Links for 21-11-2006
Bumper SL/CopyBot/IP round-up, electric sitar, fighting lobster videos, dekotora, future postage stamps…
-
“Designers who can put out new ideas quickly will do relatively well in the resulting economy of novelty, while designers that have counted on ongoing sales of existing designs to build up their in-game bank accounts will suffer.”
-
“…the havoc sewn by Copybot promises to transform the virtual word into a bold experiment in protecting creative work without the blunt instrument of copyright law.” Interesting perspective.
-
“The trouble began with the appearance of virtual gold rings in several areas of the virtual world [...] they starting replicating wildly and, eventually, the servers on which the game is hosted began creaking under the strain…”
-
SLH report on Philcon, number 1.
-
SLH report on Philcon, number 2.
-
“Cotton that has been genetically engineered so its seed is no longer toxic could provide protein-rich food for poor countries. The researchers say the technology used could make other toxic plants safe to eat.”
-
“The paintball minigun has six triggers and delivers 1,200 psi (pounds per square inch) of pressure…” You spell that O, V, E, R, K, I, L, L.
-
“This Electronic Sitar (known as the ESitar) has digitizing sensors, custom positioned to traditional Sitar technique, which converts human musical gestures to binary code which machines can comprehend.” Paging Ravi Shankar…
-
“The flaw could let a hacker steal the cryptographic keys used to protect sensitive communications and financial transactions, simply by monitoring the amount of effort the microchip is expending…” Ouch.
-
“…this is the first time the biodiversity of the animal communities living at these sites has been observed directly and thoroughly documented, providing the first discovery of cold seep communities in the entire southwest Pacific.”
-
Kathryn Cramer has plenty of snaps from Philcon.
-
12 - Fly fight clubOkay, the fly combat videos are pretty funny, but the battling lobsters even more so. Does this mean there is something wrong with me?
-
“Touch, rather than concentration, could let people multi-task with their hands, and this may also potentially help improve the performance of people with coordination problems, according to psychologists.”
-
“Dogged by rumors that Ares I rocket would not be able to lift the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle … NASA’s Constellation program manager has shot back at unnamed critics in an e-mail missive he said he wrote to set the record straight.”
-
“They’re big. They’re bad. They’re dekotora (”decoration trucks”). Explore some of the internet’s best dekotora photo collections…” Looks like no-one does retina-searing neon vehicle bling quite like the Japanese.
-
“Would you believe there’s another fine book set in futuristic India?” I keep hearing great things about this novel - one for the wishlist, methinks.
-
“After years of debate on how to dispose of rubbish from the International Space Station, the U.S. space agency will allow crew to send certain items of excess or broken equipment into orbit…” So much for green futures.
-
“Money makes us more likely to work and play alone and less likely to offer help to others, U.S. researchers say.” Interesting bit of research, though I’ve no idea how scientifically sound this sort of thing really is.
-
“I can’t remember the exact genesis, but one day recently the idea of “Stamps from the Future” popped into my head. I thought, what kinds of things would people commemorate on postage stamps in the near or distant future?”
-
20 - Autumn in Japan“The ‘Autumn Color’ photography competition was organized among Japanese bloggers … During the months of October and November, they gathered thousands of pictures, of which these are only a few examples.” Just beautiful.
-
Watch presentations on a panoply of subject matter, given by all manner of boffins and smart types to the staff of the Googleplex, all hosted for free online (by Google Video, natch).
-
“The jacket … has an electrified outer sleeve that is separated from the lining by a layer of rubber, so anyone touching the jacket gets the unknowing shock of their life while you remain nice and cozy in the self-defending cover.”
-
“Those who ponder the Fermi Paradox might want to consider Myrhaf’s solution, one based on economics. If advanced technological civilizations really are out there, maybe they simply can’t afford to build interstellar spacecraft.”
-
“…this PDA comes with a twist. It creates a body area network (BAN) that lets you communicate with other peripherals by touching them.” I’m loving this idea, as well as the cyberpunk aesthetics.
License
This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales License.
Tags: links
November 22nd, 2006 at 1:37 am
[...] Spy software could use analysis of CPU branch prediction to break encryption keys. Even a 512-bit key in “a few thousandths of a second”. Scary. (thanks, Armchair Anarchist). [...]