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Sponsored Post: Connect at home. Connect on the go.This post is sponsored by Verizon. Get Verizon FiOS Internet and Verizon Wireless Service all on ONE-BILL. FiOS has blazingly fast internet speeds, and Verizon Wireless is backed by Americas most reliable...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 7:00 pm Kids can't "go out and play" anymoreThis LA Times story (by Rosa Brooks) about the erosion of free, unstructured outdoor play and movement for kids really hits the nail on the head: little kids are just not allowed to "go outside and play" and we treat big kids who do as potential threats to be moved along as quickly as possible:But today, for most middle-class American children, "going out to play" has gone the way of the dodo, the typewriter and the eight-track tape. From 1981 to 1997, for instance, University of Michigan time-use studies show that 3- to 5-year-olds lost an average of 501 minutes of unstructured playtime each week; 6- to 8-year-olds lost an average of 228 minutes. (On the other hand, kids now do more organized activities and have more homework, the lucky devils!) And forget about walking to school alone. Today's kids don't walk much at all (adding to the childhood obesity problem).Remember 'go outside and play?' (via Wonderland) Source: Boing Boing | 25 Aug 2008 | 11:22 am Comic book tatts from ComicCon Wired's got a fabulous gallery of comic-inspired tattoos from ComicCon up today -- love this shot of old-school DC art. Geek Ink: Comics Fans Show Off Tattoos
(Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com) Source: Boing Boing | 25 Aug 2008 | 11:03 am NASA suffers another rocket mishap that saw two experimental ... - DailyTech
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 25 Aug 2008 | 11:02 am Kevin Rose Predicts New iPod Nano, iTunes 8.0 - Wired Blogs
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 25 Aug 2008 | 10:58 am Mickey Mouse bridges the culture war when teaching evolution to evangelical studentsDavid Campbell managed to slip evolution into the high-school science curriculum in the conservative Florida town where he teaches -- by using images of Mickey Mouse through the years to illustrate the principle:On the projector, Campbell placed slides of the cartoon icon: one at his skinny genesis in 1928, one from his 1940 turn as the impish "Sorcerer's Apprentice," and one of the rounded, ingratiating charmer of Mouse Club fame.Teacher shows that science, religion don't have to clash (Thanks, Andrew!) Source: Boing Boing | 25 Aug 2008 | 10:55 am Broadcom to buy AMD's Digital TV business (Reuters)Reuters - Broadcom Corp plans to buy Advanced Micro Devices' digital television business for $192.8 million in cash in a move to broaden its own product portfolio, the mobile phone chipmaker said on Monday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 Aug 2008 | 10:54 am The Big Lebowski - 10th Anniversary Limited EditionBy Andrew Liszewski Has it been 10 years already? I know a lot of people really, really like The Big Lebowski, and while I enjoy the film as a whole (performances, writing etc.) I definitely don’t...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 9:34 am Me Media: CNBC TomorrowFor those of you who are vexed by talk of such things, skip this post. And for those of you who chide me for not posting when I'm doing a media spot, here is a heads-up: I'm guesting tomorrow on Erin Burnett...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 9:31 am Secrets and Lies: New BookFinder.com Out-of-Print 'Bestseller List' Reveals Heavy Demand for Rare and Suppressed TitlesBERKELEY, Calif., Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Readers around the country are trying to find a variety of rare and suppressed out-of-print books, according to the...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 9:08 am NZ Judge Bans Online Publishing of Accuseds' NamesThe Master Moose writes "A judge in New Zealand has banned the press from reporting online the names of two men accused of murder. The names of the men will be allowed to be reported in print as well as through Television and Radio broadcast. It would seem he has taken this step to prevent someone 'googling' these peoples names in the future and finding them linked to a crime if found innocent."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 25 Aug 2008 | 9:02 am Trulia Goes Mobile, Adds FeedsIf there is any type of site that screams for a mobile edition, it is real-estate. Why print out all of those search results when you can have them on your mobile phone or in your Dash GPS car navigation...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 9:00 am ViewSonic Showcases 120Hz Display Technology at NVISION 2008Display Leader's Innovation Enables Blur-Free Video and Revolutionary 3D Realism SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- ViewSonic(R) Corp., a worldwide...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 9:00 am Vocal joystick gives computer control to those with disabled hands (CNET)CNET - SEATTLE--For many Iraq war veterans who have returned home with debilitating injuries that, for example, make it impossible to use their hands, doing anything on a computer is an impossible task.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:33 am Calypso Wireless, Inc. Announces the European Patents for Its ASNAP(TM) Technology Have Been Fully Paid for in Twenty-Five CountriesHOUSTON, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Calypso Wireless, Inc. (OTC: CLYW / CLYW.PK), a leading innovator in advanced wireless telecommunications technologies...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:30 am Motion-powered phone charger sashays inM2E Power, a company formed last year to charge electronic gadgets with human motion, has reported back that its system actually works. C/net reports. . Next year it expects to release a charger that...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:27 am Roedings World Travels: South AfricaCyriac Roeding, the former EVP of mobile at CBS is on a world tour of about 10 countries in seven weeks, documenting for mocoNews the mobile lifestyle across the countries he is touring. Excerpts from...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:08 am Can You Guess Which Facebook App Is Making A Million Dollars A Month?Facebook is a famously difficult place to make money. Despite the popularity of the social network, most ads go for pennies per thousand impressions (CPMs). Even Social Media, a Facebook ad network that...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:04 am Yahoos 404 At Giants StadiumLike a lot of other companies in Silicon Valley, TimeBridge has hired their fair share of ex-Yahoo employees. CEO Yori Nelken said most of their ex-Yahoo engineers got a chuckle when they noticed the large...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:01 am South Korea, China Agree on Revised Fisheries Trade PactText of report in English by South Korean news agency Yonhap Seoul, Aug. 25 (Yonhap) - South Korea and China agreed on a revised fisheries trade pact aimed at reducing unnecessary friction between the two neighbours, the government said Monday.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Tourism Leaders Hope Region Quits SmokingBy Anonymous First it was the faltering economy, then the birds, specifically nesting plovers, an imperiled species that prompted the closing of some popular Cape Hatteras National Seashore fishing beaches.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am PERSONNEL FILE: Mary Price Harrison, State Representative GreensboroBy Parry, Amanda Career: Bachelor's in history in 1980 from Duke; law degree in '85 from UNC Chapel Hill. She worked at Haley, Bader & Potts law firm in Washington, D.C., helping with MCI's antitrust case that eventually led to the breakup of AT&T.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Beede Cleanup on Track to BeginBy Anonymous More than 15 years after being named to the nation's Superfund list, the Beede Waste Oil site has taken a big step closer to cleanup now that the last responsible party has agreed to sign the cleanup agreement. Brodie Ski Mountain Area Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Firm Founder and CEO: 'I Love the Coast and Want to Help It Recover'By Lofton, Lynn A few former SeaBees with fond memories of time spent in Gulfport have returned as businessmen and engineers to help rebuild the post- Katrina area.