Links for 05-12-2006
Radical transparency, virtual world taxation update, Minority Report redux, ‘piracy is progressive taxation’…
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“In other words, what if spotting early-warning terrorism signals became an open-source project?” Interesting idea.
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“…Bryan Camp warned residents of virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft that demands for more specific ownership rights might have the unintended consequence of summoning the tax man.”
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“The idea known as the anthropic principle states that human existence is possible only if fundamental constants such as the speed of light or the strength of gravity are not higher or lower than what is observed.”
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“The molecule in question is called C6H-, described as a chain of six carbon atoms with one hydrogen atom at the end and an extra electron.”
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“…scientists at the University of Bath have invented a material which stores and releases hydrogen at room temperature, at the flick of a switch, and promises to help make hydrogen power a viable clean technology for the future.”
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“Certainly an intriguing (and some may find, worrisome) idea — but it would seem like there would need to be an awful lot of proof to find out if such software can be even the tiniest bit accurate.” Not just the UK cops, then.
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“I suspect that the biggest part of the labor of writing, for me, has always consisted of bludgeoning the editorial super-ego into relative passivity…”
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“The holy grail of science fiction is a setting so cool that you can describe people doing their laundry there and it’ll be riveting.” He’s right, and he’s very good at it.
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“Creativity and emotion are what makes advertising successful, not the message it is trying to get over [...] advertisements with high levels of emotional content enhanced how people felt about brands, even when there was no real message.”
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“While the ruling doesn’t make it clear exactly what this means, apparently, many believe that the FBI can make use of the microphones within mobile phones to remotely spy on anyone with (or near) a mobile phone.”
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“It took six years for Darren Aronofsky to get his mystic science-fiction film The Fountain to the big screen, and just five days for it to tank at the box office.”
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The seminal essay by Tim O’Reilly, as cited recently by Sir Cory of Doctorow.
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“You see, I believe that things are now getting so bad, with SL virtually unusable [...] business grinding to a halt, and the level of disenchantment with LL at an all time high, that breaking point for SL has been reached.” Discontent!
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“Triton’s Sawfish™ Underwater Harvester … is the world’s only deep-water logging machine, combining proven elements from timber-harvesting and submarine vehicle technology on an innovative platform.” Via OKfuture.
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“Although extrapolating from today’s phones by following technology trends can provide some clues about their future direction, the danger with this approach is that it risks overlooking discontinuities in their evolution.” Thanks, FF&F.
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“The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom.” Po-mo, mo-fo!
Tags: links
December 5th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
I’ve done some work with the Canadian government and military on the “Radical Transparency and National Security” idea. You can read a dramatization of some of these ideas at WorldChanging Canada. Canadian security experts are well aware of the possibilities here.
December 6th, 2006 at 1:21 am
[...] University of Bath researchers stumbled upon a new method of storing hydrogen that may make hydrogen-powered cars feasible. Seems fitting that a possible cure for our petroleum plague comes from Bath in the form of the “water-begetter” (thanks, Armchair Anarchist) [...]