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I also need to find a new place to live, but at least I am not a virgin anymore!

Actually Max Headroom is more apropos to modern media than it was back when it first aired. It won't be long until the networks, the RIAA and the MPAA run things for real, all TV sets lose their on/off switches, and they put TV sets in alleys so that homeless people can watch. Why, there even is a computerized talking head that reads the news! 20 minutes into the future? More like 20 seconds now...

The town of La Grand-Motte in southern France passed a new law requiring Linux users to vacate the town.

There's also something else that will get Ms Rowling fuming.

Scandinavia has a long and proud history of "fair use" broadcasting where the authors do get paid royalties, besides benefitting from the obvious free publicity, and the story-telling programs are particularly popular among the pre-schoolers who wouldn't be buying books quite yet anyway. Perhaps that was the fly in the magic ointment; no potential sales in that market segment within the current financial year?

As an author who also "initially" used to hide her gender in order to attract young boys, her behaviour has struck me as somewhat peculiar, if not outright petty. She might be a literary genius (not that I'd have read anything by her) but does she deserve my sympathy for getting one-upped by chinese pirates? I don't think so.

He'll just sign them up to his fan club. Moby gets his own back on hate emailers

When US programs are shown in countries which have less adverts, you end up with programs being shown in non multiples of 30. Eg the Oprah Winfrey show takes 50 minutes in the UK, while Law & Order takes 55.

When US programs are shown in countries which have less adverts, you end up with programs being shown in non multiples of 30. Eg the Oprah Winfrey show takes 50 minutes in the UK, while Law & Order takes 55.

Jackie Chan will star in a remake of the classic around the world in 80 days

Did everyone see how Moby is responding people who chose to send him criticism of his work and/or negative views of the internet fanbase? By subscribing them automatically to his mailing list.

Glad he believes in opt-in. I wonder how long until some takes advantage of this to harass people with Moby newsletters.

First, here are three quotes from Rightoprivacy.com

"The right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men.
To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment."

Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. U.S. (1928).

"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy"

Article 12, United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Unfortunately, most people assume that they have greater rights to privacy than the Law actually provides. Others dismiss erosion of their rights to privacy with the dangerously false pretense that only people with something to hide should be concerned about the loss of privacy.

***********

The rest of this is a basic cut and paste from my previous posts on 'Bringing Echelon In From the Cold'

I believe anybody who says "They can read my email - I have nothing to hide" must be of low intelligence - a moron.

This information can be used retrospectively against you - wait until you get a just cause to fight. The UK government love to put down protesters - as can be seen when they tried to get the dirt on Paddington crash survivors group. This group was lead by the badly injured Pam Warren - whom I presume would have nothing to worry about, having her emails read.

News article: Labour admits second email seeking searches on rail group

Labour has found another email from a government adviser seeking information searches on the Paddington rail campaigners.

The adviser to Stephen Byers, sent a second request for the searches - which have been seen as an attempt to 'dig dirt' on members of the public.

Dan Corry's email to the Labour headquarters at Millbank Tower expressed a wish to find out what was behind the group's criticisms of Stephen Byers.

In it, Mr Corry said: "Any other checking useful. They seem to have an anti-SB agenda and we want to find out what lies behind it."

The department said the second email had been unearthed in a "very thorough" trawl of the email traffic from Mr Byers's special advisers.

A spokesman said it failed to reach the Labour Party owing to "intermittent difficulties" with the system.

The disclosure last week of Mr Corry's original email asking for information about the political affiliations of the Paddington group, prompted bitter accusations that the Government was trying to smear the crash survivors for asking awkward questions.

It led to unreserved apologies from Mr Corry and from new Transport Secretary Alistair Darling.

Story filed: 02:35 Tuesday 11th June 2002

***********

What do you think the USA Patriot Act is about?

It is all about Big Brother.

Ask the Security Services in the UK and US to deny this:

Internet surveillance, using carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means e.g. face to face, personal courier or steganography.

Terrorists will have to do that, or they will get caught.

Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - Go with plan A (human bomb to target A), or plan B (target B) or abort.

SURVEILANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - IT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA.

It is for several reasons, including: making you feel safer - that the government are doing something and the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.

Government say about surveillance - "you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law"

This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something.

It does not address the real reason why they want this information - they want a surveillance society.

They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy.

This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.

All your finances for them to scrutinize - heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent when they check on your taxes.

