Lot 49

Java Toaster prints weather forecast
: "An ingenious British student may have prevented the oft-cited Internet Toaster going the same way as the Flying Car. Robin Southgate, a final year Industrial Design student at Brunel University has designed a unit that grabs the weather forecast, and burns it onto a piece of bread. Mark One doesn't reproduce the full glory of weather maps - such as isobars and cold fronts - on your toast just yet, and instead displays an appropriate symbol: a cloud, sun or raindrop. But it's seamless and doesn't take any longer than a regular, or dare we say 'legacy' toaster."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 03:12 PM | Permalink

Movie Industry Frowns on Professor's Software Gallery:"Professor David S. Touretzky, a computer scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University, says he has never watched a movie on DVD, much less copied one illegally. So why is the movie industry calling him a pirate?"

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 05:38 PM | Permalink

Ultima Online: Via Lum the Mad..."Daren Sutter, for one, put a large tower on the auction block last August. He made 600 bucks on the sale. He's been prospecting ever since. On any given day, he will have a couple of dozen items up for auction. These are mostly lump sums of gold in parcels of 500,000 or 1 million units. At present the market value is about $20 to $30 per half-million units. A 'one million uo gold!' check sold recently for $71. (Buyers send Sutter hard currency, and Sutter leaves gold checks for them at virtual banks in Britannia.) This puts the exchange rate at around 15,000 to 25,000 Ultima Online gold units to the U.S. dollar, making a unit of Ultima gold nearly equal in value to the Vietnamese dong."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 02:03 PM | Permalink

Dutch police fight cell theft with text 'bombs': "The Amsterdam police force Tuesday announced that it has found a new weapon against the rising theft of mobile telephones: text message 'bombs.' After a user reports his GMS handset stolen, the police start sending out one Short Message Service text message to the phone every three minutes: 'This handset was nicked, buying or selling is a crime. The police.'" I'm looking forward to the day when stolen items scream loudly, like the flute in H.R. Puffinstuff.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:43 AM | Permalink

Microsoft storm warning: "The HailStorm program will put all your data in one convenient place -- and leave Bill Gates with the keys. ... But even if Microsoft were somehow able to build a foolproof, fail-safe fortress of a system, there'd still be reason to doubt the wisdom of handing Microsoft your data. Depending on how you used it, HailStorm would know who you were, where you were, what you were doing and when you did it, how much money you had and how you spent it. It would hold the keys to your life. How would you feel about handing those keys over to Microsoft?"

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:55 PM | Permalink

The Federalist Society: "The Conservative Cabal That's Transforming American Law."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:11 PM | Permalink

Napster-Proof CDs: The Music Industry's Secret Plan to Safeguard Popular Music From the Wild Web: "If all goes as planned, Charley Pride will make music history in April. After selling more than 70 million records, Pride -- one of the last great figures from the pre-Garth, twang-box radio glory days of country music -- is set to release America's first copy-protected compact disk. A tribute to singer Jim Reeves, who died in a plane crash in 1964, Pride's CD will incorporate technology that, in theory, will stop listeners from ripping its tracks into MP3s. If it works -- a hotly disputed question -- copy protection will change the terms of the battle over online music." Everyone should have a secret plan.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:25 AM | Permalink

Bush Rejects EC Privacy Proposal: "The Bush administration is objecting strongly to a set of proposed European Commission privacy rules that could hurt transatlantic e-commerce, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition Tuesday." Four more years...ugh.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:19 AM | Permalink

Scientist: Two Gunmen Involved in JFK Assassination: "Two gunmen were almost certainly involved in the assassination of U.S. President John F Kennedy in 1963, a British forensic scientist has said. In a peer-reviewed paper published in the British Forensic Science Society's journal 'Science and Justice,' scientist D.B. Thomas adds weight to the so-called 'grassy knoll' theory that a second gunman shot at the president at almost exactly the same moment as assassin Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the Book Depository building. Thomas said based on an analysis of echoes on acoustic recordings from the Dallas police radio channels at the time of the shooting, there was a 96.3 percent chance that a shot was fired by a second person on the knoll." Now about Area 51...

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 03:25 PM | Permalink

San Francisco's Free Computer Networks: "With a wireless ethernet card, a laptop and some basic software savvy, you can get on the Internet for free from almost anywhere in downtown San Francisco. In fact, you can get a lot more than free Web surfing. You can waltz unhindered into dozens of corporate networks and access passwords, databases and private e-mail." Power to the people (who can afford laptops)!

