Indian divers have found more evidence of an ancient port city, apparently revealed by December’s tsunami.

Stone structures that are “clearly man-made” were seen on the seabed off the south coast, archaeologists say.

They could be part of the mythical city of Mahabalipuram, which legend says was so beautiful that the gods sent a flood that engulfed six of its seven temples.

The new finds were made close to the 7th Century beachfront Mahabalipuram temple, which some say is the structure that survived the wrath of the gods.

The myths of Mahabalipuram were first written down by British traveller J Goldingham who was told of the “Seven Pagodas” when he visited in 1798….

Xeni Jardin: Declan McCullagh writes:

Herb Vest believes that true love should come with a criminal-background check. Vest is the chief executive of True.com, an online dating service that pledges to verify whether your dream date is a convicted felon or, worse yet, already married.

"Although criminal-background screening is not entirely foolproof, we owe it to our members to provide a truly wholesome environment for online courtship," Vest said last year.

This would be an engaging but otherwise unremarkable business plan, except for one twist. Instead of competing head-to-head with his rivals in the business world, Vest has veered into the political world by pressing for new laws that would put True.com's competitors at a severe disadvantage.

Vest has managed to convince legislators in states including California, Texas, Virginia, and Michigan to sponsor bills that would target rival dating sites like Match.com, Yahoo Personals, Spring Street Networks, craigslist and eHarmony...it would regulate far more than just dating sites. The California bill introduced last week covers any Web site offering "compatibility" or "social referral services"--a sweeping definition that encompasses everything from high-school reunion site Classmates.com to a matchmaking site for a tennis doubles tournament.

Under the California proposal, social referral services Friendster.com and Google's Orkut.com would be on the hook for fines of millions of dollars a day if they declined to post a warning similar to the one above on California members' ads or profiles.

Not sure if they wanted to, you know, tip off every criminal in the country about this, but TIM, the largest wireless carrier in Italy, sent a fax to every public prosecutor in the country alerting them that they are literally tapped out. They’ve maxed out their capacity to tap cellphone calls—apparently they only have enough capacity to tap up to 7,000 cellphone lines—and from now on new requests will have to be processed on a “first come, first served” basis.

untitled (Phatory floor) 2005

Cory Doctorow: Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette has an amazing, balanced, in-depth profile on John Gilmore, the guy who Sun hired to write their first code, the guy who co-founded EFF, the guy who won't show ID to get on an airplane:

In post 9/11 America, asking "Why?" when someone from an airline asks for identification can start some interesting arguments. Gilmore, who learned to argue on the debate team in his hometown of Bradford, McKean County, has started an argument that, should it reach its intended target, the U.S. Supreme Court, would turn the rules of national security on end, reach deep into the tug-of-war between private rights and public safety, and play havoc with the Department of Homeland Security.

At the heart of Gilmore's stubbornness is the worry about the thin line between safety and tyranny.

"Are they just basically saying we just can't travel without identity papers? If that's true, then I'd rather see us go through a real debate that says we want to introduce required identity papers in our society rather than trying to legislate it through the back door through regulations that say there's not any other way to get around," Gilmore said. "Basically what they want is a show of obedience."

From The New York Tiimes: Facing intense opposition, a large real estate developer has dropped its plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a Queens shopping complex, thwarting Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City, city officials and real estate executives said yesterday. (Via  WalMartFreeNYC; see also The Box Tank)...

On the RHIZOME_RAW list, Marisa Olson asks this question (re: this post),

I feel compelled to ask (of him or anyone here who cares) what comprises this “fine line” between the two extremes of “good Pop Art and a sickening psychophantical [sic] homage to the dominant media culture”..? And must all art that appropriates the form and/or content of popular media fall into one or the other of these extreme categories?

(As soon as I saw my words quoted back at me I thought, “Psychophantical? That’s not how you spell sycophantical.”)

Marisa goes on to say,

Where does parody fit in, because to me, for something to be truly successful, on a parodic level, it has to be highly imitative—and, hence, to some degree, reverent, even if only in the sense of (let’s say) what Jameson calls “nostalgia films,” which are not necessarily acting in praise… To me, it is this act of shadowing (miming, resulting directly from, yet in contrast and however shape-shifted) that best affords the opportunity for critique. Admittedly, it is sort of an act of relinquishing some of the sense of “value” implied in models of authority (read: authorship), in order to sort of free one’s speech, ie to protest.

