Slashdot Mirror
Domain: bbc.co.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to bbc.co.uk.
Stories · 4,568
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Barcodes: The Number of the Beast
writes "The concept of UPC barcodes on packages at the grocery store is a little pedestrian these days. Much creativity has gone into the use of barcodes for many more applications than originally conceived (don't worry -- no Cuecat diatribe here!). For example, Scott Blake uses barcodes to create large, mosaic works of art. Andy Deck has reinvented classic literature with Bardcode which will stream the entire works of Shakespeare to you as barcodes. If you do nothing else, check out Art Lebedev, a group of Russian artists that manipulates photos to reveal hidden bar codes (The nod to Abbey Road in New Beatles By Robert Dyomkin is especially appealing to an ex-scouser like me). "Boomzilla continues: Barcodes were first developed in the railroad business to keep track of which cars went with which engine. The barcodes were imprinted on the side of the railway cars. The barcodes on each car could then be read together to compile information on that particular grouping; what station they came from, where they were headed, etc. thus automating the process of marshalling. When the business world realized how well this system worked, these railway barcodes evolved into the UPC system with which we are all familiar. To really be able to take in the wonder that are bar codes, check out the excellent FAQ created by Russ Adams and an article from the BBC.
Coming full circle, the clever folks at Bekonscot Model Railway in the UK have utilized barcodes at every turn of their expansive system. For example, an MP3 player is driven off barcodes attached to trains. The trains are announced before they arrive and when they are leaving, stating their destination, route and at what stations they will call.
Want a barcode of your name?
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Games To Take Your Breath Away
Agent Provocateur writes "Here's a great use of biofeedback to control your game. Instead of using a joystick or mouse to control on-screen characters, the game uses sensors stuck to a player's body. See the story at the BBC." This was developed for educational and recuperative purposes, but seems to be the latest in a long line of unorthodox control devices like the Nintendo Power Glove or the Samba De Amigo maracas. -
BBC Webcasting the 2003 Reith Lectures
pvc writes "The BBC is webcasting the 2003 Reith Lectures. This year their devoted to the workings of the human brain and are being presented by Vilayanur S Ramachandran. Topics ranging from phantom limbs to conscious awareness to synesthaesia." -
BBC Webcasting the 2003 Reith Lectures
pvc writes "The BBC is webcasting the 2003 Reith Lectures. This year their devoted to the workings of the human brain and are being presented by Vilayanur S Ramachandran. Topics ranging from phantom limbs to conscious awareness to synesthaesia." -
Russia to Offer Space Mail
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Titan's Icy Surface Revealed
Sven-Erik writes "BBC News writes about an article in the journal Science: Scientists have peered through the smoggy orange haze of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and seen icy bedrock exposed on the surface. The observations reveal a surface that is not entirely covered by liquid and solid organic materials that rain out of the atmosphere, as was thought." -
Bombing the Moon for Water
s20451 writes "In 1998, NASA scientists deliberately crashed the Lunar Prospector into the Moon, in a failed attempt to detect traces of water allegedly hiding in deep craters at the lunar south pole. Now the BBC is reporting a new proposal to attack the lunar poles with "Bunker Buster" missiles to liberate a detectable amount of water. Called Polar Night, the mission is being proposed as part of the "Discovery" series of probes." -
A Year in the Life of Wood Ants
Ant writes "This is a radio series perhaps unlike anything you have listened to before! Recorded over a year, the series charts the fascinating and bizarre lives of two colonies of wood ants; one in a pine forest and the other in a deciduous woodland in Northumberland (UK). Using specially designed microphones, we eavesdrop on the private and noisy activities of the ants; we join the soldiers, workers, nurses and guards within nests, following them as they march through the forest on a highway of ant trails, and we are with them when the nest is attacked by badgers, damaged by mountain bikes, and threatened by tree harvesters, dogs, ferocious storms and predatory birds. The series has computer voice effects like you hear in Star Trek (i.e., "Enemy ants defeated.", "Harvester approaching.")" -
Hepatitis Drug Breakthrough
Lazyhound writes "The BBC reports that scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas are running clinical trials on a new drug (similar to those used to treat HIV patients) that can dramatically reduce levels of the virus in only days." -
Ancient DNA
PyroX_Pro writes "An interesting read over at the BBC says that 400,000 year old DNA has been found. The DNA has been broken into tiny pieces, so there is little chance of bringing any of the species back from the dead. "Soil frozen into the ice has also yielded fragments of DNA of large prehistoric animals, including the woolly mammoth, reindeer and musk ox" "Cloning is in our view impossible at this stage. You'd need the whole DNA and you would have to constuct a primitive cell to put the DNA in," added Mr Gilbert. " Sure he says that now, but they may find a way to splice it with other DNA, and then, well you all saw the movies..." -
Canada, US and Kyoto
ambisinistral writes "The Commission for Environmental Cooperation, established under NAFTA to monitor North American environmental trends, has released their annual report. This article reports that Canadian polluters are doing worse than their U.S. counterparts. From the article, "Air pollutants released by Canadian industries rose 7 per cent from 1998 to 2000, while they fell by 8 per cent in the United States." This is of particular interest since Canada is a signatory member of the Kyoto accord. However, as this article reports, there are pressures inside Canada to withdraw from the Treaty." -
EverQuest - Not Just For Geeks?
