Craftster user Sharon.S made this swell bench out of broken-down chairs, a "decrapitated head board" and various bits and pieces. "I am an a self -taught artist and I build furniture out of salvage. I have never entered a contest before, but think this'll be loads of fun!
The first picture is of two chairs that were all wonky and shaky. I cut them apart and used them for the ends of a bench. The back of the bench is made from parts of a decrapitated head board. This whole project (except for the 2X4 frame underneath) is from curbside salvage."
Link
(via Craft)
OK, I'm a little punchy after a redeye flight with a small baby, but I just wanted to share this air-travel brainstorm I had over the Atlantic. You know how airlines often have a gigantic list of exotic meals you can special order (Vegan, Hindu, Asian Vegetarian, Low Sodium, Lacto-Ovo, Kosher, etc)?
Here's how it would work: after they cleared the dishes in all the cabins (including the posh nosh in First Class), people who took the Freegan option would get a chance to go to the galley and check out what's left over and edible. Some flights, you'd get fillet mignon; some flights, you'd get small, sickly bags of carrot batons.
The airlines would have less food wastage, and they'd get to serve an entirely new dietary niche for free!
You read it here first, kids. Combine this with my plan for Ninja Airlines and you'd have a profitable business on your hands. Or at least you'd have an entertaining business on your hands.
Reece sez, "My Lords, ladies and gentelmen, Greetings and Jubilations!
May I be so bold has to ask you to please take a ganders at ones Steampunked t-shirt. A rather whimsical satire of the R2 droid.
Jolly good it is too - if I do say so myself!
What-O! Reece"
Link
(Thanks, Reece!)
PS: Punk, brothers, steam with care!
Steam in the presence of the passen-gaire,
A blue steampunk for a six steam fare,
A buff steampunk for a four steam fare,
A pink steampunk for a two steam fare,
Punk in the presence of the passen-gaire!
Bruce Schneier's latest commentary looks into one of my pet peeves: faxed signature requirements. He writes "Aren't fax signatures the weirdest thing? It's trivial to cut and paste -- with real scissors and glue -- anyone's signature onto a document so that it'll look real when faxed. There is so little security in fax signatures that it's mind-boggling that anyone accepts them. Yet people do, all the time. I've signed book contracts, credit card authorizations, nondisclosure..." It's amazing how organizations are sometimes willing to accept low-quality, unverified scans delivered over POTS as authoritative, when they won't take the same information in a high-resolution scan delivered over (relatively secure) email.
By Andrew Liszewski When it comes to ferris wheels, it doesn't get more iconic than the Pacific Ferris Wheel at the Santa Monica Pier. But what goes up must eventually come down, and in this case the old... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 1:02 pm
Barence writes "PC Pro has received, benchmarked and discussed the first Intel Atom processor to be seen in the wild. A full analysis of the Atom processor itself is accompanied by a full review of the first PC — yes it's a PC, not a laptop — to use one. The benchmark results are pretty much as expected, but it's the power savings that really excite. And as a rep from the PC maker, Tranquil, joked — they could have left the Atom CPU uncooled if they'd really wanted to prove a point, as it's the old graphics chip that produces 70% of the heat coming from the motherboard. Exciting times ahead for the upcoming Atom-based Eee and friends." MojoKid was one of several readers, too, to mention the upcoming Eee Box mini-desktop from Asus (also Atom-based), which is supposed to start from $299, writing "although the actual dimensions are listed, the image from ASUS' booth really gives a sense of scale. In the picture, the Eee Box is standing next to a paperback book."
By Andrew Liszewski If you're already a fan of Tokyoflash's unique collection of obscure and hard to read watches, then you'll no doubt like these two new additions from Nekura. But if you're the type... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 12:37 pm
Time Warner is testing throttled — severely throttled — tiered pricing for internet access, putting it at odds with its customers, with the media industry, and with the future of the internet... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 12:29 pm
An analyst raised his price target on semiconductor maker Micron Tech Inc. for the second time in a week Tuesday, saying growth in the DRAM unit may likely offset challenges in the NAND unit. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 12:13 pm
As rumored a couple of months back, Time Warner is starting a trial of metered Internet access. "On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte... [T]iers will range from $29.95 a month for... 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for... 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap."