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am PERSONNEL FILE: Frank Tursi, Coastkeeper, N.C. Coastal Federation, NewportBy Parry, Amanda For more than 30 years, Frank Tursi chased the news as a reporter and editor for newspapers such as the Miami Herald and the Winston- Salem Journal. But in 2002, he became Cape Lookout coastkeeper for the North Carolina Coastal Federation, a Newport-based nonprofit.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Cleaning Up the Lower FoxBy Reinsch, Lee Marie Eight years into the cleanup of the lower Fox River, tons of toxins have been removed, and proponents of clean water see light at the end of the culvert.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Avoiding RooftopsBy Joe Nelson SAN BERNARDINO - A plan to build nearly 1,000 tract homes, townhomes and flats on a 404-acre swath of the foothills above Cal State San Bernardino has environmentalists and hang-gliding enthusiasts worried. For 15 years, Los Angeles-based Inland Communities Corp.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Hang Gliders, Environmentalists Oppose Home ProjectBy Joe Nelson SAN BERNARDINO - A plan to build nearly 1,000 tract homes, townhomes and flats on a 404-acre swath of the foothills above Cal State San Bernardino has environmentalists and hang-gliding enthusiasts worried. For 15 years, Los Angeles-based Inland Communities Corp.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am PERSONNEL FILE: Chuck McGrady, Henderson County Commisioner, HendersonvilleBy Parry, Amanda Chuck McGrady is used to getting weird looks when people find out he's an environmentalist and a Republican.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am In Other Words: New Orleans PC MarketBy Nall, Jennifer Darryl d'Aquin President, CommTech Industries In the business community, New Orleans is a PC- and Microsoft- based market. In the creative and educational communities, Mac has a stronger influence.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Nampa-Based PC-Maker MPC Computers Unveils Grade-School Sized LaptopBy Hagadone, Zach Nampa-based PC-maker MPC Computers unveiled its new TXTbook computer today, a light-weight, low-cost notebook geared toward the K-6 education market.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Hewlett-Packard's Strong Q3 Results Not Shared in Printer DivisionBy Anonymous Hewlett-Packard's (NYSE:HPQ) stronger-than-expected third- quarter performance may have helped lead a rally on Wall Street Wednesday, but its earnings report released Tuesday revealed a decline in its imaging and printing business.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Boise State Gets Funds for Grade School Tech EdBy Hagadone, Zach Boise State University is hoping a grant from the U.S. Department of Education will help bolster Idaho students' math and science abilities.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Off the Clock: Q&A With IT Director of Archdiocese of New Orleans SchoolsBy Moises, Christian Age: 40 Family: wife, Mimi; sons, Marc, 12, Brian, 11; and daughter Lauren, 9 Education: bachelor's degree in accounting, University of New Orleans Hometown: Newport, R.I.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Monday's SpeakoutMental health center I strongly disagree with your editorial Friday supporting the mental health center at the old National Guard armory. It will affect everyone in the neighborhood, not just the Fifth District.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Serving Up Tech Support at Some New Orleans-Area CoffeehousesBy Chandler, Diana A cup of java with Wi-Fi service on the side is becoming standard fare at coffeehouses throughout the metro area.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Authoritarian China Breaks Its PromisesChina's leaders would have the world believe that the country is just one big happy place where none of the 1.3 billion citizens ever complains. The reality is altogether different, and only the heavy hand of repression has kept the real picture from emerging.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am New Orleans Technology Briefs: August 18, 2008By Moises, Christian SDT Waste and Debris has a new high-tech weapon in its war on trash. The company's new $450,000 "war room" uses global positioning satellite equipment to track up to 75 trucks and vehicles and beam back real-time video to its Chalmette headquarters.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Home Appliances @ IFA: Micronas to Offer Its Smart Sensor Solutions for White Goods ApplicationsFREIBURG, Germany, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Micronas (SWX Swiss Exchange: MASN), a leading supplier of innovative application-specific IC system solutions for automotive...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Morten Lund, Investor Behind Skype, Kickstarts LiveStub.comCHICAGO, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Morten Lund, the Danish investor who helped to propel the VoIP communications service Skype to worldwide success, has turned his sights...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Online Accounting: State of the MarketAccounting software for small business and personal use is increasingly moving from the desktop to online. However, compared to other office software, this transition to online has been relatively slow...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 7:32 am Can You Guess Which Facebook App Is Making A Million Dollars A Month? I Can.Facebook is a famously difficult place to make money. Despite the popularity of the social network, most ads go for pennies per thousand impressions (CPMs). Even Social Media, a Facebook ad network that...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 7:31 am Photosynth fans overload capacity - Seattle Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 25 Aug 2008 | 7:07 am Mainsoft backs Visual Studio 2008 in tools (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - Mainsoft, which enables developers to leverage Microsoft Windows development skills to build applications for other platforms, on Monday is introducing updates to development products for Java, Linux, and Unix, adding support for Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 IDE.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 Aug 2008 | 7:01 am IPhone software developers stifled under Apple's gag orderProgrammers remain bound to not discuss how they create applications, potentially restraining innovation. By creating...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 7:00 am US Court Gives 15 Months' Jail, $415,900 Fine For Game PiracyAn anonymous reader writes "A Florida man has been sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay US$415,900 in restitution for selling video game systems that were preloaded with more than 75 pirated copies of games." If that fine sounds a bit steep, note that his profits on the devices "exceeded $390,000."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 25 Aug 2008 | 6:18 am Formula Systems Reports Second Quarter ResultsHERZLIYA, Israel, August 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Formula Systems (1985) Ltd. (NASDAQ: FORTY) a leading provider of information technology products, solutions and...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 5:29 am Trulia Redefines Real Estate Search Experience, Launching New Features Including Local News Feed, Trulia Mobile and Community BlogsTrulia.com, the best place to start a real estate search, today announced the launch of innovative new features that will provide users with a personalized real-time local news feed, allow for house hunting on the go and give agents, home owners and house hunters an opportunity to blog about their real estate experiences to 5 million monthly users.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Aug 2008 | 5:00 am Sparxent Announces Acquisition of NetworkD CorporationNetworkD Becomes Part of Company Focused on Providing Software, Hardware and IT Consulting Services to Mid-Market Customers SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ --...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 4:01 am AT&T U-verse Arrives in South BendSouth Bend Customers Can Now Enjoy Next-Generation Integrated TV, Internet, Wireless and Voice Services - All on One Bill SOUTH BEND, Ind., Aug. 25...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 4:01 am Sparxent Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire Arbyte GroupArbyte to Join Sparxent Family of Companies Focused on Providing a Single Source of IT for Mid-Market Customers SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Sparxent, a...