A company has invented a new gear box for bikes that allows the chain to run inside the frame, allowing for more durable frames with fewer delicate parts being exposed. I think this is pretty sweet, making great additions to everday products, so here are some links: A picture of a bike with the integrated shifting unit, the gear box's website, a picture of the unit, another close up of the integrated unit.
As always, for othre bike related things, check out Bigha.
I came across a link to an article at a zine called GuluFuture about the new "Superworm" they think will storm the net on September 11th. Quite honestly, this may happen, however this article seems a little over the top to me. From the article:
Perhaps not. Maybe Sobig.F was delayed a month so that the imminent Sobig.G release would fall on the 11th September target date.
Therefore the 9/11 Sobig release date is a clear warning of a catastrophic attack on 9-11-'03. The author(s) are hinting of a calamity.
Way to jump to conclusions. Is all of this possible? Yes, I think it is. There are many vulnerable computers with many troublemakers, malcontents, and even terrorists. It doesn't seem to me, though, that this type of an attack would come from the type of groups responsible for 9-11. First of all, they use the internet to communicate, so destroying it wouldn't help them any. Secondly, more focused and terrifying attacks seem to be the modus operani. It wouldn't suprise me to find out they were specifically targeting Pentagon computers, but Microsoft? Terrorists going after Bill Gates is the stuff geek dreams are made of, not 9-11 v2.
Don't get me wrong, I think a super virus is possible, if not inevitable. Having it appear on Thursday, though, seems a little far-fetched to me.
Interaction Architecture Solutions for the Real World: Keyboard vs. The Mouse, pt 1
We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:
- Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
- The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
Darwin in a Box: This is really neat. The videos are worth the time it takes to download them. The basic premise is that the researchers programatically created a nervous system as well as all the muslces, tendons, and senses needed to walk. They then algorithmically evolved the system until it taught itself to walk.
First off, I'm always amazed at how easy these articles make this sound. Take ten random numbers between one and ten. Pick the five closest to ten. Those five get reset to a random number between two and ten (they're range is smaller because being closer to ten is better in our experiment and they won the first round so they get a bonus). Reset the other five to a random number between one and ten. For each strain that advances reduce it's range.
That seems awfully artificial to me, but it also seems to be how these evolution programs break down. However they work, creating a video game character (a troll for example) and then having it develop a method of locomotion unique to the body you created for it is extremely interesting and could lead to some very cool new characters and navigation structures.
Does anyone else have links to open source versions of these types of programs? I'd be interested in learning more.
So after I first tried BitTorrent I got really excited. Everything seemed so fast. It was great. I started to write this glowing post about how it worked and what it did and how cool it was. After using it for a few weeks now, my opinions have changed a little and that write-up will probably never get posted.
So what changed? Well first off I've had a much harder time getting files. It seems to me like you need to try for the file at just the right time; if you try to early after release, you have to bear the brunt of the wait and then other people pull from you. If you wait to long, everyone else has killed their windows and the file is no longer available. The other problem is that the network seems small. All of my neighbors seem to have full connections, thereby isolating me from the file.
I have had a few really good experiences, pulling large files at very good speeds (hundred Kb/s). However, lately it hasn't been as good.
Note: I'm currently using shareaza as my bittorrent client since the python gui spontaneously broke.
I heard on the radio, and was only able to confirm in a Canadian newspaper, that McDonald's will soon be offering one hour of wireless internet access with the purchase of a combo meal. The technology will be rolled out in New York, Chicago, and an undisclosed location in California.
Although not interesting in iteself, as places like Starbucks have been offering wifi access for a while now, it does raise a question about how this affects McDonald's concept of what their business is. As a company that helped define the term "fast food", do they really want to encourage customers to sit around for an hour watching flash movies, sending email, and IM'ing their friends?
McDonald's has tried in the past to serve different types of food, like spaghetti, which are considered more "sit-down" type meals. Last I checked you couldn't order spaghetti there anymore, as those trials failed miserably. Hell, they don't even have comfortable benches, installing cold plastic slabs instead so that you'll leave more quickly and allow another cow to get in and feed at the trough.
It's a neat idea, but really. Didn't we learn in the 90's that 'e' everything caused more problems than it was worth? Won't this just drive the price of a hamburger and fries even higher? Will customers even use it? In my opinion, there are a lot of interesting questions here, questions that I'd be curious to see if McDonald's will address.
Did you ever think about the little features of a given piece of software? You know, the ones you use all the time and never think twice about? I'd like to talk about one right now, one in particular.
I'm a big AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) user. Been using it for a long time under a variety of screen names. I've used the direct chat feature, the send a file feature, the send an image feature, the buddy icon feature, etc etc. I've played with chat bots, written some AIM links that create a "sexiest man alive group" and add my screen name to it, and used programs that filter the aim protocol and can kick people off by exploiting well known AIM bugs. Yes, AIM and I are pretty tight.
In the latest version, though, there's a feature that really gets me upset, a feature that has changed the way I use AIM. You've seen it if you're using the newest version: the infamous "Your buddy entered text / Your buddy is typing" message in the middle left of the chat window.
