An Open Letter

Greetings,
As I am now in a condition that allows me to do so,  I, Gregory Zambo welcome anyone who might have a question, greivance or complaint about me or my past actions to contact me and we can discuss the matter and compensation if the matter deserves such.  

This offer is open to anyone past, present or future and I will keep all messages private so there is no chance of any matters related becoming public.

Contact me here please.

The truth about addiction and poverty

Digging through Boing Boing today I found this: The first time I have seen anyone state what always seemed bleeding obvious to me. The real problem is that some in our societies don't care about the poor or even worse attack them as if they were criminals just for not being born into a rich family.
 The real horror of this is that I still see this kind of Nazi attitude in people, typically the same people who have never gone without a meal or a home in their lives.   I have been on the recieving end of this kind of crap myself more than once. Now that I am out of the "hole" of poverty it is still amazing to see people who really should know better mouthing off at "the lazy dole bludgers" etc. etc. 
No, there is no easy way out of poverty, and as pointed out in this article, the dope just softens the misery a little.  Crime is something else again : but obviously (almost*) no-one is going to be robbing people if they have money and a worthwhile job.
Better that you read it yourself though, especially the conclusions.
Thanks, Carl Hart and NY Times.
(*Does not include persons such as Bernie Madoff {He "madoff" with a lot!})

Survivorship Bias

Coming courtesy of the You Are Not So Smart blog (which I have just discovered thanks to Boing Boing) : today's clever and funny article about success and failure . . . . .
Here's a meaty exerpt:

"If you spend your life only learning from survivors, buying books about successful people and poring over the history of companies that shook the planet, your knowledge of the world will be strongly biased and enormously incomplete.

As best I can tell, here is the trick: When looking for advice, you should look for what not to do, for what is missing as Phil Plait suggested, but don’t expect to find it among the quotes and biographical records of people whose signals rose above the noise. They may have no idea how or if they lucked up.
What you can’t see, and what they can’t see, is that the successful tend to make it more probable that unlikely events will happen to them while trying to steer themselves into the positive side of randomness. They stick with it, remaining open to better opportunities that may require abandoning their current paths, and that’s something you can start doing right now without reading a single self-help proverb, maxim, or aphorism.
Also, keep in mind that those who fail rarely get paid for advice on how not to fail, which is too bad because despite how it may seem, success boils down to serially avoiding catastrophic failure while routinely absorbing manageable damage."

Public Service Announcement: Porn sex Vs. Real sex

Watch this video, both informative and entertaining, and it does so using food.

Data Vampires

A more reputable vampire

Okay, I'll admit here that I am not "a great socialite"  - or putting it in a different way, I prefer action to jaw flapping or thumb tapping. Empty vessels make the most noise, of course.

First there was Farcebook asking for my personal email password, schools I attended, places I worked and pretty much anything they could get . .  no, no and NO again. One day someone will give me a decent reason for providing personal information like what school I went to . . . and I will provide it - but this bunch of data vampires don't even pretend to have a good reason.  
My email password? weeeeeellllll, maybe if I was fifteen and stupid you might get it but I don't fit either category.

And now . . . . . a new scavenger has appeared, someone gave my name to LinkedIn and they tried the same thing, I ask you, dear reader,  what would YOU say if some strange kid turned up at your door and said "Gimme your email password dude, I promise I won't tell anyone else or keep it, honest!" : Would you trust him?

For me, "Networking" is what PCs do. Humans get together and talk in the real FIRST so that you know who the heck you are sending a message to - and what was wrong with email? Why are we supposed to need Yet Another Stupid Messaging Program? (Worse still, some are so full of holes that they are regularly hijacked by children for their entertainment!)

I do keep a Farcebook ID so people can potentially find me but I don't get any messages from there except to tell me that a freind has written something on his page . . . . . maybe over the long, long run (years) someone will actually find me through FB but I am beginning to doubt it. Apart from those who knew me already I have made zero new friends on FB because almost none of the people I contacted via it were prepared to meet me as real people - apparently because they weren't.

Dunbar's Number

For years I knew that there was an ideal size for social groups,  small enough for everyone to know each other but not too small, big enough for a workable community. Well, thanks to Dmitry Orlov who has a blog here (and this article is a good read too, makes you think about what might be coming for us down here in Oz)  I now know it is called "Dunbar's number" and that it is about 150.
I bought his book,  "The Five Stages of Collapse" as well. Although not so uplifting it is full of interesting observations and definitely though provoking - okay I admit I haven't read it all yet, I have read excerpts on his blog though.

Electric Flying Bicycle, anyone?

It's pretty awesome, really: a video shows it actually flying albeit indoors and the Czech engineers who made it did it because they wanted to: NOT for sale. 
but . . . . .
WIRED, why attach the dumbass term "Jedi" to it?
Science Fiction  existed long before George Lucas and Star Wars.  I expect that now it has been sold to Disney there will be even more plastic crap filling the shelves (if that's possible!) soon.

It really is awesome though: a man-carrying all-electric helicopter is an achievement in itself.
Note that there are two props in each end cage and two smaller ones either side.  
I'm tempted to create my own variation in virtual.