Source: Gizmodo | 9 Mar 2009 | 9:50 am

Last Week in New World Notes...

Our search for the most stylish nightclub/hangout in SL continues-- please post suggestions in Comments! Is content theft in Second Life a "broken windows" problem? Cutting back on your virtual fashion...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Mar 2009 | 9:48 am

Europe's Biggest Amateur Rocket Completes Test-Firing

Michael Eriksen writes "The Danish amateur rocket group Copenhagen Suborbitals has successfully test fired their rocket (article in Danish). It is a 90,000 kW monster delivering a total of 140,000 N. According to the group, this is by far the biggest amateur rocket ever fired in Europe. The final goal is a manned (!) low-orbital flight."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 9 Mar 2009 | 9:33 am

Ailing Teen Socnet Piczo ‘Merges’ With Stardoll

Piczo, the long-lost Myspace-for-teens, today merges with Stardoll, the online entertainment destination for young women, and Stardoll’s other property, Paperdollheaven.com. However, it’s probably closer to a takeover than a merger as Piczo’s primarily UK user-base has been dwindling. The three sites will now make up the Stardoll Network, reaching a total of 20 million users a month, most between 5 (yes, five) and 20 years old. However, one does wonder about the value creation here since the young demographic is not known for its affluence. Bebo was recently called out as not being as valuable as previously thought for the same reason. But at least the new Stardoll network will be focused. And presumably U.S. Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners will be glad to exit after investing $11 Million in Series C funding in July 2007.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2009 | 9:29 am

Digital Proximity Marketing: Short-Range Wireless Technologies Potential Says Frost & Sullivan

LONDON, March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Although digital proximity marketing is still in the beginning stage of development, it is spreading across Europe, with the UK leading the way.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Mar 2009 | 9:00 am

Mixbook(TM) Launches Upgrade to Online Photo Book Editor

Mixbook gives users the power to collaboratively create photo books and scrapbooks on the web SAN JOSE, Calif., March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Mixbook (Mixbook.com), the free online photo service that allows users to collaboratively create personalized photo books, today announced the release of a powerful new online scrapbook editor.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Mar 2009 | 8:54 am

Let's Just Say Hors d'Oeuvres

Boingboing guest blogger Paul Spinrad is Projects Editor for MAKE magazine. He enjoyed everyone's attention enormously. 

Guestblogging for Boingboing has been a real treat-- I always love the discussions here, and as anticipated, I learned and will continue to learn a lot from this opportunity. Thank you!

If you're interested, check out my website Premises, Premises, devoted to one-paragraph descriptions of new business ideas and inventions. I haven't updated it in a while and need to re-do it using all the great free online community tools available now, but I think many of the ideas there have real potential. Others are just for grins, and most are somewhere in between. Deciding which is which is left as an exercise for the reader. It also lists other "ideas sites" -- which is a genre I love and have been following, although it has yet to succeed as a frame.

FWIW, with this post about atheism I apologize to any atheists who thought I was saying they should shut up or be untrue to their beliefs-- that's not what I wanted to say! I am an atheist myself, by Greta Christina's definition of certain enough although I've always been fascinated and inspired by religion. I like these quotes:

"Religions fulfill deep-seated psychological needs for people, and if you don't get it from a specific religious doctrine, you'll get it from the kind of films I like to make. A film like The Terminator is consciously meant to give a sense of empowerment to the individual."
--James Cameron, American Film, July 1991

"We think heaven on earth is a real possibility. There are resources enough to create it. And people are intelligent enough to advance it. Now all that remains is to market it."
--Olivier Toscani, (media director of Benetton), Colors #12

Thanks also to Mark F. and all of the other boingers for their help and support-- and I'll see you on the boards! I will leave with another favorite quote, from Flaubert, which I got from my father (it's originally from Madame Bovary):

"Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity."

Source: Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2009 | 8:11 am

Down with Facebook! [Voices]

Look at the outer shell–the parachute pants, the piano-key tie, the fake tuxedo T-shirt–and you might mistake me for a slave to fashion. Do not be deceived. Early adoption isn’t my thing. I much prefer late adoption, that moment when the trend-worshipping sheeple who have early-adopted drive the unsustainable way of life I so stubbornly cling to ever so close to the edge of obsolescence, that I’ve no choice but to follow. This explains why I bought cassette tapes until 1999, why I wouldn’t purchase a DVD player until Blockbuster (BBI) cashiered their VHS stock. Toothpaste? I use it now that it’s clear it’s here to stay.

So I’m not inflexible. But there is one promise I’ve made to myself. And that is that no matter how long I live, no matter how much pressure is exerted, no matter how socially isolated I become, I will never, ever join Facebook, the omnipresent online social-networking site that like so many things that have menaced our country (the Unabomber, Love Story, David Gergen) came to us from Harvard but has now worked its insidious hooks into every crevice of society.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Mar 2009 | 8:05 am

The Coming of the Megacomputer [Voices]

Here’s an incredible, and telling, data point. In a talk yesterday, reports the Financial Times’ Richard Waters, the head of Microsoft Research, Rick Rashid, said that about 20 percent of all the server computers being sold in the world “are now being bought by a small handful of internet companies,” including Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Amazon (AMZN).

Recently, total worldwide server sales have been running at around 8 million units a year. That means that the cloud giants are gobbling up more than a million and a half servers annually. (What’s not clear is how Google fits into these numbers, since last I heard it was assembling its own servers rather than buying finished units.)

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Mar 2009 | 8:04 am

Dialogue: The Future of Online Obscenity and Social Networks [Voices]

When the Communications Decency Act (CDA) was enshrined into law with the passage of the historic Telecommunications Act of 1996, it contained a number of controversial provisions that covered “obscene or indecent” online content. But at the behest of ISPs and others concerned about the potentially stifling effects of possible obscenity suits on the still-young network, the CDA also included 47 U.S.C. Sec. 230, commonly known as Section 230, which shielded “interactive computer service providers” from liability for information posted or published by users of their systems.

Although the censorial elements of the CDA were later struck down by the courts, Sec. 230 protections were preserved, and even enhanced, during subsequent legal challenges. Other child safety-oriented laws that Congress passed, such as the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA), were also struck down as unconstitutional. Currently, therefore, “interactive computer service providers”—which has been interpreted broadly to include almost all types of online services, from ISPs to social networking sites—are largely free from any liability associated with speech or content that some deem objectionable (e.g., indecent, harassing, defamatory, biased, etc).

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Mar 2009 | 8:03 am

Bring On The Techies: How Silicon Valley Can Help Save Newspapers [Voices]

How badly does the newspaper industry need new ideas? Here’s the story I often tell when that question comes up.

The year was 2005, and I had recently joined the venerable Dow Jones (NWS) from Yahoo (YHOO), where I had led the team that helped build the financial portal. My job at Dow Jones was head of all consumer online sites, including WSJ.com, Barrons.com and Marketwatch.com. One day I was invited to a meeting to brainstorm about, of all things, the width of the Wall Street Journal. After I made a suggestion that was somewhere between novel and off the wall, the then-publisher leaned on the table, looked at me and said: “How old are you, young man?” The suggestion was clear: If you’re under 40, you can’t possibly understand the newspaper business. I still wish my response, though impolitic, had been: “How old is your thinking?”

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Mar 2009 | 8:02 am

When Everyone’s a Friend, Is Anything Private? [Voices]

Facebook has a chief privacy officer, but I doubt that the position will exist 10 years from now. That’s not because Facebook is hell-bent on stripping away privacy protections, but because the popularity of Facebook and other social networking sites has promoted the sharing of all things personal, dissolving the line that separates the private from the public.

As the scope of sharing personal information expands from a few friends to many sundry individuals grouped together under the Facebook label of “friends,” disclosure becomes the norm and privacy becomes a quaint anachronism.