Macworld.com - Dare to be Creative has announced the release of Dragoman 1.0, a batch file conversion utility for Mac OS X. It costs $39, and runs as a 10-day trial version when you download it. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Jun 2008 | 12:00 pm
As you age your brain slows down, your memory goes, and your attention lapses. Online brain fitness games like Lumosity sell the promise of stopping that decline. But as the chart below shows, it is... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:58 am
Office equipment maker Xerox Corp. said Tuesday it closed on its $68 million acquisition of Veenman B.V, a Dutch independent office technology reseller, from Corporate Express NV. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:46 am
On-demand software provider SuccessFactors Inc. said Tuesday it filed a registration statement for the proposed public offering of about 7.5 million shares, of which the company is selling 2.5 million... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:42 am
The Times is so right about this.A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:32 am
This is the year of all years to go to the Personal Democracy Forum, coming up June 23-24 at Lincoln Center. Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej have a great program. It’s the most amazing election year... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:14 am
AP - As readership and revenues shift onto the Internet, experts said on Tuesday that top news media executives must seek new digital opportunities without neglecting their traditional print publications by rushing headlong into cyberspace. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:07 am
As readership and revenues shift onto the Internet, experts said on Tuesday that top news media executives must seek new digital opportunities without neglecting their traditional print... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:07 am
By Brian Stelter Can the environment make for entertaining TV? Discovery Communications is about to find out. On Wednesday in the United States, Discovery will introduce Planet Green, a new cable brand promoted as the first 24-hour channel dedicated to eco-friendly living. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:05 am
Drugstore operator Walgreens has completed installing and networking Ionit Technologies's digital video recording system to monitor, manage and protect over 6,200 stores, facilities and distribution centers across the US. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
SHANGHAI, China, June 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In order to meet the demand of the rapid development of China and the Asian economy, ICL Industrial Products is opening a new subsidiary in China, Jiaxing ICL Chemical Co., Ltd. Jiaxing ICL Chemical Co. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Lois K. Solomon, South Florida Sun-Sentinel Jun. 2--BOCA RATON -- Muslims seeking to show "the real image of Islam" have unveiled a new $2.3 million mosque in Boca Raton that will house a Sunday school, prayer hall and community meeting rooms. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Robertson, D Ross Smith-Vaniz, William F Coral reefs, one of the most biologically diverse and important ecosystems on Earth, are experiencing unprecedented and increasing ecological decline, yet the fish faunas of such reefs and other tropical shoreline habitats remain poorly known in many areas. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Bruce Henderson, The Charlotte Observer, N.C. Jun. 3--In a victory for environmentalists, state regulators will review whether Duke Energy's expanding Cliffside plant has the most effective controls available to catch mercury and dozens of other hazardous air pollutants. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Scott Waldman, Albany Times Union, N.Y. Jun. 3--RENSSELAER -- Requiring small boats to obtain the same federal permits as large commercial craft would strangle the local recreational boating industry, cutting revenue and jobs, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said Monday. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Mary Beth Lane, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio Jun. 3--The final leg of a natural-gas pipeline from Colorado to Ohio is expected to be operating in 18 months, now that federal regulators have given final approval. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Anonymous Busy, dam-building beavers may be more important for preserving forest wetlands than temperature and rainfall, a recent study suggests. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Peterson, Erin ON MAY 10, GOVERNOR TIM PAWLENTY will cast his line into the waters near Brainerd as part of the annual Governor's Fishing Opener. The 60-year tradition has had its share of hijinks and headlines. Here are the keepers. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Marquez, Jessica HR OUTSOURCING Hewlett-Packard s acquisition of EDS may mean good news for ExcellerateHRO, the HR outsourcing joint venture between EDS and Towers Perrin. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
Hewlett-Packard has released a new version of its Neoview data warehouse platform to provide companies with broader access to operational business intelligence. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced today that Fran Allen, IBM Fellow Emerita and 2007 Turing Award Winner, and Mary Lou Jepsen, founder and CTO of One Laptop per Child, will be keynote speakers for the 8th Annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, which will be held October 1-4, 2008 at the Keystone Resort in Keystone, Colorado. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Pappas, Ken Employee education might be the best tool for fighting invasion of computer networks. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Anonymous COMMUNICATIONS Japan Communications is to launch internet-based mobile phones that would allow users to transmit calls using VoIP (voice over internet protocol). Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Jennifer Lebovich, The Miami Herald Jun. 3--When it came to computer skills, 66-year-old Helen Wilson couldn't do much beyond logging on and playing solitaire. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
