Posts by James Summerson

Screaming Fist

Hopefully the Generals will have read the whole story and realize that Screaming Fist was a disaster on a par with the Iranian Hostage Rescue attempt and the real life 'Black Hawk Down' scenario.

Much easier to hack from the Sprawl than hanging upside down from a microlight, eh?

Military wargaming long established

Why does this come as any surprise?

The militaries of many countries have long historial links with wargaming and many services fund and develop their own games for training, such as the 'Project Warrior' programme by the USAF in the early 80's - dozens of commercial board wargames came out of that particular project.

All the US and RAF are doing are getting onto the leading edge of games, 1st / 3rd person shooters / tacsims and flightsims and more power to their elbows as I'd quite like to see what comes out in the commercial zone as a result.

As a slight aside, I'm sure the tacsims the military use _don't_ look or play like C&C, unless the 'tank rush' is now an accepted military strategy...

You missed a trick.

Surely the headline 'Woman Shocked By Google Pussy Display' would get more hits in a Mrs Slocombe-esque turn of punnery?

We've had a very happy 10 minutes or so cackling through the various permutations, so thanks for that, El Reg!

Dmages for what?

Is Mr Grisman unhappy about the fact that people are actually daring to post fan-shot video and this is somehow hurting his reputation? The comments on the videos on YouTube are universally good and appreciative of his playing and music, perhaps some of those people actually went out and bought some of his stuff, eh?

He's also way behind the times if he thinks that there's "a difference between fan bootlegs and the global distribution of Google". There's a massive amount of global bootleg trading - on one such 'trader site' there's more than a dozen shows featuring 'Dawg' each one downloaded more than 100 times, over 400 times in the case of one 1973 show and nearly 800 for a Garcia / Grisman show from 1992!

This sounds like a case of "Google's got lots of money - I want some" syndrome.

Oh, and he should probably re-word the "Steal Solos From Your Favorite Artists" line on the Music Studio part of his site...

Gabriel - Dynamic Firebrand?

Considering the glacial progress of Mr Gabriel's own product and his ability to put the mockers on any Genesis back catalogue revamp - he managed to put back the release of the remixed Lamb Lies Down On Broadway ( ask yer dad, kids ) so it managed to miss every significant anniversary - I wonder how long it will take him to release his own songs in such a butchered format?

This is a man who overdubs vocals onto the supposedly 'live' tracks as he is such a 'perfectionist' and he's punting this nonsense...?

Hope the Culture gets here first.

The usual good sf authors get mentioned - Niven for Footfall etc., but let's hope those nice Culture people get here as described by Iain M Banks.

They are an exception to the standard advanced = predator model, but don't get them upset! Even these crypto-Anarchists have terror weapons...

At least they'll not bother to drop rocks on us as a standard Ship can destroy something much bigger than a planet from _very_ far away, probably without us even noticing until the planet flies apart.

Townshend / Eno?

Pete Townshend has been trying for years to get his "Lifehouse" ideas into reality, e.g. using Meher Baba's 'life statistics' to generate synth loops and now the 'Lifehouse Method' for generative music.

Quite why he didn't ring up Brian Eno and get a copy of 'KOAN Pro' in 1996 or check out Lauri Gröhn's 'Synesthesia' which generates music from pictures, including ones of his dog(!), I don't know. It might have saved him some trouble.

Here In My Car

In response to Geoff Gale:

If listening to Pirate Radio in cars is such a big thing, use something like slingplayer to get the music to your 'phone, then use your newly legal in car transmitter to get those kickin' choonz out of your car speakers. Possibly at high decibels. With the windows down. At midnight.

Win / Win / Win. ;o)

Old Tech is more direct.

I presume that the campus has a fire alarm system, something nice and low tech like bells / flashing lights / audible warnings via tannoy, unless they also send e-mails out with the title "You're on Fire!"

From the news reports some of the students were killed in a French lesson, so I think that they weren't watching their inboxes at the time. There might also be a problem with the mobile phone alert as some Professors have a strict 'turn phones off policy' - there's a bunch of YouTube vids of kids having their phones taken off them and smashed, in at least one case.

A simple alert system might have saved some lives, but the reports say the shooter locked and chained shut some of the exit doors, so maybe having dozens of kids loose in the corridors might have lead to more deaths.

There's no simple solution, other than actually having some form of policy that seems rational and logical then putting it into practice. It seems none of that applied in this case.