04.30.04
Posted in forum archive at 5:30 pm by
Microvision has developed a system to beam information and images directly on the human eye.
The signals contain vital information about the intensity and mix of the colours which can be reproduced by the light source.
The scanner then applies the image to the retina. It is made up of a tiny mirror that sweeps the light beam until a full image appears to the user.
The scanned beam is focused onto an optical element called an exit pupil expander. When the light from the expander is collected by a lens and guided by a mirror and a see-through monocle to the eye, it covers the entire area seen by the pupil.
Microvision say the technology is safe because of very low strength of the laser used.
Sweet. :upper:
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04.29.04
Posted in forum archive at 10:29 pm by
Virtual Worlds (VWs) are increasingly looking like this world – including offshore labor problems (in regards to the newly launched Lineage II English Version):
There are Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and English servers. The former three have been online for some time, but the English-language servers only opened recently. Nonetheless, where do you think much of the RL purchasing power resides? And on what servers would you find the lowest wage rates (and hence opportunity costs of time)? The source reports that players on Asian-language servers have invested much time to discover money and loot bugs during extensive uptimes there, and are now moving into the newly-opened English servers because the returns to exploiting the bugs are higher there.
In other words, in cyberspace, labor can move instantly from any one of Earth’s economies into any other. More accurately, there isn’t an American Labor Market and a Chinese Labor Market. There’s just a Labor Market. … Wages will equilibrate.
Because of the fluid nature of transactions, we’ll all have an avatar in the land of silicon (we already have one, two, or several if you consider the names we don for email use as a pre-avatar alias).
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Posted in forum archive at 10:26 pm by
From AfterDawn:
Apple released a new major version of its popular iTunes software that allows purchases via iTMS music store, aiming to change the authentication method of iTunes’ songs that was broken previously by hackers who wished to incorporate iTunes support to various applications. Now, just 24 hours after the release of new version, v4.5, the new authentication scheme seems to be cracked again.
Will the world ever have a DRM system that is crack-proof and consumer friendly? Is that even possible?
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Posted in forum archive at 10:17 pm by
Google’s going for a 2.7 billion dollar IPO, and you could have a piece of the action, sorta.
First, interested investors need to have an account with one of the underwriters, Morgan Stanley or Credit Suisse First Boston, where they must submit a bid with the number of shares desired and price they are willing to pay.
Google’s investment bankers will gather up the bids and enter them into a master order book, which will be reviewed by the company’s founders and underwriters. If a bid appears unusually large or the share price listed far exceeds the top range, then investors may be disqualified for creating a speculative bidding environment, according to the filing.
So no get-rich-quick schemes here. Needless to say, this sort of public opening is highly unusual. With all the coverage and Googling having become a household verb I find it hard to see how it wouldn’t be volatile.
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Posted in forum archive at 1:17 am by
A Spanish judge has ruled that Xbox and PS2 Mod Chips are legal in Spain. While based on a technicality in the Spanish law, it does mean that whole cottage industries devoted to modding out Xboxs are free to flourish in the land of the Spanards.
The loophole exists in article 270 of the penal code, which mentions “the manufacture, distribution or possession of means to crack computer programme security codes”. It does not, however, cover “components of video games players nor, in general, equipment designed to run image or sound software”.
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04.27.04
Posted in forum archive at 2:06 pm by
Even while being well into his 50’s, David Bowie remains innovative. Turns out the thin white duke has embrased mash ups:
Mash ups were a great appropriation idea just waiting to happen. I first heard of them when 2 many dj’s put out their album a year or so ago and have been following the evolution avidly ever since. Being a hybrid-maker off and on over the years, I’m very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.
Visconti and I had an unintentionally Luddite fantasy in the seventies revolving around a plan to write songs in the style of several different artists, The Doors or Mark Bolan etc., and then record some backing tracks in the style of, say Hendrix or the Stones and then I would record the vocal tracks imitating Cliff, Lennon or the Supremes even (with slightly speeded up tape). Shame we never got on with it but you know how those rainy Tuesday afternoon brainstorms go. Nowhere, generally.
And now he’s opened up a whole collection of his own music for artist’s to ‘mash up’.
For any remix/mash-up/producers out there, how often does an opportunity like this come along? Not very often, I’ll say. :upper:
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Posted in forum archive at 12:39 am by
An interesting debate is brewing in the US Senate:
By a 74-11 vote, senators agreed to begin a process climaxing in a final vote expected later this week over whether to renew a lapsed ban that would permanently prevent state and local governments from levying additional taxes on dial-up, DSL (digital subscriber line), cable modem, wireless or satellite access to the Internet.
As somebody who looks at my phone bill and balks at how the federal and state ‘access’ charges more than double the amount of my service, I say :upper:!
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Posted in forum archive at 12:15 am by
A new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that less people are illegally downloading music… kind of:
The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey released Sunday found that 14 percent of adult Internet users said they had once downloaded music files but are no longer doing any downloading.
…
But the number of Americans who said they are still downloading music increased to 23 million from an estimated 18 million in the four-month period between November 2003 and February 2004, the Pew report showed.
The survey, however, failed to specify if users downloaded music illegally or purchased songs through authorized Web sites, such as Apple Computer’s iTunes.
A third of the former music downloaders — close to 6 million users — said they have turned away from the practice because of the lawsuits brought against music file-sharers by the recording industry since last summer, the survey said.
…
The report, citing online tracking company comScore Media Mextrix, said about 5 million fewer people are actively running the well-known free, music-swapping service, KaZaa, compared to November 2003.
But the comScore data showed modest growth in usage of some of the smaller file-sharing sites, such as iMesh, BitTorrent and eMule, since November.
It is, it isn’t, it is, it isn’t…I’m glad they spent all that money to tell us something concrete. 
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Posted in forum archive at 12:11 am by
This month Apple’s iTunes service turns 1 and oh, what a year it has been. Just last year record labels were clueless, P2P was the only game for digital distribution, and we were to believe that the apocalypse was upon us. Now 800,000 iPods have been sold, you can’t swing a mouse without hitting a digital music site, and record labels are somewhat optomisic that there will be a place for them in the near future.
Despite Apple’s success, the digital music business is only beginning to get off the ground, and it’s hard to predict what might happen next. The iTunes launch was seen by many in the record industry as an experiment with loosening previous restrictions on digital files. Now that the first stages of the experiment have proven successful, labels may be amenable to further experimentation.
Here’s to the future: :upper:
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Posted in forum archive at 12:01 am by
Who would have thought all those years ago while watching Full House that those adorable twins would be suing a video game manufacturer.
According to the suit, Acclaim has failed to pay nearly $178,000 that was due by April 1 under the terms of a settlement reached last September.
That settlement came after an audit of Acclaim’s books turned up what Dualstar said was “hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties” that had not been paid from games featuring the girls. The lawsuit seeks damages and interest.
There were Olsen Twin games? What’s more, they made enough money to generate royalties? 
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