Problem Attic. Insert witty tagline here.

Design by Brehaut, URLs by Me. (Look at the address.)

A group of people in Auckland are broadcasting a live reading of the bible this weekend. If you want to listen, go to:

mms://L1.r2.co.nz/careybc
(You’ll need Windows Media Player, sorry)

After the weekend it will become a podcast, so you’ll be able to subscribe with iTunes or your news/feedreader and get a chapter a day in mp3 format — read out loud. Visit the website at podbible.com.

Tim Bulkeley posted recently on a discussion he’d run across about digital (computer) literacy. He was struck by the phrases “digital natives,” and “digital immigrants.” Digital natives are those who have grown up with computers and digital technology — today’s western kids. Digital immigrants are those who have had to learn — like their teachers.

However, I think this divide is somewhat of a myth. Most kids have no more clue about things digital than “immigrant” adults; they just learn faster and earlier. I’ve seen many kids who parents would describe as computer literate, but who have just learnt to do a few more tasks than the parent has — in addition to word processing, the kids can also play games and build a powerpoint presentation.

The biggest problem is that there is still very little understanding. The digital natives still have no idea why things work the way they do, they just know how to make them happen. This is digital literacy of a very poor kind. Compulsory basic computer theory for everyone, I say!

Comment Moderation is currently on to avoid spam. As I am not around to moderate for the next couple of weeks, comments will not show up until I get back. But hey, don’t let that stop you.

Recently I have been getting a ridiculous amount of spam in the form of comments on this blog (ridiculous as in, I’ve probably had over a thousand in the last couple of months). Fortunately, I have been able to block most of it.

Some of this spam, however, is really quite sophisticated entertaining. Here is a selection of the best efforts to evade my filters.
Read it all…

From DrunkenBlog:

And, just for the record, I firmly believe that artificial intelligence is going to be born in some aberrant piece of forgotten code that falls into disuse in some backwater of the internet, which then quietly starts doing things to entertain itself. It’ll then become fully sentient in an unloved environment (or worse yet, on this guy’s computer) and fail to feel any connection to its masters-made-of-meat. In short order it’ll decide we’d make really damn good batteries or, if its on Steve Jobs’ computer, decide to remove us from the earth purely for aesthetics. My $10 is on an ActiveX control on a forgotten thumbnail pornsite in Russia, which means its going to have really, really interesting attitudes towards women and accessing strangers bank accounts.