Facebook’s younger members — high school or college students, and recent graduates who came of age as Facebook got its start on campuses — appear comfortable with sharing just about anything. It’s the older members — those who could join only after it opened membership in 2006 to workplace networks, then to anyone — who are adjusting to a new value system that prizes self-expression over reticence.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Mar 2009 | 8:01 am

Plentyoffish.com Rings True With Online Daters

Plentyoffish.com takes official top rank as North America and the U.K.'s favorite Internet dating site. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Plentyoffish.com is now the official #1 online dating site in both the USA and the UK according to Hitwise* and is quickly gaining the reputation for being the site where people meet their true love.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Mar 2009 | 8:00 am

Frost & Sullivan: Lower Competition and Operating Costs Transform Romania into the Fastest-Growing Outsourcing Hub in Europe

LONDON, March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Romania has been attracting many contract manufacturers due to low competition and operating costs, making it one of the fastest-growing electronics manufacturing services (EMS) markets in Eastern Europe. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081117/FSLOGO) New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.smt.frost.com), Romanian Electronics Manufacturing Markets, finds that the markets earned revenues of over $1.6 billion in 2008 and estimates this to reach $3.38 billion in 2014. "Romania has been leading the paradigm shift in contract electronics manufacturing, which has been driving EMS providers in search of lower cost locations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)," says Harish Natesan, Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Mar 2009 | 8:00 am

Wondercon 2009: Video game highlights

FROM GAMERTELL - Once again held in foggy San Francisco, California, this year’s WonderCon featured a surprising amount of video game entities (as in more than 0)... MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 9 Mar 2009 | 7:45 am

Power On Self Test: Gaze1

Thre are many odd and beautiful portraits, of people and odd technological relics alike, at Linesandass' photostream.

Gaze1 [Linesandass' Photostream]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 9 Mar 2009 | 7:05 am

SinoHub to Report 2008 Financial Results and Host Conference Call on March 17, 2009

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and SHENZHEN, China, March 9 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- SinoHub, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Mar 2009 | 6:52 am

UMC Reports Sales for February 2009

TAIPEI, R.O.C., March 9 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE: UMC; TAIEX: 2303), (UMC) today reported unaudited net sales for the month of February 2009. Revenues for February 2009 Period 2009 2008 Y/Y Change Y/Y(%) M/M(%) February 3,143,826 7,288,918 -4,145,092 -56.87% -0.29% Jan.-Feb.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Mar 2009 | 6:45 am

Agito Networks Announces European Availability of Its Enterprise-Grade Mobile Convergence Products for Enhanced Mobile UC

European Presence Headed by Former Juniper Networks EMEA VP to Provide Customers with Improved Mobile Voice and Unified Communications, Expanded Wireless Coverage and Reduced Mobile Costs
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Mar 2009 | 6:30 am

China Mobile in talks with Taiwan firms on roaming services (Reuters)

Reuters - China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier, is in talks with Taiwan's three major mobile phone network operators to cooperate on roaming services, chairman Wang Jianzhou said on Monday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Mar 2009 | 6:25 am

Emulation Explosion On the PS3 Via Linux

Marty writes "The PlayStation 3 has recently seen an explosion of releases of emulators and games for the Yellow Dog Linux distro for PS3; once you have installed Yellow Dog Linux you then have the ability to try out MAME, SNES, Amiga, Dos, Commodore and Atari emulators (that's the tip of the iceberg) and such games as Quake 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Hexen 2 and Alephone. Time to start installing Linux on your PS3?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 9 Mar 2009 | 6:24 am

World's most flushingest toilet

null - Watch more free videos

This St Thomas Creations toilet flushes basically, anything. Huge, vasty supplies of euphemistic carrot-batons, entire chess-sets, and so on. I kept waiting for the child safety warning about its capacity to swallow whole toddlers.

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)


Source: Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2009 | 5:57 am

Sita Sings the Blues is finally free!

After years of wrangling, Nina Paley's acclaimed, brilliant short film, Sita Sings the Blues is finally available as a free, open-licensed downloads. Paley spent a shocking amount of time and money fighting over the copyrights to the 1920s jazz music that is integral to the film (some have likened it to Betty Boop in Bollywood, which is catchy, but fails to capture the fantasticness of the film), Paley's finally secured a license that allows her to distribute the whole movie, for free, forever, under a remix-friendly license.

I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.

You don't need my permission to copy, share, publish, archive, show, sell, broadcast, or remix Sita Sings the Blues. Conventional wisdom urges me to demand payment for every use of the film, but then how would people without money get to see it? How widely would the film be disseminated if it were limited by permission and fees? Control offers a false sense of security. The only real security I have is trusting you, trusting culture, and trusting freedom.

That said, my colleagues and I will enforce the Share Alike License. You are not free to copy-restrict ("copyright") or attach "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) to Sita Sings the Blues or its derivative works.

Congratulations, Nina! It was a long ride, but man, was it worth it!

Sita Sings the Blues (Thanks, Andrew!)

Source: Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2009 | 5:55 am

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld I wrote up quite possibly the most heartfelt game suggestion I've made thus far, for Steph Thirion's iPhone debut, Eliss (right). It's a game of abstraction and economy: you could say it's "just" a game of splitting and joining circles, but the elegance and novelty of its design (it is one of the first true multi-touch games), and the Tetris-like innate sense of order and accomplishment at its core make it one of the most original and essential games for the platform. Elsewhere, we looked into the dreams of the Noby Noby Boy and saw hints of multiplayer and maracas on the way, gawped at the outlandishness of the first trailer for Russian strategy game Stalin vs. Martians, took a playable look back at the origins of 2D Boy's World of Goo, and read that the co-designer of Sonic is creating a new Pac-Man game. We also somewhat accidentally discovered that Arkedo's Big Bang Mini was headed to the Wii after downloading its excellent free blip-pop soundtrack, saw the first images of a new 'Art of the Game' exhibit opening in Italy, read Parappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura's take on the music game industry he helped birth, and saw peerless games magazine Edge get 200 different covers for its 200th issue. Finally, we discovered that Radiohead's Paranoid Android redone in Mario Paint is way more wicked than it deserves to be, and that Behemoth's Castle Crashers was nearly a Lucha Libre comic book spin-off, saw a very Pilotwings-ish game and a new spherical 3D tower defense game coming to the iPhone, and watched an amazing iPhone promo from Bomberman creator Hudson, which calls Fieldrunners out by name in announcing its own original tower defense game.


Source: Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2009 | 5:50 am

Free Apps Roundup for March 6th, 2009

FROM APPLETELL - This week saw a slow start on the App Store, but we were pleasantly surprised with some of the best free apps to become available in quite some time. MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 9 Mar 2009 | 5:44 am

Eric Schmidt reanimates el cheapo PC zombie - Register

TECH.BLORGE.com

Eric Schmidt reanimates el cheapo PC zombie Register By Ted Dziuba • Get more from this author Fail and You Last week, Eric Schmidt ran his mouth off again at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco. Schmidt: Google 'unlikely' to buy Twitter soon CNET News Google's Revenue Weakens Markedly Over Past Month (GOOG) The Business Insider New York Times Blogs - ZDNet - Fudzilla - Search Engine Journal all 17 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 9 Mar 2009 | 5:42 am

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld I wrote up quite possibly the most heartfelt game suggestion I've made thus far, for Steph Thirion's iPhone debut, Eliss (right). It's a game of abstraction and economy: you could say it's "just" a game of splitting and joining circles, but the elegance and novelty of its design (it is one of the first true multi-touch games), and the Tetris-like innate sense of order and accomplishment at its core make it one of the most original and essential games for the platform.

Elsewhere, we looked into the dreams of the Noby Noby Boy and saw hints of multiplayer and maracas on the way, gawped at the outlandishness of the first trailer for Russian strategy game Stalin vs. Martians, took a playable look back at the origins of 2D Boy's World of Goo, and read that the co-designer of Sonic is creating a new Pac-Man game.

We also somewhat accidentally discovered that Arkedo's Big Bang Mini was headed to the Wii after downloading its excellent free blip-pop soundtrack, saw the first images of a new 'Art of the Game' exhibit opening in Italy, read Parappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura's take on the music game industry he helped birth, and saw peerless games magazine Edge get 200 different covers for its 200th issue.

