Voice stress analysis for benefit claimants: bollocks, or complete and utter bollocks?

My Dad thought I’d be interested in this one. He was right. Ministry of Truth investigates the technology that will apparently tell the Department of Work and Pensions whether benefit claimants are telling porkies.

Have you watched The Wire? You know the bit where the homicide detectives tell a gullible suspect that their office photocopier is a lie detector? That’s probably just as effective, but an awful lot cheaper.

Techradar Thursday: cool things in the labs, clown computing and 3D gaming

Two by me, one by Neil Mohr that I thought was really interesting. First up, Cloud Computing – or Clown Computing?

So much for the cloud.

Can we really rely on web-based services and software? If you’re expecting us to say no, surprise!

Then a look at some of the interesting things Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and Mozilla have got cooking in their labs including:

4. Google Mars
Fancy looking for Martians or discovering whether The Watchmen really do have a base on the Red Planet? Google Mars brings the power of Google Maps to nearby planets. Sadly Street View and Local Search aren’t yet available, so if you’re trying to find a kebab shop you’re out of luck.

This piece by Neil Mohr caught my attention: 3D gaming. Is it ace, or is it arse?

At its best with Left 4 Dead, some primal instinctive part of the brain lights up as you realise you now have depth perception. Zombies flailing towards you suddenly have a natural order and a beauty as they spiral in space with a well-placed shotgun to the head. Blood spurts in awesome Jackson Pollock-esque fashion onto your virtual camera lens that views this apocalyptic world. This is the 3D at its best; it works straight out of the box complimenting the gameplay, even enhancing it.

Yay! But it’s a qualified yay:

At its worst, though, it’s a frustrating mess. A crosshair that makes you feel you’ve drunk five pints, constant ghosting from lights and effects, while struggling to make the stereo effect work at all without inducing eye-strain. Somewhat akin to magic-eye pictures, it’s an effect that you gradually get more and more used to or not at all.

The sad tale of the girl who didn’t read the Daily Mail

For no other reason than for my own amusement, I’ve turned 20 Daily Mail stories into a narrative about somebody who recklessly ignored all the warnings:

Karen smiled as she logged into Facebook, a glass of red wine in her hand. Damn this cold, she thought. I’m so bunged up I’ve no idea whether I’ve put on the right amount of deodorant. She had always been prone to colds, ever since she was little. It was a pain.

Still, Facebook was funny. Bob had been in touch. They’d been close ever since the primary school days when they’d share a bag of chips every lunchtime. They became lovers in secondary school. Karen thought about the time they’d been caught by a teacher in the book cupboard, Bob’s trousers at half-mast and Karen on her knees. She’d been mortified, but of course it was thrilling too.

Tonight, though, Bob was on the other side of the world. Karen cobbled together something to eat – a fry-up and a bowl of soup – and as always, made sure she took her vitamins afterwards. She went back to the computer and absent-mindedly tugged at her bottle blonde hair, browsing the online shops for swimsuits and sun tan lotion. She’d be flying out to meet Bob in two weeks. She couldn’t wait.

Bored with the computer, Karen decided to run a bath. She had a long, luxurious soak, grudgingly getting out when her skin started to wrinkle. A dash of talc and a daub of moisturiser before shrugging on her favourite dressing gown.

She was hungry again. No wonder. She hadn’t eaten much of dinner, and hours had passed since then. Karen munched her way through the remaining Pringles, wolfed down a packet of Hula-Hoops and some organic crisps, and ate some chocolate. You greedy cow, she admonished herself, making a note to go back to the gym tomorrow. More often than not she didn’t go. The hospital was understaffed, and X-ray technicians were in particular demand. She decided to pack her gym kit anyway and hope she’d finish work at a reasonable time.

Karen checked her mobile phone for messages, and saw that Bob had sent her a text. “Love you XXX”, it said. She smiled. Not long now.

Karen went through the usual routine, remembering to give the tooth whitener the full ten minutes. She rinsed with mouthwash, took a book to bed, and was asleep within half an hour.

Karen died of mouththroatbrainbreastlungstomachbladderskinovarianbowel cancer that very night.

[All links via The Daily Dust]

Don’t buy a laptop. Buy a netbook and a desktop, and keep the change

Back in 2006, I wrote this:

Many laptops, such as the MacBook Pro, are real desktop alternatives. But they also cost an awful lot of money, and they’re hefty things to carry around. Any time I’ve used a laptop when travelling – on planes, on trains, on ferries – I’ve wished I had a smaller computer (particularly on planes, where you get less room than a veal calf). Unless you need serious horsepower from a mobile PC, a top-end laptop is a daft buy: even the titchiest machine is perfectly capable of DVD playback, office applications and anything else you might need on your travels.

