Monday, March 03, 2003

China will colonize the moon. China's announced an ambitious project to explore and exploit the moon. Ziyuan said exploring the Moon "probably holds the key to humanity's future subsistence and development". Chinese officials have previously said that some sort of permanent, most likely unmanned, base could be established on the Moon's surface by 2010... "The prospect for the development and utilisation of the lunar potential mineral and energy resources provide resource reserves for the sustainable development of human society," he told the newspaper. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 7:30:04 PM    comment []

Conspiracy? Who cares. FUN!. Tokyo's seekrit tunnel conspiracy. Dav sez, "I love a good consipracy. Especially when it involves secret tunnels underneath and already exciting and mysterious sprawling urban landscape. Shun Akiba, a former war-time correspondant has potentially uncovered just such a scenario in Tokyo and thinks that there might be a conspiracy to keep the information hidden. Or maybe he's just drumming up book sales, but I still dig it." What changed his life was finding an old map in a secondhand bookstore. Comparing it to a contemporary map, he found significant variations. "Close to the Diet in Nagata-cho, current maps show two subways crossing. In the old map, they are parallel..." This inconsistency is just the first of seven riddles that he investigates in his book. The second reveals a secret underground complex between Kokkai-gijidomae and the prime minister's residence. A prewar map (riddle No. 3) shows the Diet in a huge empty space surrounded by paddy fields: "What was the military covering up?" New maps (No. 4) are full of inconsistencies: "People are still trying to hide things. Link Discuss (Thanks, Dav!) [Boing Boing Blog] I couldn't care less whether or not the Japanese military is trying to hide things. But the idea that there are hidden tunnels ANYWHERE just causes my inner 6 year old to spring to life, wide eyed. (Of course, it has been said that my "inner 6 year old" is my dominant personality... But that's a discussion for another time ok Tink? :-p ) All I need is a back pack, some beef jerky and a flashlight with extra batteries. Lemme atem. [The Universal Church Of Cosmic Uncertainty] Cool!  I seem to remember some similar hidden discussion about some subway system here in the states.  Someone saw a glow from the water where there shouldn't be something.  7:18:39 PM    comment []

I've spent most of today moving stuff from my house to the third dumpster. If the stuff in the house was that valuless, in a sense I was living in a dumpster. Most of the stuff I'm throwing away now, on shelves, in he house, had not been touched in years. I got a clue about this when I spent most of the last quarter of 2002 in New York. I did pretty well with a suitcase, knapsack, laptop and cellphone. There really wasn't much more that I needed, or much more that I could even use. When I'm traveling I find I watch very little TV, I always have a book I'm reading, nothing like the 1000 books I keep at my house, most of which I've never read and never will. (The ones I read invariably I give away, because those are the ones I talk about.) Then the last few days with all the talk about commons vs property, and I realize I probably would be happier with a really nice room, a large one, with a deck and a hot tub, bathroom and shower, and access to a kitchen for the rare times I create a meal, and that's about it. Having a car is nice, but I don't need anything on the order of the kinds of possessions that have accumulated in this very nice house-dumpster.  [Scripting News] There is a lesson in there for all of us.  Sigh. 7:07:31 PM    comment []

New Web Cameras Allow Spying by Subscription. A Japanese company has unveiled two new series of network cameras that can be controlled from personal computers over the Internet. The cameras, from Kyushu Matsushita Electric Co. Ltd., come equipped with a Web server function and an Ethernet port. Users can connect to the Internet with the camera device through a cable or ADSL modem. [osOpinion] 6:58:53 PM    comment []

The Future of 3D E-Commerce. 3D e-commerce is a pair of jeans seen from every angle. It is the ability to mix and match shoes, dresses, coats or belts; to explore the nooks and crannies of an entire home; and to capture the most realistic, detailed view possible. It is also entering the mainstream as companies strive to win consumers' hearts and pocketbooks. Are customers ready? [osOpinion] 6:57:01 PM    comment []

Infineon Touts Plastic Chips for Smart Tags. A research team at Infineon Technologies has claimed that plastic chips will be cheaper than their silicon counterparts, and could offer as many potential applications. The demand for plastic chips is greatest in the RFID (radio frequency identification), or smart tag, area, project leader Guenter Schmid said. [osOpinion] 6:54:48 PM    comment []

Bob Dylan. "He not busy being born is busy dying." [Motivational Quotes of the Day] 6:53:45 PM    comment []

Michel de Montaigne. "Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved." [Motivational Quotes of the Day] 6:53:21 PM    comment []

Cicero. "The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret - that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him." [Motivational Quotes of the Day] 6:53:03 PM    comment []

Surveillance of U.N. Security Council. An article in The Observer has caused quite a stir. It reveals NSA plans for surveillance, including intercepting phone calls and e-mails, of UN delegates in New York. Of curse the delegates from the countries that are likely to not agree with the U.S. position. The Observer had at first posted an e-mail purported to be from a top NSA official, but which used British spelling and date format. They still insist that it is authentic, but that they at first had 'translated' it for a British audience, and now they changed it back. That's a bit fishy, of course. I'd like to see the real message with its headers. Regardless, I'm sure that something like that is going on. [Ming the Mechanic] 6:55:43 AM    comment []

Lotus Leaf Inspires Waterproofing Scheme [Scientific American] Is it just me or do we seem to be coming up with more breakthroughs like this?  I never really followed the material science front before, but lately I've come across some really cool ideas that really seem poised to change the way a lot of things work. 6:54:08 AM    comment []

William Gibson once famously said that the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed 6:49:44 AM    comment []

How Mr. Rogers Saved the VCR In ruling that home time-shift recording of television programming for private use was not copyright infringement, the Supreme Court relied on testimony from television producers who did not object to such home recording. One of the most prominent witnesses on this issue was Fred Rogers. The Supreme Court wrote [1/17/84]: " Second is the testimony of Fred Rogers, president of the corporation that produces and owns the copyright on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The program is carried by more public television stations than any other program. Its audience numbers over 3,000,000 families a day. He testified that he had absolutely no objection to home taping for noncommercial use and expressed the opinion that it is a real service to families to be able to record children's programs and to show them at appropriate times." (Excerpt from Mr. Rogers' trial testimony: ) "Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the 'Neighborhood' at hours when some children cannot use it. . . . I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the 'Neighborhood' off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the 'Neighborhood' because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been 'You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.' Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important." 6:43:09 AM    comment []