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"It's like Castro said: They don't really like patents. They like medicine. Cuba's drug pipeline is most interesting for what it lacks: grand-slam moneymakers, cures for baldness or impotence or wrinkles. It's all cancer therapies, AIDS medications, and vaccines against tropical diseases."

For a counter perspective, check out 1UP's look at the issue.

Long story short, the lead designer for The Playboy Mansion and the lead product developer for Bloodrayne are female, and the lead designer for Beyond Good and Evil is male. Many of the people listed in the article cross the line between the traditionally expected viewpoints. Many female designers and artists are comfortable with a larger degree of sexuality in their characters, and many male designers take a more respectful "kid's gloves" approach to the issue. The designer most directly responsible for the look of Laura Croft left the company after the first game because they wanted to sex her up too much (Legend has it she is based upon his niece).

This is not as black-and-white an issue as "men are sex-starved, women are victims." Quite frankly I find that reductionism insulting. The majority of the male gaming population does not act like 13 year old boys. Have you been around 13 year old boys recently? If the current statistics are correct, the percentage of 6 - 17 year old boys playing videogames is holding at about 20%. Which means 1 in 5. Which means that the obnoxious kid that you bump into on the Halo 2 server is probably in reality an obnoxious kid. And if he understands that the behavior is unacceptable, he will change. But if you shrug and make gross generalizations based on sex, that makes it OK for him to continue and insults the rest of us unproductively.

And please lose the stereotype of the lifeless piply male gamer. It's been debunked. Multiple times. over and over again.

You can patent DNA sequences as long as you associate the sequence with a specific function. The USPTO got a little stricter on that in 2001, but I'm not sure they threw out all the patents that had already been granted. see: this newish story and this old one.

You can patent DNA sequences as long as you associate the sequence with a specific function. The USPTO got a little stricter on that in 2001, but I'm not sure they threw out all the patents that had already been granted. see: this newish story and this old one.

Takes you to the second page of the article. For those who like to skip to the end I guess. first page

As you know, I believe strongly that we must set aside every penny of any budget surplus until we have saved Social Security first.

Fiscal responsibility gave us our strong economy. Fiscal irresponsibility would put it at risk. And whether we save Social Security first I will not be moved, but on how we save Social Security -- that will require us to have open minds and generous spirits. It will require listening and learning and looking for the best ideas wherever they may be. We simply must put progress ahead of partisanship.

The stakes couldn't be higher. For 60 years, Social Security has reflected our deepest values -- the duties we owe to our parents, to each other and to our children. Today, 44 million Americans depend upon Social Security. For two-thirds of our seniors it is the main source of income. And nearly one in three beneficiaries are not retirees, for Social Security is also a life insurance policy and a disability policy, along with being a rock-solid guarantee of support in old age.

Today, Social Security is sound, but a demographic crisis is looming. By 2030, there will be twice as many elderly as there are today, with only two people working for every person drawing Social Security. After 2032, contributions from payroll taxes will only cover 75 cents on the dollar of current benefits. So we must act, and act now, to save Social Security.

More from Vincent Cerf on creating an interplanetary IP network.

It's bound to happen in grain crops as well. Farmers could speed it along by spraying a very dilute solution in the center of the field each year and keeping that seed for next year's planting. Not a good idea to spray the edges and cultivate resitant weeds.

Folks that dislike GM crops could do this on purpose and then distribute the seeds. That's not copying the gene or reverse engineering it, but developing a competing product.

And if they were redone by these guys, could it do Mosh Mosh Revolution ?

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No sig for you!

There's a similar approach being adopted in Australia, as reported in Wired.

Maybe this is what you're looking for: Holy Land MMORPG.

The ultimate goal of the mmorpg is to help rebuild the Temple Mount (in real life) and bring about the apocalypse.

From the article:
"Players navigate the narrow streets and bustling marketplaces trying to uncover and decipher Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scriptural clues relating to the end-times. They can choose to kill each other, but they won't be able to move to the next level if they do. The goal is to unlock the secret that will induce the coming of a messiah - whether players believe he will turn out to be the Christian Jesus, the Jewish Moshiach, or the Muslim Mahdi."

If you have to get five other suckers to sign up in order to get your iPod, it's a pyramid. At least with MLM outfits like Herbalife, you can theoretically make money selling the pills and without building a downline.

Turns out that only 4% of the FreeiPods.com suckers have gotten their units and they're being spammed, too. It most certainly is a pyramid scheme.

"ethical business practices." Funny.

It's not surprising this has happened. Many, many companies do not take administrating their domain seriously, and several registrars -- Network Solutions especially -- make it very easy to steal domains.

I know this from experience -- many years back one morning I woke up and Excite.com, Angelfire.com, and a few other domains were mysterically owned by me. The only thing the hijacker needed to do (it wasn't me, by the way) was send in a single email. Old Story at Wired.