What comprises the fine line? I don’t know, but I know it when I see it. Parody, it seems to me, is neither Pop Art or ‘sickening’ sycophancy. Good Pop Art doesn’t seem like straight-up parody to me as it’s critique isn’t as implicit. You’re not quite sure if Warhol is critiquing popular culture or celebrating it. His best pieces (and his life) seem to have a conceptual shimmer. One is unsure of his intentions. Nonetheless there always seems to be a critical text in there somewhere… it’s just hard to pin down sometimes.

I don’t think Artstar.tv is intended to be a parody. Perhaps I’m wrong. It also doesn’t seem to be intended as Pop art. It just seems to be a regular ole reality TV show (which btw will air on the Zoom hi-definition satellite network) using reality TV conventions and grafting them onto the art world. This is only speculation, but there doesn’t seem to be a critical text or sub-text in sight.

But anyway. I also wonder how TWhid (& MRiver) would situate their 1 year performance project re: reality tv—and if they see similarities, then have they given us “good Pop Art [or] a sickening psychophantical homage to the dominant media culture”? ;)

1YPV doesn’t have anything to do with reality TV or Pop art IMO. Since reality TV is so heavily edited there isn’t really any formal connection. The closest thing it comes to is the 24/7 web-cams that Big Brother used to have online.

Thanks for the discussion Marisa :)

To my friend's fuck buddy who I probably cant name for legal reasons:

I hate you. I hate your penis, too. I hate you both so much that if I knew which apartment you lived in on Comm Ave I would march right over there and tell you.

Back in October, she was driving us all insane because she hadn't had sex in months when I made the fatal suggestion: "why don't you just go on craigslist and put yourself out of your misery?"

Thanks to Mako, I heard about a remarkable piece of reverse engineering. A reverse engineer (Nils Schneider) wanted to study the firmware of the Apple iPod in order to figure out how to write software that runs on iPods. But he experienced a chicken-and-egg problem: after learning how to write simple programs to run on an iPod, he found that he couldn't figure out how to use the iPod's I/O hardware (in order to extract a copy of the firmwire) without studying the firmwire first to see how Apple does I/O. At the same time, he couldn't study the firmware without first extracting a copy of it.

His ingenious solution was to use someone else's technique for making the iPod squawk and squeak, in order to write a program that output the firmware as a series of sounds (which could then be recorded using a microphone, and analyzed using software on a PC in order to convert them back into a digital representation of the firmware). In effect, he turned the iPod and microphone system into an acoustic modem, and wrote his own modulation scheme for representing data as sound. He wasn't using the iPod's headphone jack; he was making the iPod itself squeak and squawk, using a piezoelectric element somewhere inside the iPod. To protect against background noise, he had to put the iPod and the microphone together inside a padded box, and let them sit for eight hours.

Somehow this reminds me of the scene in William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" in which Johnny is made to recite (for three hours) a memorized computer program to which he has no conscious access. "And then it all faded to cool gray static and an endless tone poem in the artificial language. I sat and sang dead Ralfi's stolen program for three hours." In the story, the program in question is a misappropriated secret; here, despite the interesting aesthetic parallel, I think Schneider's purpose in studying the iPod's firmware is perfectly proper.

In fact, Nils Schneider's remarkable creativity with the iPod gives me a kind of hope for the future. In seventh grade, when I had a computer with a dead monitor (I think it turned out to be unplugged), I wrote a routine to give output in terms of beeps on the speaker; you could tell if a program was working by counting the number of beeps it output. (Strings could be translated into binary and then beeped at you that way, but it was a little tedious writing them down and trying to decode them.)

Schneider's ingenious approach shows several important virtues:

