This week:
Batteries included, at a price
Apple's iPod comes with a non-replaceable battery that lasts 18 months.
Then you have to fork out quite a bit of cash for a new battery, or chuck
the iPod out and buy a new one.
Understandably, this has riled some iPod owners. The Niestat
Brothers expressed their frustration by making a rap
video about iPod's dirty secret (requires Quicktime). Others have
gone the writ route.
thanks, Claire
18 March 2004 | top of page
Let slip the bots of war
It was simple coincidence that the US Army ballyhooed about its robot
transporter race on the same weekend I was re-reading Philip K Dick's
XXX, about the rise of the intelligent war machines.
Technovelgy lets you browse
a timeline or category, or if you're looking for something specific you
can search by category, author, date or name.
via digital
dust
16 March 2004 | top of page
Exploiting imagination
Cory Doctorow has been thinking hard about what the books
of the future will look like. He and his BoingBoing.net
friends are among the world's most visited bloggers, and Doctorow is using
his own fiction-writing career as a test of some of his ideas about the
future of books and publishing. He observes:
"Writers are a dime a dozen. Everybody's got a novel in her or
him. Readers are a precious commodity. You've got all the money and
all the attention and you run the word-of-mouth network that marks the
difference between a little book, soon forgotten, and a book that becomes
a lasting piece of posterity for its author, changing the world in some
meaningful way.
"I'm unashamedly exploiting your imagination. Imagine me a new
practice of book, readers. Take this novel and pass it from inbox to
inbox, through your IM clients, over P2P networks. Put it on webservers.
Convert it to weird, obscure ebook formats. Show me -- and my colleagues,
and my publisher -- what the future of book looks like.
"I'll keep on writing them if you keep on reading them. But as
cool and wonderful as writing is, it's not half so cool as inventing
the future."
Last year Doctorow released his first novel as a free download as well
as in the more normal printed buy-it-from-a-bookshop format. The novel
was copyrighted with a Creative
Commons licence that allowed readers to download it for private use.
Lots of people downloaded the free version of Down
And Out In The Magic Kingdom, and it sold well in both hardcover and
paperback.
Encouraged by this success, Doctorow has now released his second novel,
Eastern Standard Tribe, in digital
and printed formats with an even less restrictive Creative Commons licence.
This time he's inviting readers to play by adapting the novel to other
media (scripts, animations, fan fiction, whatever), the only condition
being that you don't do it for profit. He's also relicensed Down
And Out to allow similar freedom to play.
via BoingBoing.net
15 March 2004 | top of page
Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass
Lucas Kovar had a bad
week in the physics lab, and wrote
an assignment about his attempts to identify electrons in germanium:
"Electrons in germanium are confined to well-defined energy bands
that are separated by 'forbidden regions' of zero charge-carrier density.
You can read about it yourself if you want to, although I don't recommend
it...
"Banking on my hopes that whoever grades this will just look at
the pictures, I drew an exponential through my noise. I believe the
apparent legitimacy is enhanced by the fact that I used a complicated
computer program to make the fit. I understand this is the same process
by which the top quark was discovered."
via boingboing.net
15 March 2004 | top of page
Orson Scott Card is wrong, again
I'm inclined to be dismissive of Orson Scott Card's occasional rantings
about the evils of homosexuality. His SF novels might be OK, but on the
whole he's not worth the effort of reasoned argument about either of the
G-words.
To his credit, Chris Lawson has responded seriously to Card's latest
screed. In Das Frankenblog, Lawson
analyses a goodly chunk of Card's article "Homosexual 'Marriage'
and Civilization". He identifies the flaws in Card's logic, analyses
misuses of language and notes apparently wilful misrepresentations of
concepts that should be fairly basic to any writer's understanding of
his craft (such as the idea that a dictionary is descriptive, not proscriptive,
of how words are used).
Lawson concludes:
"Card is an extremely skilful author. He must know, on some level,
that he is using these words because of their emotional impact and not
because of their meaning... I can almost forgive the fallacious language
and the hypocrisy, but I can't forgive the dogmatism, the self-importance,
the clutching at faux-Darwinian straws, and most of all, the spite revealed
in his rather scornful tone."
12 March 2004 | top of page
Occupational hazard
What happens when
a circuit breaker at an electrical substation fails: half a million
volts of spectacular light-show and a very loud crackling hum.
via User Friendly's
link of the day
11 March 2004 | top of page
Every geeky home should have one
"The USB
Swiss Army Knife is available with 64 or 128 Mb memory, plus all the
usual extras--knife, corkscrew and tin-opener. The 64 Mb version will
cost €55; the price of the 128 Mb version is tba."
thanks, Fraser
11 March 2004 | top of page
Future memes
A collection of stuff that caught my eye via Matt (Blackbelt) Jones'
weblog:
- What's
next, a nano or neuro wave? Can an economist successfully predict
the next global revolution and its effects? There are limits
to prescience, even when--like Vannevar Bush--you're in possession of
all the current facts. I can hear Damien
Broderick nodding enthusiastically...
- Just for you typesetting fiends (virtual waves to Warren, Paul, Susan
and Troy!), a review
of the 10th anniversary edition of "Stop Stealing Sheep",
a book about how people read type and what that means for designers.
- The mouse
and the mobile as witchy familiars.
- Digital
democracy: the launch of DowningStreetSays.com, a pseudoblog that
mines information from official web sites, presents it in ways that
are easy to find and understand, and lets you comment on the latest
pronouncements from politicians (specifically, the British Prime Minister).
- Games and other shared experiences inspire cooperative
relationships among strangers, as do the stories we tell ourselves.