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 4:01 am Sparxent Founded to Offer Mid-Market Companies Unmatched Breadth and Depth of Enterprise-Class IT ServicesNew IT Services Company Makes First Acquisition; Delivers Software, Hardware and Consulting Services to Companies with Up to 5000 Users SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 25...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 Aug 2008 | 4:01 am Aug. 25, 1973: More Than One Way to Slice a CAT1973: The CT scan goes into use in the United States. Lives will be saved. Originally known as a CAT scan -- for computed (or computerized) axial tomography, or computer-aided (or assisted) tomography -- the process uses a series of X-rays to create sequential images of virtual slices of body tissue. Those can be integrated into a 3-D X-ray, so doctors know the precise position of diseased or otherwise abnormal tissue. In Medford, Massachusetts, in the 1960s, Tufts University physics professor Allan Cormack's main field was particle physics, but he laid the foundation for computerized tomography in his spare time. He theorized that you could take X-rays from varying angles; account for differences in the density of bone, muscle and organs; and program a computer to assemble 3-D images. Electrical engineer Godfrey Hounsfield was working on a similar line of research at the EMI Central Research Laboratories in England. (Yes, that's the same EMI as the record label, and massive profits from The Beatles' 1960s hits funded development of the CT scanner.) Hounsfield developed a CT machine that could perform brain scans. He began testing it in 1971 -- sometimes carrying bull's brains across London on public transit. His announcement of the invention at a series of British scientific meetings in 1972 created a stir. Hounsfield's prototype took five minutes to make a scan, and two-and-half hours for the computer to process an image. The first production-model EMI-Scanner took four minutes to scan, and its Data General Nova minicomputer needed seven minutes to compute each picture. Meanwhile, back in the United States, dentist-physicist Robert Ledley developed a whole-body scanner at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1973. It saved its first life while still in development, when a pediatric neurosurgeon used it one weekend while Ledley was off-duty. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, claims to be the first U.S. medical institution to install the CT, but Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston also began using the CT scanner in August 1973. Hounsfield and Cormack shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ledley was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1990. (Among other achievements, he also devised the image processor and wrote a seminal paper on medical informatics, or computer-aided diagnosis.) CT scanners today are faster -- four to eight images a second -- and more agile. Instead of taking discrete, individual "slices" as images, they use spiral, or helical, tomography, like a virtual Honeybaked ham. That's a lot of progress in 35 years ... which is, after all, 245 in cat years. Source: Various 
Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Aug 2008 | 4:00 am Analog Meets Its Match in Red Digital Cinema's Ultrahigh-Res CameraA crowd has gathered in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center, where a security guard is about to unlock the main entrance. It's less than a minute before 9 am, the official opening of the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters Show—typically a sleepy sales and marketing event known more for schmoozing than buzz. But as the glass doors open on this April morning, a hundred people race toward a large crimson tent in the center of the hall. The tent is home to Red Digital Cinema and its revolutionary motion picture camera, the Red One. Standing nearby is the man who developed it—a handsome guy with a neatly trimmed goatee and a pair of sunglasses perched atop his clean-shaven head. He clutches a can of Diet Coke in his left hand, an unlit Montecristo jutting from between his fingers. Jim Jannard, 59, is the billionaire founder of Red. In 1975 he spent $300 to make a batch of custom motocross handlebar grips, which he sold from the back of a van. He named his company Oakley, after his English setter, and eventually expanded into sci-fi-style sunglasses, bags, and shoes. In November of last year he sold the business to Luxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, for a reported $2.1 billion. Jannard won't say how much money he has poured into Red, but his target market clearly appreciates the investment. Supplicants swarm the tent, many of them with offerings—fine wine, gourmet coffee, single-malt whiskey—all to thank Jannard for building the Red One. "I guess they just like me," he says with a wry smile. An example of video shot on the Red One. For a better look, watch it in HD. It's more than that: His team of engineers and scientists have created the first digital movie camera that matches the detail and richness of analog film. The Red One records motion in a whopping 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—"4K" in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical. For comparison, hi-def digital movies like Sin City and the Star Wars prequels top out at 1,920 by 1,080, just like your HDTV. (There's also a slightly higher-resolution option called 2K that reaches 2,048 lines by 1,080.) Film doesn't have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K. And that's what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it's easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard's creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete. Two years ago, Jannard brought a spec sheet and a mock-up of a camera—not much more than an aluminum box about the size of a loaf of bread—to NAB 2006. Even though it wasn't a working product, more than 500 people plunked down a $1,000 deposit to get their names on a waiting list. For months, industry watchers wondered if the company was for real. Today, there's no question. The Red One is being used on at least 40 features. Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director, borrowed two prototypes to shoot his Che Guevara biopics, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and later purchased three for his film The Informant. Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings himself, bought four. Director Doug Liman used a Red on Jumper. Peter Hyams used one on his upcoming Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Digital cinema that's all but indistinguishable from film is finally coming to a theater near you. The Red headquarters is in Lake Forest, California, a sprawling Orange County exurb consisting mainly of strip malls and office parks. The 32,000-square-foot facility, which Jannard recently bought for a reported $7.7 million, has a stark white exterior unbroken by windows except at the entrance, where a winged human skull is painted on the glass. Jannard, wearing blue jeans, black slip-on sandals, and a lime-green short-sleeve shirt, greets me in the lobby and ushers me through a set of gray metal doors. On the way into the workspace, there is a sign: 1) Please knock.
Since I'm getting a tour from the wizard himself, I'm apparently excused from genuflecting. Behind the doors, the walls are festooned with camouflage netting—a nod, perhaps, to the postapocalyptic design of the steel-clad Oakley headquarters half a mile away. 
Jim Jannard in his Red screening room.
Photo: Amy Crilly "I had been thinking about this project for a long time," Jannard says. "As a camera fanatic and a product builder, this was something I seemed destined to do." When businesspeople talk destiny, it can sound like bullshit. But at Oakley, Jannard not only ran the company, he personally shot one of its two TV spots and all of its print ads from 1975 to 1995. He owns more than 1,000 cameras, both still and motion picture, several dating back almost a century. "I have a Bolex, Aaton, Arriflex, Eyemo, Filmo, Mitchell, Photosonic, Beaulieu, Keystone—just about every movie camera you can think of." Why The Red Rocks, Part IThe Red One camera gives moviemakers the best of both worlds. It delivers the ease of use and editing flexibility provided by digital cinema cameras. At the same time, the Red's resolution and color fidelity rival that of 35-millimeter film, and it allows the same kind of control over focus. Bonus: Like HD and 2K digital, it's cheap.
