effort focused on a single problem: develop a program to defeat the world chess champion. Although Deep Blue has not yet quite achieved this goal, it played a remarkably strong game against Kasparov in the recent ACM Chess Challenge Match.

A key lesson we learn from Deep Blue’s strength is that efficient brute-force search can be much more effective than sophisticated, heuristically guided search. In fact, brute-force was so successful that it led Kasparov to exclaim “I could feel–I could smell–a new kind of intelligence across the table.” (Kasparov 1996)

Joke Robot now offers a more potent smell that’s nigh on impossible to ignore!

The Turing Test.
When talking about the Turing Test today what is generally understood is the following: The interrogator is connected to one person and one machine via a terminal, therefore can’t see her counterparts. Her task is to find out which of the two candidates is the machine, and which is the human only by asking them questions. If the machine can “fool” the interrogator, it is said to be INTELLIGENT.

This test has been subject to different kinds of criticism and has been at the heart of many discussions in AI, philosophy and cognitive science for the past 50 years. Submit your joke to Joke Robot and you will not be able to tell if his AI is human or computer. Joke Robot does not find the Turing Test funny!

Carnegie Mellon’s AI
Artificial intelligence research at Carnegie Mellon and other universities has even become the stuff dreams are made of, inspiring movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Steven Spielberg’s AI.
Now Joke Robot offers new dreams!

PUT JOKE ROBOT TO THE TEST click HERE

Indeed a CCD will have unlimited storage capacity by virtue of the fact you’re downloading a file when you need it. It’s not stored, saved or owned by you but it is downloadable, playable whenever you need it. Of course it doesn’t just stop at music files, the files can be literally anything from movies to computer programs.

Ownership is Dead! Long live Access!

The reason it will work is simply that the new consumers, the young, will not care if they can actually store the files somewhere to keep later. They have the files whenever they wish. Download speeds will and can be already imperceptibly instantaneous. Many websites now offer free music to listen too whenever you want and are funded by advertising. They, I venture, will be usurped by telecoms and media companies as they offer lifestyle packages. These packages incorporated into the monthly fees for line rental.

It’s all hapening now to varying degrees.

The success of CCD’s will come when the Telecoms and Media companies strike the deals to be able to offer the most ACCESS!

This could be done by cutting jobs and bureaucracy from the Employment Agency and Benefit System.

Some of the benefits would include…
Extra income into the economy for all, regardless of employment status.
The easing of the reliance among some upon claiming as many benefits as they can.
Time wasted in assessing claims for benefits & time wasted in people waiting for their applications approvals a thing of the past.
Easier to stamp out fraudulent claims.

Is your job really a job? Or a BOS (Bum On Seat) Job?

BOS jobs strangle and draw oxygen away from the fire of human achievement. It’s a strangle hold that, given human nature, inexorably increases it’s grip, stifling & killing economic growth and worse still slowing human progress.

Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele made a remark whilst being interviewed on ABC Television February 8th, 2009 about Government jobs not being jobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRhIrr-vmGk

He’s been roundly lambasted for this, in many a blog & chat room.

But I think he has a point and I’ll explain why…

This is a U.K. based web site but his remarks serve to highlight the problem is worldwide. It seems he was rather clumsily referring to what I like to call BOS Jobs. (Bum On Seat) Jobs. These are jobs that aren’t jobs. These are exclusively government jobs, local council and any other jobs funded by the taxpayer. i.e. armed forces, police, health service, civil servants etc. All without exception employment sinks and BOS jobs.

With increasing populations Governments across the world have seen fit to create jobs to keep people employed. The UK has become a world leader in this ultimately doomed and damaging policy.

Last year the UK Labour Government created 30,000 new public sector jobs. The private sector lost 105,000 jobs.
Combine this with an average increase in pay of 3.7 percent for the public sector as compared with a drop of 1.1 percent in the private sector.

With private sector people working harder than ever, with the added pressure of the threat of unemployment and what might be insecure pensions they might well look over their shoulder to their public sector comrades and could quite rightly think to themselves… “I’m working harder than this BOS and for less reward. These people should be serving us, they are, after all public servants!”

Morale of private sector workers is knocked severely. It’s damaging.

There is room for all of the aforementioned jobs (Armed forces, police, health service, civil servants etc.) but they’ve grown out of all proportions into juggernauts, that now, and for some time have had a momentum all of their own.

Give somebody a BOS job, pay them very well, and after a while they believe what they are doing has some sort of importance and value! They can busy themselves creating yet more bureaucracy and barriers for people to negotiate on their way to getting something, which should be simple, done.

Is the UK Government spending out of control?
A regional development agency has recently rebranded itself from “One NorthEast” to “One North East”. The cost of this rebranding reportedly £7000. Payed by, guess whom, the taxpayer! This for an agency that’s meant to be encouraging private investment in the area of the North East.

Quite obviously BOS people full of self importance.

It’s NOT OK for the press and publishers around the world to criticise Governments for their spending and policies without offering alternatives…

Here’s my radical approach for Governments around the world!

This is called the 3Humans Plan.

You’ll have to roundly agree that a job has to be something that someone else considers is worth paying for before you accept this plan.
So NO new BOS Jobs. Through natural wastage let them decline to acceptable levels. In the UK this would be one tenth of what they are currently.

Firstly, introduce the 4-day working week. Why? Because it frees up peoples time to pursue other things during the rest of the week.
These “things” I’ll classify as Edutainment because they can be both pure education or pure entertainment or indeed a mixture of the two, Importantly I’m also including sports within my classification of entertainment.

As human beings we’re special. We love nothing more than to entertain or be entertained. We love to learn and accept new ideas! Those of us “in the know” love to keep fit too.

Generally, there’s not enough time at weekends to relax AND do something for ourselves and/or families.

Governments need to steer social policy and funding in the right direction. Education, Entertainment and Sports need to be given equal priority and they have to have the very highest priority above ALL else. They require the proper funding and aid to push them in the right direction and to make them ready for the influx of new consumers with extra time on their hands… that’s you and me.

I’d much rather see someone teaching people to juggle, learn a musical instrument or manage a 5 aside football team anything other than see them filling in forms to pass to someone else to fill in.

This plan, albeit simple, would improve the happiness and workplace productivity of everyone. It is well known that in France with shorter working hours it has a higher productivity rate. I would venture to say probably a happier workforce than the UK too.

Apart from being happier individuals the general creativity and human endeavour following the 3Humans plan would promote all sorts of other benefits. Including, hey presto! New opportunities for growth and economic prosperity as inevitably people will find other and yet more creative outlets.

The 3Humans plan would work to not only halt the inexorable rise in governments creating BOS jobs but also happily Free humans from the bondage of work. Not completely, but the balance would be more fair. We did not come into this world to work in the name of progress… especially when that progress is inevitably someone else’s progress.

We could all be edutained more! The truth is this…
There is infinite room for expansion in this area. No need for BOS Jobs. No need for financial crunches!

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