Do not believe the lies of Government - even more money spent on these measures will not protect you from terrorists.

It really annoys me that our governments would con their people like this.

We pay their wages - we deserve the Truth - not this spin and lies.

Beware corporate theft of your domain name. Please visit the World Intellectual Piracy Organization - not associated with United Nations WIPO.org

In this context, here are two definitions for you.

Moron: Somebody who believes that government reading your emails is about catching terrorists.

Terrorists know about Echelon and will use other methods e.g. personal courier - either that or get caught.

Moron: Somebody who says, "They can read my email - I have nothing to hide."

This information can be used retrospectively against you - wait until you get a just cause to fight. The UK government love to put down protesters - as can be seen when they tried to get the dirt on Paddington crash survivors group. This group was lead by the badly injured Pam Warren - whom I presume would have nothing to worry about, having her emails read.

News article: Labour admits second email seeking searches on rail group

Labour has found another email from a government adviser seeking information searches on the Paddington rail campaigners.

The adviser to Stephen Byers, sent a second request for the searches - which have been seen as an attempt to 'dig dirt' on members of the public.

Dan Corry's email to the Labour headquarters at Millbank Tower expressed a wish to find out what was behind the group's criticisms of Stephen Byers.

In it, Mr Corry said: "Any other checking useful. They seem to have an anti-SB agenda and we want to find out what lies behind it."

The department said the second email had been unearthed in a "very thorough" trawl of the email traffic from Mr Byers's special advisers.

A spokesman said it failed to reach the Labour Party owing to "intermittent difficulties" with the system.

The disclosure last week of Mr Corry's original email asking for information about the political affiliations of the Paddington group, prompted bitter accusations that the Government was trying to smear the crash survivors for asking awkward questions.

It led to unreserved apologies from Mr Corry and from new Transport Secretary Alistair Darling.

Story filed: 02:35 Tuesday 11th June 2002

Beware corporate theft of your domain name. Please visit World Intellectual Piracy Organization - not associated with United Nations WIPO.org

No one who listens to CBC Radio "As It Happens" will know where Rotherham is unless you say how many miles away from Reading it is. (Running joke of many many years.)

Erhmm.. I quess they run out of power when this shot was taken? I've made paper gliders that fly better. In preschool.

Google found me this story debunking an urban legend surounding a "paper" leaked to the usenet, read it and you realise that whoever bought into this must trust every document posted to the usenet, and that whoever wrote it has some insight in how space experiments are conducted and a large imagination. my personal favourite part "We made extensive use of a number of published sources in our efforts to find satisfactory solutions see Appendix I), arriving at an initial list of 20 reasonable solutions. Of these, we used computer simulation (using the mechanical dynamics simulation package from the CADSI company) to determine the 10 most promising solutions. ".

Can you imagine the work involved in getting accurate computer simulations of twenty posible positions for intercourse in zero-g, motioncapturing wont work ofcourse (unless in micro-g) and getting the right model for the amount of force astronouts can use to keep in position is even harder. And all of this would ignore the mental factor (subjects being to occupied to keep attention to their position), but this one is discused in the results of the experiments, wich sugests those with exceptional selfcontrol might be able to use some positions without elastic bands.

Anyway not to kill the discision, the same google searches also returned rumours about rusian space missions (we all know they hold most longest-time-in-space records, rusians get bored to apperantly (again acording to some usetnet posts ;-))

But on a more serious story, I recal a discovery documentory including interviews with questions on this very subject with older female nasa biologist explaining nasa was looking into experiments with rubber bands and hamsters, and astronauts (the astronauts could be included in the experiment later on, not together with the hamsters ofcourse....uhm yeah...couse..uhm...you know) This interview was folowed by a astronaut couple which explained that if nasa would be willing to do this experiment, then they would be happy to be test-subjects!

Google also mentions iss has pregnancy test onboard But for now it seems all just Theory

And another is here.

That's because people surfing pr0n at Berkeley are probably just doing their homework. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.

You have more than one [penis]?! You lucky bastard.

It's not that uncommon for a male to have more than one joy-stick. For example: Earwigs have two penises. Sharks have a pair of "claspers". Many marsupials have a bifurcated (Y-shaped) penis, which may look like two penises. And a Google search reveals accounts of human men with two penises, and not just the common joke of "one for peeing and the other for brushing the babysitter's teeth."