Icons by Jason Lee In 2004, Jannard bought a Sony HDR-FX1—the first hi-def videocam for consumers. When he found he couldn't use the files it produced without translation software from a company called Lumiere, he telephoned Lumiere's owner, filmmaker Frederic Haubrich. "I told Frederic that I couldn't even view my footage on a Mac and that this had pissed me off enough that I wanted to build my own camera. And he said, 'Jim, I know guys in the industry who can help.'" Haubrich introduced Jannard to interface designer Ted Schilowitz. Schilowitz, Haubrich, and Jannard spent a year trying to design that dream camera, one that would combine the practical advantages of digital moviemaking with the image quality of analog film. They recruited mathematicians, programmers, digital imaging experts, hardware engineers, and physicists. "We needed a bunch of guys who were inventors to come up with entirely new ways of getting to the finish line," Jannard says. He kept the project quiet until his team could determine whether building the device was even feasible, but rumors swirled through Hollywood about some kind of mysterious supercamera in the works. "I didn't know who Jim was," Soderbergh says. "But I heard about Red because they were canvassing filmmakers and cinematographers, asking, 'If you could wave a magic wand, what camera would you design?'" Most of the work took place in what employees call Jim's garage, a 20,000-square-foot warehouse across the street from Red's massive headquarters. The team quickly concluded that existing technology was inadequate. The guts of the camera—the image sensor and all the accompanying circuitry—would have to be created from scratch. It was a daunting challenge, but the fact that Jannard's management style falls somewhere between Mr. T and Steve Jobs on the autocracy scale helped. "What separates us from other camera companies is that the vision guy is the decisionmaker," he says. "That was one of my biggest advantages at Oakley, and it's the same at Red—I'm in the trenches, in the product development, and I make the final call. Red is a benevolent dictatorship." The video revolution has been on pause in Hollywood. Just as digital still cameras now rule the photography market, hi-def digital movie cameras were supposed to replace film. But moviemakers never fully bought in. Typical digital videocams use prisms to split incoming light by color and send it to three separate sensors, which tends to soften images. Onboard software sharpens the footage but also introduces halos and exaggerated edges. Worse, the small sensors put too much of the picture in focus, giving it a canned look. Cinematographers hate that; the ability to guide the viewer's eye by selectively blurring focal planes is one of their favorite techniques. "That's a storytelling tool," says Pierre de Lespinois, a producer and director who spent three weeks in April filming a feature in the Mojave Desert with two Red Ones. "In HD, what's right in front of the lens and what's 20 feet away are both sharp, so the image looks flat." To compete with celluloid, a digital cine-camera would need an image sensor identical in size and shape to a single frame of 35-mm motion picture film. Without that, the Red couldn't give filmmakers the control over depth of field, color saturation, tonality, and a half dozen other factors that 35-mm film provides. Why The Red Rocks, Part II
Icons by Jason Lee You'll find that kind of full-frame sensor at the core of any high-end digital single-lens reflex camera. But they're designed to shoot no more than 10 frames per second. That's warp speed for still photographers but barely first gear for filmmakers. Movies are shot at a minimum of 24 frames per second, with some scenes topping out at 120 fps for slow-motion effects. The Red's sensor would have to do everything a DSLR sensor does—and do it significantly faster. The camera also had to be able to record in the same bulky file format that DSLRs use—called raw. The format preserves picture data in essentially unprocessed form, which gives photographers more latitude to tweak images with software the way they once did in a darkroom. (Cinematographers do the same thing with 35-mm film, but it's a complicated, expensive process: The film must be scanned into digital to be manipulated, then converted back to analog for projection.) Since a movie is just a long sequence of still pictures, using the raw format presented bandwidth and data-storage problems. A two-hour feature could run up to 7 terabytes. The Red engineers built a workaround, a lossless compression codec they call Redcode Raw. Finally, in August 2006, Jannard's team flipped the switch on Red's first prototype, codenamed Frankie. It wasn't really a camera at all, just a mechanical test bed containing the new sensor. "Our whole business was predicated on this sensor," Jannard says. "If it didn't work, we'd be cooked. When it did, it was like giving birth and counting all the fingers and toes to make sure everything was there. It was phenomenal. Everybody went nuts." Schilowitz remembers that moment, which camera makers call first light, as mind-blowing: "Everyone started screaming like little kids, 'First light! First light! It's alive!' The thing actually worked." Two weeks later, at an industry event in Amsterdam, Jannard showed test footage taken with Frankie—a clip of two perky women in '50s garb chugging milk from glass bottles—on a 60-foot screen. "People were stunned," Schilowitz says. "They were standing around scratching their heads. That moment made a lot of people into believers." Filmmakers didn't care how the Red One worked, but they liked what they saw. "The Red camera is the closest thing to film I've seen," says Tristan Whitman, a cinematography lecturer at USC. The Analog AdvantageTypical 2K and HD digital movie cameras keep everything in focus. The 4K Red One is more like an analog camera, allowing depth of field control, which blurs the foreground or background.
Analog film lets moviemakers control the depth of field.
2K and HD cameras force everything into focus.
By March 2007, Red had assembled two additional prototypes, named Boris and Natasha. But now, with three weeks to go before NAB 2007, Jannard wanted new footage to show what the camera could do. He emailed Jackson, asking if the director could recommend a good cinematographer in Los Angeles to help create a Red promo spot. Not long after, Jackson telephoned. "Jim, why don't you fly down here to New Zealand, and I'll shoot the footage for you," he said. "Don't tease me," Jannard replied. "No, I'm serious," Jackson said. "Bring the cameras down." Jannard packed up Boris and Natasha, still crude machines with no features other than a run/stop button and a shutter, and headed south. When he got to Wellington, Jackson was ready. "Peter had put together an army," Jannard says. "He was going to shoot a mini-movie to put the cameras through their paces, using them on helicopters and Steadicams, crawling on the ground with them—and I'm thinking, 'Oh my gosh, I just hope they keep working through the weekend.'" Boris and Natasha performed flawlessly. "We stayed at Peter's house, and he was just beaming because he was having so much fun." Jackson delivered his 12-minute featurette, titled Crossing the Line, the night before the NAB Show opened. Jannard shows me the film at Red headquarters. His desk is in an open workspace that he shares with six staffers and his puppy. Next to his computer there's a box of the Montecristos he favors and a pinewood crate from Napa Valley Reserve, the world's most exclusive wine club. Members reportedly pay up to $145,000 to join, in exchange for which they can partake in grape harvests and create their own blends. There's something oddly honorable about a billionaire with insanely expensive taste in wine but no office. I watch Crossing the Line on Jannard's 30-inch HD display while he stands behind me. The film, set on the front lines of World War I, alternates between aerial dogfights and bloody ground combat. The screen resolution is about half what it would be in a theater. Nevertheless, it's like looking through a window onto a battlefield. I can barely discern a single pixel. The detail is stupefying; the colors are rich and sensual. After NAB 2007, Jannard showed Crossing the Line at the Directors Guild in LA. "I rearranged my travel plans to be there," Soderbergh says. After he saw the film, he called Jannard. "Jim, I'm all in. I have to shoot with this." "OK, great," Jannard said. "But what does that mean?" "I'm making two movies with Benicio del Toro. Come to my house, and we'll do a test. If it looks as good as what I saw in Peter's film, I want these cameras for my movies." Soderbergh took two prototypes into the Spanish wilderness. "It felt like someone crawled inside my head when they