That was before the invention of the netbook, which is the smaller computer I wanted whenever I tried to unfold a Powerbook or MacBook Pro in a plane seat. With netbooks becoming so handy (particularly in the battery life stakes) and cloud computing making it easy to share and/or sync stuff between multiple machines it’s bordering on insanity to buy a fully-featured laptop for travelling: with netbooks going for £300 or less (and refurbs starting to appear from the likes of EuroPC) you really need to be rich or daft to buy anything bigger.

As my 2006 post put it:

The little laptop will be smaller, lighter and therefore more portable than a big beast of a machine – and you’ll be less upset if it gets broken, nicked or blown up by terrorists because you’ll still have a working machine at home.

I’ll be testing a Samsung NC-10 fairly soon, so I’ll eat my words if it’s a load of crap. But I suspect it won’t be.

Is the Safari 4 beta any good?

Yes. Yes, it is. Guess where the link goes? That’s right! Techradar!

Overall, we like Safari 4 a lot. We’re not convinced we’ll actually use Top Sites or the visual History Search, but flashy gimmicks aside it’s a fast and pleasant way to do stuff online.

Facebook “eats brains”

Today’s WTF comes courtesy of – who else? – the Daily Mail. Facebook and Twitter eat brains, says a woman.

Social websites harm children’s brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist

BRAINS!

Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.

BRAINS!

But while the sites are popular – and extremely profitable – a growing number of psychologists and neuroscientists believe they may be doing more harm than good.

BALLS!

Facebook and Twitter extremely profitable? On which planet?

‘My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.’

BRAINS!

‘It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations,’ she said.

BRAINS!

Psychologists have also argued that digital technology is changing the way we think. They point out that students no longer need to plan essays before starting to write – thanks to word processors they can edit as they go along. Satellite navigation systems have negated the need to decipher maps.

Editing! Sat-nav! We’re fucking DOOMED!

Sorry. I just get tired of this front page, screaming headline, evidence-free, book-promoting, somebody told me something once so I’ll extrapolate it to the entire planet, scaremongering bullshit – scaremongering bullshit with a gratuitous autism reference thrown in, because parents of autistic kids haven’t had enough shit thrown their way over the last decade.

Techradar Tuesday: don’t be a dumbass

Last.fm isn’t telling the RIAA that you’ve pirated the new U2 album. But you might be.

Why go to the hassle of trying to get data from websites when the users will hand it to you on a plate?

We’re sure that some of the people listening to the leaked album simply forgot that Last.fm tells other people what you’re listening to, but we’re also sure that a fair number of them were boasting. Look at me! I’ve got something I shouldn’t have! I am cool!

More Friday tomfoolery: how to tell if Twitter is ruining your life

Ten signs of Twitter addiction, including:

You think in 140 characters
Your wife has been attacked by a shark in the middle of the high street. “How can I make this poignant but funny in 140 characters?” you think. “This would be a lot easier if it weren’t for all the screaming.”

Return of the son of The Words That No Sane Person Should Use

29 tech phrases you should be punched in the face for using:

We’re told that if you give a million monkeys a million typewriters, they’d create the works of Shakespeare – but what would you end up with if you threw a million typewriters at a monkey?

The internet shows us the answer: perfectly good phrases are replaced with rubbish, grown-ups talk like toddlers, and business bullshit is everywhere.

Daddy? What was the world like before the internet?

There’s a huge discussion on Fark.com based on a brilliant question:

Youngish [Fark user] has no comprehension what her adult life would be like without the internet or computer technology. Describe your pre-internet life

It’s a brilliant question because the potential answers are so big. Baby Bigmouth wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the internet – I met Mrs Bigmouth online – and my job wouldn’t exist without it either. And yet the whole thing has happened in a very short space of time, so Baby B was born into a world where the things we already take for granted – broadband, YouTube, Google, iTunes, Facebook – are all just a few years old. And eventually she’s going to ask me, what were things like before the internet?

What would you say? Would you sound like a Daily Mail reader, hankering for a simpler time? Or would you be more like the Yorkshiremen in the Monty Python sketch where they exaggerate the awfulness of their upbringings? Is answering the question like trying to explain what the world was like before fire, electricity and the wheel?