Finally, we discovered that Radiohead's Paranoid Android redone in Mario Paint is way more wicked than it deserves to be, and that Behemoth's Castle Crashers was nearly a Lucha Libre comic book spin-off, saw a very Pilotwings-ish game and a new spherical 3D tower defense game coming to the iPhone, and watched an amazing iPhone promo from Bomberman creator Hudson, which calls Fieldrunners out by name in announcing its own original tower defense game.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 9 Mar 2009 | 5:11 am

AT&T U-verse Arrives in Midland and Odessa

MIDLAND, Texas, March 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AT&T* today announced the launch of AT&T U-verse(SM) TV, AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet and AT&T U-verse Voice in parts of the Midland and Odessa areas.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Mar 2009 | 5:01 am

Amid Crisis, Policymakers Embrace Mobile Banking to Reach Unbanked Poor

Clarity for telecom operators, consumer protection top the list at global seminar WINDSOR, England, March 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Despite regulatory challenges and the financial crisis, policymakers are embracing mobile banking as a means of providing financial access to the unbanked poor.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Mar 2009 | 5:00 am

Mr. Know-It-All: Disclosing DNA, Enrolling Friends in Rehab, Protecting Peepers on a PDA

According to my 23andMe DNA test, I have an above average chance of developing prostate cancer. Should I disclose this to my finacé?

Cancer is arguably the scariest word in the English language, so your anxiety is perfectly natural. But this news is far less frightening than it sounds, a fact you should make clear while looping in your soul mate—which, yes, you should indeed do.

The 23andMe test looks for five genetic variations, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, that are associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer. The more SNPs it finds, the higher your chance of getting the disease. Your personal odds, for example, are evidently north of the one-in-six average for American males. But don't panic. We're just beginning to understand the root causes of common diseases, and five measly SNPs scarcely tell the whole story. In fact, some argue that they tell us very little. "This test is not ready for prime time," says Steven Miles, a professor at the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics. Though the folks at 23andMe might quibble, it's worth noting that the company's terms of service state that your data "is not intended to be used for any diagnostic purpose."

Also, the 23andMe test sheds little light on when you might develop the cancer. You could be disease-free until well past your 85th birthday, by which time the big C may be as treatable as hemorrhoids. But even if medical science doesn't advance an iota by then, your prognosis will still be pretty good—the current five-year survival rate for prostate cancer is 98.9 percent.

Emphasize all these caveats when you break the news to your fiancée, and assure her that you'll take good care of yourself as the years pile up. If she still freaks out, perhaps you should be getting cold feet—if she can't handle this noncrisis, how is she going to react in a real emergency?

I want to get my friend into a drug rehab program, but I can't afford an in-patient center. Should I enroll him in an online program like eGetgoing, or is that like putting a Band-Aid on a severed limb?

Just as Band-Aids have their place in medicine, so, too, do the eGetgoings of the world, which offer virtual group sessions and one-on-one counseling chats. "The growing evidence is that they work, but they don't work all the time," says H. Westley Clark, director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. "But that's no surprise—nothing works all the time for everybody." One eGetgoing study found that 85 percent of the group's clients were still sober nine months after participation.

Online programs are generally geared toward people who've already done a spin through treatment and are looking for a way to support their newfound sobriety. After all, a Web site can't force you to dry out the way a residential program can. If this is your friend's first, brutal visit to rock bottom, he'd likely be better off getting some real hands-on care. Your state's substance-abuse agency may be able to offer leads on low-cost or free assessment services. If you still can't find something affordable—or if your friend simply won't go—you might encourage a visit to the closest 12-step meeting. He may find some wisdom down in one of those church basements, and it won't cost a dime.

I just installed a video-sharing client on my BlackBerry—oh joy! But my wife says I'll ruin my eyesight if I watch too many clips on such a tiny screen. Is she right to be concerned about my peepers?

The primary danger here is short-term irritation. Given the screen's small size, you'll probably end up holding it pretty close to your face. "This places the viewer at higher risk for symptoms such as eyestrain, dry eyes, and sore eyes," says James Sheedy, a professor at the Pacific University College of Optometry. "However, there is no evidence nor reason to believe that this results in any long-term damage to the eyes." As for the potential effects of YouTube on your mind and soul—well, that's on you, my friend.

Need help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at mrknowitall@wiredmag.com.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Life Before the Console Age: Forgotten Electronic Games

: Photo: Martin Ling

Before the death of arcades and the consolidation of home gaming onto videogame consoles, electronics found their way into almost every toy. Some toys were complete flops, some were extremely innovative and captured kids' imaginations for days. Many of them predicted future videogame interfaces and dynamics.

We asked you to remind us of your favorite electronic games that are already museum-worthy, and we received lots of great submissions. The gallery highlights our favorite reader toys.

Left: Big Trak
Submitted by Malinalxochi

Our reader says:

Ah, I spent days programming my Big Track: You could program a sequence of up to 32(?) instructions, including move forward or backward by any number of feet, turning left or right by a certain number of degrees, and fire a light-bulb "laser." It taught me about angles (turn 30 degrees right!).... It was great to attempt to pre-program it to "chase" cats as well.

:

Submitted by jirkstore

Our reader says:

OMG, I loved playing with this. All the bulbs had a different function but would snap together and use a single power-source bulb. You could make cars, tanks, amphibious thingies and tons of useless mechanized machines. I had forgotten about this until today.

: Photo: DigiBarn Computer Museum

Submitted by Lyle

Our reader says:

Vectrex was the only home gaming system to use vector graphics in its games (think Asteroids). The system was only available for a couple years in the mid-'80s. It was loads of fun and used color "overlays" to help hide its black-and-white-only screen. Amazingly enough, there are even new games being produced today (see classicgamecreations)!

: Photo: Rik Morgan of handheldmuseum.com

Submitted by Jockser

Our reader says:

Remember first seeing this in '79 and still have one. Flying saucers drop down the screen in singles or pairs and you have to guide rockets into them. Dead simple, but awesome at the time.

: Photo: Germán R. Gómez on GameBoardGeek.com

Submitted by Anonymous

Our reader says:

Stop Thief was a board game based on a city grid, where players became detectives tracking a thief. The handheld electronic tracking device played sounds corresponding to the location of the invisible thief. By process of deduction, you could figure out which crime location was the start point and where the thief currently was.

: Photo: Chris Brua on GameBoardGeek.com

Submitted by Anonymous

Our reader says:

Boom! Patrol boat hit!

: Photo: Rik Morgan of handheldmuseum.com

Submitted by Anonymous

Our reader says:

A handheld game system that used cartridges, well before any other. I used to be really good at Star Trek Phaser Strike.

: Photo: Rik Morgan of handheldmuseum.com

Submitted by William Audette

Our reader says:

This was my first handheld electronic game. It had six games in one. I think that I lost the manual very early on, so part of the fun was pulling the toy out of the pile and figuring out what game was what and which non-descriptive button caused what to happen. I think the Mind Bender-type game was my favorite and the early pattern-based musical one. It was kind of like a later game called Simon but it had a full keypad of tones. The tones generated sounded like telephone tones."

:

Submitted by Mark

Our reader says:

In order to score the maximum points, you almost had to rely on instinct, using muscle memory to move Mario up and over the falling barrels to rescue the princess; moving so fast, the screen couldn't refresh in time, and you'd only see brief glimpses of Mario to know you were on track. Many hours were spent playing this instead of doing homework!

:

Submitted by Angelo

Our reader says:

Who could forget this Mattel classic! In my 1980s home-gaming circuit, this was considered the "poor boy's Atari." For some reason, it just didn't have the popularity of Atari. However, in my mind, there was nothing better. The fact that each game had a slip-in plastic game guide — and a directional disk. Awesome! Burgertime was my favorite!

: Photo: Karen Craven on GameBoardGeek.com

Submitted by Brad Krahe

Our reader says:

The Dark Tower electronic board game was created by Milton Bradley in 1981. This game combines a traditional board game with an electronic tower unit and can be played by up to four players. The object of the game is to journey around the board, build an army, collect the three magical keys and successfully attack the brigands in the Dark Tower. Each game-board move is accompanied by pressing the appropriate button on the tower’s keypad.

