Thursday, October 26, 2006

That Seals the Zipper on My Wii Wii

I've been math debating about having two separate game systems. Up until now I've been a one console kind of guy. Do I really want to have to buy games for two consoles and have all the paraphernalia associated with it lying around my room? I am certainly buying a ps3 and certainly not buying the xbox360, but the Wii does intrigue me. Every other interactive controller gimmick I have had though has been a novelty, not a win. So I've been on the fence with the Wii, not sure whether it will break the mold or if it'll be fun for 10 minutes and then get stupid. Then I saw the video for Red Steel. Nintendo / Ubisoft advertising departments, give yourselves a pat on the ass. I'm sold.


Tuesday, October 24, 2006

One Step Closer to Contact Lens HUDs and Super-Vision

Well, hello, serendipity. My name is Tay. I found these two articles right by each other on KurzweilAI. The first [technology review] is about a group from Northwestern who have developed some cheap, high performance, and transparent transistors using indium oxide at room temperate that could be used for displays. The second [newscientist] is about a UPenn / Stanford tag team that has developed an implantable silicon chip that mimics the neural workings of a real eye.




Edit: Serendipity strikes again. Look closely, they run firefox!

E-Ink Reader

As a bleeding edge technophile, (leading edge now, damn you sweet, sweet core 2 duo macbook pro) who also loves to read, you would think I would be pitching a pant tent over all these new e-readers coming to the market. I want to like them and part of me wants it just to play with it as well as for the few situations it might actually be useful. Unfortunately, I love the physical qualities of books, especially the way they smell and the way they look stacked up on a bookshelf.

I am very worried about the possible DRM restrictions that may be imposed. Will there be rampant book p2p-ing when e-readers are more ubiquitous and won't burn your eyes out? I'd like to believe people who read a lot of books and grow to love certain authors would want to support them, but easy five fingered discounts are always enticing. I think publishers are going to preempt the wait and see method and just hit us with crippling DRM that won't be interoperable and will force you to buy and re-buy content that you should already own. Then you will get the same backlash that you get from true music fans who refuse to be encumbered with DRM, which DECREASES the value of the file, who use p2p or torrents to get a more featured "product."

Eventually, the wave that is technology will overcome the paper book as it does to most obsolete things, but I am interested to see how fast it catches on in the meantime.

Firefox 2.0

Well, Firefox 2.0 is out to go along with every other version 2.0 in the world today. I got to thinking, there really isn't much I want from my browser. I want it to be clean, secure, and fast. That's what I like about Firefox. It comes with the base configuration and let's you choose how much extra crap you wanna load on. For me that consists of Stumble, Delicious, and Adblock Plus. Anyway, 2.0 is nice in sticking with this tradition. So, thumbs up here.



Sunday, October 22, 2006

November, Best Month Ever

In the world of rampant consumerism, November is shaping up to be a stellar month. I will even go so far as to say it is going to be the best month ever. I'm a young, single yuppie, and I love me some electronics (and some other things). This post will serve as a list (in no particular order, not even chronological like you might think) of all the awesome things that are due out soon:

1. Playstation 3 - November 17th: I won't even be trying to get a first run PS3. I'll let the bleeding edgers flush out the bugs and spend a night or two sleeping outside on a line.

2. Nintendo Wii - November 19th: I'm on the fence with this one. It's cheap, it could be fun, and my TV has 9t9 trillion inputs and I want to have something plugged into every one.

3. Apple iPod Shuffle - Listed ship date of October: I don't know if these babies are shipping already but other products that are get listed as ships within 24 hours. These things are so small and cheap, I'm going to get two and clip one to each of my nipples whilst at the gym.

4. Socom: Combined Assault (PS2) - November 7th: Let's face it Socom 3 sucks, a mere shadow of its predecessor. Being that CA will be playable online with S3, well, I'm reserving excitement.

5. Tony Hawk's Project 8 (PS3) - November ??: I've heard rumors that this is coming out in November but a quick intrasnets search is telling me probably not. The Tony Hawk series is one of my favs. American Wasteland was a bust though. Will the new platform offer unparalleled game play or merely pretty graphics?

6. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan - November 1st: This is my first deviation from electronics, but this movie looks too funny to not include. My name ehhhhh Borrrrat, your name please?

7. The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind - November 7th: In his much anticipated follow up to The Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky gives us his updated thoughts on AI. The future of the world is at stake here, for reals.

8.
The Jennifer Morgue - November 1: Charles Stross is the man. Accelerando was the best sci-fi book of 2006, "IMHO." I haven't got around to reading Glasshouse yet as I've been taking a brief stint into neurology and philosophy lately. Once that's over, it's Stross time.

Well that is all I can think of for now. I'll update the list as I remember things or new word gets released down the Internet Tubes. Get excited.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Luddites, Religious Fundamentalists, and the Singularity

In trying to play some small role in working towards a positive singularity I thought spreading the singularity meme would be a good, though possibly insignificant, start. Thinking about this a little more deeply, I'm not so sure. The bigger and more popular this idea gets, the more likely it is going to be heard by people who will vehemently oppose it without question. In the case of the singularity these people are the luddites and the religious fundamentalists. There is no doubt of the numbers and power/influence that these two groups yield. No light bulb will flash into existence shining bright over their heads when they hear of the singularity. These are the people in the top tiers of the American government who control policy, money, and sway. Embracing such an idea requires a critical, open mind, a trait sorely lacking in these types. They will either strike swiftly against it in fear of change or possibly ignore it through a lack of intelligence.

My question then becomes, is it best to keep this idea quiet fearing swift action against anything deemed singularity inducing? Should we go on about our business, seeing the big picture, constantly piecing the puzzle together towards this possibly fantastic future and merely smile to ourselves at other people's utter stupidity?

Or do we stand up and fight for what we believe in? Fight against supernaturalism and the all pervasive death meme. Fight against a life philosophy that detests questioning and criticism in hope that somehow it will get through.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Solar Powered Google

With all the GooTube news going around lately, a smaller tidbit of information that I find much more interesting went largely un-talked-about. Google will be constructing solar panels at headquarters that will provide 1.6 MW of power. This would be enough to run 1/3 of their offices (not data centers). I remember reading not too long ago about Larry and Sergey investing in Nanosolar and purchasing the awesome Tesla Motors electric powered sports car.

So let's see....

Miles and miles of dark fiber.......................check!
Unlimited (as it gets) source of energy......check!
Secret 34,000 sq. foot data centers............check!

At least some people know how to look further than 1 week ahead of themselves.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

First Link

At long last, another site has posted a link to my blog. Granted, the site seems to be an RSS aggregater that searches blogs for things related to Macbook Pros and therefore, no human has read my blog and deemed it worthy of linking. However, a crawler robot did, and we all know that's who really matters. I, for one, welcome our crawling robot overlords!

Anyway, here's a link back to the site because I think that's what you are supposed to do in the unwritten law book of the blogosphere on the intraweb tubes.

http://mrkab.com/macbook-pro/?p=709

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Ruben's Tube

Pretty cool physics experiment made even cooler with some old school Foo Fighters.




Originally found here.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Countdown to the Singularity!