designed the Red," he says. What impressed him most was the cameras' sturdiness. Movie sets are often a flurry of crashes and explosions, which can vibrate sensitive electronics, introducing visual noise known as microphonics into images. "A lot of cameras with electronics in them, if you fired a 50-caliber automatic weapon a few inches away—which we did—you'd get microphonics all over the place," Soderbergh says. "We beat the shit out of the Reds on the Che films, and they never skipped a beat." Then there's the economics: The Red One sells for $17,500—almost 90 percent less than its nearest HD competitor. The savings are even greater relative to a conventional film camera. Not that anyone buys those; filmmakers rent them, usually from Panavision, an industry stalwart in Woodland Hills, California. Panavision doesn't publicize its rates, but a Panavision New Zealand rental catalog quotes $25,296 for a four-week shoot—more than the cost of purchasing a Red. "It's clearly the future of cinematography," Peter Hyams says. "You can buy this camera. You can own it. That's why people are excited." Even so, traditionalists cling to film's reliability. Film is tangible. Hard drives crash; files get corrupted. "You put film in a can and stick it on a shelf, and it costs $1,000 a year to store," says Stephen Lighthill, who teaches cinematography at the American Film Institute. "With a project that starts as data, you have it on a hard drive, which has to be nursed and upgraded. It's an electronic, mechanical device that can't be left unplugged." Preserving a 4K digital master of a feature film would cost $12,000 a year, according to a report by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And that doesn't address the reliability of the camera itself. "In the slammin', jammin' world of production, you want a really tough machine that takes very simple approaches to problems," Lighthill says. "I'm not sure Red is the way to go. It's a supercomputer with a lens on it." Proponents dismiss such criticism as Luddite drivel. "Hollywood is just used to shooting on film," says Bengt Jan Jönsson, cinematographer on the Fox TV show Bones. "Honestly, if you proposed the film work-flow today, you'd be taken to the city square and hung. Imagine I told you we're going to shoot on superexpensive cameras, using rolls of celluloid made in China that are a one-time-use product susceptible to scratches and that can't be exposed to light. And you can't even be sure you got the image until they're developed. And you have to dip them in a special fluid that can ruin them if it's mixed wrong. People would think I was crazy." As Reds infiltrate Hollywood, the typical filmgoer might not notice much difference at first. After all, once they're projected onto a cineplex screen, movies shot with Jannard's camera will look like the analog movies audiences are used to. But the camera's ease of use and lower cost are sure to change the industry. "There's talent on the streets, kids with ideas who have stories to tell and never get a chance," Jannard says. "Up to now, they've been limited to tools that confine their stories to YouTube." Access to this kind of tech will make it easier for aspiring auteurs to break in and could ultimately expand the range and variety of films that get made. Of course, most theaters still show movies the old-fashioned way, running analog film in front of a bright light. For now, pictures shot with the Red must be transferred to celluloid for distribution. It's a cumbersome system: A full-length feature might take as many as five (heavy, expensive to print) reels. A major release goes to at least 3,500 theaters. Plus, the celluloid stock gets damaged and dirty and has to be sent in for cleaning and repair after every few dozen screenings. Luckily, analog projection seems to be on the way out. In March, four big Hollywood studios announced plans to retrofit 10,000 screens—about a quarter of the US total—for digital projection at 2K. Movies shot with Red's 4K camera will look every bit as good as those shot on film, and they'll all be ads for the company's next camera, the Epic, with more than 5,000 lines of resolution. That's a knockout pixel punch. I ask Jannard if Red plans to develop a 4K projector or perhaps even a 5K that it would market to theater owners. He's cagey. "I will say that the future of motion-capture will be digital," he says, "and I think you can extend that to say the future of presentation will be digital." Jannard is doing his best to fulfill that prophecy. He spends nights on the company's Internet user forums sifting through customer feedback, answering technical questions, and addressing rumors about upcoming products. "I'm passionate about this because I'm building the camera I've always wanted to shoot with," he says. "When my grandkids and great-grandkids look back, they're going to say I was a camera builder. I did handgrips and then goggles and then sunglasses to prepare myself. But cameras are magic." Michael Behar (michael@michaelbehar.com) wrote about computer graphics guru Jos Stam in issue 16.01.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Aug 2008 | 4:00 am Geek Ink: Comics Fans Show Off Tattoos : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comAll comic book fans dig ink. Some of them just take their superhero obsessions a little further than others. Michael Boyce (left) wears his love of comics on his sleeves. A thirtysomething artist who runs On Comic Ground, a comics shop in San Diego, his arms are covered with tattoos of all the superheroines he grew up with: fightin' females like Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Supergirl and Wonder Girl. "Once I started getting one girl, I had to get 'em all," Boyce said. With flesh forever marked with the comics and sci-fi characters they know and love, geeks like Boyce would give a pack of hard-core bikers a run for their money in the tattoo department.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comWonder Woman struts her stuff on Boyce's right bicep, but his tattoos cover both of his arms. "I want to have arms that look like comic book pages with the girls bursting out," said Boyce, who got the work done over a three-year period by Willie King Clover in Lemon Grove, California. Boyce also wears a wicked Wonder Woman belt buckle.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comWhen getting Venom's spider logo added to his left calf, Aaron Hamilton went with stark black ink. "I wanted something big and bold that just said, 'This is who I am. This is what I like,'" said Hamilton, 30, of Birmingham, Alabama. He says he got the tattoo done 10 years ago by Justin Kontzen of Aerochild Tattoos in Birmingham.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comTim Burton's animated movie The Nightmare Before Christmas got Coley Suicide into tattoos. Now it's Halloween every day of the year on her arm, where "Pumpkin King" Jack Skellington, his girlfriend Sally and ghost dog Zero have taken up permanent residence. "I've always kinda been obsessed with Tim Burton," said Suicide, 20, of Long Beach, California. "I figured I'd start out with my favorite." The tattoos took 28 hours, she said, and were done by Nathan Menske in Yakima, Washington.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comChaos Comics characters Lady Death and Purgatori face-off eternally on the back of Chris "Cybian" Kneeland, 39, of San Diego. "Everything I have (tattoo-wise) is kind of like good and evil," said Kneeland, who works as a website coder and analyst. The back piece, which was done by Bob Vessells at Funny Farm Tattoos in Los Angeles, was started five years ago, with 20 to 25 hours of needling so far, said Kneeland. He's gained some weight in the interim, and swears he'll get the piece finished when he drops the pounds.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comImages of The Thing (pictured), Image Comics' Maxx and other superheroes decorate Sean Brunle's body. The 31-year-old bartender, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, says he chose those characters because he "was physically attracted to them." The tattoos, done by Rodney Raines at Ace Custom Tattoo in Charlotte, took 15 or 20 hours to finish, Brunle said.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comX-Men badass Wolverine is another of Brunle's favorites. "They're basically hard on the outside and soft on the inside," Brunle said of the characters indelibly inked on his arms. "Strong men with good hearts, I guess."  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com"Does it ever make sense to us?" asks Jeff Walker, 27, of San Diego. The custodian wears a stark image of a dead bird with a philosophical quote from Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes comic strip on his arm. "I've just always loved the artwork," Walker said by way of explanation. The tattoo was inked by Chris Walkin at Avalon Tattoo II in San Diego.