Just number me among the many who went to see AOTC hoping against hope to really enjoy more than just the pretty fight scenes. But if you caught this quote from Anakin, er, Hayden Christiansen, that should really sum up all you need to know about George Lucas.

Jack

I'll watch it a few more times to try to confirm it for you. Please send tickets.

Speaking of cool keyboards, how bout those virtual keyboards on zdnet and elsewhere. They project keyboards on any surface and use cameras to sense where your fingers are. Msn story with a photo. Different model at ananova. I know there's no tactile feedback, but think of the compactness.

Note this link about how an attempt to preserve an ancient book digitally ended in the ironic situation years later where the digital format was obsolete and unreadable after little more than a decade, while the ancient book was still fine.

The real problem with bit entropy can only be solved (if you ask me) by having the information regularly copied and used by at least some people [who will thus bother to migrate it into the new super-dense holographic optical processors all the kids will be using in 2080, who probably wouldn't even recognize the purpose of a shiny little 5cm disk if their lives depended on it].

The continuance of the historical record may well be a victim of excessive IP protection and laws like the DMCA, as much as that sounds like a somewhat far-fetched possibility today. Only info in an open format that is 'mirrored' by many people [and kept freshly copied into modern devices] would likely prevent this.

You're probably right as Gibraltar is a tax haven. However Gibraltar is just a big Rock peninsular at the southern tip of Spain. It is not an island. And if the British and European governments get their way, it won't be a haven much longer, as it will be assimilated into Spain.

My friend has a touchstream keyboard which he used full-time for a couple weeks. His emails constantly looked like the parent post. He attributed this to lack of tactile or auditory feedback.

On the other hand, I use a small two-way alphanumeric pager (size comparison, closeup). You end up typing on it preying-mantis like, holding the front with your thumbs nad the back with your pinkies, and typing with your two pointer fingers. Typing is definitely slower, but you don't end up making constant mistakes like with the other keyboards mentioned.

May point is... as far as I know, mini keyboards are the best solution so far, there are worse solutions available.

HTH. HAND.

Who cares about life saving rats? Don't you guys realize that someone invented robots that can open beer?

Sheesh, where are your priorities?

Of course, within the past couple years, eve the past decade, there has been exponential growth in the 3D modeling industry. I mean, if the entire Titanic can realistically be rendered, why not be able to render a person in real time with realistic voice synth and physics? Just look at the upcoming game Soldier of Fortune 2. Some of the skin textures look incredibly realistic, and that can be done in real time on a GF2.

But, we have to be careful about what we do for these models. Ananova isn't giving any real humans a run for their money, but eventually we may get there. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within gave a nearly flawless rendering of humans, and it will only be a limited amount of time before that can be done with real time processing. It's not like we'll be turned into a slave race like in The Matrix or anything, but it still is a good idea to use some caution.

Sounds very much like the story on ananova.com of the Ethics students who were caught cheating using a paper pulled from the internet. The point I'm making is that it's a silly analogy because you simply can't give credit for using someone else's paper coz you wouldn't get a grade for it. Compare it to, say, using someone else's php script on your own website where you *can* give credit - people should definitely do that.

I don't know anyone that can write as fast as someone types, unless the person typing is a typing newbie.

How about a keyboard like this that can be projected onto any surface.

Or perhaps the senseboard?

I think these are much more plausible than a pen. Perhaps a pen with voice recognition would be faster...

I use a wacom tablet (which uses a pen) to play Unreal Tournament. You can place your shots much more accurately.

Here

World's earliest photo set to make £500,000 at auction

Turns out someone in France has been holding an even earlier (1825) Niepce photograph, and now they're selling it.

Chewing gum makes you smarter.

Don't forget the alcohol.

Beer makes you cleverer!

You may have a point there. I just read an interesting article entitled "Earth formed quicker than thought."

While findings could be used by "either side of the origins debate", as you so interestingly put it, it does support your claim that we're merely at the end of the beginning of scientific discovery.

A prospect that both thrills me and frightens me all at once.

Places like Moose Bosom (I'm not kidding - it's in this story) probably have problems with filtering by Keyword too.

And Fuchs Lubricants must have some real problems. Heh.

Please see my above reply - I did follow the PA connection to PA site ananova.com, and it led back to the Irish Times! It can happen..!

So, I'm not surprised about the Irish hi-tech sector, since I'm in it, I'm just surprised it got noticed here first (as far as I can tell). Immersion are based in San Jose, Silicon Valley, after all...