• User innovation and the lack of passivity. Apple didn't intend for third-party software to be used with the iPod; not only was Schneider unconcerned with this, he ended up using the iPod in a way that its developers wouldn't have anticipated (and, if they've heard about it, are probably amused or startled by). He certainly refused to limit his thinking to what the original manufacturer had in mind; he insisted, on, well, thinking different.
• Consciousness of history. This problem was solved before in an earlier generation of technology. As Dave Farber has often pointed out, it's tragic that computer scientists and programmers working today are often thoroughly ignorant of what earlier generations have already invented and implemented. Even more than other fields, computing may be repeating and duplicating effort all the time. The notion of modulating digital data as a waveform at audio frequencies has been deeply important in digital communications, but it's easy enough for people who don't use a modem any more to forget it -- never mind people who (like myself) have never had to use an acoustic coupler.
• An appreciation for the universality of the machine. The idea that data is data and that representations and encodings of it are merely accidental goes back, depending on how you want to count it, decades or centuries. (See, e.g., Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), for some antecedents of this idea in the days before Shannon, Turing, and von Neumann.) But even so, we can get stuck in what cognitive psychologists call "functional fixedness" and refuse to think about data outside of its current representation. We can refuse to think of some signalling method or storage medium as capable of representing any data, of communications media and computing devices as genuinely universal. We can say that certain outputs were made for certain purposes and stubbornly refuse to consider that there are other outputs, even outputs that may be a problem for somebody's security policy. We can read Shannon, or anything after Shannon, and still not know in a practical sense that any data can be encoded on any channel. But Schneider thought with an abstraction and generality that befits an "information age"; he knew that bits are bits, from a communication engineering point of view, and meaning comes after, at another layer.
• Hack value. It can be risky to describe something as having "hack value"; those words now appear in a judicial opinion together with a footnote pointing out that the parties to the action have not defined them. So let me note the Jargon File's definition, and (at the risk of overusing it, and although one could argue that it refers to a somewhat different concept) the famous discussion in The Diamond Age: "Pardon me, Your Honor, the concept is not easy to explain -- there is an ineffable quality to some technology, described by its creators as a concinnitous, or technically sweet, or a nice hack -- signs that it was made with great care by one who was not merely motivated but inspired. It is the difference between an engineer and a hacker."

Now, normally this wouldn’t even register so much as a blip on my game-dar, considering all the other great MMORPGs out there. World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Everquest II, etc. What is remarkable about this game, however, is that it is being developed for a home console, an environment where, for whatever reason, the MMOG scene has never quite taken off. Even more remarkable is that this title is being developed for the Gamecube, a console which takes a lot of flak for its particularly barren online lineup. Besides Phantasy Star II & III, the only Gamecube titles which even show potential for going online are the 4 or 5 LAN-enabled titles, which can only be played online using a program akin to WarpPipe. However, Chunsoft is looking to change all that with their next online RPG, HomeLand. Judging by screenshots and movie clips, the game seems to be a cross between Paper Mario, Animal Crossing, and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.

Chunsoft hasn’t yet released much information on their upcoming title (in English, anyway), but I’ve taken the liberty to skim through the official HomeLand website on an Engrish-laden quest for knowledge. From what I can infer, when you first start the game you’ll select either a male or female main character. Soon after, you will receive “the emblem,” a special item which will somehow affect your class. The single-player game will feature a large, open environment, resplendent with villages, dungeons, side quests, and other usual RPG fare. Rather than random battles, you engage enemies in real-time whilst traversing the overworld, at which point combat ensues. The battles are turn-based, and pretty much consist of selecting an attack and picking an enemy at which to aim it. Additionally, enemies and allies may appear mid-fight, meaning that a routine battle may quickly turn into an enormous brawl.

Aside from the online component, the central gimmick in HomeLand is that you have the ability to, um… hold hands. And you’re not just limited to one-on-one hand-holding, no siree. We’re talking looooong chains of HomeLanders, several dozen in length, like a big virtual game of crack-the-whip. Wait, come back, it’s actually not as frooty as it sounds, and is a key element to several aspects of the game. By holding hands with a fire spirit, for instance, you and everyone else in the chain gain the ability to traverse pits of lava without taking damage. By holding hands with a wind spirit, you gain the ability to blow obstacles out of your path. In battle, the hand-holding mechanic serves a few purposes. First, the person at the very front of the chain gains a stat bonus from each person behind him, and also gains the use of the abilities of everyone else in the chain. Secondly, it serves to protect weak or wounded characters from harm, being that the person at the front of the chain is the only one who can give or take damage. The point of this system is to foster cooperation between players, which means you must choose your party wisely, especially when playing the online component.