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comLeona the lizard girl from Katherine Dunn's sideshow stunner Geek Love earned a permanent spot on one of Odette Suicide's legs, right next to a living shrine to the Virgin de Guacamole. Suicide, 27, lives in Ventura, California, and calls herself a "baker with brains." She has a bachelor's degree in psychology (and neurons tattooed on her right arm). Leona was inked in nine hours by Tim Kern at Tribulation Tattoo in New York City, she said. Nathan Kostechko did the avocado-faced Virgin.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comSteve Thompson works as a toy designer for Disney, but Sci Fi Channel's rebooted space opera Battlestar Galactica motivated him to get this skin art. He has Starbuck's tattoo on his arm, courtesy of two hours under the needle at Body Electric Tattoo in Hollywood. "I'm just a huge fan of the show," said Thompson, 34, of Los Angeles.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comShaz Nolan wears the Dark Mark of the Death Eaters from the Harry Potter books on her left forearm. That fits nicely with the 32-year-old seamstress' cosplay role -- she dresses as Bellatrix Lestrange. When she saw the image, she couldn't live without it. "And it's fun," said Nolan, who lives in Fullerton, California. She says the tattoo took one hour at Deep Blue Tattoo in Grover Beach, California.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com"I've been a comic book fan my entire life," said Chad Bacon, 34, of Huntington Beach, California. It shows. On his right forearm, the strip-club manager sports Captain America, done by Vance O'Rourke of 723 Tattoo in Fullerton, California. Bacon's into the "whole patriotic thing," he said. Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Wasp, Spider-Man and Spawn cover other parts of his body, and for extra geek effect, he's got an image of Albert Einstein on his upper left arm.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comSteven Miller has a bold panel from a comic on his right forearm. "I just thought it was cool looking," said Miller, 27, of Los Angeles. The director of Automaton Transfusion said he is working on a movie called Ink about -- what else? -- tattoos.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Aug 2008 | 4:00 am Games Without Frontiers: Games Give Free Reign to the Douchebag WithinI really want to nuke Athens. I know it's possible. Hell, I've watched and rewatched the YouTube videos of the 14-year-olds who've done it in Sid Meier's new game, Civilization Revolution. The guttural roar of the ICBM taking off, the flare of the missile as it arcs slowly across the sky, the terrifying rumble in your Xbox 360 controller as the nuke pulverizes the target: It's awesome. I can't sleep until I've rained that sort of death on the world. What the hell is wrong with me? There are a lot of ways to win at Civilization Revolution that do not involve taking a happy, peaceful city and reducing it to a smoldering gravesite filled with radioactive trinitite. I could, for example, train my country in brilliant artistry, building Wonders of the World -- a "cultural victory," as it's called. Or I could win by becoming a great economic power, enriching my citizens and the global community. But no. Every time I plunge into a game, I inevitably choose the most Cro-Magnon, "Hulk smash, Hulk destroy" strategy possible. Or maybe I geek out and try to discover spaceflight before anyone else, so I can outfit my hermetically sealed, glassed-in astronaut city with interstellar warp drives, blur the stars into hyperspace, arrive at Alpha Centauri, encounter alien worlds ... and then try to kill them. Ooooh, you guys back home wanna spend your time carefully building the Hanging Gardens, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Alexandrian Library? Fine. Go for it. Hippies. Me, I'm gonna reach for the goddamn stars, built some kickass mechs, flatten anybody in my way with a molten avalanche of plasma. I repeat: What's wrong with me? One of the classic highbrow defenses of videogames is that they allow you to experience new personalities -- to, in the words of Sherry Turkle, create a "second self." This is considered supremely healthy, because self-exploration is generally a good thing. But what happens if the second self you create inside videogames turns out to be a total dick? Sometimes I think the best way to get a grip on my true inner self would be just to list all the people I choose to be inside games. For example:
"OK, so, deep inside you're a frustrated geek with serious masculinity issues who doesn't like authority," said a gamer friend of mine when we talked about this over drinks. "And you're a loner who can't handle complexity." Except, except ... wait a minute, that's not even vaguely what I'm like in real life. In meatspace, I'm a total people-pleaser who avoids all conflict (to the point where I often get completely doormatted in my professional life). And I have a superhighly tuned, sensitive-boi EQ. Christ, I cry at weddings. What's going on? Nothing weird, said Ian Bogost, a friend of mine who's one of the smartest game academics and game designers around. The whole reason my in-game choices are so divergent from my wussy-ass actual self is because I'm using games to see life from a different perspective; the Walter Mitty effect, as it were. Nothing wrong with that. And, he added, I'm imprisoned by a lack of options. Too many mainstream games are predicated on loony macho conflict because it's easy to model, and because the industry is focused on the power fantasies of 14-year-olds. I shouldn't blame myself for getting sucked into their poor choices. Fair enough. Except ... there's been a huge growth in alternative forms of gaming in recent years, and the sad truth is that I rarely get as excited by them. All those "click management" games, like Diner Dash or Cooking Mama -- the ones that model the chaos of real life in a charming, witty way, and let you deal with it? That stuff puts me to sleep. Hell, I don't even have the patience for computer golf. When offered a choice inside games like Civilization, given the option of picking amongst different types of personalities, I choose to play as a complete douchebag. (In Halo 3, as you may recall, I wound up embracing suicide-bomber tactics.) Now, I'll issue my usual caveats here. I don't mean to suggest that I, or anyone else, should police their fantasy lives. Games are -- at least partly -- an exercise of the imagination, and it's always a perspective-broadening experiment to visit the dark or creepy places of the mind. But interestingly, the rest of the world is beginning to realize that one's game preferences can be regarded as a Myers-Briggs personality type for the digital age. Plenty of college kids list their most-played games on their Facebook pages, under the presumption that this speaks as clearly about their inner lives as their religion or political stances. And in the last few years, Silicon Valley companies have begun actively recruiting the leaders of major World of Warcraft guilds, under the assumption that people who choose those roles are good at being leaders, motivating teams and defusing interpersonal drama. Just imagine what things will look like 10 years from now. "Hmmm, this job applicant has a kind of cool Alliance-Mage thing going on, so she'd be good in the legal support department, eh? Yeah, but her team-killing stats in Gears of War 4 are really troubling." Or in the world of dating: "I just don't know if I can go out with someone who never plays any of the side missions in Grand Theft Auto!" Maybe, for the sake of my social reputation, I should start playing some Diner Dash. Who knows: If I play it enough, I might get really into it. Yeah, I think I'll head out to the GameStop and get a copy. Right after I nuke Athens. - - - 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.