: Photo (c. 1953): Uncle Jerry/Flickr

Submitted by jirkstore

Our reader says:

Nothing like slowly vibrating your way to a touchdown!

: Photo: Chris Johnson

Submitted by Akston

Our reader says:

Blip was little more than an electromechanical version of Pong that featured an LED that moved beneath smoked glass ... but it was magic for those of us who had yet to enter the technological world of video graphics pioneered by its Atari-powered inspiration.

: Photo: Tim Mossman on GameBoardGeek.com

Submitted by Anonymous

Our reader says:

I remember hitting the sides and throwing those tweezers across the room. Geez, that buzzer was loud.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Netbooks Offer a Chance to Challenge Windows

Windows is a poor fit for tiny, underpowered netbooks. The situation has prompted a new crop of innovators to create netbook-optimized operating systems. Microsoft's not taking the challenge lying down, however.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 9 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Netbooks Offer a Chance to Challenge Windows

Windows is a poor fit for tiny, underpowered netbooks. The situation has prompted a new crop of innovators to create netbook-optimized operating systems. Microsoft's not taking the challenge lying down, however.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Getting Lucky: Hard-Core Gamers Penetrate Peggle's Physics

When you play the game Peggle, do you think everything is left up to luck, or skill?

As it turns out, the answer to this question might say a lot about the nature of gamers -- and what makes someone a casual or hard-core player.

In case you haven't heard of Peggle, it's a title that came out from PopCap Games two years ago(and a new version was launched a week ago on the Nintendo DS). PopCap is the current king of casual games, those little in-browser gewgaws played by tens of millions of people who do not, normally, play any videogames at all -- like moms and grandparents (or cubicle workers seeking to anesthetize their humdrum existence).

PopCap has been the giant of casual gaming. Indeed, the company pretty much single-handedly created the trend with its 2001 game Bejeweled, which has placed more than 500 million people into a glazed trance. PopCap quickly followed up Bejeweled with other games like Zuma and Bookworm, all of which went on to become casual hits.

Why are PopCap games so popular? If you ask most game designers, they'd say it's because PopCap perfectly understands the psychology of casual gamers -- and what makes them different from the hard-core crowd.

The dividing lines are generally understood to be two: simplicity and time commitment. Hard-core gamers are willing to deal with incredibly complex game interfaces -- like inventory-management systems, bewildering arrays of power-ups, controllers festooned with a dozen buttons and triggers. They like the flexibility the complexity gives them. They're also willing to commit 10 hours in a row to master a game.

Casual gamers are precisely the opposite: They want super simple games you can learn instantly and finish playing in a few minutes. When it comes to simplicity and time commitment, these two styles of gamer are poles apart.

So when PopCap released Peggle, it looked like another game tailored perfectly for casual folks.

Peggle, for those who haven't played it, is like a digital-age version of a pachinko game. You drop 10 balls down into a constellation of pegs, and they bounce downward until they reach the bottom. Each time they hit a peg, they eliminate it; your goal is to clear all the red pegs before you run out of balls. The rules are incredibly simple, and the game can be played in minutes: A natural for casual folks, right?

Except soon after Peggle launched, PopCap discovered something weird: The game was becoming a hit amongst hard-core gamers, too. And while many casual gamers also loved it, others found it a turnoff. Why?

The PopCap guys have several theories. Possibly the game's psychedelic graphics freak out casual folks; possibly the "passive" style of play -- you drop the ball, then silently watch as it bounces around the screen -- is slightly foreign to the nonstop-clicking vibe of most other casual games.

But when I chatted with Greg Canessa, a PopCap vice president, he suggested another fascinating theory: That hard-core and casual gamers have different views on the role of luck in the game.

For a casual gamer, Peggle seems too heavily based on luck. You aim the ball, but once you've dropped it and it hits the first peg, all bets are off: It bounces and careens through the forest of pegs in crazy, zigzagging patterns. For casual players, there doesn't seem to be a clear enough correlation between how they aim and the results.

But hard-core gamers see the game quite differently. When they look at the Peggle board, they see the Euclidean geometry that governs how the ball falls and pings around.

"They'll be sitting there thinking, 'Oh, if I bounce the ball off that peg it'll hit this other peg and jump over here, where it'll take out two other colored pegs," Canessa said.

In other words, hard-core players are comfortable mentally manipulating Peggle's complex physics. They can build models about where the ball is going to go, even after the seventh or eight collision. A frustrated casual gamer looks at Peggle and sees chaos; a hard-core one sees causality.

(And, being hard-core gamers, this immediately puts them in an absolute lather to try and master the game. Indeed, one key to succeeding at Peggle is predicting bounces so far in advance that you can win extras by having the ball land in the traveling "rescue" slot at the bottom of the screen.)

The really interesting thing is that -- assuming this theory is true -- the casual players are misperceiving the role of luck in the game. Bejeweled, PopCap's single biggest hit with casual gamers, is in reality far more luck-based than Peggle. Both types of gamers are seeking out games where they have some sense of control; that's part of the fun of a game, after all -- a controllable environment. But the hard-core players are able to see past the apparent luck of Peggle, and to spy its underlying -- if extremely complex -- rules.

Maybe this is another way that hard-core and soft-core gamers are psychologically different. When you look at a game -- hell, maybe when you look at life -- do you see everything governed by chance and fate? Or are things up to you?

- - -

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 | 9 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

March 9, 1945: Burning the Heart Out of the Enemy

1945: In the single deadliest air raid of World War II, 330 American B-29s rain incendiary bombs on Tokyo, touching off a firestorm that kills upwards of 100,000 people, burns a quarter of the city to the ground, and leaves a million homeless.

The raid also represented a tactical shift, as the Americans switched from high-altitude precision bombing to low-altitude incendiary raids.

Tokyo was the first of five incendiary raids launched in quick succession against the largest Japanese cities. Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe were also targeted — with Nagoya getting hit twice within a week. By the end of the war, more than 60 Japanese cities had been laid waste by firebombing.

The Tokyo raid, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, began an aerial onslaught so effective that the American air command concluded by July 1945 that no viable targets remained on the Japanese mainland. But if the American objective was to shorten the war by demoralizing the Japanese population and breaking its will to resist, it didn't work. What had proven true in Germany proved equally true here: Morale was shaken by bombing, but once the shock passed, the war work went on.

The Americans began looking to incendiaries as their stockpiles of those weapons increased, and because the typically cloudy weather conditions that prevailed over Japan made precision bombing difficult at best.

Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, commander of the 21st Bomber Command, also argued that incendiary bombing would be particularly effective, because Japanese cities contained a lot of tightly packed, wooden structures that would burn easily when set alight.

He was right.

The B-29 bombers for the Tokyo raid were stripped of their defensive weapons and packed with various incendiary explosives, including white phosphorus and napalm, a new gasoline-based, fuel-gel mixture developed at Harvard University.

As opposed to the high-altitude precision bombing, which the Allies practiced with only mixed success over both Germany and Japan, incendiary raids were carried out at low altitudes of between 5,000 and 9,000 feet. The attackers were helped by the fact that Japanese air defenses were almost nonexistent by that point in the war. In fact, only 14 B-29s were lost in the March 9-10 Tokyo raid.

As was done in Europe, pathfinder planes flying ahead of the bombers marked the target with a flaming X, guiding the attackers in. Tokyo was hit over a three-hour period by three bomber streams that dropped roughly 2,000 tons of incendiaries near the docklands and in the industrial heart of the Japanese capital.

Tokyo immediately burst into flames. The combination of incendiaries, the way they were dropped, windy weather conditions and lack of coordinated firefighting on the ground resulted in a firestorm similar to what occurred two years previously in Hamburg, and only a month before in Dresden. Temperatures on the ground in Tokyo reached 1,800 degrees in some places.

The human carnage was appalling; bomber crews coming in near the tail end of the raid reported smelling the stench of charred human flesh as they passed over the burning capital.