These nebulous concepts are starting to infiltrate the language of business
and software design.
- A
monument that all politicians should visit, read, mark inwardly
and act upon. In case you don't recognise the statue, it's Franklin
D Roosevelt, a former US President.
- "One part flaneur, one part breakdancer, skateboarding without
the board, kung fu with the city as sparring partner. Parkour
is the art of the traceur... There have been countless times walking
down the street where I've been ready to start jumping
on ledges and leaping over the hydrants. Sometimes I do, but at
other times the oppression of culture overrides. Its not exactly a seemly
thing to do is it? God forbid adults actually have fun in the streets".
- Microsoft's Marc Smith reckons "if
you're 1 in a million, then there are 768 of you on the Internet."
- Estonia,
population 1,408,556 million, is using
digital technology to push social and economic change: changing
from old primary industries to newer intellectual and business activities,
encouraging citizens to get involved in their government and maintaining
social and cultural traditions.
- "Benford's Law
is a powerful and relatively simple tool for pointing suspicion at frauds,
embezzlers, tax evaders, sloppy accountants and even computer bugs."
The law demonstrates that "in general, fraudulent or concocted
data appear to have far fewer numbers starting with 1 and many more
starting with 6 than do true data."
10 March 2004 | top of page
The League of Extraordinary Subtitles
What happens when a non-native speaker of English tries to transcribe
subtitles from the dialogue track of a Sean Connery movie: "And
he attached every nations claiming very weapons to the sierra."
via BoingBoing.net
9 March 2004 | top of page
Order up a lawful plot
Got writer's block? Hit the Random
Law and Order Plot Generator and start scribbling!
via BoingBoing.net
9 March 2004 | top of page
Infographic: how news travels on the web
Stephen van Dyke illustrates how
news travels on the Internet, via small-scale and highly-trafficked
blogs and finally to 'big' media. According to researchers at HP Labs,
the tricky bit is how
to accurately infer relationships and connections--bloggers often
don't attribute the source of their links.
via BoingBoing.net
9 March 2004 | top of page
Crick in the neck
Towards the end of the dinosaurs'
era, a new
galaxy was born. A supernova was visible from Earth in 1987, and its
visible blast
wave is still roiling about, currently looking like a neat bracelet
of pearls in the night sky. Amateur skywatcher Jay
McNeil may yet get a nebula named after himself, even if it turns
out to be a 'variable' nebula-and-star combination that periodically appear
and disappear.
The most distant
known galaxy is about
13 billion light years away, and may actually be a pulsar (it's hard
to tell at this distance). Spotting such massively distant objects is
a tricky business, requiring Earthbound astronomers to see around corners
by looking for massive
bodies that 'lens' (bend) light from more distant objects.
9 March 2004 | top of page
|
2004 flipsocks:
17 Dec: the
sock has flipped
10 Dec: anything anywhere any time
3 Dec: instant
flattery
26 Nov: the steamroller
of branding
19 Nov: fried
v rice
5 Nov: the page
with no name
29 Oct: and then
there were none
22 Oct: filled
with naughty laughter
15 Oct: get
souls and disconcert the public
8 Oct: ooh,
aah, ooh
1 Oct: pinch
and a punch
24 Sep: design
is the new art
17 Sep: footsteps
of Aeneas
10 Sep: slow
art, viral aesthetic
3 Sep: I
can see your house from here
27 Aug: forever
blowing bubbles
20 Aug: jargon
for the digital age
13 Aug: beautiful
plumage, the Norwegian blue
6 Aug: brokenated
terribility
23 Jul: Alice
underground
16 Jul: color-coded
2 Jul: for
so long treated as nouns
25 Jun: looking
for love, echidna-style
18 Jun: joy-to-stuff
ratio
11 Jun: fun's
fun but a girl can't dance all night
4 Jun: pink dinosaur
28 May: two
people every minute
21 May: incompitnce [sic]
14 May: zygomatic smile
5 May: mailbox
30 Apr: bananaguard
23 Apr: mmmmmWAH!
15 Apr: playtime
8 Apr: googlewhack
2 Apr: we
wish to inform you...
18 Mar: daffy dills
12 Mar: echo
chamber
9 Jan: refund profologies
Also on this site:
about this site
home page
articles:
who
is geoffrey ebert?
testing
for the fun factor
chicken
at the (higher education) crossroads
crawford's theory of interactivity
froghunting
home-page
real-estate wars
the eagle
has landed
listmania:
must-reads
for web people
recent reads
pop-culture
quotes
neology:
they shoulda been words
recipe:
lemon and
rosemary risotto
reviews:
Written
In Blood by Chris Lawson
The
Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams
Without whom (web):
frankenstein
journal (Chris)
tbn97 (Troy)
webster's encyclopedia [sic]
science playwiths
(Peter)
neroliwesley.com.au (Neroli)
Fraser
Jonathan
Maverick IT network consultants
(Rick)
Look! There's a castle!
(Brent)
Cairns Corporation (Gerald)
Homosapien Books (Julie and
Bruce)
Southern Sky Watch
(Ian)
Panda's Thumb (Ian again)
ABC Science-Matters
(official)
science-matters (unofficial)
chisig
Bovios
Disinfo.com (Alex Burns)
Lee Battersby
Little Malop Gallery
Digest of Usability Resources and
News (Dey)
WooWooWoo (Andrew)
Without whom (also):
Ramona P Lovechild
Dombardo
Katherine with a K
Katherine (no relation)
Catherine
Teresa
Corey
Claire
Claire (no relation)
Helsbels
Iain
Toby and Jann
Andrew
Paul, Warren, Dr K and The New Reality
Stephen
Tania
Trevor
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