Speaking of the online portion of this game (which is featured on its own disc), rather than taking the approach of a traditional RPG (a few giant servers for everyone in the game), HomeLand will allow players to use their Gamecubes to act as miniature servers, into which 35 other people may join. Whether or not this justifies the “Massive” in MMORPG is up for debate. Because of this, only people with broadband will be able to use the online component of the game (dial-up is, like, sooooo 1999). Despite Google’s best efforts, I can’t seem to find much information on the online mode at all, aside from the fact that you’ll play as your personalized emblem rather than your main character, and that it will serve to advance the storyline somehow. If anyone out there can read Japanese, I’d appreciate it if you could provide a better translation (sorry Google).

The Debate: how much of an impact could HomeLand have on Gamecube sales, considering how late in the generation it is? If Chunsoft did decide to port HomeLand over to this side of the pond, would you rather they wait for the Revolution to come out (much like Nintendo did with Animal Crossing)? And would you even pick up the game anyway, considering the currently lackluster offering on all of Nintendo’s consoles so far?

Carter Kustera Boys Will Be Boys 2004 gouache and mixed media on paper 22" x 30"

Boys Will Be Boys detail

Violence with a flair. In his current show at Lyonsweirgallery Carter Kustera finds a way to seriously address the commercial world's obsession with glamorizing violence without abandoning his own aesthetic - or his usual good humor.

The show is titled, "Fabulous Anger," and these provocative works on paper will be up until March 12.

The press release on the gallery site tells us how we can become be an integral part of Kustera's art and wit. He's also a really nice guy, which would be pretty relevant to those who can accept this offer:

Carter Kustera will also be featured in -scope New York from March 11th – 14th at Flatotel, 135 West 52nd Street. Kustera’s "America’s Most Wanting" is a body of work gleaned from personal encounters. These intimate works on paper are simple silhouettes that have quips about the sitter. These engaging antidotes utter volumes about the way people project themselves in public and how the public interprets them. Kustera will be available for individual portrait commissions during the run of the scope Art Fair.

Carter Kustera Who's the Bitch Now? 2005 gouache and mixed media on paper 22" x 30"

Who's the Bitch Now? detail

[images from Lyons-Weir]

Fri Mar 25 04:15:53 EST 2005

jc42 writes "In the latest entry in the battle over Digital Rights Management, a fellow has blatantly ripped off a "tune" from the iTunes Store. "Tune" is 1 minute 3 seconds of silence. To compound his crime, he has posted the tune on his web site for anyone to download. I downloaded it to iTunes, and it played just fine (but now I suppose I'm a criminal, too). I wonder what John Cage and Mike Batt would have to say about this? Will lawyers for Apple or Ciccone Youth send a C&D letter? If I were to make my own MP3 silent tune of exactly the same length and put it online, would I be infringing their copyright?"

Hasbro plans on launching a musical toothbrush called "Tooth Tunes" reports the WSJ.

"When pressed to the teeth, the toothbrush renders a recorded riff from a pop star that lasts two minutes -- precisely the amount of time dentists say children should spend brushing their teeth.

How does it work? "The two-minute recording is stored on a microchip no bigger than a dot atop the letter i. Push a button on the toothbrush, and a minicomputer starts playing the song. Sound waves are transported through the transducer to the front teeth, traveling from there to the jawbone and then to the inner ear.

Hasbro is in talks with several recording artists about getting rights to their recordings. Many artists would probably consider a gig in a toothbrush beneath their talents. But others might welcome the daily exposure in their young fans' lives."

Following our earlier forum post, it seems that Media Lab Europe, was crippled by weak management and tensions between its two shareholders, the State and the MIT, newly released documents show.

WICHITA, Kan. The attorney general of Kansas wants to know the detailed history of the sex lives of nearly 90 women who received late-term abortions.

Court documents show that Phill Kline wants to search the documents for evidence of crimes under laws that limit late-term abortions and require mandatory reporting of suspected child sexual abuse.

Under the order signed by a judge, the attorney general would get records that would include each patient's name, medical history, details of her sex life, birth control practices and psychological profile.

The Wichita Eagle says two medical clinics have asked the Kansas Supreme Court to intercede.

We know that the real barrier to solar energy adoption is not the cost factor, nor our obsession with fossil fuels; it’s the fashion factor. Who wants a roof that looks like a RAM chip? Enter Kyocera to the rescue with solar panels that (gasp) actually look like roof tiles. Whoda thunk?

Cory Doctorow: Larry Lessig sez,

Thanks to some prodding by a couple of great US Senators, the copyright office is currently considering whether to recommend changes to copyright law that will make it easier and cheaper for you to use "orphaned works" -- works that remain under copyright but whose "owner" can't be found. As many of you have written me, this is a real problem that affects thousands of innovative people every year. But the copyright office still needs some convincing.

