Links for 28-10-2006
Surveillance as performance art, USB drumkit, DestroyTV in SL, the audio CD is dead…
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“For the next few months, every trip Elahi took, he?d call his FBI agent and give the routing, so he didn’?t get detained along the way. He realized, after a point – why just tell the FBI – why not tell everyone?”
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“For all of Mark Cuban’s talk about how YouTube (or whoever bought them, such as Google) would get sued for breaking the law, it’s never been at all clear that that was true.”
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“The COROT space telescope is proceeding smoothly towards its launch in December 2006. Once in orbit, COROT will become the first spacecraft devoted to the search for rocky planets, similar to our own Earth.”
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4 – USB Drum Kit“Besides taking up far less floor space than a real set this USB drum kit is also completely silent save for the quiet thumps of drumsticks on the rubber pads.” I want one! Minus points for kid with emo haircut in the promo shot, though.
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“Mao’s team subjected water to a pressure 170,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure at sea level. Then they bombarded it with X-rays, causing the water molecules to split and reform into a previously unknown crystalline solid…”
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“Scientists have uncovered more evidence for a dramatic weakening in the vast ocean current that gives Britain its relatively balmy climate by dragging warm water northwards from the tropics.”
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“‘The first nuclear test by any state today is about sending a political message,’ says Michael Levi … A weapon can’t be a credible threat if no one knows you have it.”
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“While working on a book project last month, I stumbled into an educated guess at that number, and it surprised even me. I once tried to make my own estimate [...] but that was a doomed task, since it didn’t account for overlap.”
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“She looks innocent enough … but Destroy is an avatar of unique stripe; she’s controlled for the most part by users dialling over to the Destroy TV Web site, where they can make her chat or walk around.” Visit Second Life by proxy! (When it works).
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“EMI Music Chairman and Chief Executive Alain Levy Friday told an audience at the London Business School that the CD is dead, saying music companies will no longer be able to sell CDs without offering “value-added” material.”
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“Little did they know, high above Earth, a small satellite was already watching the volcano. No one told it to. EO-1 noticed the warning signs and started monitoring Talang on its own.” Autonomous satellites! The end of the world is nigh!
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“Experiments involving real and simulated robots suggest that the relationship between physical movement and sensory input could be crucial to developing more intelligent machines.”
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“Global warming caused by rapid deforestation could be curbed if developing countries were paid the proper rewards for maintaining their forests, according to a World Bank report.” Do the World Bank count themselves among the rich, I wonder?
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US Army has long been interested in exoskeletons; “…the project is very much alive and … exoskeletons will be delivered for Army testing in 2008.” Link via Advanced Nanotech.
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“The release of the U.S. National Space Policy (NSP) … has worried many experts, who say the policy marks a strategic shift toward a more military-oriented, unilateral approach to space for the United States.” Hardly out of character, though.
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16 – Rocket’s Red Glare“Operating on a fraction of NASA’s budget, the [Indian] ISRO has turned itself into the Energizer Bunny of space programs – it just keeps launching and launching and launching.”
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“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, it may or may not make a sound, but in Second Life, it’s pretty certain that not too much interesting is going on in a sim when there aren’t any avatars around.”
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“…the problem that occurs when people focus too hard on the idea that economics is the study of resource allocation in the presence of scarcity. That only makes sense when there’s scarcity — and in digital goods, scarcity doesn’t exist.”
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“A stampede of human cactus (cactii?) cuts across Goguen, likely spooked by the space dreadnoughts and giant robots that usually rule the desert…” Damn it, that place is weird.
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“Stars don’t always rip apart in violent explosions. Some blow up in an orderly fashion. A star named Cassiopeia A blew up in such a tidy manner that it retained much of its original onion-like layering.” Pretty picture.
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“The sound is so maddening, it seems, that it’s inspired some residents ‘to take drastic action’ – which, in one case, means purposefully deafening oneself with the roar of chainsaws.”
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“So what you’re saying is,” Brithpth said slowly and distinctly, “is that you eat with the same orifice you breathe with?” Funny little sf short, via Brian Dunbar.
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