DJPenguin writes "In this article at the BBC, a respected psychologist has co-authored a study into people who play games online, which breaks some of the stereotype of online gamers." This is similar in the results as the survey data we did of open source developers. The stereotypes and realities are often *very* different. -
EverQuest - Not Just For Geeks?
DJPenguin writes "In this article at the BBC, a respected psychologist has co-authored a study into people who play games online, which breaks some of the stereotype of online gamers." This is similar in the results as the survey data we did of open source developers. The stereotypes and realities are often *very* different. -
Tecmo Furious Over Nude Volleyball Patch
Draveed writes "Tecmo seems pretty angry over those nudie patches for Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Apparently they intend to take to court anyone who makes or distributes them. I don't really understand why they have such a problem. As if big boobed bikini girls playing volleyball is far more classy than big boobed naked girls playing volleyball?" -
Europe Spaceworthy Again
Soft writes "After last february's retirement of the Ariane 4 and last year's failure of the uprated Ariane 5 EC-A, an Ariane 5G ("generic") successfully launched two communications satellites tonight. Stories at SpaceflightNow and the BBC. Atlas, Delta, watch out, we're still game!" -
Concorde to be Grounded
Goonie writes "This BBC article reports that Concorde flights are to come to an end in October. It may be a noisy and costly anachronism, but it's sad to see the end of perhaps the coolest commercial plane ever to fly." The financial wires carried a story the other day showing how much jet fuel demand has dropped recently. -
Networked Refrigerated Microwave
shades6666 writes "BBC news is reporting that Tonight's Menu Intelligent Ovens has developed a refrigerated microwave that can be controlled over the net or by mobile phone. The prototype uses a Peltier cooling device. It expects the appliances to be ready by the end of the year, costing around $2,000." -
Anti-Radiation Drug
BravoFourEcho writes "The BBC has an article about a U.S. company that is producing a drug to mitigate some of the effects of radiation. Reminds me of Rad-X in the Fallout series of games." -
Did You Really Want To Read That Spam?
Henn writes "The BBC is carrying a story about computers that track how much attention you are paying and the "worth" of individual messages. Based on these criterion, it adjusts how intrusive to make the alerts. The story is fairly short, however you can find more depth over here." Interesting ideas, but for me it's becomming less about time- my filters catch 80% of my spam, meaning it only takes me 10-20 minutes to deal with it, and more about bandwidth. At home, on my modem, downloading several megs of spam seriously interferes with my ability to work. Yay spam! -
Did You Really Want To Read That Spam?
Henn writes "The BBC is carrying a story about computers that track how much attention you are paying and the "worth" of individual messages. Based on these criterion, it adjusts how intrusive to make the alerts. The story is fairly short, however you can find more depth over here." Interesting ideas, but for me it's becomming less about time- my filters catch 80% of my spam, meaning it only takes me 10-20 minutes to deal with it, and more about bandwidth. At home, on my modem, downloading several megs of spam seriously interferes with my ability to work. Yay spam! -
Internet Enabled... Toilet Paper Dispenser
The BBC are reporting that one of the items displayed at this years Ideal Home Show at Earls Court is an internet enabled toilet roll browser. From the article: A unit installed in front of a toilet on the cubicle wall provides up-to-the-minute information on products, stocks and shares and lottery results. People can even print off the information on a standard toilet roll. Go Ahead, make your TCP Dump comments. We'll wait. -
Starchaser Plans Test Drop
cwalkden writes "Everybody's favourite amateur rocketman, Steve Bennett has unveiled his new space capsule that he hopes will get him one step closer to the edge of space. This one is due to undergo a test descent (with Steve inside) in Arizona. Earlier versions of Steve's capsules included one made with a cement mixer and some old joysticks." Our previous story was in 2001. -
LCD Screens Double as Speakers
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has a story about a company who has developed an LCD screen that can produce sound as well. They claim that the sound quality is quite good, and compare it to average multimedia computer speakers. Also NEC is making and selling computers that use this technology in Japan. Hardware integration like this should make for some interesting appliances in the next few decades." -
LCD Screens Double as Speakers
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has a story about a company who has developed an LCD screen that can produce sound as well. They claim that the sound quality is quite good, and compare it to average multimedia computer speakers. Also NEC is making and selling computers that use this technology in Japan. Hardware integration like this should make for some interesting appliances in the next few decades." -
Antibody Food Spices
jargon writes "Flouride...antibiotics...looks like they now want to add antibodies to your food. "Adding spices laced with antibodies to your cooking could help protect against food poisoning bacteria, according to scientists."" -