To convince them, we need your help. If you have a relevant story, or a perspective that might help the Copyright Office evaluate this issue, I would be grateful if you took just a few minutes to write an email telling them your story. The most valuable submissions will make clear the practical burden the existing system creates. (One of my favorite stories is about a copy-shop's refusal to enlarge a 60 year old photo from an elementary school year book for a eulogy because the copyright owner couldn't be found.) Describe instances where you wanted to use a work, but couldn't find the owner to ask permission. Explain how that impacted your ability to create. Or pass this email on to someone who you know might have a useful story to add.

David Pescovitz: New Scientist has a long article about the renewed interest among scientists in the possible medical uses of psychedelic drugs like LSD, Psilocybin, DMT, and Ketamine:

Since 2001, psychiatrist Francisco Moreno of the University of Arizona in Tucson has been testing psilocybin as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Psychotherapy and antidepressants such as Prozac help many patients, but some have such severe symptoms and are so resistant to treatment that they turn to electroshock therapy and even brain surgery. As with the work on cluster headaches, Moreno's study was motivated by reports from people with OCD that psilocybin relieves their symptoms.

So far, Moreno has given both sub-psychedelic and psychedelic doses of pure psilocybin to nine treatment-resistant OCD subjects, in a total of 29 therapy sessions. His preliminary findings suggest firstly that it is safe to ingest psilocybin, which was a primary concern of the trial. Beyond that, Moreno calls his results "promising", but won't discuss them further, since he plans to submit a paper to a peer-reviewed journal this year.

Link (Thanks to Nick Philip for the link and the illustration!)

A tutorial for wiring a sex toy into an XBox. Force-feedback signals + vibrator + XBox Live = DIY teledildonics:

In dedication to JG Ballard (and to a lesser extend, David Cronenberg), I decided to use Burnout 3 in Crash mode. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching a dildo run due to the fact that you just crashed your car into a crowded intersection…

(Found by The Reverend Scott Crawford, thanks)

...while the rest of us continue to insist upon living out our youth through her.

I’d personally like to encourage Matz to take the day off, relax, maybe make a few appearances for the public’s benefit, accept their accolades and exhale with contentment. Today, we celebrate twelve years since an idea popped into that man’s head.

I wonder what I was doing that day. That was right around the time I made that handheld TV jammer and blocked out the closed-circuit high school news program in my English class. Nobody really cared. Definitely not worth talking about twelve years later.

drawing from a pre-school Chechynan child

To Chechnya with art, with deep concern, and love too.

A number of artists from around the world have organized what they are calling the "EMERGENCY BIENNALE in CHECHNYA."

The extraordinary occasion, a work of conceptional art itself, will be inaugurated tomorrow, February 23, at 5 pm with a press conference at le Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Thereafter a suitcase filled with works, projects and concepts by more than 60 artists from all over the world will "hit the road," to be delivered in Grozny to a location yet to be finalized. The project is co-curated by Evelyne Jouanno and the artist Jota Castro with the support of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH).

Duplicates of the works and documentation packed in the suitcase sent to Chechnya will be displayed in Paris until April 23.

All kinds of information on Chechnya will also be presented [in le Palais de Tokyo]. Mylene Sauloy's and Manon Loizeau's films on daily life and culture of Chechens since the beginning of the first war in 1994 will be screened.

nternet post with webcam and direct access to the website created for the occasion - http://www.emergencybiennale.org - will do its utmost to connect with Chechen partners, to receive images and information on the suitcase and the organization of the exhibition in Grozny. A discussion forum will also offer an opportunity to react and exchange on the subject across and beyond all borders.

A publication is in preparation. It will comprise texts on the situation of human rights, some theoretical articles on art, political and social sciences as well as images of the various artistic projects.

[tip from e-Flux, image from sauseschritt, where it was accompanied by the text I've copied below]

terror und gegenterror in tschetschenien: aus einem 2002 veröffentlichten bericht (der russischen föderation und der republik chechnya) über die lage des Bildungswesens in tschetschenien stammen folgendes zitat und die kinderzeichnungen:
pre-school children were born and lived during war and continue to live in war affected situation. the psychological condition of children could be described by words and expressions like terror, reserved disposition, cautiousness in behavior with other adults, insufficient level of development of native speech, poor imagination, absence of variety of emotions ...