"Why are you changing that?! It's the most popular program on my planet!!"

I submitted the Segway article to Slashdot about Yamafugi's patent with a story on ananova soon after IT was revealed.

Here is the story dated from Story filed: 10:48 Friday 14th December 2001. Why the editors didn't post it is not right.

Here is another interesting link about police using the Segway.

I submitted the Segway article to Slashdot about Yamafugi's patent with a story on ananova soon after IT was revealed.

Here is the story dated from Story filed: 10:48 Friday 14th December 2001. Why the editors didn't post it is not right.

Here is another interesting link about police using the Segway.

More info on the drop of Nsync from EP2 can be found on Ananova

> pleading a case before an electronic judge sounds like a loser to me

Well, they say she's got the wit of Max Headroom with the looks of Annanova

erm *cough* ba-dum-ching.

right here on ananova and on prequel-spoilers

well if stone rhino doesn't want the karma i will gladly waste it

Being the good little karma-whore i'm not, HERE is the Ananova story (all the way back from december 31st!), and Here is Prequel spoilers. they were the original source, and the story is on the front page.

Backstreet boys to be present in Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones .

come on salshdot eeditors. i posted a sotry bout this guy woh would get laid if his website got 111 million or so he would get laid with his girlfriend. so go to his site right here you mutha fuckers and help this guy get laid. tere are stories on the register and on ananova

Superficial reading of the Ananova article would give one the impression that they are talking about a partly human chimera (it is hard to read "combined human-animal embryos" any other way); which would be a horribly unethical monstrosity.

What they're undoubtedly talking about (though I can't verify it since I can't read Japanese) are transgenic animals which express human proteins which is nothing new and posses no real ethical challenges (other than those involving the safety issues of xenotransplantation such as the real posibility for introducing various pathogens into the human population).

I suspect we'll see artificial news anchors becoming prevalent first, before generic "synthespians". Ananova is an interesting initial attempt at this. In my opinion, the text-to-speech needs a bit of work, and the site needs a better news feed, but the CG is nicely done. Unlike an actor, or performer, where you need convincing movement, dancing, etc., a synthetic news caster needs limited facial expressions. If I were a talking head on the local "Eyewitness News", I'd be worried.

When Ananova.com launched a couple of years ago, there were numerous articles in the press laughing at the way it worked. At the time, Ananova was primarily a streaming video news service fronted by a computer generated character.

Its voice was completely retarded, and let out plenty of faux-pas during its 'broadcasts'. For example, there was a story about a cancer patient who died, and Ananova's cock-awful pronounciation and weird facial tics turned it into a comedy.

It's better now, but still sounds like Stephen Hawkings on acid. Whoever developed this system is a brave mofo for trying it out, but with computer generated characters like this, I think regular people are going to be in demand in the broadcasting industry for some time yet..

Watch Ananova Video

When Ananova.com launched a couple of years ago, there were numerous articles in the press laughing at the way it worked. At the time, Ananova was primarily a streaming video news service fronted by a computer generated character.

Its voice was completely retarded, and let out plenty of faux-pas during its 'broadcasts'. For example, there was a story about a cancer patient who died, and Ananova's cock-awful pronounciation and weird facial tics turned it into a comedy.

It's better now, but still sounds like Stephen Hawkings on acid. Whoever developed this system is a brave mofo for trying it out, but with computer generated characters like this, I think regular people are going to be in demand in the broadcasting industry for some time yet..

Watch Ananova Video

I consider Lara Croft to be the first CG idol .. I would actually put Lara as the first true idoru. Like Terai, Lara has a "biography" (she's still single, guys!) and a web site as well as many fan sites.

Like an idoru, you can pretty much put Lara anywhere to advertise any product. Lara has already been in several commercials (Lucozade, SciFi channel, ...) and has modeled clothes from various designers. Of course you can also buy books about her, calendars featuring Lara, and movies about her. Not to mention the games that introduced us to Lara.

I think Lara Croft the GG idol has now expanded beyond Lara Croft the game character. You have real-life models portraying her at conventions (E3) and in movies (Angelina Jolie). Fan sites are all over the place. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who would have preferred that the movie had starred the virtual character rather than Angelina (who was great and all, but not quite there.)

It's nice that Yuki Terai is getting attention for bringing "idoru" into the every day, but I think someone else has been there first.

(And don't even get me started on Ananova, who not only has a CG body and personality, but voice as well...)