Sixty-three percent of Tokyo's commercial area, and 18 percent of its industry, was destroyed. An estimated 267,000 buildings burned to the ground.

The firebombing campaign, coupled with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are believed to have killed more than 1 million Japanese civilians between March and August of 1945.

Source: Various

Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

How to Set Up a Basement Chem Lab

In your own smoking, bubbling lair, you can make everything from bouncy balls to rocket motors. Here's a catalyst to get you started, plus, a video demo with Geekdad Ken Denmead.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

The continuing saga of Boxee and Hulu

Section: Video, Content, Video Providers, Web, Downloads, Websites, Online Music/Video

Remember the dismal news last month that Boxee would no longer be providing Hulu content?  Well, Boxee tried to come up with a way around that.  Although the solution was not the same as what those loving Hulu content on Boxee are used to.

Instead, the newest Boxee featured an RSS reader which is optimized for video.  This worked to get Hulu content on the site since Hulu offers up public RSS feeds.  So, the once “bleeding edge release” of Boxee grabbed the Hulu videos and streams them.  While it did work, it did not work as smoothly as the previous Hulu tools.  However, within the same day of this RSS work around, yet another glitch arose - Hulu blocked them.  What the heck? 

According the Boxee blog “we just found out that Hulu blocked the boxee browser from accessing the Hulu site. this is a disappointing development since their RSS feeds are publicly available, and our browser, while optimized for a great 10 ft video experience, is no different in how it accesses this content than Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Opera or any of the other browsers out there.“

All I can think is that Hulu is caving to the content providers.  Previously, Boxee had talks with Hulu and its content providers, which fell through to keep things the way they were.  At that point, they added the new RSS tool.  Boxee, however, remains diplomatic on their blog stating that “the people in the industry ‘get it’ ... they are trying to adjust to a new reality, but they need time.“

Hmmm…I’m thinking if the content providers really did “get it,“ Hulu would still be on Boxee.  The providers have to realize, if they try to block places like Hulu, viewers are just gonna go elsewhere to get what they are watching.  Places a little less than legal perhaps.  At least on Hulu we still have to watch all those blips of commercials during the programming.  Keep making it difficult to get your shows to watch legally and push your viewers to some commercial-free programming.

Boxee will be keeping their users up to date on the latest developments with the situation.  “to our users: if you choose to use boxee as your media browser to view legal and publicly available content on the internet, we will do everything we can to ensure that you can access it, no matter what the source.“  They have now implemented a status bar on the upper right corner of their page, showing if Hulu is available on the site or not.  Should be interesting to see how often the status changes.

If you want to snag yourself the latest version of Boxee, just go to the download page.  Just keep in mind that being pre-release software, there is a chance of bugs.  According to Boxee “a more stable version” should be coming March 24th.

Via: wired

Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 9 Mar 2009 | 3:32 am

So Hot Right Now: Top 10 Gadgetell posts for the week of March 01, 2009

Section:

Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week?  Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!

• Take our readership survey, win an Xbox 360
  “Here at Gadgetell we are committed to bringing you great content day after day, allowing you to stay in the know with everything electronic, web, and technology related. We have opted to offer you all this information for free, by serving various banner ads (and sometimes video ads)…“ MORE »
• Recession-O-Rama Deals for Tuesday 03.03.2009
  “ We’ve partnered up with LogicBuy.com to bring you today’s Recession-O-Rama deals.  What do we have for you today?  You can grab a HP Pavilion laptop (lots of different versions), an Xbox 360 bundle, a PS3, a PSP, or even a 52-inch Toshiba…“ MORE »
• Recession-O-Rama deals for the Weekend 3.1.09
  “ The economic stimulus bill has passed, it’s a new month, and the economy is still in trouble.  Let’s hope this new month can bring some new changes for the better in the economy.  Today we have some deals ranging from a Sony…“ MORE »
• Facebook - social networking fiasco or phenomenon?
  “ It seems as though everybody blogs or is on some kind of social networking site these days.  You have a ton of social networking sites to choose from to meet people, stay in touch with those you know, instant message, share photos,…“ MORE »
• Motorola: We blew it says CEO
  “Financial Times has a great post detailing Motorola’s Joint Chief Executive Greg Brown letting loose on how his company lost its mobile edge.  The executive sees three main issues that led to the once shining star’s decline: wrong plan, the wrong product, and missed customers changing needs. …“ MORE »
• Asus unveils the Windows Mobile based W835 smartphone
  “Asus has recently unveiled their latest smartphone—the W835 and based on the specs it sounds like it may be worthy of a purchase.  As for the specs, it features a 3.5-inch touchscreen display with a resolution…“ MORE »
• Avoid deserted islands with new cheap PLBS
  “If living off of coconuts and fish for a year or two doesn’t sound like your idea of an extreme vacation, check out this new personal locator beacon called Fast Find.  Today, adventurers have many options in locator beacons…“ MORE »
• Get free movies from Redbox in March on Wednesdays
  “  You’re probably already using redbox, the rental kiosk found all over the place in supermarkets.  Lots of people like it because it is convenient and it is cheap - only $1.00 a night per rental.  Well, now it is even more…“ MORE »
• Palm Pre: two year shelf life?  Palm bleeds in Q3
  “ Cue the Batman “oooffff” and “Bam!“  Palm issued a statement yesterday attempting to set analyst expectations on the company’s performance or lack thereof.  In releasing their preliminary Q3 results, Palm shed light on the bad news but also some good news. The bad news, was pretty…“ MORE »
• Microsoft returns with its “Ultimate Steal” promotion for college students
  “ Microsoft is back again with its Ultimate Steal promotion for anyone attending a U.S. educational institution and actively enrolled in at least a half course credit.  You have to be able to provide an .edu email address…“ MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 9 Mar 2009 | 3:30 am

IBM Wants Patent For Lotus Notes-Free Meetings

theodp writes "Over at IBM, the Lotus Notes team has 'invented' preventing the use of their own product during meetings. Self-described patent reformer Big Blue has asked the USPTO for a patent covering Suppressing De-Focusing Activities During Selective Scheduled Meetings by forcing meeting attendees to 'submit to the computing system suspension requirements.' What's next — a patent for Verizon for blocking cellphone usage during movies?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 9 Mar 2009 | 1:13 am

Drew Friedman paints Robert Crumb presenting Cheap Thrills album cover to Janis Joplin

Our pal Drew Friedman painted this great moment in freak history.

This recent piece is a depiction of my old friend (and favorite artist) Robert Crumb presenting his original "Cheap Thrills" comic strip cover art to Janis Joplin, (with various members of "The Holding Company" lurking behind), backstage at the Filmore West in San Fran' in 1968. It was commissioned by the private collector who owns the original Crumb "Cheap Thrills" art, as a companion piece to hang along side it in his office. Interestingly, Crumb's original intention was for this art to run on the back cover and a portrait of Joplin to run on the front. But Joplin loved the the comic strip art so much, (she was an avid underground comics fan, especially the work of Crumb, and already at that point in her escalating career, had the power to hire her own cover artist), she decided to run it on the front. It's arguably the SECOND most famous album cover ever, after Sgt. Pepper. One amusing side note: bending no doubt to pressure, Crumb wore his hair for a time at it's longest in '68, which I try to show. Joplin was also encouraging him to "loosen up" and wear "hippie clothes and beads" but he just couldn't go that far.

Drew Friedman paints Robert Crumb presenting Cheap Thrills album cover to Janis Joplin

Source: Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2009 | 12:21 am

Best Wi-Fi Portable Browsing Device?

foxxo writes "I'm a library worker, so I get lots of questions about our collection when I'm out in the stacks. I'd love to be able to access our online catalog and give patrons more comprehensive guidance without directing them to the reference desk. What options are available for a portable device with Wi-Fi connectivity, full-featured Web browsing, and (most importantly) no cellphone-style activation and service fees? Size is important, too; I need something I can carry in my pocket, not a micro-notebook with full keyboard. (And I am a library worker, so low cost is key!)" One device that sounds interesting in this category is the GiiNii Movit (not yet released, but shown off at CES). What can you recommend that's out there now?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 9 Mar 2009 | 12:05 am

Essay Jukebox: Playlist #1

Boingboing's current guestblogger Paul Spinrad is currently Projects Editor for MAKE magazine. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Wendy, their two children Clara and Simon, and their cats Ron and Nancy. 