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 05:06 PM | Permalink

All your base are belong to us: Meme over.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 02:38 PM | Permalink

Hardwiring copyrights: "'If they succeed in this, all of a sudden these industries have complete control over how the public does such things as backing up their music libraries,' said John Martilla, director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression, which is spearheading opposition to several 'digital rights management' technologies. Even legal activities such as sampling digital works for educational or critical purposes could be blocked under proposed models, Martilla said."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:26 PM | Permalink

3Q: "First a virtual clone of you is created. Your clone then becomes the main character in your computer game. The face of gaming has changed, and the face is yours." Now Quake players can take being fragged even more personally.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:10 PM | Permalink

Business lessons learned from 'The Sims' - March 22, 2001: "But aside from its twisted humor and its ability to turn virtual dollhouses into a mass-market cash cow, 'The Sims' is a remarkable example of how a company and its customers can help a product evolve to the point where customers not only do a large portion of the innovation and marketing but also produce as much intellectual capital as they consume."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:06 AM | Permalink

Cell phone jammers defy law: "Nearly everyone has been annoyed at a cell phone ringing at an inopportune moment or someone blabbing away in public. Many people would love to block the signals if they could — but doing so in America is illegal. So you might be surprised to learn that not only are cell phone jamming devices being sold to frustrated folks in the United States, but that MSNBC.com has been told one purchaser is the U.S. government."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:46 PM | Permalink

mycereal.com: Via Silent Tristero... "Welcome to mycereal.com, where cereals don't exist until you create them. We will formulate a cereal tailored to your individual tastes and health concerns, and deliver it right to your door."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 09:01 AM | Permalink

Terms of Service by Rita Ferrandino: An interesting article from The Village Voice. "Through online chat, people test out their most secret impulses. The segmentation of rooms and sites allows them to find one another like rapists in a prison. Just as playing Dungeons & Dragons doesn't turn a kid into a wizard, pretending to be a homicidal maniac online doesn't make a man a killer. But determining what it does make him is one of the biggest ethical dilemmas facing modern society."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:44 PM | Permalink

Sex-Starved Moose Defecates on Car: "A sex-starved moose in Norway mistook a small, yellow car for a would-be partner, but defecated on it after it got no response."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:09 AM | Permalink

A Thorn in Hollywood's Side: Long live Dave Touretzky.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Bushonics speakers strike back: "We're mad as hell and we won't be misunderestimated anymore!"

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 11:08 AM | Permalink

Space, the Final Frontier...Of Trash?: "No human has ever been harmed by space debris, but part of the U.S. space station Skylab killed a cow in Australia when it fell to Earth in 1979. The most serious debris collision in space came in 1996 when a French spy satellite hit a fragment of a French Ariane rocket." In a related story, Taco Bell is promising that if Mir hits a floating target the company has set up off the coast of Australia (it's scheduled to fall from the sky this Friday), everyone in America will get a free taco. There's no word on whether there will be a cow waiting on the bull's-eye.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:59 AM | Permalink

Technology Review - Interactive Gaming Grows Up: "Breaking the boundaries of traditional computer games, Majestic interacts with players by e-mail, instant messaging, fax and phone calls. Majestic's slogan: It Plays You. ... The Majestic team has also set up phony Web sites, purchased hundreds of phone numbers from all over the U.S. and even founded dummy companies—all to keep the line between fact and fiction properly blurred. Ideally, players hunting for evidence online won't be able to tell when a Web site is real or not."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 03:41 PM | Permalink

Big Media v. Freelancers: The Justices at the Digital Divide: "Jonathan Tasini, the president of the National Writers Union, argues: 'We deserve a fair share of revenue that these big media companies are making in the digital age. You want to use my work? You have to pay.'" The situation here seems to be the reverse of Napster. Instead of individuals trampling corporate copyrights, large media companies are running roughshod over the rights of writers.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:30 PM | Permalink

Taliban Atone for Delay in Destroying Statues: "Afghanistan's ruling Taliban on Monday carried out the ritual slaughter of 100 cows to atone for not acting earlier to destroy all the country's statues, including two giant Buddhas." I don't suppose they could have sacrified a few of the European cattle destined to be slaughtered for carrying hoof and mouth disease.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:11 PM | Permalink

Record Industry Plays Both Sides: "With Napster a shell of its former self and services like MP3.com paying hefty tribute, record labels are poised to conquer cyberspace with their own streaming and downloading services. Ironically, only one thing stands in the way: copyright."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 09:38 AM | Permalink

Moller International: Home of the Moller M400 SkyCar. Time to get a helicopter pilot's license.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 04:56 PM | Permalink

Welcome to the World Wide Web. Passport, Please?: "'There is this naïve idea that the Internet changes everything,' said Ronald S. Katz, one of the lawyers representing the French groups that have sued Yahoo. 'It doesn't change everything. It doesn't change the laws in France.'" Maybe it should.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:43 PM | Permalink

The Human Body Shop: "What if getting a replacement for a failing heart or liver were as easy as buying a new muffler? Recent advances in a field known as tissue engineering could make it happen." What if keeping your liver healthy were as easy as laying off the Jack Daniels? Recent advances in common sense could make it happen.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 09:41 AM | Permalink

This Trap Mimics Humans to Lure Biting Bugs: "Forget the fly swatter, a new trap was launched in Singapore on Wednesday that lures biting insects to their doom by fooling them into thinking they are heading for a juicy human." Definitely a worthy use of technology.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 02:13 PM | Permalink