DigitalPost Interactive (OTCBB: DGLP) (www.dglp.com), a leader in the digital media-sharing and social networking space, announced today that Kiddie Kandids LLC (www.kiddiekandids.com) is launching a new, nationwide family website product powered by DigitalPost Interactive's advanced digital media-sharing platform in Q4, 2008. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Davis, Anita It's no secret that young Asians love technology, but how exactly are they using it? Exclusive new data reveals how they combine digital media, and how their digital diet varies by country Sophia Nagar sits in her turquoise bedroom in front of her desktop computer after a hard day's work. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
By Anonymous A survey of Chinese consumers suggests that most web users believe that government control of the internet is a good thing. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Jun 2008 | 11:00 am
USATODAY.com - Thirsty for more business during the worst slump in its history, Starbucks will try to lure more customers by offering two hours of free AT&T Wi-Fi a day. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Jun 2008 | 10:56 am
Don't miss the fireworks today as hedge fund manager George Soros testifies before the Senate Commerce Committee. He apparently will say that oil is a bubble, and that commodities are not a legitimate... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 10:54 am
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Tuesday defended biofuels, saying they could be an "important tool" against food insecurity, at the start of the UN food summit on... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 10:46 am
Spending a lot of timely lately mulling some issues related to catastrophe finance and spurious correlations. Anyone find interesting patterns in these two photos of burned homes from last October's wildfires... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 10:46 am
Reuters - Microsoft Corp is making its Windows
operating system available to low-cost desktop PCs, as cheaper
laptops enjoy booming demand globally, the software giant said
on Tuesday.
Stef sez, "TheyWorkForYou.com, the Open Source re-imagining of the site that the British Parliament should be, has been quietly acquiring video from BBC Parliament for a while now, and has over 30,000 clips. However, due the archaic nature of the Mother of Parliaments, there has been no sufficiently accurate timecode data (anywhere!) to make it available on the site to users.
Solution: they've built a little crowdsourcing game: watch the video, match the text, the clip goes live, and you move up the rankings. Improving democracy has never been so addictive.
Let's see if we can get all the clips live before the Cease-and-Desist arrives."
Link
(Thanks, Stef!)
Stef sez, "TheyWorkForYou.com, the Open Source re-imagining of the site that the British Parliament should be, has been quietly acquiring video from BBC Parliament for a while now, and has over 30,000... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 10:38 am
The German government is set to reap around one billion euros (1.55 billion dollars) this year from the sale of carbon dioxide emission rights, a press report said Tuesday. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 10:38 am
By Andrew Liszewski When I was younger, to say I was a fan of Jurassic Park was a bit of an understatement. Not only did I love the movie, but I seemed to have a soft spot for Jurassic Park themed video... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 10:18 am
Toilet troubles on the International Space Station (ISS) could force Russian cosmonauts to return to Earth early, a Russian official told Interfax news agency Tuesday. "It's... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 10:18 am
More word on Canada's version of the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which Industry Minister Jim Prentice is rumoured to be ready to release tomorrow: it will include a $500/download fine, which means that if your kids download a couple of $0.99 singles without paying for them, the American labels will be able to take $1,000 out of her college fund (and those are Canadian dollars, still worth something on the international market).
Some sources say that it comes as a result of Prentice's concern that the Conservatives could be tied to huge damage awards against teenagers for peer-to-peer file sharing. If that is indeed the case, it is not clear how this provision will solve that concern. While there are still many questions about this provision (does it target downloading or uploading? does it exempt sound recordings covered by the private copying levy? is the $500 a set amount or a maximum? is it per infringement or cover all activity? does it require actual evidence that files made available are downloaded?), consider a case involving 1000 song files, not an unusually high number. The "retail" value of those files is roughly $1000, yet on a per infringement basis the Prentice proposal could lead to a damage award of $500,000. Even small scale cases would lead to huge awards - 50 songs could lead to a $25,000 fine. Ironically, the prospect of huge damage awards comes as Canadian musicians and songwriters have both rejected lawsuits against individuals. If Prentice hopes that the provision reduces the concern associated with file sharing lawsuits, this move may actually have the opposite effect.
