PANIC STRUCK PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS .. STAR WARS REVELATIONS - download the movie here
This is a movie made by Star Wars fans on the Internet -- I think that's a pretty cool thing. It's not for profit -- just for fun.
April 2005 Archives
The vOICe - Seeing with Sound is a site that shows you how some blind people are learning to see with their ears.
It's very cool -- though I don't see how it works -- so to speak.
Wired News: NASA Funds 'Miracle Polymer'
Ok -- in this link, NASA is seeking a better conductor. That's cool. But in the five years that they're going to potentially MAKE the new polymer, and the five years after that when they actually use the polymer -- forward motion on computing with light will bypass this intermediate juncture for computing speed.
Wired News: Car Computers Track Traffic
Ok -- this basically talks about what we've all been expecting someone to figure out for years: traffic mapping to centralized servers. The idea is that if a server knows where all the cars are -- people can be given the OPTION to follow suggested routes that keep traffic down in certain areas and redirect cars around known jams. Worth a read.
Geeks like to be prepared. So, when you decide to wander aimlessly in the woods without a compass, remember the basic rule: Food, Water, Shelter, Heat -- if you have these four things -- you can survive indefinitely.
Many of us find ourselves lost in the woods with a coke can and a bar of Toblerone chocolate. Before you suck down the last of the soda and crush the can on your head while gnawing away the last of your candybar -- start a fire.
CBS News reports on a flying car that can take off and land wherever you want. Granted, it's priced like a small airplane -- but I linked to this today because I've been traveling recently and got to thinking about what the real message is behind all this hassle in the airports.
The great blob that is the human race will move towards individual air transportation -- it's the sensible next step...
Mark my words -- online TV is the next web. This article about an initiative to get video distribution online is another indication of the coming trend for video distribution over the Internet.
This article in Slashdot points to some pretty heady work being done to "capture light" using super frozen atoms. What this would do is allow for light to remain in "state", doing what electrons currently do in RAM.
This is one more step towards a profoundly faster computing environment -- one that will make today's computers feel as archaic as punch cards seem to us.
It is possible to put Linux on anything. There's more to do with your freetime than thsi -- but I gotta admit this is pretty cool.
You heard it here first. When Slashdot talks about a vulnerability of this magnitude, it's not going to be long before the blackhats (that's folks who make viruses) are gonna exploit it.
You can be sure that there's folks right now building viruses off this idea. It basically means that when you get the virus, your hard drive can be locked out via the bios at the hard-drive level and you're done.
Now, I've actually run into this sort of attack on a friend's computer, the LSASS type does something of this shape. But to my understanding, LSASS doesn't attack the ATA itself, it just eats the BIOS.
This one locks the drive out -- so you can't even put it into another computer and recover.
Bad stuff.
Take a look at this article in Slashdot.
It basically points out that Texas is trying to put RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags on your car. Why is this not good? Because then the government can monitor you at any time for any reason. Why is that bad? Because the government can share that data with other people like insurance companies. So basically, if you make a mistake on the road, for example, and turn left against a red light when nobody else is in the intersection, the Texas government would know it immediately ... and share it with your insurer, who would then add it to their criteria for how much they charge you.
Many people ask things like, "well, if I'm good, what do I care if the government watches me?". Well, that presumes the infinite accuracy of the government, and their perfect capacity to get nothing wrong ever. However, that's not the case. We all know that they make mistakes, they're just people like the rest of us, dealing with monumental mountains of information, and sometimes a paperclip gets dropped and a page goes missing.
Based on that, there are safe-guards for things. Governments must have reasons to watch their citizens, working from the point that, in essence, the citizens are the real kings of the country. But if watching you gets to be a privilege at any time, there's the occasional error, or downright flaw that you do that could be abused or mistakenly turned against you.
In addition to this, the answer to the question of why should you care is because, even if this government is filled with 100% pure, God-fearing All-American, diverse, open-minded liberal-conservatives without bias or personal intent -- the next government might not be. If you give the good guys the big toys, the bad guys will have them in the future too, if they ever get there.
Just ask McCarthy.
