Bizarre guide to Russia
If you’re an anti-tourist and just want to see… more… of the place.
Month: March 2006
Spray on clothing
Cotton that comes in in a spraycan!
Why we don’t like invasions of privacy
Here we go – it’s the second time the CCTV camera’s being set up in the home surveillance capital of the world, the UK, has been caught misusing the material captured on camera. The first time the cops were watching people undress at home, now they’ve gone a step beyond and are selling footage of Read more about Why we don’t like invasions of privacy[…]
Desktop Earth 2.0
Using NASA’s Blue Marble, you can recieve high resolution updates often on the state of the earth on your destop.
Rocketry history
An interesting profile of the granddaddy of rocketry – Dr. Goddard. How he was snubbed and turned out to be right.
Wozniak’s name is worth $150m
Which the apple founder raised by going public with a company who’s charter states that it’s a ‘blank-check’ company – ie. one that doesn’t have to do anything. Oh and on the share issue, the company has allready run a $30m profit!
Why animal testing is important
Did some enlightened pharmacologist allow six people to get instantly critically ill because they decided NOT to test on animals before? Yup, that’s why we like lab rats.
RFID virusses
PCs have virusses, Macs have virusses, PDAs and cellphones have virusses, so why should RFID chips be any different? A working proof of concept has been made which is put onto an RFID chip, which infects the backend database and then transmits to other RFID chips that connect to that database.
Microsoft has a sense of humor!
The ipod packaging movie apparently was made internally by Microsoft to show how packaging should be done. The link to the movie is in the article.
My Quantum computer is a black hole
Not that I know how to turn a black hole off, for best results, but if I can capture the emissions from a black hole, I should be able to know everything that ever went into it. So for my next trick: turn the globe inside out as my pinhole black hole computer project gets Read more about My Quantum computer is a black hole[…]
Stalk the stars!
You ain’t nobody if you ain’t got a stalker. And Gawker helps you – the stalker! With a Google Maps interface, you can see where the celebrities are, as the reports are filed in – which they seem to be pretty quickly! A nice little story comes with each siting. Invasion of privacy? I thought Read more about Stalk the stars![…]
Why surveillance can be bad
Nobody seems to believe me when I say it’s possible, but now it’s happened – in Greece unknown people have hacked into the cellular system and been tapping politicians and officers. Yup, the bad guys can get into your wonderful surveillance infrastructure too.
Schneier asks for some defence
The following question is one I’ve had to struggle with as well: I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it? Schneier gets some good responses on his blog.
Quantum computer works when turned off
Don’t you love things quantum?
Is Controller design killing creativity in video games
We make money not art has a great set of notes on a lecture by Tom Armitage about how the game controller is basically the same everywhere, and how they have evolved for specific platforms to the point where they are no longer intuitive to the new user of console games due to the plethora Read more about Is Controller design killing creativity in video games[…]
Names for the U.S. Army novel
They had a competition to name the book about the US Army in 2015. Here are some of the names that came in: Asymmetrical Warriors Brave New War Future Knights of the Global Table The Iron Fist of Freedom Molded Children, Future Warriors There’s more at Harpers…
Mens rights on child support
Well, we all know when it comes down to women and children it’s the woman who gets to say it all, and the man can just lump it and pay over the child support. Fortunately for us downtrodden men someone is starting a lawsuit to establish precedence much as there is precedence for women being Read more about Mens rights on child support[…]
Space exploration = money
OK finally the boffins have found a way to fund extra space exploration: yes, tourism is a (small) part of it, but 3554 Amun is a larger incentive: It’s a space rock about 2 kilometers in diameter that looks as if it might have fallen straight out of The Little Prince. There are three key Read more about Space exploration = money[…]
Wind Farms block RADAR
It turns out that there’s a whole controversy going on about wind farms, which deliver ‘green’ energy. The BBC has a story listing 10 objections to wind farms, more than half of which are bunkum, but it turns out that one of the major problems they produce is RADAR clutter, which creates false positives (aircraft Read more about Wind Farms block RADAR[…]
Pentagon FY 2007 Budget
Published in Febuary it’s a little hard to find, but I’ve got it – staggering amounts of money in this!
Why the west doesn’t arrange marriages
Nerve.com has a very readable article on how the church made up it’s mind in the west to increase the goldflow in the coffers and thereby help end the arranged marriage in the west.
Shutdown Expert
Because every so often it would be nice to just have Windows turn itself off. Or on. This is a lovely little scheduler for system tasks, not limited to powering up and down.
Why Vista won’t Suck
Nice article running through the features of Vista which make it a quantum leap away from Windows XP. It’s nice to see that the OS2 Warp desktop has FINALLY been incorporated into windows. And if you don’t know what that means, you’re a n00b.
High school low achievers build green 0-60mph 4s car
Damn! It runs on soybean bio-diesel and was developed by 5 kids! So why don’t the big automakers have this?! Oh, and it runs more than 50 miles to the gallon! And it looks hella cool too…
Read the world – RFID
Spirit makes RFID readers which can read a wide range of standards and come in USB or SDIO (Pocket PC / WinMobile) forms, and retail at only $99 – $199! Pretty soon they’re going to go nuts on the amount of data coming in.