Links for 28-07-2006
VR redux, gecko-foot materials, advanced Googling tips, black holes debunked…
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1 – MetaMersion“The MetaMersion Immersive Gaming System is a cutting-edge gaming platform designed to let you play your favorite PC-based game titles in a fully immersive, virtual reality environment.” Looks like VR is making a comeback.
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“Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran.” No surprises, then.
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David Louis Edelman strikes again. Good food for thought, especially for a wannabe story-writer like myself.
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Yes, again. Who knows, this time it may make it beyond lab speculation and into actual products. Link via Warren Ellis.
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Trying to find the 411 on something, but sick of wading through advertising copy? Some great tricks and tips to unearth the data you really want. Link via Lifehacker.
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David Louis Edelman talks about sensible ways to make speed limits more useful.
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All text in Russian, but the excellent photography speaks for itself. Link via BoingBoing.
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Henry Jenkins on comic books and graphic novels and their responses to 9/11.
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Worldchanging.com talks about a new book that sounds interesting, especially in the light of increasing globalisation at the same time as the spreading ‘Long Tail’ meme.
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10 – How Bot Those Nets?In case you weren’t already in the know, here’s a guide to what the hell a bot-net actually is, and what it does.
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11 – The Geek HeirarchyWhere do you fit in? Link via SFSignal.
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“Research suggests that by harnessing the maths behind Einstein’s theory of relativity, airlines could speed up the arduous process of boarding.” So, literally bringing physics down to earth, then? [ducks]
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“Having been the internet’s instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN, making the organisation a more international body.” Li
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Financiers unimpressed by Microsoft’s not-actually-very-effective speech recognition demo.
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Sadly, it doesn’t sound anywhere as good as one might have hoped…
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…but there is work being done on the technology elsewhere, albeit early prototypes. Both eBook links via Engadget.
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17 – Zoom in on COSMOSCentauri Dreams explains and links to the COSMOS Skywalker, an online tool that allows the average geek to see the images of space that the big telescopes gather – trust me, your PC couldn’t handle 10^10pixels in one go any other way.
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…which is a shame, because ‘black hole’ is much catchier and easier to say than ‘magnetospheric eternally collapsing object’. Meh.
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I doubt they’ll last forever, but if they’re less likely to stop working at short notice, then that’s all good. Link via Engadget.
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No, it’s not an article advocating getting smacked up for relaxation – it’s advocating launching sulphur particles into the stratosphere to reflect more sunlight from the Earth. Which is marginally less crazy, I guess.
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It’s like an Ethernet connection straight into your head, man.
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Bad news for the organisations with CubeSats headed for orbit – the booster failed. No details as to the cause yet, nor the fate of the payload.
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AMSC announces new high-temp superconductor wires capable of handling power grid loads, despite being only a few millimeters thick. Link via AdvancedNanotechnology.
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