Japan's capital Tokyo is preparing to force industry to make big cuts in greenhouse gases, an official said Tuesday, taking the lead in a country struggling to meet its Kyoto Protocol... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 9:57 am
Ponca City, We Love You writes "The tower of Pisa began to lean five years after its construction began, in 1178, and by 1990 it had tilted more than four meters off its true vertical. Conservationists estimated that the entire 14,500-ton structure would collapse 'some time between 2030 and 2040.' Now the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been stabilized and declared safe for at least another three centuries. The stabilization, which cost $30M, was accomplished by anchoring it to cables and lead counterweights, while 70 tons of soil were removed from the side away from the lean, and cement was injected into the ground to relieve the pressure. The tilt has now returned to where it was in the early 19th century. Nicholas Shrady, author of Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa, says that the tower was destined to lean from the outset because it was built on 'what is essentially a former bog.' Shrady adds that the tower previously came close to collapsing in 1838, 1934, and 1995. (The commission convened in 1990 to study the tower's stability was the 17th such.) Although Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped cannon balls from the tower in a gravity experiment, Shrady says the myth is the result of 'the overripe imagination of Galileo's secretary and first biographer, Vincenzo Viviani.'"
Reuters - Don't blame the fridge for your steep
power bills -- an Australian consumer agency study has found
that videogame consoles and plasma flat-screen TVs are major
electricity guzzlers, even when left on stand-by.
Shuttle Discovery's astronauts geared up for the first spacewalk of their mission Tuesday and the installation of Japan's giant lab to the international space station. The two... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 7:51 am
VonGuard writes "Earlier this year, I spoke to Mark Rizzo, the man who manages the people who run Sony's online game servers. Rizzo learned the ropes of MMO hosting back on Ultima Online, and we chatted about where the tough problems were then versus now. Rizzo compares the operation to a 24/7 scientific simulation, albeit with some sassier and more involved end-users. His favorite innovation since those early days? Rapidly provisioning and deploying Linux installations tailor-made to their purposes. Here's my article on Rizzo and his band of 50-some-odd sysadmin-cum-dungeon-masters, written for the new newspaper The Systems Management News."
BASKING RIDGE, N.J., June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Business is expanding its ultra-long-haul (ULH) network to enhance communication services for companies doing business Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 7:01 am
MIAMI, June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- A net 8 percent of chief information officers (CIOs) in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area expect to hire information technology (IT)... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 7:00 am
CINCINNATI, June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- A net 11 percent of chief information officers (CIOs) in the Cincinnati area expect to hire information technology (IT) professionals... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 7:00 am
ATLANTA, June 3 /PRNewswire/ -- A net 9 percent of chief information officers (CIOs) in the Atlanta area expect to hire information technology (IT) professionals in the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 7:00 am
Stony Stevenson writes "Quantum cryptography, the most secure method of transmitting data, has taken a step closer to mainstream viability with a technique that simplifies the distribution of keys. Researchers at NIST claim that the new 'quantum key distribution' method minimizes the required number of detectors, the most costly components in quantum crypto. Four single-photon detectors are usually required (these cost $20K to $50K each) to send and decode cryptography keys. In the new method, the researchers designed an optical component that reduces the required number of detectors to two. (The article mentions that in later refinements to the published work, they have reduced the requirement to one detector.) The researchers concede that their minimum-detector arrangement cuts transmission rates but point out that the system still works at broadband speeds."
Stan Romanek, who claims he has been repeatedly abducted by extraterrestrials, has released video he says shows an alien peering into his window several years ago. A few nights ago, Romanek was a guest on Larry King along with Jeff Peckman, who is pushing for the city of Denver to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission. Link to Larry King video, Link to Denver Post
AP - SpiralFrog Inc., which operates an ad-supported, free music and video download Web site, said Monday it will soon begin offering content from Coldplay, Keith Urban and other recording artists as part of a new licensing deal with EMI Music. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Jun 2008 | 4:05 am
Though Wired.com readers selected 10 excellent photos in our water photo contest, we here at the Photo Department like to fight for the underdog. Here are our 10 favorite submissions that we think deserved more attention.
