ATOM and understanding the Universe

...The ATOM was the name of the BBC documentary three part series that concluded the other evening.

Am I alone in being absolutely mesmorized by the facts, theories, mathematics and conclusions that were drawn by this series, the trouble was that I had no idea what they were talking about most of the time. With a vocabulary of words including Quantum, Electron, Mass Energy etc... I was eventually left with this less technical example of how to think of it below: -

Example of how to understand the Universe
In order to understand the universe, all I had to do was undestand their simple analogy which was to stick a cat in a box facing the prospect of being poisoned with a cyanide contraption. While you dont raise the lid of the box, the cyanide contraption is "deciding whether to activate of not" so the cat would be both in great health AND dead from the cyanide at the same time. However, as soon as I lifted the lid, either the poisoning would have taken place or not, so only one would then be true.

I am not making this up by the way. It is real and called Schrödinger's cat.

Anyway, with this and other ideas such as, ...we are living in one of an infinite number of parallel universes with an infinite number of myselves (thats not a word I use often) typing random keys etc, its a wonder the churches are not full of people that would much rather believe in the less farfetched idea of an all powerful being that makes it all OK in the end.

Late Night Poker Online with Ninjas

...I'm sorry but I cannot help conclude that this late night online poker session is nothing more than a software controlled scam.

...lets put to oneside that I have just lost $8 to a "bot" (Software Robot pretending to be a player at the table and defined by a fellow human player as a "short stack ninja") and concentrate instead on the way the cards seem to unfold....

Now its my ever growing belief that although the cards may well not favour any particular player, it seems to me that a couple of other software tricks may be being employed.

So far I have identified two distinct traits that appear to be in force.

The Heartstopper - This is designed to draw you into playing more and more hands. Idenified by when you fold a hand that perhaps could have been played, the ensuing flop far too regularly reveals you would have made a fantastic hand had you stayed in.

Sexing Up The Flop - This makes Alistair Cambell's exploits seem like Enid Blyton at work. As the name suggests the hands are often too outrageously good at the same time. I sat down yesterday, on my third hand I was dealt AK suited. I naturally raised the stakes. Both other players went with me and we ended up "all in" The final hands revealed the other players actually had Pocket Aces and Pocket Kings. Three giant hands all at the same time !

Of course its obvious what the effect is on the value of the cut taken by the house on these huge pots. I know it sounds cynical, but you have to be a regular player to see what I mean. You get a feel for the chances, if you watch TV poker or play against friends with a real deck of cards in the real world, those hands just dont happen that often.

The thing is it would be so hard to prove it was going on. It appears there could be a kind of software dial that can be adjusted with devastating results, perhaps distributed across various tables making it impossible to detect.

There is one other unthinkable solution that may explain all of the above... maybe I am a crap player that is being gobbled up by superior skilled players, then in denial of that fact instead go looking for some insane conspiracy theory to balance my own crazy mind that would prefer to whinge endlessly on about it. Hmm, I feel a bout of introspection coming on I will keep you posted....

Google Drives Small Retail Websites to Ebay

Isn’t it time Google recognized that if you have a retail website selling products that are prevalent on the internet, it is not reasonable to expect each product description to be unique.

In fact some manufacturers would take offence if you start to make up your own unique description of each of their products. Consequently, it is not reasonable in that case for Google to decide, based on duplicate content or low back links to send these pages off to supplemental oblivion.

Retailers can make some slight changes to the titles and descriptions as in this attempt to differentiate between the new Jacques Cousteau dvd and original manufacturers description Similar content but Google is still likely to decide that the content is not materially different and your page could slide down to a firey grave...

So is it really fair to expect a retailer to go through this rigmarole to satisfy Google, and doesnt this just lead to retailers resorting to black art techniques, such as participating in affiliate schemes where people make a living out of placing links over the internet to your pages because you are agreeing to pay a 5% commision back to them on every sale ?

All pages from retailers should be properly indexed and shown to users on the basis of Google's normal algorithm of best page wins. Therefore if a smaller retailer puts a lot of effort into their pages, they deserve to be displayed somewhere. Also it is bad for the customer if they only ever get half a dozen big named companies, you know the usual suspects, displayed with no real choice, leaving them with the certain knowledge that there is bound to be a smaller more competitive perhaps helpful, knowledgeable family run business out there but which has been condemned to Supplemental Index.

This is a serious problem that is unfair to smaller businesses and unhelpful to customers and what in the end drives businesses off to become Ebay Shops with all the additional costs involved there, but at least it is a proper fair playing field where customers will be able to search and find ALL products for sale.

I would like to see Google ditch the one size fits all approach to indexing and accept there are exceptions that need to be considered for a more inclusive approach....