I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more complete, well laid out website devoted entirely to mapping every public toilet on an entire continent. Find toilets based on address or GPS location, plan your trip around public toilets, register for My Toilet Map or even receive a monthly newsletter. Brought to you by Australia’s National Continence Management Strategy.
Where to go in Australia Read More »
Apparently Republican spindoctors have tried no fewer than six different names for their immanent parliamentary rules change to block Democrat filibusters. Is this just because no one can keep a straight face when Bush calls it the Nucular Option?
Redefining language Read More »
A study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association compared the effectiveness of acupuncture as a treatment for migraine headaches against “sham acupuncture” where the doctors used needles at non-acupuncture points. The results of the two groups were virtually identical: a 2.2-day reduction in the number of days with moderate or severe headaches in a four-week period. That’s significantly better than the 0.8-day reduction for the control “waiting list” group that got no treatment, but begs the obvious question: why spend years studying acupuncture if needle location doesn’t really matter?
As a side note, I’m too cheap to pay the $12 to to download the full paper, but there’s a nice breakdown of the study at the UK National electronic Library for Health. (Thanks to Bob Park’s What’s New for the link!)
Acupuncture good for migraines — and so is random poking with needles Read More »
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| image courtesy Cornell University |
Cornell Researchers Viktor Zykov, Efstathios Mytilinaios, Bryant Adams, and Hod Lipson have built a self-replicating robot (video). The robot itself is just a basic proof-of-concept — their real contribution is how they try to redefine the whole concept of self-replication from being a “you either have it or you don’t” binary property to being a continuum. From their FAQ:
Contrary to previously held views that self-replication is a property that a system either has or has not (“you can’t be half pregnant”), our theory suggests that it is actually a continuum, where different systems can self-reproduce to different extents. The extent to which a system is self replicating depends on things like how fast does it self replicate, how accurately does it self replicate, how dependent is it on its environment to self replicate, how complex are its building blocks, how complex it is itself, etc. etc. For example, crystals self replicate, but only in a solution; rabbits self-replicate – less accurately and more slowly than a crystal – but they are less dependent on having a specific environment.
Self replicating robot Read More »
My brother is finishing up his Masters of Fine Arts at SUNY Buffalo, and just recently debuted his main dissertation project: a 20-minute experimental film about Eadweard Muybridge called tesseract (downloadable here).
Even to my relatively untrained eye it’s a beautiful piece (it just won the award for Best Photography at the Jutro Filmu international film festival in Warsaw), but the part that’s most interesting to me is how he’s applying ideas from Scott McCloud‘s Understanding Comics to film. Take a look and see for yourself.
I’ve run into a few interesting models for information flow-control in the past months:
All three cases are creating two classes of info-users: people who can disseminate their information (paid subscribers, plus people who read the Times when it’s still fresh) and consumers who can read what the first class of people point to but can’t go further without paying. While it’s a little Tom Sawyerish to essentially force people to pay to drive potential new subscribers to your site, I can see the basic model working if the balance is gotten right and fit the content well. At the very least, it’s nice to see models that are more subtle than the all-free / ad-based / subscriber-based triple that’s so common today.
Interesting information flow-control models Read More »
Concerned about the influence Google‘s PageRank algorithm has in determining what information people see? Think that ranking pages by how many people link to them isn’t objective so much as automated mob rule? Want a search engine for people who don’t want to just follow the herd, or just want to see the dominant paradigm get a little more subverted?
If so, then you’ll be interested in Shmoogle, the Google-randomizer developed by Tsila Hassine. Shmoogle forwards your query on to Google and then randomizes the results, presenting them in the same no-nonsense interface you’d expect from Google along with the original rank of each result. Shmoogle is more of an art project than a practical alternative to Google, designed to encourage us to question whether “everyone else thinks this is good, so you should too” is really the best assumption upon which to base the library of first resort. Random order is at least diversifying, but to me it seems so arbitrary — and has me thinking of all sorts of alternatives:
If you can think of more variations feel free to comment…
As is being reported all over the net, the U.S. Court of Appeals just ruled that the FCC doesn’t have the authority to force all manufacturers of video hardware (televisions, computers, video recorders, etc.) to disables the ability to make copies of shows where copying doesn’t fit the broadcaster’s business model.
As Declan McCullagh at C|net points out in more diplomatic terms, now the MPAA will actually have to lobby congress to extend their government-enforced monopoly rather than force it through the less-accountable FCC.
Court shoots down Broadcast Flag Read More »
For years science-fiction author David Brin has been preaching that privacy as we know it is essentially dead, and rather than mourn our loss of shadow we should embrace the light — and make sure it shines in the bedrooms of power as much as it shines in our own. The Cameras Are Coming! has been his battle cry.
I remember hearing Brin speak at the Media Lab sometime in the late 90s and thinking he was completely off the mark if he thought ubiquitous lack of privacy was anything but trouble — I saw it as giving an expert marksman (powerful individuals, companies and governments) and someone who has never held a gun before (us peons) the same high-end rifle and saying “there you go, now you’re both equal.”
I’ve not gone completely over to Brin’s position, but events in the intervening years have brought me a little closer. First, I’ve seen no sign of privacy erosion even slowing down and every sign that information wants to be free and unfettered is becoming a new physical law for the 21st century. (In the spirit of Free as in beer and Free as in freedom, this would be the Free as in virus point of view.) The same forces that erode top-down power and barriers to free expression are the forces that erode our privacy — I can’t think one is inevitable without accepting the other as well. Second, things like the Abu Grahab scandal give me at least a little hope that light will occasionally leak into even the more protected dens, and that we peons are slowly learning how to shoot. I’m not totally convinced by any stretch (Abu Grahab, I’ll point out, has so far only lead to punishment of low-level participants), but it’s something.
I came in halfway through Brin’s talk in the opening debate at CFP, but I did note one quote I especially liked (slightly paraphrased here):
Give the watchdog better glasses and more freedom, then yank the choke chain to make sure it remembers that it’s a dog and not a wolf.
The fundamental question for every free society is how to insure we keep a hold of that choke chain. Shining light in the bedrooms of power is one part of the answer I think, but it’s not enough.
I’ve some thoughts of what else is needed, but they involve questions about free will — and anyone who’s heard me rant in person on the topic knows I’d never get to sleep if I started down that path tonight…
(For some related reading take a look at Stafanos’ response to my post about privacy that got me thinking about Brin again.)
Thoughts on privacy and David Brin Read More »
It’s sounding pretty grim for Xybernaut (thanks to Stefanos for the link in his comments):
The Company also announced that the Company was contacted Friday, April 22 by the U. S. Attorney’s Office for The Eastern District of Virginia, which is opening an investigation. In addition, the Audit Committee, through its legal counsel, has contacted the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the previously disclosed Audit Committee investigation and findings. The Company will cooperate fully in these investigations and any others.
The Company also affirmed that it continues to face a severe liquidity crisis and possible insolvency. There can be no assurances that the Company will have sufficient cash to meet its financial obligations or fund continuing operations. The Office of the Chairman of the Board is authorized to retain a consultant with financial and management restructuring expertise. The Company intends to work with such adviser to reduce costs, conserve cash, and obtain advice regarding restructuring and other alternatives to maximize shareholder value.
I remember several years ago hearing grumbling (unconfirmed by me) that folks at Xybernaut were pumping their stock with misleading press releases and then selling on the bump, but this is looking like much larger chickens coming home to roost.
More Xybernaut woes Read More »