Our next bi-monthly photo contest is summer. Let us office shmoes live vicariously through your best summer photo. Check out the contest page for more information.
Left:
Amazon Worker
Submitted by Fernando Martinho
Photographer's comment:
"This man works producing charcoal of illegal wood. He drinks the same water he is destroying...."
:
Water Feet
Submitted by Elliot Carvalho
Photographer's comment:
"A kid takes a dive on Ipanema Beach, Rio de Janeiro"
:
Floating in Color
Submitted by Kristarella
Photographer's comment:
"On Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia."
:
Puddle Beamer
Submitted by AmsterS@m
Photographer's comment:
"BMW reflected in a puddle in Amsterdam, shot with my Sony Ericsson S700i mobile-phone cam."
:
Falling Drops
Submitted by Anonymous
Photographer's comment:
"Drops of water falling from the wall in Hong Kong"
:
Mnemonic
Submitted by Orion Schmidt
Photographer's comment:
"View of St. Sebastian's Church in Salzburg, Austria. Taken on a Nikon pocket point-and-click."
:
This Sunset Brought to You By:
Submitted by Petter Duvander
Photographer's comment:
"Take that for showing all those horrible infomercials!"
:
Red Bridge
Submitted by Paco Alcantara
Photographer's comment:
"A bridge in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan"
:
Nature's Testament
Submitted by Vilhjalmur Ingi Vilhjalmsson
Photographer's comment:
"Skogarfoss, a 60-meter-high [nearly 200-foot] waterfall in southern Iceland. Legend tells that behind the waterfall is a treasure chest filled with unimaginable riches. The story goes that a man ventured behind the falls and grasped the handle on the chest, only for it to vanish in front of his very eyes."
1657: The blood stops circulating in the body of the scientist who definitively established that blood indeed circulates. William Harvey is dead.
Most scientists and physicians in Harvey's time were still blindly following the second-century Greek physician Galen, who proved that arteries contain blood. But he thought that the liver converted food to blood and that the arteries and veins are distinct systems. Galen warned his students not to be content with book knowledge, but 14 centuries of doctors relied instead on Galen's many anatomical treatises and did not themselves perform dissections.
In the century before Harvey, Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius published charts of his own dissections. Vesalius' work literally resurrected the practice of dissection of human cadavers: It was still widely forbidden, and for centuries to come often had to be performed in secret on newly dead bodies stolen from cemeteries by "resurrection men."
Cairo physician Ibn al-Nafis had established the "lesser circulation" between heart and lungs in the 11th century. Hieronymus Fabricius, of Italy, published a work on the valves in the veins in 1603, but he mistakenly saw them as imposing a speed limit on the flow of blood from the heart. However, al-Nafis' work was not widely known in Christian Europe, and no one put it together with the true import of Fabricius' research.
Until William Harvey.
Harvey experimented on animals and even on surface veins in the limbs of living humans. In 1628, he published his magnum opus, Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals -- often called De Motu Cordis for the literal heart of its original Latin title.
It demonstrated conclusively that the heart pumps blood to the rest of the body, and that the veins return the blood to the heart. With the microscope not yet available, Harvey could not see what connects the smallest arteries to the smallest veins, but he postulated the existence of the capillaries.
Harvey also served as a royal physician. How did he get a plum job like that? The man was talented, but he also had the good judgment to marry the daughter of another royal physician.
As doctor to King Charles I, Harvey did a lot of scrambling during the English Civil War, losing most of his scientific papers and ordinary possessions to anti-royalist riots. He fled London to Oxford with the court in 1642, then left the court (and his job) to return to London in 1646. Thus, he was not royal physician when the king was beheaded in a public execution on a London street in 1649. Plenty to learn about the motion of blood there.
Harvey published his second major work, On Generation in Animals, in 1651. In it, he propounded the notion that an animal embryo grows gradually, in parts, and does not exist fully formed in miniature in the ovum, as much current theory then held. Harvey's ideas, as with circulation, were based on direct observation and measurement.
But the founder of modern experimental physiology, cardiology and embryology was again impeded by not being able to observe the microscopic level: the earliest, smallest stages of embryonic growth. Antony van Leeuwenhoek did not make the first practical microscopes until two decades after Harvey's death.