If you're linking to a story doesn't it make sense to use those words for the link to the story?

To witness similar "amoral thinking", read this interview of Bram Cohen.

If you have a very pure abstract mind, all challenges are equal. "Thinking through the moral implications" is only relevant if you have ill intent. If you don't, you'll naturally pick the first sufficiently interesting challenge that comes along.

"...if the concept was developed in 1980 and it was founded in 1985?"

Touche; I got a date wrong, but the Lab's heyday was undoubtedly the Go-Go Internet 90's. That's when the Lab as we know it got it's reputation.

"MIT has had no need to "polish its reputation" for anything..."

Of course they do. They, like all universities, are in constant competition for students and dollars. If you're not in the front of the curve, you'll be left behind. They're CONSTANTLY polishing their reputation, as are Cal Tech, Duke, Princeton, etc.

"MIT doesn't need publicity stunts either".

That's news to other MIT professors, who have long criticized the Media Lab as a trendy research lightweight that thrives on farfetched projects (such as the infamous radio-in-the-tooth). Some of the Lab's own professors (especially in the hard sciences) have tried to break their individual groups off from the Lab to keep their reputations from suffering.

"And it's not like it has been a total waste: a lot of nice stuff has come out of there."

Other than the MPEG standard, what has the lab done of lasting value? What other creations have they come up with? They like to toss around fantastical, though general, ideas, and then take credit when someone else realizes them (Nick Negroponte likes to take some credit for Apple's Quicktime, saying that it was ideas from the Media Lab that spawned the product...I'd like to know what Apple has to say about that), but very seldom do they actually come up with a product or advance that is actually useful.

"companies like Motorola, Swatch, Lego, and HP need wacky ideas for making new products."

This attitude perfectly describes what is wrong with the Media Lab as we know it; companies don't need "wacky ideas" for products. Such products usually go straight to the bargain aisle, and then dissapear. What companies need is solid basic and applied research, and innovative ideas for products that solve specific problems and fit specific needs. That's why companies like Apple make good products. What people need to realize is that innovative does not neccessarily equal silly. And expensive silliness is EXACTLY what's coming out of the Labs. That kind of silliness is why the Media Lab thrived in the dot com era, and why it's quickly dying now. There is definitely a need to meld science, technology, and art for the benefit of humanity. After all, we're creative beings that like useful, attractive, natural-to-use things (hello, Ipod). But radio recievers in the teeth and washing machines with Internet connectivity are not such things.

Look up Wired Magazine's piece about why the Media Lab is dying.

The sticker is part of an attack on evolution by anti-evolutionists now operating under the alias 'Intelligent Design.' Wired had a good article on this several months ago (I believe November, try here) Basically they've realized they cannot win the battle by pushing the bible and have switched to pushing 'theories' (Aliens, Omnipotent Beings, etc.) that are at best hypotheses. All in an effort to confuse the population into thinking there is a division in the scientific community.

As for the complexity of life and the chance of it occurring, perhaps you've heard the universe is a [i]really[/i] big place; if thats not enough quantum theory predicts that there are an infinite amount of slightly different ones! So while the chance of life existing is small, it's had a lot of chances. An easy example of a similar situation: if I'm holding a single card the chance of it being a specific card is low, if I'm holding most of the deck its probable to have a specific card.

Is Larry really planning to undergo a sex change operation?

Probably not, although that doesn't make the reality any less strange. At the Reloaded premiere, Larry, who once favored jeans, flannel shirts, and Chicago Bulls caps, sported a floppy knit beret, delicate earrings, plucked eyebrows, and what appeared to be full makeup. Afterward, Jake Miller, Winslow's estranged husband and himself a female-to-male transsexual (try to keep up now), popped up in the London tabloids to explain that Larry had stolen his wife after the two met in Winslow's dungeon. Furthermore, Miller claimed, Larry was taking female hormones in preparation for a sex change operation. Now living in New Orleans, Miller admits he has no firsthand knowledge that Larry is planning to go through with the surgery and concedes he was paid for his story. "I lost everything," he says of his breakup with Winslow.

One source who knows the couple and the scene dismisses the sex change rumor, explaining that Larry is merely a cross-dresser, not a transsexual. "But what people don't get," he says, "is that Larry and Karin are genuinely in love - they're the perfect match."

The info below applies to government officials, but I would guess that it might apply to anyone who would ever be required to produce an email for a legal (lawsuit?) issue:

---------------
The Governor of Utah has been sued by news organizations for deleting his email. Apparently, he deletes all of his email after three days. The news organizations say that he is destroying public records. The legal issue is really whether email is a document or a transient conversation like a telephone call. This, of course, is the same reason why President Bush had to stop using email entirely.