It's gotten to the point where I can watch that message and tell what version of AIM my buddy is using, pre-message or with-message. When I type, they hesitate and stop, delete and rewrite, stop again, wait for me to finish, rush to type and send before I get my words out. It drives me crazy. I find myself typing faster to finish my thoughts before they interrupt, those damn buddies. I see them typing, waiting for me to get mid-point so they can make the "Your buddy has entered text" go away with an exultant press of the enter key and break my train of thought. Man, you buddies are bastards!
It seems trivial, but it's important: small features can make or break a piece of software. Bookmarking multiple tabs (or tabs period) in gecko browsers is an example. Minimizing CallWave is another (honest to goodness, in old versions you couldn't make the thing go away without closing it). Movable Type bookmarklets count as well. Think about this the next time you write or use software, and keep it in mind if you ever have the ear of a developer. Remind them: the bottom line is that we write software for people to use, not to hate.
HighLift Systems
I had heard of the space elevator before, but never actually looked into it. Who would have thought we'd be attaching ribbons to the earth and using the centrifugal force created by the earth's rotation to keep them stretched out towards space. Seems pretty crazy to me... So crazy, it just might work!!!
Over at Alogorhythm, Shawn has a story about a new app on OS X that monitors connections to the internet by programs on your computer. Some applications tell you when they connect to the internet, others don't. In my opinion, this is an app that should have been written a long time ago. As noted in his write up, the fallout from things like this will be interesting to see, as I'd be curious to hear what the "one up" by companies like Microsoft will be.
Wired: Immortal Code
This is just an interesting article, kind of heart-breaking though in a geeky sort of way. Having written some projects that took me a while, if the code was to just disappear, I'd be unhappy as the jpy of code writing for me isn't the perfect algorithm, but instead the use the code gets. These poor people spent years on their app only to have it sold out from under them on promises that evaporated along with practially everything else built during the dot com boom. Bah. The whole thing is so depressing...
The man doesn't think GPS jammers are such a hot idea.
Homemade GPS jammers raise concerns - Computerworld
In modern post 9-11 America, it's nice to see this kind of work. I'm a strong supporter of getting the terrorists/bad-guys. I don't support, however, creating a government gestapo that can run a-muck stomping on Civil-Liberties as they see fit. This is America, damn it. If I don't want the man to be able to track me by GPS, then I have every right to block him from doing it. Maybe I'll build one of these things just on principle.
mySQL has redesigned their site, making it easier to find what you want. I still, however, can't determine the date when version 4 will be recommended for use. According to eWeek in this article benchmarking some major database engines (minus Postgres, which is strange), version 4 performed as well as Oracle9i. It's nice to see such an easy to use and open source project doing so well. Also, I read the other day that there's some work going on with the Mozilla crew in order to allow XUL based Mozilla apps to connect to databases (they've already got a Postgres version). Since XUL can be downloaded from a server, anyone using a new mozilla client will have access to the latest version of your application. The possibilities are limitless.
Is the Computer Desktop an Antique? - by Steven Johnson
An interesting article by Steve Johnson, author of Interface Culture. Personally, I think innovation in the computer interface is past due: technology has advanced to the point where we can try new things and interact in new ways. When I'm working with a text document and I go to save it, why doesn't my computer reccommend a spot for it in relation to other documents on the same topic? Why don't pictures automatically group themselves in useful ways, such as by date? Why don't more monitors have touch screens built in so I can move my files around physically? Maybe these are stupid ideas, but they just prove that computers have gotten to the point where these types of things are possible, and with every possibility come the chance for innovation and more useful ways of interacting with the new e-world.
Now if we could only make them stop crashing...
the book of seg. phillip m. torrone. segway ht human transporter
I don't know how I fel about this whole thing, but these are some interesting projects. Funny, though, that we can't do any of this with automobiles, or I should say that no one has tried it with them.
Forbes.com: AMD to move beyond PC, faster chips no longer key
Interesting decision to make. Have we finally reached the point where the speed of the processor is secondary to what you can do with it? I don't think so as nice as that would be. However, this could be a great thing for AMD if they do it right. Think about it: the processors and manufacturing processes they use aren't exactly ass, they are right behind Intel in the processor race. What if they started tailoring their devices for certain uses? Start placing full processors in digital video cameras and allowing for more control and manipulation right at the image capturing stages? What if they added their processors to VCR's and stereos for added functionality and ease of use? This could be a really interesting developement in the hardware industry.
Slashdot | Software For Ransom
This is an interesting idea. I wasn't able to read anything in-depth because the stupid pages were all slashdotted.
In any case, I think with short time spans and reasonable amounts of money, this could work well. One problem I couls forsee is a small group of users constantly paying for the entire group's usage, however it would be those people who would be most likely to use the application and it's source code to the fullest.
Military & Aerospace Electronics Current Articles
This is all well and good, but what happens if it gos crazy? what if it's ability to repair cracks turns into an ability to disolve anything it touches, turning into sludge? Not very far fetched when you consider that it would need some ability to create something usable for filling the cracks it would repair. I'm still quite a bit scared about nano-technology to be too supportive of it...
Wired 10.11: Power Houses
I can't wait until I'm a millionairre (and I will be someday). Greta article by Wired, finishing up with a how to wire your own home for $20,000 parts list. Anyone got a Xanboo XAS135 acoustic sensor I could have cheap?
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