Harvey died at age 79. The cause of death was a stroke, which we now know to be a circulatory disease.
Summer is finally here, and we under-sunned desk turds want to see what fun looks like. Remind us what it is to be young and capable of joy again with a skillfully captured frame.
Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best summer photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com home page. We want to see itchy bug bites and rickety bunk beds, sparklers and barbecues. Take us on a manic road trip through fireflies and wine vines, and leave us sipping margaritas on umbrellaed beaches. If it doesn't scream "summer," we don't want to see it.
The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.
We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).
Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!
NEW YORK - Microsoft Corp.'s Internet search engine will become the default search program on all personal computers sold in the United States and Canada by Hewlett-Packard Co. , the world's biggest maker... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 4:00 am
SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. chief executive Jerry Yang pushed for an employee severance program that made it more expensive for Microsoft Corp. to engineer a takeover even after an outside consultant questioned... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Jun 2008 | 4:00 am
Myst co-creator Robyn Miller writes about computer pioneer Doug Engelbart's "mother of all demos" from 1968.
What I didn't know until recently, is that a stunted version of hypertext had been demonstrated as early as 1968. This was no run-of-the-mill boring-vision-of-the-future demo. This was, simply put, "The Mother of All Demos". Steven Levy first gave it that name and it seems to have stuck: The Mother of All Demos (and oh I really love that name). Douglas Engelbart's whirling vision of the future; it was the first public use of a mouse, as well as examples of cutting, copying, pasting, teleconferencing, video conferencing, email, and... hypertext. It's just too damn much for 1968! From Steven Levy in his book, Insanely Great, The Life and Times of the Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything:
"... a calming voice from Mission Control as the truly final frontier whizzed before their eyes. It was the mother of all demos. Engelbart's support staff was as elaborate as one would find at a modern Grateful Dead concert. ..."
Apro+im writes "Today, Google announced that Google Finance will report real-time prices on NASDAQ-listed securities. While real-time stock quotes are not new, they have long encumbered with subscriptions, legal agreements, or pay software. This may be the first free source for real-time quotes."
Something quite interesting happens in the first few minutes of Ninja Gaiden II: The dead people don't vanish.
About five minutes into the game, I finished my first battle, and it was a grisly spectacle of carnage. I'd killed about seven guys, and their corpses lay scattered about. Then I went around the corner to save my progress at the "sacred statue."
When I turned around ... the bodies were still there.
All seven of them. Everything was intact: the fractal flowers of blood on the walls, the body pieces I'd severed from their hosts -- a couple of legs, a stray arm -- scattered like doll parts.
Why was this so weird? Because the bodies weren't gone.
In the originalNinja Gaiden, every time you killed someone, within a few seconds the body would poof away in a cloud of eldritch smoke -- leaving nothing behind, not even a bloodstain. You'd dispatch 20 guys, go around the corner to snare some loot, and when you came back a few seconds later, the fight scene was as clean and sterile as an operating room.
This phenomenon is not limited to the first Ninja Gaiden. Over the years, I've noticed that most of the seriously violent games I love deal with the corpses by simply whisking them away. Take the recent Grand Theft Auto IV: I'd butcher my way through a gunfight, wander off to admire the view out a window, then on the way back to my car discover that the bodies were gone, neatly as if they'd been Raptured. Nothing left behind but their ammo!
On the one hand, this vanishing-body thing is such a blasé convention of gameplay that it's barely worth mentioning. No big deal, right? Often the designers make the bodies disappear for reasons of gameplay, because leaving all the bodies piled up is ludologically impractical: If every monster killed in World of Warcraft hung around forever, Azeroth would be so chest-deep in stinking corpses that you couldn't walk anywhere. The sheer metric tonnage of killing in our favorite games essentially requires that there be some sort of cleanup crew.
But still, I wonder if there isn't a moral effect here, too.
I mean, I've been gaming for 25 years. How many people -- or monsters, or entities, or robots, or whatever -- have I killed? If you add up all those gunfights, laser battles, BFG attacks, crazy Japanese RPG spellcasting deaths, throat-slittings from behind, starcraft pulverized by plasma missiles: Man, it's probably nearing a million or something. That's war criminal territory.