I've probably been reading ThinkSecret since he was 13 and it's been consistently the most accurate of all the other rumor sites that I know of.

Way to go kid!

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It works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo

Yep

Here's the WoW system requirements:

Mac® System OS X 10.3.5 OS:
933 MHz or higher G4 or G5 processor
512 MB RAM or higher; DDR RAM recommended
ATI or NVIDIA video hardware with 32 MB VRAM or more
4 GB or more of available hard drive space
MacOS X 10.3.5 or newer
56k or higher modem with an Internet connection

Since the cheapest Mac Mini has a 1.25 GHz processor and ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB of VRAM then you should be set. Though since it only comes with 256 MB of RAM you'll probably need to upgrade to 512 MB, but you were going to do that anyway, right? Actually, you were going to max it out at 1 GB of RAM, right? ;)
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It works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo

Why can't people get it through their heads that Microsoft's problems are part of the natural course of free-market economics? They didn't start out a huge business, placing their OS on everyone's computer. They *earned* that position through superior marketing and business deals.

Again, your memory needs refreshing....

Indeed. I would also point out that Microsoft it, in fact, a *convicted* *monopolist*. Period. The election and subsequent settlement occurred during the penalty phase after MS's guilt had been established.

Here's a link to a timeline for the interminably lazy.

The first page, the very first page...

what do you mean? we do have holographic displays (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,40264 ,00.html) ...just none that are practical.

MirrorDot.org has a mirror up, but it's pretty slow right now. Get it while you can.
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It works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo

I was at CES all day on Saturday, and lo and behold, what was in the nVidia booth? Well apparently Infinium Labs had a rep showing off the Phantom console there. I thought that was very interesting considering the fact that it won this year's Wired Vaporware Award.

So needless to say, a friend of mine and I started grilling the poor guy. Naturally the first thing we wanted to know was how much the subcription fee was. His answer: "I am a hardware guy". Ok, fine, so now we wanted to know if the game content was exclusive or if it was just (under)glorified PC. He said that the Phantom would run anything a PC would and is directly loaded over the 'Net. So basically that left us with the impression that the Phantom was basically a PC in a fancy box pre-packaged with a Steam-like delivery system. I starting asking about the guts, and found out that they are farming out the board design to BIOStar, but I didn't get any word on what the BIOS would be like. That is, if it was encrypted Xbox style or pretty left alone. However, the indication I got was that it would be pretty well locked down. I also asked how the system would handle a hard disk crash, and he said the hard disk could be replaced and the content would automatically load itself back on the drive. I commented "so it takes you what, a day and half to get to your stuff loaded again", to which he replied, "Well, how often does your hard disk crash?", to which I shot back "Well, if it's a Maxtor, once every two weeks."

Then he wanted to know what kind of hard disk I would recommend to put into it. I said Seagate and he seemed to agree with me. So if Seagate ends up in the Phantom, it's because of me! :)

Argh can't find the link. Anyway, Wired news a year ago: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,578 97,00.html

so, the news is that more applications were vulnerable to spidering. DOH! I mean, sure, give away you surveillance webcam access without a login. What were these guys thinking about?

From TFA:
It uses revolutionary smart antenna technology to boost wireless network speed and range far beyond that of today's standard 802.11b/g and 802.11a wireless networking technologies.

So anyone knows how these so called smart antenna work?

And talking about antennas, does anyone have more information on NASA's deer antler antenna?

...hints at what might be coming in the future.

I can tell you that right now. More stupid strangle patents, like the infamous one click patent.

Bezos is a tool.

...Telnet from a CMD.EXE prompt, since even HyperTerminal has vulnerabilities and most of the alternative products are communists (although maybe that's just how Bill pronounces "communities").

If you want to poke fun at the whole idea, buy one of these (buttons coming when I can figure out what to fit in a 2.25" circle).

A large number of UPS drivers in fact retire as millionaires owing to the generous stock options that company offers, you arrogant prick. Remember that the next time a big brown truck gets between you and the ambulance you're chasing.

Lemme guess... L2.

Yours,

Son of a UPS driver/paper millionaire.

Another interesting article from Wired titled "Love Machines" can be found here.

You forgot the dead-flies-eating ecobot. Maybe we get dog-poo-eating cyborg legs.

And telling people to sign up and cancel right away to avoid credit card charges is fraud

When a company gives out a free trial offer, such as AOL, how is it fraud to terminate your account before the end of the trial offer to prevent charges? If you aren't satisfied with a companies services, of course you're going to terminate the account. You are not breaking your legal contract with this company, as they TOLD you it was a free trial offer.

Conversly, companies who advertise through places such as FreeIpod.com know that a majority of people aren't going to remain active members at the end of their trial offer. But they still give FreeIpods.com $50-90 per person that freeipods.com sends their way because enough people stay and it's way cheaper than the billions they spend on TV advertising.