The World's Largest Really Small Thing
nut writes "The Beeb has a story on the discovery of the world's largest virus. It is nearly the size of a bacterium and lives in amoebae commonly found in your air-conditioning system. It has been linked to pneumonia in people, but isn't known to cause disease itself. More reports here(1), here(2) and here(3)." -
Balloonists Prepare For Another Altitude Record Attempt
EyesWideOpen writes "Determined to break the current altitude record of 34,747 metres (114,000 ft) Colin Prescot and Andy Elson will try again this year to take a giant envelope to a height in excess of 40,000 metres (130,000 feet). The balloonists have made previous attempts at the record and are hoping to use what has been learned so far, as well as a wider zone in which their QinetiQ 1 balloon can fly off southwest England, to be successful this year. To perform radiation and micrometeoroid experiments Prescot will try to fly a solar-powered propeller-driven plane (with a mounted camera) in the stratosphere. June to September is the proposed launch window." -
Watching Kids Via Mobile Phone
Joe the Lesser writes "This BBC article says how parents could soon keep a much closer eye on what children are up to on their way to and from school thanks to a mobile monitoring system. It will send text alerts to their mobile phone if the child deviates too far from that route or takes too long getting there." -
Andy "Gollum" Serkis Speaks
Jondor writes "The BBC has an article in which Andy Serkis answers questions about his role as Gollum. Can't wait so spend a whole 9 hours watching for the full DVD release of LOTR!" -
BBC on Website Slow Downs
HiveMaster writes "The BBC is carrying a report about the impact on websites as people try to get news regarding the war in Iraq. It talks of a report from Keynote Systems, which tests the reponsiveness of websites, which shows that the BBC news site has shown a fourfold increase in response times. However, Government sites in both the US and the UK are being hit, with the US Army site taking over 80 seconds to load at peak times." Also, here is a press release this. You can also read My journal where I've talked quite a bit about what Slashdot has done in preperation for traffic bursts. -
Wireless Charging your Handhelds?
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Dying Languages, Fading Formats
utopyr writes "A story on BBC News looks briefly at the problems in preserving human languages in digital formats. The scope of the problem? Of the world's roughly 6,500 languages (of which, fewer than 500 are listed here), half will be extinct within the century, as the last speakers die. However, formats are proving even more ephemeral than human memory." -
Voice Communication & Gaming Etiquette
Goldberg's Pants writes "The BBC have an interesting article on XBox Live, regarding the voice communication used in the game. Some interesting insight into the culture, and politics of the players." -
Beer and Bluetooth
juxter writes "The BBC is reporting on a London bar which has installed a Bluetooth and WiFi access point. Owners of camera phones can wirelessly send their pictures to an overhead screen and web based gallery - The system runs the LocustWorld Linux based MeshAP which has been extended to drive bluetooth devices as well. Hopefully this will encourage more UK premises to deploy free hot spots." -
How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows
orangerobot writes "The latest issue of Fast Company has an article about how Google has managed to survive beyond its peers and develop a culture of openness and innovation. The article also mentions Google memes and spin-offs such as: Googlewhack, Googlebombing, Googleshare, Googlism and Google Smackdown." -
Alternate Reality Games Grab Mindshare
An nonymous reader points to articles at the New York Times and on the BBC about online games that require a lot more audience participation and curiosity than conventional games do. "Known as ARGs or Alternate Reality Games, these immersive experiences mix real world clues, phone calls, voicemail, email chatter-bots, real people playing roles in real life and a bevy of bogus and legit websites, to create a fully rounded gaming experience that bleeds over into everyday life. With central sites like ARGN, Unfiction, and endless forums and Yahoo groups, the BBC claims that this is not only a quickly emerging gaming trend, but that it may also have real-world applications like group dynamics and problem solving. Chasing the Wish claims to already have a few thousand people worldwide playing since it opened for play on Feb. 28. One sure sign of having people's attention is the fact that it's already spawned a parody site, Chasing the Fish." -
Linux Powers Motorola's Smart Phone
An anonymous reader writes "Motorola unveiled the A760 at CeBIT and claims the handset is the first in the world to blend the open source operating system with Java software. As well as Linux, the A760 has onboard a camera, diary, e-mail program, MP3 player, speakerphone and colour touchscreen." -
NASA To Try To Resume Flights By Fall
underground alliance writes "According to BBC News, space shuttle flights could resume as early as this fall. The article says that 'Engineers have been put on standby to fix problems already raised by the investigating board, and devise a way of checking the exterior shuttle for defects while it is in orbit.' I think that this is a good move especially since ISS construction has been put on hold because without the space shuttle. The space shuttle is the only heavy freighter and the only means of putting a new ISS component in space." -