[my] English translation of the German above:

terror and counterterror in Chechnya: these drawings and the following quotation comes from an official report (of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Chechnya) published in 2002 on conditions within the Chechnyan education system:

No, it’s not the latest version of Griffin Technology’s PowerMate. It’s a magnetic kitchen timer from Eva Solo that you can stick on your oven or fridge. It’s Danish (natch) and is just so retro and analog that it almost makes us wish we cooked so we’d have an excuse to buy one (guess we’ll just have to settle for the PowerMate).

[Via MoCoLoCo]

Cory Doctorow: Stephen Elliott is a successful novelist whose books are consistently ranked at four or five stars in their Amazon reviews. The sole exceptions are those reviews posted by his bitter, crazy, abusive father, who makes a point of slamming his son's books with bilious online reviews:

The book has scenes like the one where he kisses the hand of the man who abused him. Most normal people will find this nauseating. The book is for wanna-be masochists who enjoy perversion, and people with strong stomachs. Perhaps that's who the author sees as his audience? The book has little plot, and seems like one vaguely descriptive scene after another. The reader is left with a bad taste in his or her mouth. I hear the author's father is preparing a website to show that his background is totally fabricated. That will be an interesting blog.

Link (via Waxy)

GoFast is a new game by some students at Simon Fraser University that requires you to stand up and move around. Fast, even. The multiplayer experience requires you to team up and go on a treasure hunt from computer to computer. When you find the object you’re looking for on the screen you click a button and run to the next computer; and so on, until one team wins.

The video of the game being played is a little like watching Musical Chairs without the music or the chairs, but it’s intriguing.

Now if I could only find 5 friends and 3 more computers, I can give it a go.

[Thanks Matt]

Gary Look, a researcher at MIT, is looking to incorporate landmarks into automatically-generated directions using a software that models the geographical relationships between spaces and their functions.

The Location Awareness Information Representation software, dubbed Lair, can represent a person's location, what that person is near, and what s/he can do at those nearby places, giving directions which are "similar to those a person would give".

The system generates a graphical route map, then produces written directions from the map, using phrases like "turn right at the end of the hallway" or "walk through the doorway into the lounge." Besides, "you will see" phrases assure a person is headed in the right direction.

The researchers have also developed a related tool, the Interactive Simulator for Lair Exploration, that allows users to ask questions about places and routes like "Where am I?", "Describe this place.", "What can I do here?", or "Is place P along my route from X to Y?"

The query tool could be used with handheld computers that track a user's position using indoor equivalents of GPS.

Via TRN mag.
PDF of the research.

In case you don't recognize it, the first included photo is of the Stata Center, the new MIT building by Frank Gehry. Which makes me wonder if Lair will include tips like "take a left when you pass that rickety, celebrity-architected piece of crap." -- FH

For those of you worried that the Defense Department might have decided to bail on the idea of building an armed, robotic helicopter, don't fret. The dream of unmanned killer copters is still alive, at least in some corners of the Pentagon. The U.S. military's highest-profile robo-copter project, the Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) program, crashed and burned a few months back, after the Army decided to pass on funding the UCAR's next, $160 million phase. But some smaller efforts are continuing. The Army recently test-fired a set of rockets from one of its Vigilante unmanned copters. The December trial marked the first time a first rotary-wing drone let loose such weapons. In the not-too-far future, the modified UH-1 "Huey" is expected to make the step up to launching guided missiles, like the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS). Meanwhile, Boeing is turning one of its special forces copters, the Little Bird, into an unmanned killer, too. In a press release, Boeing said it sees the drone as being "uniquely suited for precision re-supply; communications relay using large, heavy packages; airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; downed pilot recovery, and weapons delivery." With a $1.6 million Army grant, the company is...

We know that small-town libraries have shed their image as fusty repositories of moldering encyclopedias and are now high-tech temples of e-learning, but we were still impressed to find out that at least one library has come up with a novel way to get teens into libraries: put audiobooks onto iPod Shuffles. We have it on good word that the South Huntington Public Library in Suffolk County, New York, is doing just that. They apparently have a handful of Shuffles, pre-loaded with books, and are planning to add more. Given the ongoing Shuffle shortage (even Apple’s online store has a two-week delay on shipping them), we’re surprised that the library has any at all to share; let’s hope for their sake that borrowers don’t “forget” to return them.