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Aug 2008 | 4:00 am How the Soviets Drilled the Deepest Hole in the World : In the Cold War '60s, as the space race heated up, another race began: to the center of the earth. Well, perhaps the Soviets and Americans couldn't drill quite that deep, but they could try to get to the so-called Moho, more formally the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, the theorized but much-disputed boundary between the mostly solid crust and the magma-filled mantle. After the launch of an American drilling program to reach the boundary, the Russians joined the race to drill the deepest hole in the world. "Between 1960 and 1962, the combination of economic interest and national pride during the Space Race period inspired scientists of the Soviet Union to plan drilling a "Russian Mohole" whose objective was to reach the Mohorovicic Discontinuity before the American drilling program," Dean Dunn writing in the book, Science of the Earth. The original goal was soon subsumed by the desire to learn more about how valuable ores formed, so the hopes of the Russian effort eventually landed in the middle-of-nowhere mining region, Pachenga. There, the Soviets drilled the deepest hole in the history of the world, more than 7 miles deep. At the Kola Institute, pictured, the Russians drilled for more than 15 years to reach a crust depth of 40,226 feet, a record that's never been broken. But however successful the mission was as an exploration, the geological findings from the site remain murky and obscured by the way they emanated out of the fading Soviet scientific machine. Stanford geologist and drilling expert, Mark Zoback, said that the Kola borehole was "an anomaly" even within the rather grandiose field of superdeep drilling projects. Photo: Kola Institute  : The process for drilling a borehole is conceptually simple. A rotary drill bit, like this one, is placed into a shaft. When it reaches the bottom, a powerful motor destroys the bottom of the hole and the hole grows deeper. Fluids are circulated into and out of the hole to cool the drill and maintain the stability of the borehole. When a bit is worn out, it's swapped out. Though the basics are well-known, superdeep drilling is a difficult enterprise. The Soviets encountered a host of technical problems drilling so deep into the earth's surface. Foremost is the high heat that deep in the crust. The Kola engineers, working with limited resources, came up with cooling processes and dozens of special bits that could work at temperatures of over 600 degrees Fahrenheit. Photo: Kola Institute  : The Soviet drilling program began in the early '60s and continued all the way through the slow dissolution of the USSR. But the geopolitical circumstances of the day have kept much of the work shrouded in mystery. Despite the publication of a now out-of-print and hard-to-obtain book, The Superdeep Well of the Kola Peninsula, edited by Yevgeny Kozlovsky, a Soviet minister of geology, little of the project's data has ever made it out of Russia. Photo: Kola Institute  : The workers of Kola, like those pictured here with a piece of the drill, also had to live in the remote region. In fact, a sort of company town sprung up around the superdeep hole. As described in the Kozlovsky-edited tome: "Sanitary facilities and shower rooms, a first-aid station, a canteen to cater for staff day and night, a meeting hall and rooms for preventative medical aid provide normal living conditions for the operating personnel of the rig." Photo: Kola Institute  : Here we see the Kola Institute's technological control room. The computers you see were the hub for data coming up from miles below. As computer technology advanced and the drilling became more complex, the Soviets began to monitor dozens of data points ranging from simple depth measures to a variety of measures for how hard the drill was working. Photo: Kola Institute  : While drilling programs were being conducted across the globe -- notably in Germany -- the Soviet team created their own custom tools, like these alloy drill pipes. Because they were literally boring to unseen depths, the method they usually employed was trial and error. That goes a long way toward explaining how unusually long the project took. Still, Kozlovksy bragged, "The complex scientific-technological experiment of the Kola superdeep drilling was accomplished solely by Soviet technology and technique." Photo: Kola Institute  : The deep drilling programs were part of a concerted effort by some geologists to get funding for the large-scale facilities, like Kola's Byzantine machinery, that were delivering such spectacular results for astronomers. As recorded in the book, Super-Deep Continental Drilling and Deep Geophysical Sounding, Karl Fuchs made the space analogy explicit in his opening remarks to a conference on Kola and superdeep drilling. "Earth science have [sic] a telescope: deep drilling and deep geophysical probing!" Fuchs said. "Are we dedicated enough to use this telescope to go beyond our present limitations, to reach for new frontiers of the earth sciences." Photo: Kola Institute  : Kola's engineers could swap out drill bits depending on the type of rocks they were trying to move through. They describe a dozen types of core heads such as the KC-212.7/60 TKZ-NU, which "is designed for low rpm drilling in hard rock interbedded with extremely hard rocks." Most of the bits had four roller-cones, like this one, while some had six. Photo: Kola Institute  : Even though drilling deeper became impossible, the Kola well remains open and structurally intact. Rocks from the hole -- known as cores -- are even still stored at the institute. Instruments still take seismic and other measurements, but state resources have ebbed away from the institute to other geologists who have helped build Russia's oil and gas production. The country now produces about 9.7 million barrels of oil a day, up from 6.1 million back in 1998. Photo: Kola Institute  : The Kola borehole produced a wealth of seismic measurements, cores from deep within the Earth, and intriguing results that there might be liquid water in the depths of the earth. Yet for all the effort and years of drilling, modern American and European geologists don't often reference or use Kola data, preferring the more tightly regulated information generated by Germany's KTB deep-coring program. Findings from Kola were just never systematically presented enough for Western scientists. It raises the question: Why put all that effort in to ultimately produce little of value to global science? Zoback, the Stanford geologist, said Kola's goals weren't as defined as those of some other projects, perhaps because the project was more about the triumph of just doing than about a particular scientific objective. "You have to acknowledge the fact that it may have been the sense of discovery, the idea that they might discover something [that drove them]," he said. Or maybe, as the old minister of geology, Kozlovsky, explained in the introduction to the book on Kola, perhaps geology was just a Russian thing. "The Soviet Union has always been more consistent in carrying out large-scale studies of the structure and regularities of the evolution of the continental crust than other countries," he wrote. "This is a deeply rooted tradition in our country, and it is still very much alive." Photo: Kola Institute
Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Aug 2008 | 4:00 am Study Concludes "Planet" Was Just Stellar SpotsKligat writes "Back in January, it was reported that the youngest planet ever to be discovered, about ten times the mass of Jupiter, was orbiting the eight- to ten-million-year-old star TW Hydrae. Now a Spanish research team has concluded that TW Hydrae b doesn't exist, and that cold spots on the star's surface actually produced the dip in brightness instead of a transiting planet. Not as cool as if a planet had actually been there, but refutations are science, too, right?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 25 Aug 2008 | 3:01 am Solar Plane Breaks Endurance Recordcalmond writes with this excellent snippet from CNET News: "QinetiQ Group PLC claimed Sunday that its propeller-driven aircraft called Zephyr flew for 83 hours and 37 minutes non stop, more than doubling the official world record set by Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk in 2001. The Zephyr is much different from the Global Hawk, which is about the size of a fighter and requires runway for taking off and landing. Zephyr, on the other hand, is an ultra-lightweight carbon-fiber aircraft that weighs less than 70lbs and is designed to launch by hand. The little aircraft flies on solar power generated by amorphous silicon arrays covering the aircraft's paper-thin wings. It is powered day and night by rechargeable lithium-sulfur batteries that are recharged during the day using solar power."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 25 Aug 2008 | 12:43 am 105th Anniversary Ride - State Journal