NASA To Try To Resume Flights By Fall
underground alliance writes "According to BBC News, space shuttle flights could resume as early as this fall. The article says that 'Engineers have been put on standby to fix problems already raised by the investigating board, and devise a way of checking the exterior shuttle for defects while it is in orbit.' I think that this is a good move especially since ISS construction has been put on hold because without the space shuttle. The space shuttle is the only heavy freighter and the only means of putting a new ISS component in space." -
Flowing Water Discovered on Mars
Dolphy writes "BBC News has the latest big scoop on the Mars phenomenon. Researcher Tahirih Motazedian apparently uncovered proof quite some time ago of flowing water and surface change on Mars." -
Flowing Water Discovered on Mars
Dolphy writes "BBC News has the latest big scoop on the Mars phenomenon. Researcher Tahirih Motazedian apparently uncovered proof quite some time ago of flowing water and surface change on Mars." -
Giant Synchrotron to be Constructed in UK
juntunen writes "According to the BBC, construction will start this week on Diamond: a £500 million synchrotron in Oxfordshire at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. These facilities are crucial to a deep understanding of structure in matter. With all the new emphasis on biotechnology, demand will certainly be high. Diamond has its own homepage, and the Accelerator Physics Group has publicly available tech notes." -
Peter Molyneux Asks For Gov't Help For Small Shops
spot35 writes "Maybe the gaming industry isn't as healthy as I thought. Peter Moluneux has gone on record stating that creating a successful video game is too expensive for the smaller developers. According to this BBC article he suggests that the government helps the smaller developers to keep them afloat. This other article gives a very brief profile of the man." -
Peter Molyneux Asks For Gov't Help For Small Shops
spot35 writes "Maybe the gaming industry isn't as healthy as I thought. Peter Moluneux has gone on record stating that creating a successful video game is too expensive for the smaller developers. According to this BBC article he suggests that the government helps the smaller developers to keep them afloat. This other article gives a very brief profile of the man." -
Peter Molyneux Asks For Gov't Help For Small Shops
spot35 writes "Maybe the gaming industry isn't as healthy as I thought. Peter Moluneux has gone on record stating that creating a successful video game is too expensive for the smaller developers. According to this BBC article he suggests that the government helps the smaller developers to keep them afloat. This other article gives a very brief profile of the man." -
New Images of Jupiter From Cassini
Mike Parsons writes "BBC News is showing some new images of Jupiter recorded by the cameras from the Cassini spacecraft. Here is a quote: Cloudy belts and zones dominate Jupiter's appearance - the darker belts alternating with lighter zones. Scientists think the pale zones are areas of rising atmosphere, partly because many clouds on Earth form where atmosphere rises. Conversely, the dark belts have been viewed as areas where the atmosphere descends. However, pictures from the Cassini spacecraft tell a different story." -
New Images of Jupiter From Cassini
Mike Parsons writes "BBC News is showing some new images of Jupiter recorded by the cameras from the Cassini spacecraft. Here is a quote: Cloudy belts and zones dominate Jupiter's appearance - the darker belts alternating with lighter zones. Scientists think the pale zones are areas of rising atmosphere, partly because many clouds on Earth form where atmosphere rises. Conversely, the dark belts have been viewed as areas where the atmosphere descends. However, pictures from the Cassini spacecraft tell a different story." -
World's First Double-Arm Transplant
quakeslut writes "The BBC has the scoop on the first double-arm transplant. Amazingly, after only two weeks or so, the recipient says that it already feels "as if these are my own hands." Please, keep the "give that guy a hand, or two!!" jokes to a minimum." -
Net Speed Record Smashed
BrianWCarver writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists have set a new internet speed record by transferring 6.7 gigabytes of data (the equivalent of 4 hours of DVD-quality movies) across 10,978 kilometres (6,800 miles), from Sunnyvale in the US to Amsterdam in Holland, in less than one minute. Average speed: more than 923 megabits per second, or more than 3,500 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. The data was sent across the Internet2 network. Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (Slac) Computer Services participated in the record-breaking event. Slac has an interest in such high-speed transfers as they have accumulated the largest known database in the world, which grows at one terabyte per day." -
Pancake Physics to Cut Batter Splatter
Anonymous Coward writes "The headline just about says it all on this one. A physics grad student in the UK has come up with the mathematical formula for how to flip a pancake and have it land correctly back in the pan. The BBC has the details."