[Via WWWAC]

some hackers at cmu decided to make the better pogo stick.  instead of a coil spring, it stores energy in a fiber composite bow.

the bow spring stores 2-5 times as much energy per unit mass, and precludes the sliding friction that results when long coil springs buckle sideways.

there’s a page with photos and movies of people flying on these things.  thank deep blue shift for the link.

A few years ago, Warner Brothers sold the video game rights to its film series "The Matrix," a heady science-fiction trilogy starring Keanu Reeves, for $10 million, according to industry reports.

So when the time came for Warner Brothers to sell the game rights to "Constantine," the new fantasy movie also starring Reeves, the studio might have expected a similar windfall. Instead, the rights went to a small developer, Bits Studios, for less than $1 million.

The difference between the two deals is just one example of how unpredictable, and at times unprofitable, the game publishers' relationship with Hollywood has become. Five years ago, the studios looked at video game royalties as a growing source of revenue as well as a source of promotion, while game makers saw movies as a way to stand out on store shelves.

But blockbuster movies have not always made for blockbuster games, and many game makers are weighing licensing deals far more carefully. (NEW YORK TIMES)

Cartozoology n. The science or practice of discovering and studying animals outlined paradigmatically by street layouts as they appear on maps, especially with reference to physical evidence of the animals’ presence in the corresponding terrain.

The Cartozoological Society of Norway

See also: Animals on the Underground & The Brighton Elephant (GPS Drawing)

via The Creative Generalist

gustgr writes "The American Go Association is reporting that Go for the 5x5 board has been solved by the computer program MIGOS, reports the program's creator, Erik Van Der Werk, a professor at the University of Maastricht in Holland. At about a quarter of the full-board version, 5x5 go is miniscule, similar in scale to "solving" 2X2 chess. The fact that a programmer would even consider this a noteworthy challenge is itself a remarkable testament to the game's complexity. Van Der Werk's approach is described in detail in an article at the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NOSR)."

When you think about the whole retro-cool thing, it was really only a matter of time before someone whipped up a Q&D data to analog-audio codec, and, you know, pressed it to vinyl. (We’ll forego any warez, crackz, scratching, or turntablist jokes, if that’s alright.) Enter the band The 8-bit Construction Set, whose self-titled record features encoded samples and data along the the inner tracks that can be uploaded to your machine. And what’s more, the whole record was programmed entirely in 6502 assembly language. We are humbled, gentlemen.

[Via Slashdot]

We get pretty excited around these parts at the prospects for open source biotechnology (and have even mused about what open source nanotechnology might look like), so it's good to see another field begin to embrace the open source philosophy. ZINC -- which, in the free software tradition of recursive acronyms, stands for ZINC Is Not Commercial -- is a free database of compounds for "virtual screening." That is, ZINC provides 3D models of chemical compounds in a standard "docking" format used in chemistry and biochemistry software, allowing researchers to assemble and test new chemical compositions on their computers. While useful across chemistry-related disciplines, this is particularly important for drug discovery and development -- and could be of great value to biochemistry and pharmaceutical researchers in the developing world.

ZINC was created by Brian K. Shoichet and John J. Irwin, faculty at the pharmaceutical chemistry department of UC San Francisco, and is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Shoichet and Irwin announced the opening of the project late last year in an article published in the journal of the American Chemical Society.

ZINC encourages users to upload information about chemical compounds not currently in the database (which already contains 2.7 million entries). Unlike BioForge, ZINC does not explicitly adopt free/open source software as a model; nonetheless, they do not try to extend copyright over submitted compounds, and emphasize both on the site and in their descriptive paper the free and open access elements of the project.

(Via Open Access News)

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in The Tech Bloom – Collaborative and Emergent Technologies at 12:25 PM)

a girl holds a poster reading 'Seriously damages human rights' during an anti-Bush demonstration in front of the US Embassy in Brussels today

[image by Jacques Colett for Agence France Presse Belgium]

Cory Doctorow: The Phillipines' communist New Peoples' Army, a guerrilla rebel group, has sanctioned same-sex marriage and officiated the first gay marriage in the force:

On Friday, under a romantic drizzle in a muddy clearing in Compostela Valley province in Mindanao, Ka Andres and Ka Jose exchanged vows in a heavily guarded ceremony before local villagers, friends from the city and their comrades in arms.