Here's a neat wired article
Here are some interesting quotes from that article:
"Canoso also declined to specify the advertisers' bounties, but said they can range between $25 and $90, depending on the program and the kind of customer it attracts"

and

"Canoso said while $90 seems like a lot, it is peanuts compared to the millions spent on TV and magazine ads, which don't guarantee new customers."

And of course, just in case I change my signature in the near future, if you would like a GMail invite, please help me get a FreeIpod. If I don't get an iPod, I'll let you know and will most definately help spread the word across the internet as a whole.

Until then please mark no-freebie-for-u as a friend. I know I have ;)

Anyone know the odds that any of these will become Vaporware?

Wired News Vaporware Top 10 for 2004

Why 6 through 10? Who really expects this to not suck enough for anyone to really be clamoring for it in the first place?

I want you all to read this very carefully: Nothing is free

Apparently sometimes iPods are free... Wired ran a similar story in august and the author really seemed to think the "scheme" was legit. According to the Wired.Com story, Gratis's privacy policy is pretty air tight, and I personally haven't recieved any spam as a result of signing up.

That said, if anyone wants to help me get one, and a gmail invite for yourself in the process...

Wired had an article on programmable matter some time ago. I don't know if the guy you link to is a quack or not, but it sounds similar in concept.

Despite the fact that Wired Magazine's online content is located at www.wired.com/wired/, these are different publications. Wired News is owned by Lycos, Inc. Wired Magazine is owned by The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

It's a bit like confusing Time and High Times.

What about the SCO Group's evidence that Linux contains Unix source code?

After nearly two years and Darl McBride's claims of "mountains of code" you'd think they'd have shown something by now.
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It works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo

What you stole was the revenue the artist expected from the additional copy of their work that's now in your hands.

One more time, using nice, short words that you'll be sure to understand: Your "stolen revenue" argument is only valid when the person who committed the copyright infringement would have purchased the item legitimately if it hadn't been available to copy illegally. A substantial percentage of the time, this is not the case: if the work weren't easily available in the form of an illegal copy, the person would not have spent the money to buy a legal copy. See, for example, this (PDF), this, and this .

In short, an instance of copyright infringement does not always equal a lost sale.

And on one page as well.

Knew this sounded familiar.

AT&T announced this 12 years ago... http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/electrons. html

I'm not sure about the cost of the small syntehtic diamond that FEDs require, but I imagine they aren't cheap to make either (does anyone know?).

Wired has a love fest with synthetic diamonds

I recall a /. article from a year or two ago that spoke of a small company in the Massachusette's area that produced flawless white diamonds. They used some technique of using a diamond point of action, and layering carbon onto it, like a chip fab does. It seemed like they could produce fairly large quantities at minimal cost. I'm not sure if they have been shot by deBeers yet, tho.

It would be nice if the submitter or "editors" had linked to the printer-friendly 1 page version.

Actually, this interview appeared before the Shadow Network article. It's from last year, Dec 29, 2004 -

http://wired.com/news/archive/0,2618,2004-12-29,00 .html/

It's calld a "printer friendly version".

Interesting differences about the nature of the confession.

After being taken to an FBI office and given a lie-detector test, Banach said he had hit the jet with the beam, court documents say

This fits with the claim that he was stargazing with his daughter and that contact with the plane was completely coincidental.

Banach, 38, of Parsippany, New Jersey, admitted to federal agents that he pointed the light beam at a jet

That paints a different light which can be interpreted to mean that he was deliberately pointing out the jet. Both articles you cite use this language. I think the public opinion is being swayed by language which deliberately skews the story. I wouldn't be surprised if all subsequent articles stick exclusively with the second wording and will probably never quote the lie detector questioning directly.

As for the police helicopter also being hit with the beam I'm still suspicious. Police reports are always skewed to justify the actions of the officers. No one wants to be found guilty of misconduct and spend time off without pay. The police helicopter reportedly was attempting to scout the area with the plane's pilot. Wouldn't they be doing that in the day? Wouldn't it be a little difficult to see a 5 mW green light during the daytime? Wouldn't it be even more difficult to see the light making contact with the outside of the chopper while looking at the ground? The goal wasn't to "fly the chopper around like a target to see if the terrorist comes back". The goal was to fly the chopper around and see if the pilot could recognize and identify the area from which the light had been coming.

Too many ifs for me to believe, rank and file, that this guy was even recklessly endangering anything. With this much reasonable doubt I'd want the Cessna pilots to give a lie detector testimony to back up their claims of being blinded or even seeing the light make contact with the windshield.

"This sucks," said a Pennsylvania State University student in an e-mail interview. "I can't surf the web and I can't trade files if I uninstall the spyware. Why can't the college let me do what I want to do with my computer? The school computer security guys are being way more annoying than the spyware was."