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 24 Aug 2008 | 11:38 pm FSF-Sponsored gNewSense 2.1 ReleasedAn anonymous reader writes "gNewSense, the fully-free GNU/Linux distribution sponsored by the FSF, has released a 2.1 live CD (torrent). Since the last release, more non-free binary blobs have been removed, new artwork has been added and lots of other improvements have been made. It's also two years since the first edition of gNewSense, and in that time an impressive ten live CDs have been released! gNewSense 2.1 DeltaH is based on Ubuntu Hardy, and removes non-free software that other distributions don't." I wonder if gNewSense can be easily installed on an OLPC XO the way several other distros can.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 24 Aug 2008 | 11:10 pm Ray Bradbury Turns 88Lawrence Person writes "Legendary science fiction writer Ray Bradbury turned 88 years old on August 22. Happy Birthday Ray! 'The Illustrated Man' was one of the first science fiction books I ever read, and I've been hooked ever since. I'm sure that's true of a lot of science fiction writers and readers, be it that, or 'The Martian Chronicles,' or 'Fahrenheit 451.' There are also several videos of Ray on that page, including one where he doesn't endorse Sunsweet Prunes." I remember when another student on the bus loaned me "Fahrenheit 451," and my middle-school English teacher Mrs. Young was smart enough to include "All Summer in a Day" in her curriculum.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 24 Aug 2008 | 9:54 pm California Classes LED Component Gallium Arsenide a CarcinogenReader LM741N, pointing to a report released this month by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, writes "Gallium Arsenide has now been listed as a carcinogen. Given the increasing usage of gallium arsenide, the main constituent in LEDs, and their recent championing as more efficient light sources in recent news stories and Slashdot, there may be significant environmental concerns as related to their disposal. Morover, workers in industries using the substance may be at risk of cancer as well."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 24 Aug 2008 | 8:41 pm Canadian Firms Get Behind OpenMoko/FreeRunnermario writes "Now that the OpenMoko platform has stabilized enough to provide the OM2008 image (supporting the three major toolkits), things are starting to heat up. Linuxdevices is reporting on the start of a port of Devicescape's connect application. Koolu (another Canadian company) is also doing development for its W.E. phone (a branded FreeRunner). Which leads me to ask, Where are the American companies?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 24 Aug 2008 | 7:29 pm Zephyr broke flight time record for unmanned aircrafts - CNET News
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 24 Aug 2008 | 6:54 pm Research aims to put tongues in control of devices (AP)AP - The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn it into a computer control pad.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Aug 2008 | 6:23 pm New Computer Control Pad to Tap Tongue TechGeorgia Tech researchers believe their Tongue Drive System will allow disabled persons to manipulate wheelchairs, manage home appliances and control computers, by using their tongue as a joystick of sorts.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Aug 2008 | 6:23 pm Are IT Security Professionals Less Happy?zentanu writes "It's said that if you want to be happy, be a gardener. What about IT security professionals? Having worked as an IT security consultant for several years, I now wonder if my job has a negative influence on my happiness, because it constantly teaches me to focus on the negative side of life: I always have to think about risks and identify all sorts of things that could go wrong. As an auditor I search for errors that others have made and haughtily tell them. As a penetraion tester I break systems that system engineers and administrators have laboriously built. I assume inside threats and have to be professionally suspicious. The security mindset surely helps me in my job, but is it good for me on the long run? What kind of influence has being an IT security professional had on your general attitude towards life? What helps you stay out of pessimism and cynicism? Is protecting existing things really as good as building new ones?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 24 Aug 2008 | 6:20 pm UPDATE: US citizens detained in Beijing over Tibet protests are released, returning home.A spokesperson for Students for a Free Tibet tells Boing Boing that the 6 US citizens who were detained last week by Chinese authorities for participating in pro-Tibet protests around the site of the Olympics have been released. The group included videobloggers and artists whose work has previously been featured on Boing Boing. All were sentenced to 10 or more days in jail."James Powderly, Brian from Alive in Baghdad, and everyone else all arrive at LAX around 6 or 7pm tonight," says the SFT rep. A group of Tibetan expatriates and pro-Tibet activists plan to greet them at the airport and welcome them home. Previously: Beijing and Tibet: GRL's James Powderly, Brian of "Alive in Baghdad, 4 other US citizens receive 10-day jail sentence Source: Boing Boing | 24 Aug 2008 | 5:18 pm NIST Releases Report On WTC 7 Collapsephotonic writes "After three years of study, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally released its report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. The main conclusion is that the building came down due to fire, not due to debris damage or some conspiracy demolition team. The fire started pretty small after the collapse of WTC 1, but was left to burn several floors out completely. The important finding is that the collapse was triggered by thermal expansion of beams, which could detach asymmetrically loaded girders from the main columns. Some limited pancaking of floors then caused a lack of lateral support and buckling of a single column. This triggered the failure of the entire core of the building, which finally fell down as a single piece. Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here. All documents can be found at NIST's WTC page, which read like a porn magazine for finite element junkies. Simulation movies are also available. And yes, they used Beowulf clusters to do the simulations, some of which lasted for several months."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 24 Aug 2008 | 5:15 pm Obama Fan Madonna Gets PoliticalMadonna's latest sexually charged live show exploded on Saturday, and brought down the house due to a video interlude that criticized John McCain and heaped praise on Obama.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Aug 2008 | 3:00 pm QinetiQ Says It Has Broken Unmanned Flight RecordQinetiQ said its propeller-driven "Zephyr" aircraft has broken the world record for longest-lasting unmanned flight.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Aug 2008 | 1:27 pm Printcrime in Filipino and European PortugueseFriday's post announcing that a fan named Eduardo Mercer had translated my story Printcrime into Brazilian Portuguese sparked two more translations; Luis Filipe Silva translated the story into European Portuguese and Paul Pajo translated it into Filipino. I'm particularly excited about the Filipino translation; I think it might be the first story of mine to be translated into Filipino! Filipino fan-translation European Portuguese fan-translation
See also: Printcrime in Portuguese Source: Boing Boing | 24 Aug 2008 | 12:28 pm Klingon knife scares the crap out of dumb British scandal-sheetPiss-poor scandal-sheet The Daily Mail has a hilariously breathless account of a giant stainless steel Klingon fighting-knife received by police during a knife-amnesty; to hear them tell of it hooded thugs are roaming the streets with Klingon duelling swords looking for little old ladies to terrorise.Lethal Star Trek blade seized in knives amnesty (via JWZ) Source: Boing Boing | 24 Aug 2008 | 12:09 pm Fine art meets the movies photoshopping contest Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: Cinema Pygmalion, fine art blended with stills from famous movies. Shown here, Saving Private Van Gogh. Cinema Pygmalion 3 Source: Boing Boing | 24 Aug 2008 | 12:05 pm Fafblog's Medium Lobster becomes a political columnist for the GuardianThe Guardian has hired The Medium Lobster from the brilliant and incredibly irregular comedy politics blog Fafblog to write a column for them; the debut effort (a Monster Manual of vice-presidential contenders) is hilarious:Ah, the US vice-presidency! From visiting second-tier foreign dignitaries to waiting for the president to die, this linchpin of the modern democratic nation-state is a role that can't be filled by just anyone. Indeed, this is a job that calls for nothing less than the most highly-cultivated political window-dressing money can buy.America's next vice Source: Boing Boing | 24 Aug 2008 | 12:00 pm Airlines cut flights out of NY - Crain's New York Business
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 24 Aug 2008 | 10:07 am
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A spokesman for police in Gloucester, where it was surrendered, said: "It is a particularly nasty weapon that can, literally, take someone's head off. We are very glad it is off the streets and we want more weapons handed in."