Prepaid Phones and Privacy, Too: "For privacy advocates who have spent years agitating for far-reaching data collection legislation, the last few months have resembled an ongoing bad dream. ... But while public attention has focused on Washington, D.C., a quiet revolution has taken place in the marketplace. Spurred not by legislative fiat but by competitive pressures, companies have begun to offer anonymous services -- in part to lure customers who have poor credit or who are immigrants without any credit history."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:33 PM | Permalink

Syringe Wielding Muggers Terrorize City: "Muggers in Vietnam's southern Ho Chi Minh City have been threatening to jab people with what they say are HIV-infected hypodermic needles to persuade them to part with money and jewelry, state-run media reported on Tuesday." Bio-terrorism trickles down to thugs.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:26 AM | Permalink

How Cyberpunk lit influenced technology: An interview with cyberpunk author Pat Cadigan.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 11:05 AM | Permalink

Stumping for Fair Use: "'The time, in my opinion, has come, for the Congress to reaffirm the fair use doctrine, and to bolster specific fair use rights, which are now at risk,' said Boucher in his speech. Among those rights that he listed as at risk were the use of copyrighted material for distance learning over the Internet, the doctrine of 'first sale,' which allows the purchaser of copyrighted material to lend it out or resell it, and the right to sample music." Remind me to vote for this guy, even if it won't count.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 04:29 PM | Permalink

Shepherd Shot Dead, Sheep Blamed: "An Egyptian Bedouin shepherd was shot in the chest and killed on Thursday when one of his flock jogged his loaded shotgun as he slept, police said." Careful readers of this site may recall that this isn't the first incident where a sheep has killed an Egyptian. Back on January 2nd, 2001, there was another post about a sacrificial sheep that shoved an Egyptian to his death. Coincidence or a conspiracy of the lambs?

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 02:13 PM | Permalink

Hundreds Volunteer for Clones, Scientists Say: "Hundreds of couples have volunteered for an experiment to create the first cloned children despite strong religious and scientific opposition, a team of scientists said Friday." I can't think of an instance when a technology has been invented and not used. I'm looking forward to seeing which despot will clone himself first.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:55 AM | Permalink

The open PC is dead - start praying, says HD guru: "So have fun fighting the battle against CPRM and alike but please do not be surprised when you fail, after all the war has been lost, long live the new world order: proprietary devices, proprietary interfaces, copy protection, limited functionality, and prepare you credit card accounts for all those monthly rental and service charges you will be paying for every 'computer controller consumer electronics device' you use."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:31 PM | Permalink

Shedding more light on Kamen’s ‘IT’: The definitive 'Ginger'? I'd buy one.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:27 PM | Permalink

Descramble That DVD in 7 Lines: "Descrambling DVDs just got even easier, thanks to a pair of MIT programmers. Using only seven lines of Perl code, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz have created the shortest-yet method to remove the thin layer of encryption that is designed to prevent people -- including Linux users -- from watching DVDs without proper authorization." The script can be found here.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 09:19 AM | Permalink

Copyright fight might narrow TV, music options : "'If the content industry has its way, the 'play' button will become the 'pay' button,' says Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association, a manufacturers trade group."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 02:17 PM | Permalink

Mutant Bacteria Next Threat From Russia's Mir: "Forget the danger of heavy-weight debris raining down from space when Russia sends the Mir orbiter to a watery grave this month -- the real threat could be mutant fungi, a researcher said Tuesday." Mutant fungi from space? Makes me wonder what they were up to up there.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Australia Outlaws Email Forwarding: Now that's just silly.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 09:23 AM | Permalink

Breaking It Open, Making It Better: Hacking TiVo and ReplayTV.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 03:01 PM | Permalink

CIA, CUL8R: Inside the CIA's secret chat room.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:26 PM | Permalink

Courtney Love Seeks to Rock Record Labels' Contract Policy: While Courtney Love's music has never been my favorite, I hope she wins her lawsuit.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:10 AM | Permalink

Pentagon Unveils Plans for a New Crowd-Dispersal Weapon: More on the 'active denial system' ... "As envisioned by its Pentagon designers, the weapon would fire bursts of electromagnetic energy capable of causing burning sensations on the skin of people standing as far as 700 yards away — without actually burning them, officials said." A promising tool for crowd dispersal ... and for torture.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 09:47 AM | Permalink

Computer 'can talk like a baby': "An Israeli company has created a conversational computer program it claims could revolutionise the way people interact with machines. Artificial Intelligence Enterprises (Ai) says its Hal program can already converse convincingly and has the vocabulary and grasp of language of a 15-month-old child." It's ready to debate dubya!

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 11:36 AM | Permalink

Taliban Begins Smashing All Afghan Statues: "The radical[ly stupid] ruling Taliban movement began smashing all statues from Afghanistan's rich cultural past Thursday, defying international appeals to save the ancient artifacts. Taliban Information and Culture Minister Mullah Qudratullah Jamal said centers where the campaign had been unleashed included Bamiyan province -- site of two soaring statues of the Buddha hewn from a solid cliff that are the most famous relics of Afghanistan's history." That's got to be some bad karma.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 11:24 AM | Permalink