So when you put it that way, this idea -- that the bodies of everyone we kill just sort of wink out of existence -- is so hilariously pregnant with misplaced dread that it's practically Freudian. It's as if our violent games can't quite bear to have us face up to the dimensions of what we're doing. So they just get rid of the evidence.
Now, I'm not saying that games turn us into killers, or that I'm going to stop playing these things. I'm just ... sayin'.
All of which brings me back to Ninja Gaiden II, the Xbox 360 game that hit stores Tuesday. Unlike in its prequels, the bodies hang around. Indeed, they hang around for a good long while. After I'd killed my way through about seven battles, I experimentally backtracked all the way to the beginning, and sure enough -- every body was still lying there, every blood fleck on the ceiling intact. I peered off the edge of a promontory to spy a battleground far below and, yep: There's that guy I disemboweled. Still dead.
Now, did this change the emotional, or even moral, timbre of the game?
In some ways, yes. You really do get a better sense that you're a sociopath when the evidence of your crimes is stacked around you. (The human bodies, anyway; magikal beasts still vanish in a puff of smoke, but since they were probably undead in the first place, you could mount some legalistic argument that you didn't technically kill them. Or something.)
On the other hand, you could argue that the moral and aesthetic content of all those racked-up corpses isn't negative. It can be meaningful in a sneaky way: As I meandered back over the scenes of my previous slaughters, the preposterously huge body count sometimes had a Wagnerian feel to it -- all this senseless, tragic death!
Other times it felt self-parodic. The jumbled piles of cut-off legs felt more like the severed-limb knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or maybe Ovid's gore-flecked parodies of Greek combat in The Metamorphoses. By leaving the bodies in, the game manages simultaneously to take the violence more seriously, and less.
We're going to see more and more of this -- because unless I'm mistaken, the new trend seems to be to leave the bodies onscreen. Maybe it's the stronger pixel-pushing abilities of next-gen consoles, which makes it easier to leave the bodies around for Halo-style looting. Personally, I applaud this trend, because it brings these hidden moral and narrative dimensions to the fore, at least slightly.
Let the dead lie. We'll learn something about them -- and, maybe, ourselves.
- - -
Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to Wired and New York magazines. Look for more of Clive's observations on his blog, collision detection.
The fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons is slated for June 6, and that is also the deadline for entering the GeekDad portrait contest. Send us a drawing of yourself and your child (or children) as D&D characters, and you could be win a copy of the 4th Edition Players Handbook.
CWmike writes "A recent survey of 300 senior IT staff found that 94% fear PDAs present a security risk, surpassing the 88% who highlighted mobile storage devices as a worry. Nearly eight in 10 said laptops were an issue. Only four in 10 had encrypted data on their laptops, and the remainder said the information was 'not worth' protecting. A key danger with PDAs was that over half of IT executives surveyed were 'not bothering' to enter a password when they used their phone. A VP at the company that performed the surbey said: 'Companies need to regain control of these devices and the data that they are carrying, or risk finding their investment in securing the enterprise misplaced and woefully inadequate.' Is this just iPhone fear-mongering? Do you think the passwords execs could remember would help with securing PDAs and smart phones?"
Scientific American has a nice article listing the top five mistakes that photo-fakers make when they use photoshop to doctor piccies.
Surrounding lights reflect in eyes to form small white dots called specular highlights. The shape, color and location of these highlights tell us quite a bit about the lighting.
In 2006 a photo editor contacted me about a picture of American Idol stars that was scheduled for publication in his magazine (above). The specular highlights were quite different (insets).
The highlight position indicates where the light source is located (above left). As the direction to the light source (yellow arrow) moves from left to right, so do the specular highlights.
The highlights in the American Idol picture are so inconsistent that visual inspection is enough to infer the photograph has been doctored. Many cases, however, require a mathematical analysis. To determine light position precisely requires taking into account the shape of the eye and the relative orientation between the eye, camera and light. The orientation matters because eyes are not perfect spheres: the clear covering of the iris, or cornea, protrudes, which we model in software as a sphere whose center is offset from the center of the whites of the eye, or sclera (above right).