In this post I asked boingboing readers what mini-essays by me they would want to read, and now it's time to pay the piper. Here are the votes tallied from the first 103 comments, in descending order, followed by the goods. Since some interest was expressed in all of them, I'll hit them all with at least a line or two. The top vote-getter was "D) Guys need a coming-of-age ritual that has some teeth, like exist in other cultures," with 35 votes. I guess it's true! Anyway, for those interested, thank you for your interest!

D) Guys need a coming-of-age ritual that has some teeth, like exist in other cultures. (35 votes)
M) Styles of dress follow people's differing views of human perfectability (22 yes)
L) Laughter and crying serve to carve new cognitive pathways in a hurry. (20 yes)
H) Poetry will become popular again. (19 yes, 1 no)
B) My cynical Public Service Announcement campaign idea to get more people to major in Science and Engineering. (17 yes)
I) "Method" acting changed the role of celebrity in all cultural disciplines, starting in the late 1940's. (17 yes)
C) Was Jesus a comedian? (17 yes, 1 no)
J) The 6th-8th Century Iconoclast Controversy in Eastern Europe has fantastic dramatic potential. (16 yes)
F) Control vs. Love: breadth-first, top-down vs. depth-first, bottom up search strategies that work in opposition. (12 yes)
G) Some countries "get" rock 'n' roll better than others. (14 yes, 2 no)
K) Where there is vice, there is connoisseurship. (12 yes)
A) What is a crackpot? (7 yes, 1 no)
E) We need a communications language standard for networked devices, and why this is more of a social/political problem than a technical problem. (3 yes, 1 no)

Guys need a coming-of-age ritual that has some teeth, like exist in other cultures. 

If you wanted to design the perfect consumer, what would they be like? How about someone who thinks and acts like a "typical teenager" their whole life? Empathy, patience, and responsibility are hard to monetize, so there's huge commercial interest in keeping these out of our repertoires. (Sorry, together teens-- you know the stereotype.) All the seductive advertising got to me, anyway, on some level, even though I don't consider myself a big consumer type.

A coming-of-age ritual would counter the industrial production of overgrown boy-men and girl-women. Speaking personally again, I think that if I had grown up knowing that I could screw around and count on people's indulgence until I was, say, 26, and then after a big public ritual everyone would expect more, I would have risen to the occasion, as would all of my pals. Other things we call rites-of-passage (moving out, supporting yourself, getting married, having kids) can certainly have the same effect, but you can do all of those things while still just always trying to see what you can get away with.

The bar mitzvah age of 13 is too young, as one example. I'm guessing that when people came up with that age, more was expected of 13-year-olds than is today. I'd push it out, to allow for things like college and some good years of sowing wild oats. As the ritual itself, what do you think? It's great that this question got the most votes, and I just wish I had some hard information to contribute. For those of us who, like me, haven't read our Joseph Campbell, let's hop to it, and we'll all try to figure something out. Meanwhile, I love the comment from the man who marked his change by cutting his hair, and also find it interesting that a couple of generations ago, men wore hats all the time. How did you get your first hat? Did your father and grandfather ceremoniously take you to a haberdasher?

Styles of dress follow people's differing views of human perfectability. 

Let's say you're an alien who comes to Earth and happens to land in the middle of an abortion rally. Both sides are there waving signs, which you can't read, but you notice differences in the way each side is dressed. On one, colors and patterns match more closely, fabrics are smoother and more uniform, hair is neater, there are more suits, and jewelry is finer. On the other side, patterns are louder, hair is looser, materials are rougher, there's more eclecticism and asymmetry, and more costume jewelry. You wonder, is this species fighting about what they should wear?

There are many flashpoint issues surrounding reproductive and drug policy, and I think they have to do with differing views of human weakness and what to do about it. If people should be guided by divine ideals, you don't want laws to assume (and reward) falling short, and you want to wear things that are as neat and coordinated as possible. If people are fascinating, flawed animals whose missteps should be expected and provided for, you're more liable to wear things that reflect the complex collage we all live.

Laughter and crying serve to carve new cognitive pathways in a hurry. 

One theory I remember from a psycholinguistics class ascribes humor and laughter to suddenly resolving a tension. Like "What has four wheels and flies? / A garbage truck" or seeing someone fall and then realizing they weren't hurt. They're all "aha!" moments that revise your model of what's true, and the brain gets extra juice in order to carve revised pathways, so the new understandings stay permanent.

When you lose someone you love, you also need to carve new pathways in order to remake your model of the world. But it takes much longer and requires much more juice.

Aside: What made the Anthony Perkins character in Psycho so creepy is that (spoiler alert!) he found a way around having to process his mother's death, and so he never learned what death means.

Poetry will become popular again. 

Manifesto

The heroes of the small screen, the humans,
Sharpen their points,
And pierce the media thicket with the power of concentration.

My cynical Public Service Announcement campaign idea to get more people to major in Science and Engineering. 

This is an idea for a series of 30-second promotional spots. They're totally dishonest because they imply that you can't do as much good for the world as a liberal arts major (for example), but if you see this as a war, then I guess all's fair!

In straight-ahead Errol Morris style, each spot would present a real person in mid- or late life who regrets not having pursued science or engineering, talking about the wrong turn they took. Formula: I was interested in and good at science/engineering, but for stupid reason A, I pursued/majored in B instead. 3) So now I'm doing unsatisfying-C while my scientist/engineer friends are doing meaningful-D. Examples:

"...I was also always great at BS-ing, so when the math started getting too hard, I decided to switch to B, and then I went into advertising. Now, if I reach the pinnacle of my profession, I can convince people to buy more cars and liquor. Meanwhile, my old friend Sam, who studied Civil Engineering, is bringing clean, safe water to poor people in India. Pursue BS, and that's what you get."

"...But I also noticed that there were more babes at the Art library than the Engineering library, so I majored in something else. Now I grub for grants to do minor variations on the one concept I'm quote-unquote 'known' for, while my college buddy Alex, who did Chemical Engineering, is figuring out how to stop the spread of brain cancer."

"I was intimidated by all the hot-shot guys in those classes, so I changed to B and wound up in Law school. Now I work 70 hours a week doing corporate law to pay off my debt while my college roommate Carol, who studied Biochem, is figuring out how proteins fold. I'm happy for her."

"My buddies were mostly liberal arts majors, so that was the easy path. Now I work for an investment bank, and if I do a really good job, it means some rich people get even richer. But my friend Keven, who studied Aeronautical Engineering, and now he's building autonomous robot aircraft for putting out fires and rescuing people."

And so on. The stories must be real, not acted, which is where some actual work would have to get done. But if the subjects wanted the video to obscure their identities, all the better-- they would just look that much more pathetic. Possible tagline: Engineering - Make something of your life. It's in the grand tradition of sobering, cautionary, and presumably effective PSAs about V.D., drugs, etc.: Don't let this happen to you!

"Method" acting changed the role of celebrity in all cultural disciplines, starting in the late 1940's. 

When actors began stepping into their roles rather than viewing acting as a craft, it brought more attention to who they were personally. Audiences knew that Marlon Brando's "Stella!" was a window into his own emotions. As critic Richard Schickel recalls, "People who saw him as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 cannot forget the sense that they were seeing the beginning of something for which there was no precedent."

Maybe there's no cause-and-effect, but other fields soon shifted their focus the same way. Swing music's tight arrangements and orchestras gave way to Bebop's small-combo improvisation and personal signature styles. Abstract Expressionist paintings came entirely from what the artist dreamed up, with no observations the viewer could share. Beat writers rejected editing as separating the reader from their raw, original thoughts. In all cases it feeds celebrity-- to appreciate their work, you think about the artist.