They are considered the first homosexual couple in the New People's Army (NPA) who were wed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

nks, Winston!)

Hunter S Thompson Commits SuicideAspen, Colo | February 20AP - Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself Sunday night at his home, his son said. He was 67.

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Delirious Hong Kong: Check out Michael Wolf's photos of architecture there. Please tell me these are photoshopped:













(another hat tip to Lorenzo Bustillos)

Cory Doctorow: Cicolini sez, "Someone was cleaning out an old insane asylum and found the cremated remains of over 5000 people tucked away in a closet. Here are some former patients of the hospital who are trying to tidy up this huge PR mess."

Over the next few months we will hold listening sessions with former and current patients of the hospital, their chosen friends and family members, caregivers and neighbors, to begin to design and site the memorial. The dates and locations of these sessions will be posted on this web site—you can attend and make your voice heard. You're also welcome to write to us via mail or email.

Either way, you will be heard.

We are working to find a ceremony to bring peace and sanctuary to the cremated remains. The ceremony will help us remember the distance we have come in providing care for people with mental illness and addiction in Oregon.

Cicolini!)

Thanks so much Maciej.

Up next is Francis Hwang, Director of Technology at Rhizome, and artist, writer, and software engineer. His most recent artwork is the Unauthorized iPod U2 vs. Negativland Special Edition. He is the developer of Lafcadio, an object-relational mapping layer for Ruby. He has written about technology and culture for Spin, Wired, ArtByte, and Feed.

Go Francis.

Country_hacker writes "News site TBO.com is reporting ChevronTexaco has opened a hydrogen fuel station in Chino, California, and has plans to open five more. Servicing three (or more) Hyundai SUVs, these prototype fueling stations are a part of a five-year cost-sharing program put on by the Department of Energy. Could this be the 'egg' in the alternate fuels 'chicken or egg?' scenario?"

entertaininly brief music reads, often with mp3s

Dwell Magazine merges modern architecture with climate-friendly living in "Making Modern Green," this year's installment of the Dwell Home Invitational (link to last year's winner). All five submissions detailed in the Jan/Feb 2005 issue seek to "create a sustainable single-family home in Los Angeles" and "establish a progressive model for future housing."

Escher GuneWardena's winning design features diversely designed shading devices, from plant trellises to to movable aluminum-and-polyester screens, solar chimneys and "cool cavities" in the crawl space to manage summer heat and maximize winter sun. The house's green roof will include photovoltaics and solar water heating panels, and native plants that need little water.

Behold, 13-year Guinness World Record Holder, Bryan Berg.

Exhibition answers that question.

After reading our recent post about the controversy over the potential use of nuclear power (could it be clean and efficient, or is it an accident waiting to happen?), reader Mikhail Capone dared to defy us! (Exactly what we were...

Ben Sullivan writes "St. Louis researchers say there's something to the notion of a 'sixth sense' in humans. A part of the brain known as the cingulate cortex, they've found, likely combines multiple, sometimes unconscious data streams to come to conclusions and send warning signals to the conscious mind. Example: Aboriginal tribesmen somehow sensed the impending danger of December's tsunami in time to flee to higher ground before the first sign of water."

Whether they're strapped to our belts, sitting on our desks, or jammed in an overstuffed closet, we absolutely love our gadgets.

So it wasn't exactly easy coming up with the definitive list of the 100 best gadgets ever unleashed. In the weeks we spent debating the entries, tempers were flared, fingers were pointed, chairs were smashed over heads, and feelings were hurt. But we emerged, like Moses from the mountain, with the world's most authoritative ranking of the best gadgets of all time.

But let's lay some ground rules before we get started. What defines a "gadget" anyway?

It has to have electronic and/or moving parts of some kind. Scissors count, but the knife does not. It has to be a self-contained apparatus that can be used on its own, not a subset of another device. The flashlight counts; the light bulb does not. The notebook counts, but the hard drive doesn't.

It has to be smaller than the proverbial bread box. This is the most flexible of the categories, since gadgets have gotten inexorably smaller over time. But in general we included only items that were potentially mobile: The Dustbuster counts; the vacuum cleaner doesn't. In the end, we tried to get to the heart of what really makes a gadget a gadget. (MOBILE PC MAG)