Wil Wheaton sez, "This guy really loves science fiction, and REALLY hates the Sci-Fi channel for not airing enough classic SciFi. So he found all sorts of shows online, and has created his own incredibly awesome repository of classic science fiction television show links. As far as I can tell, it's all legal, and there are hundreds of hours of programming to choose from."
Link
(Thanks, Wil!)
You may think your band is the greatest thing to come down the pike since Uriah Heep, but if you want to win on MySpace, you're going to have to prove it to the kids. Follow our guide to social networking domination on Wired.com's How-To Wiki.
Elizabeth Kolbert writes about the life of Buckminster Fuller and about an exhibition about Fuller at the Whitney Museum of American Art. “By staging the retrospective, the Whitney raises—or, really, one should say, re-raises—the question of Fuller’s relevance,” Kolbert writes. “Was he an important cultural figure because he produced inventions of practical value or because he didn’t?” Here is a portfolio of images from the magazine and the Whitney exhibition.
(Shown here: 4D Tower: Time Interval 1 Meter. Gouache and graphite over positive Photostat on paper.)
Sasha Frere-Jones writes about Auto-Tune, a pitch-correction software program used in pop music. Here Frere-Jones talks about how Auto-Tune has become a pop-music phenomenon, and demonstrates how it can transform the human voice, with the help of the music producer Tom Beaujour.
The New Yorker's Fiction podcast is a treasure. Once a month, a contemporary fiction writer chooses a story from the New Yorker's fiction archives, reads the story, and then talks to the host about why they chose the story and what it means to them.
Mary Gaitskill reads “Symbols and Signs,” Vladimir Nabokov’s first story published in The New Yorker, and discusses it with fiction editor Deborah Treisman.
AP - Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang pushed for an employee severance program that made it more expensive for Microsoft Corp. to engineer a takeover even after an outside consultant questioned the plan's generous benefits, according to previously sealed documents in a shareholder lawsuit against Yahoo.
ohxten writes "Stefan Grothkopp has come up with a pretty neat tool called goosh. It's essentially a browser-oriented, shell-like interface that allows you to quickly search Google (and images and news) and Wikipedia and get information in a text-only format. This is quite possibly the coolest thing I've seen in a good while."
PC World - Facebook is releasing as open-source software parts of its application development platform in order to make it easier for... Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 Jun 2008 | 11:00 pm
AP - AT&T customers who have seen mysterious charges for ringtones and other content show up on their cell-phone bills will be eligible for refunds as part of the settlement of a group of class-action lawsuits, a lawyer for the class said Monday. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 2 Jun 2008 | 10:47 pm
Roland Piquepaille writes "An international team of scientists has found a strange ring around a dead star by using images taken by NASA's Spitzer space telescope. This star, called SGR 1900+14, belongs to a class of objects known as magnetars. According to NASA, a magnetar is 'a highly magnetized neutron star and the remnant of a brilliant supernova explosion signaling the death throes of a massive star.' So far, about a dozen magnetars have been found. An amazing thing about these stellar objects is their magnetic field. One of the researchers said that 'magnetars possess magnetic fields a million billion times stronger than the magnetic field of the Earth.'
Yoko Ono loses bid to preclude 15 seconds of 'Imagine' in the film Expelled. The film, which explores intelligent design and is narrated by Ben Stein, used John Lennon's song as a critique and had a right of 'fair use' to it, a federal judge ruled Monday.
Apple buys a slew of .me domains, the new domain suffix for Montenegro, set to go live next month. The domain will likely be an international hit (imagine the possibilities: drive.me, send.me, xxxx.me). Will Apple rebrand .Mac as "Mobile Me"? Here's what we'd like to see the service include. Send us your ideas.
Reuters - Microsoft Corp is making its Windows
operating system available to low-cost desktop PCs, as cheaper
laptops enjoy booming demand globally, the software giant said
on Tuesday.
Reuters - Don't blame the fridge for your steep
power bills -- an Australian consumer agency study has found
that videogame consoles and plasma flat-screen TVs are major
electricity guzzlers, even when left on stand-by.
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AP - Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang pushed for an employee severance program that made it more expensive for Microsoft Corp. to engineer a takeover even after an outside consultant questioned the plan's generous benefits, according to previously sealed documents in a shareholder lawsuit against Yahoo.