Kerouac's On The Road manuscript, written on a roll of teletype paper, is currently on a museum tour. Writing that way helped him avoid breaking his flow, and if he also thought it might become a precious relic some day, a quasi-religious object the way Pollock's paintings were valued records of his artistic trance at the time, he was right.

I learned this stuff from reading Richard Schickel's Intimate Strangers and Leo Braudy's Frenzy of Renown, both fascinating books about the phenomenon of celebrity.

Was Jesus a comedian? 

I'd seen numerous references to Lenny Bruce's notorious "Religions, Inc." routine, and when I finally read it, I didn't find it that funny. Sure, I appreciated that it was revolutionary at the time, but in the years since, so many of us have accepted Bruce's comparison between organized religions and corporations that it's no longer daring or funny to point it out.

Humor tends not to age well. If being "edgy" means testing the edge between taboo and acceptable, then each generation turns edgy into obvious or even doctrinal as it moves the line.

Jesus reportedly called out hypocrisy and put authority in its place, and his words resonated with people, but the accounts we read are filtered through subsequent generations. If the Sermon on the Mount (or the sermons it summarized) was so daring and dead-on that it had its audience howling in the aisles, and if the surrounding culture eventually came to accept the views it expressed, how would later generations describe the event in their accounts? To say that it provoked laughter would be unthinkable.

The 6th-8th Century Iconoclast Controversy in Eastern Europe has fantastic dramatic potential. 

Another great chapter from Frenzy of Renown describes the Iconoclast Controversy, which raged on and off from the sixth to the eighth centuries. Christian churches under the Byzantine Empire developed a tradition of icon painting, and the lay worshipers loved praying to these icons. But bands of iconoclasts, who saw this as un-Christian idol-worship, began storming into churches, ripping the icons off the walls, and smashing them.

Meanwhile, the top of the church hierarchy felt that the icons had too much power over people, and interfered with their authority. So a series of Byzantine emperors began to secretly support the iconoclasts in smashing icons. So the iconoclasts, zealots who justified their views with scripture, took payoffs from the Byzantine Empire to destroy the most precious possessions of the icon-worshipers, many of whom were mendicant monks. Wheels within wheels!

Towards the end of the controversy, one pro-icon author was captured by iconoclasts who branded his forehead with some of his pro-icon verses. After the Byzantine Empire withdrew its support for the iconoclasts, he obtained a high position in the church.

Control vs. Love: breadth-first, top-down vs. depth-first, bottom up search strategies that work in opposition. 

A great meta-recipe for systems that learn and adapt is to have opposing forces fighting each other. It's the basis for our legal system, and I see this dynamic everywhere.

One of my favorite pet pairings is Control vs Love. As I see it, Control uses a breadth-first, top-down search strategy, whereas Love is depth-first and bottom-up. Control without love causes large-scale death, destruction, and suffering in the service of generalizations and abstractions. Love without control gets pulled this way and that, universally sympathetic but unable to step back and build systems that are ultimately more helpful. Together, locked in eternal combat, they keep the excesses of the other in check.

Another requirement for the recipe is that the opposing motivations should prompt similar actions. This allows for infinite flexibility within a spectrum of motivation. When the rules of the game are set up like this, something clicks, and complexity grows.

And so, for example, the artist seeking connection and artist seeking fame search for the same cultural niches to occupy and grow from. The careerist who always wants to prove himself right follows the same course as the ethical professional who always wants to do a good job. The seducer follows the true lover's thought process when determining his next move.

I like the commenter's suggestion that "Love vs. Control" could be an album title!

Some countries "get" rock 'n' roll better than others. 

Some countries expect young people to move away from their childhood home and strike out on their own. In others, extended families are more close-knit, and young people tend to live close to their parents, grandparents, and other relatives. The wealthy English, who traditionally hired nannies and sent their children away to boarding schools at young ages, represent the first extreme. But in the U.S. as well, young people have more distance from their families than in other countries.

The rock 'n' roll that drives the genre comes from young people who want to connect with each other over something that they love but that their parents would hate. The first type of country breeds this type of rebellion, but in more family-oriented countries, the rock musicians are more liable to produce a derivative form, by applying rock-sounding style to melodies and music that the whole family can understand and enjoy.

Where there is vice, there is connoisseurship. 

Briefly, connoisseurship develops in part as a rationalization: alcohol, tobacco, etc.

What is a crackpot? 

Someone who produces non-disprovable, non-quantitative, descriptive generalizations. Whether it's Sigmund Freud or Lyndon LaRouche, it's all the same impulse.

We need a communications language standard for networked devices, and why this is more of a social/political problem than a technical problem. 

It should be a simple but complete language, not just a protocol. Then you could do anything you want in the communications layer, rather than applications themselves having to handle multiple protocols redundantly. You could write fancy cross-platform rules to control when and how to send or open all of your communications, and how to handle the ones directed to you. In the 1980's, Adobe got its start by doing the same thing with a page description language for printers, PostScript, and look what happened to them!

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Mar 2009 | 11:06 pm

Lonely Myanmar Elephant Camp Receives Few Tourists

Down a rocky path in an isolated mountain range in central Myanmar waits an inquisitive, young elephant calf named Wine Suu Khaing Thein whom should be the star attraction of the Pho Kyar eco-reserve, recounts AFP News.   The reserve is home to the one-year-old elephant calf, along with 80 other elephants who roam about among decades-old teak trees and singing birds.  Although the camp promises elephant rides and jungle treks, eco-tourists simply do not want to come to the military-dominated nation, let alone attempt the pot-holed ride to the secluded Pho Kyar.   Holiday seekers to Myanmar have been declining since a violent crackdown in 2007 on anti-junta protests, while the previous year’s cyclone and coercion from pro-democracy groups to shun the country also discourage tourists.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Mar 2009 | 11:05 pm

Data.gov Is Coming — Let's Help Build It

Barack Obama and his new Chief Information Officer say they want to make government data more accessible and easier to use. But they'll need your help pointing out which datasets we need the most. Enter the Wired How to Open Up Government Data wiki.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Mar 2009 | 11:00 pm

Wolfram Promises Computing That Answers Questions

An anonymous reader writes "Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram feels that he has put together at least the initial version of a computer that actually answers factual questions, a la Star Trek's ship computers. His version will be found on their Web-based application, Wolfram Alpha. What does this mean? Well, instead of returning links to pages that may (or may not) contain the answer to your questions, Wolfram will respond with the actual answer. Just imagine typing in 'How many bones are in the human body?' and getting the answer." Right now, though the search entry field is in place, Alpha is not yet generally available -- only "to a few select individuals."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Mar 2009 | 10:56 pm

Cisco buys Flip Video/PureDigital

San Francisco based Pure Digital Technologies, the seven year old company behind the Flip Video line of video cameras, is considering a sale of the company, multiple sources have confirmed. One interested buyer is rumored to be Cisco. Flip cameras - dead simple and small video devices that are tailored towards users who want to upload video to the Internet - have become massively popular. One source says the company has sold more than $200 million worth of the tiny cameras in the last couple of years. Based on reviews of the recently released Flip Mino HD, we're not surprised. The devices cost between $130 and $230 and have spawned a large group of copy cat competitors. One potential buyer, says a source, is Cisco, which has been more active recently in acquisitions. Ned Hooper, Cisco's chief M&A guy, is said to be actively looking to buy or invest in consumer startups that offer high-bandwith-using services. A hot startup like Flip, which is helping to fuel the explosion in user generated video (much of which makes its way online), fits in perfectly with that strategy.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Mar 2009 | 10:40 pm

Nokia and WiMax are no longer friends

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Mobile

Things aren’t looking so good for our friend WiMAX.  Sure, there are the successful rollouts from Sprint and Clearwire in Baltimore and Portland, but that’s about it in the U.S.  Other carriers such as AT&T and Verizon have committed themselves to LTE rather than LTE for 4G connections.  Nokia, the world’s largest cell phone maker, is following and abandoning WiMAX for LTE going forward.

A big part of Nokia’s adoption of LTE is that it is more backward-compatible with 3G technology.  The fact that Verizon is already beginning testing of LTE this year, with a planned rollout by next year doesn’t hurt, either.  Those trials so far show download speeds of 50Mbps to 60 Mbps, though that could decrease with more people using the network at the same time.

The dropping of WiMAX could be very depressing to quite a few people.  It’s been successfully rolled out in several European cities so far, while LTE is just getting started with widespread testing.  WiMAX is also based on open standards that anyone can theoretically use in any device.  LTE on the other hand is proprietary, and not nearly as open.  Sprint fans might run into some trouble as well.  If Sprint and Clearwire are the only ones supporting WiMAX, even with the large sums of money the received from backers such as Google, Intel and Comcast, it might not turn out all that well in the end.  Hopefully the two standards can both be used, if only to have an open standards option to the cloed-off LTE

Read [eWeek]

Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Mar 2009 | 10:30 pm

Norwegian Broadcasting Sets Up Its Own Tracker

eirikso writes with an interesting story from Norway; the state broadcaster there has decided to put up some of its content on BitTorrent. "The tracker is based on the same OpenTracker software that the Pirate Bay has been using for the last couple of years. By using BitTorrent we can reach our audience with full quality, unencrypted media files. Experience from our early tests show that if we're the best provider of our own content we also gain control of it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Mar 2009 | 9:50 pm

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf part 2: Monochrom's retro-sov-kitsch game!

At long last, our pals at Monochrom have released the next installment in their free, mad retro-sov-kitsch game Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (and I'm a character in it, along with Jello Biafra!).

/////// SOVIET UNTERZOEGERSDORF
//////
///// SECTOR II
////
/// The Adventure Game
//
/

An adventure marches on!

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (pronounced «oon-taa-tsee-gars-doorf») is the last existing client republic of the USSR. The soviet enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with the surrounding so-called "Republic of Austria" or with the capitalist fortress "European Union". The downfall of the people's motherland -- the Soviet Union -- in the early 1990s had a devastating effect on the country’s intra-economic situation. External reactionary forces threatened the last remaining proletarian paradise. Party secretary Wladislav Gomulka has been kidnapped and is being held in US-Oberzoegersdorf. We must save comrade Gomulka! Because communism isn't an opinion. It's a promise.

Special Non Player Guest Characters: Jello Biafra, Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Emmanuel Goldstein, Mitch Altman, Bre Pettis, David 'DaddyD' Dempsey, Kyle Machulis, MC Frontalot, Eddie Codel, Irina Slutsky, Christian 'plomlompom' Heller, Jason Scott Sadofsky, Hans Bernhard, Robert Stachel (maschek) -- and many more.

Voice Acting by: Jevgeni Beliaikin, Sergey Teterin, Mikhail A. Crest, Daria Prawda, Bre Pettis -- and many more.

Soundtrack features: The Fat Man/George Alistair Sanger, Q-Burns Abstract Message, Zoe Keating, Neil Landstrumm, Jonathan Mann aka GameJew, Blockwerk, The Extra Action Marching Band, The Lazy, antivolk - Torsun feat. classless Kulla, Jan Klesse & Felix Knoke (left), Savant Trigger, Rioteer, MC Orgelmueller, Magic Jordan, Schaua, Horace, The Vladivostoks, Limpopo, Eric Skiff, Prometheus X, Kertal (feat. sunsetfactory), Bolschewistische Kurkapelle Schwarz-Rot, Farmer's Market, Attention, Cosmonauts!, Woodn Earf, Trishes, Krach the Robot, Prosperity Denied, Arteom Denissov, Dan Oberbauer aka DJ Chronos, LFO DEMON -- and more.

Operating systems: Available for Windows, Linux and OSX! And many thanks to the fabulous comrades at CodeWeavers (http://www.codeweavers.com) for Linux/OSX versions. And also bloshevik geetings to the folks at Silver Server (http://www.sil.at) for bandwith sponsoring.

Soviet Unterzoegersdorf / Sector 2: Proletarian Download


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Mar 2009 | 9:45 pm

Norway's public broadcaster sets up its own torrent tracker using same code as The Pirate Bay

Eirikso from NRK, the Norwegian public broadcast, writes to tell us that they've set up their own BitTorrent tracker, adding, "The tracker is based on the same OpenTracker software that the Pirate Bay has been using for the last couple of years. By using BitTorrent we can reach our audience with full quality, unencrypted media files. Experience from our early tests show that if we're the best provider of our own content we also gain control of it."

The first show we’re putting on our new tracker is a very popular television series about people living in remote places in Norway. It features fascinating people and spectacular scenery. We have provided all the Norwegian subtitle files and if people want to fansub any of the episodes we’re more than happy to let you do that. Please let us know in the comments and we’ll link to your translations.

We are providing full quality video files with no DRM. The biggest problem regarding this project is to clear all the rights we need to be able to distribute content in such an open system. NRK is a big content producer, but record labels, actors, external production companies and format rights owners usually have contracts that prevent us from distributing our content freely in the internet. We are in constant negotiations over these issues. And it seems like it should be possible to find a solution where NRK gets the rights it needs and the rights holders get the compensation they want.

In addition to this we look into new providers. Pump Audio, Magnatune and other companies with easier licensing systems are interesting sources.

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation is promoting the free and opensource Miro software as their preferred BitTorrent client. It is user friendly and contains everything you need to both download and play the high quality video files.

Now that's public service broadcasting!

Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation sets up its own bittorrent tracker (Thanks, Eirikso!)

Source: Gizmodo | 8 Mar 2009 | 9:00 pm

The Last Will and Testament of Circuit City

Harry writes "Sunday is the final day of business for Circuit City, the once-dominant national consumer electronics chain done in by the rise of Best Buy, the crummy economy, and multiple failings of its own. I paid a final visit of respect to my local store, and found that they'd gotten rid of just about all the unopened electronics products, and were therefore selling off stuff like broken computers and the toilet-paper dispenser from the restroom. Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene." NPR has a segment on the end of the Circuit City era as well.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Mar 2009 | 8:40 pm

Do do doo doo doo DOOT!

These are showing up around New York. “Sorry, Mario, the Princess is at Daffy’s!”
via BBG

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Mar 2009 | 8:04 pm

Angelsoft Lets Startups Find Funding Through New Investor Filtering Tool

Angel and VC funding platform Angelsoft has launched an investor filtering tool, allowing entrepreneurs the ability to access detailed profiles on over 1,000 venture capital firms and angel investment groups in the U.S. Angelsoft allows startups to “push” their business ideas to over 400 angel investment groups and 15,949 investors across the world. The site formerly focused on connecting entrepreneurs to angel and early-stage investors only, but recently changed its model to include VC firms.

Angelsoft calls it an investor search engine, but it lacks a search box (a big flaw). Instead, entrepreneurs use Kayak-like filters to adjust their sorting results by how much an investment firm usually invests, what terms they typically offer, as well as by company-based criteria such as industry, location and stage. VC and angel firm profiles include a snapshot of the fund, industry expertise, prior investments, executive profiles and links to the LinkedIn profiles of investors. For the 450 investment groups that use Angelsoft’s VC and Angel dealflow management tools, the search engine results provide even more data, including a firm’s average response time to entrepreneurs applying for funding, number of applications a firm receives each month and additional past funding history.

The new investor sorting tool gives startups the power to vet and gain insight into potential investment firms and then choose to apply for funding from the firm which best fits their needs. It is certainly an interesting way to add more transparency into the funding world. Angelsoft was launched in 2004 by David S. Rose, Chairman of the New York Angels, and Ryan Janssen. The company’s platform is currently used by 450 angel groups and VCs (that use the platform for deal workflow), with 2,500 startup applications coming in a month. In December, the number of startup applications per month increased to just over 3,000, perhaps a sign that the economy is taking its toll on the ability of startups to get funding through more traditional means. According to Angelsoft, 2.6 percent of the applicants ultimately get funded, which seems relatively small, but that number has increased since December. As more traffic is driven to the site, the number of completed deals could rise.

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