Using a camera and some cool software these guys have set up a multi player game in a cinema. The whole audience plays by swaying to the left or right. It’s meant to keep the audience going while waiting for the movie to start, and I’m sure they will build in advertising.
It’s a really cool idea and it looks like a lot of fun too.
I was surprised by some of the articles which are most frequently revised in the Wikipedia. Very frequent revisions would be caused by:
So, I can understand why Adolf Hitler is so high in the list, but “October 2003” really surprised me. I would also be interested to see just how many revisions these articles take. I took a look at the history of the Jesus article and it gets revisions every single day. Most days there are about 10 revisions to the article. So the Wikipedia entry on Jesus is updated several times a day, every day.
Top 20 Most Hotly Revised Articles
People are increasingly building personal presences online. For instance, I have this blog, a Picassa web album, a Facebook account, etc. I have an online life, people communicate with me online, I have stores, opinions and photos online. So do millions of other people around the world.
What hadn’t occurred to me until today is that thousands of those people die every year, and their web presences will just go on. This article is from a guy whose friend committed suicide. The guy’s MySpace page has actually been pretty active since his death – it’s become like a shrine to the guy. His online presence lives on after his death.
Apparently Facebook has profiles for the students killed in the Virginia Tech massacre which are also still active. Strange…
I recently deleted some work files from my computer. I don’t really know how I did it, but I got quite a shock when I realized. I had held SHIFT down while deleting, so the files skipped the recycle bin. My most recent backup was 2 weeks before (something I have since changed) so the files were gone. Right?
Actually I was able to restore almost all of the lost data. A guide to recovering deleted data:
Amazingly this actually works really well. How does it work? When you delete a file, the operating system (Windows, etc) just marks that section of the hard-drive as free space – it doesn’t actually wipe the data. So even though the file has been ‘deleted’ the data is still there. This great little program digs through the free space and checks if there are any recoverable files sitting in there.
That is why you need to stop using the computer ASAP – otherwise the free space could be overwritten by new files.
More detailed instructions and explanations available here.
Wired has a story about a security researcher who paid for a Google ad saying “Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!”
The ad was loaded onto pages 260,000 times and 409 users actually clicked on the link! That means that out of every 1000 times a site was loaded showing the link, 1.6 users actually clicked to get their computer infected.
A group
of scientists
in the US
reckon
that they
have a better
way of reading
text online.
They break
the text into
short phrases
like this.
The whole idea behind it is that the human eye didn’t evolve to read blocks of text, so it isn’t necessarily very good at it. Their research findings show that when reading a block of text our area of focus is pretty much circular (see image).
So our brain is getting hit with characters from the lines above and below what we are reading. They reckon this is tiring to the brain and reduces speed and comprehension. Their software analyzes the structure of the sentences and breaks them up into short phrases.
Check out this example on their site.
Now that I think about it, I frequently use bullets and shorter sentences because they are easier to read and understand. I should sue these guys!
There is a well known and pretty cool site called Digg. This is how it works:
Digg can generate enormous traffic and when smaller sites get ‘Dugg’ their servers often go down due to all the traffic.
Recently someone posted a link to a code which could be used to unlock new HD-DVD encryption schemes. The HD-DVD companies were rather chipped off about it and threatened Digg with legal action if the link was not removed. So the Digg management team got worried and started removing all links to the unlock code.
What happened then was cool, scary and a significant first: people noticed their Digg entries being deleted and fought back! Soon Digg users were going NUTS and posting hundreds and hundreds of links to the unlock code. Thousands of people became involved and links were posted faster than they could be removed. Eventually Digg realised that their site had been taken over by the user community – they had a choice:
So they surrendered. The co-founder posted the code himself and said:
“After seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”
They made a brave and perhaps foolish choice. It’s a win in the war building up against censorship – and a significant point in the history of the web. The code is probably going to become an icon of the anti-censorship movement (see the T-Shirt above).
Also see a BBC news story about the whole thing.
UPDATE:
There are now more than 1.2million sites referencing the code! You can check the current Google count by going to this link. The AACS reckons they are going to sue each of those sites! Idiots…
They call it the elusive alarm clock. Hitting snooze once is allowed, but after that the alarm clock literally jumps off the bed-side table and runs away. It looks for a good place to hide and heads off, forcing you to get out of bed and catch the thing to turn off the alarm. This reminds me of a university friend who used to hide a second alarm clock in his cupboard so that he wouldn’t sleep through an exam.
One of the comments on an article about this is: “This might be more practical than strapping my alarm clock to my cat!”
In a similar vein, the alarm clock below is a simulated bomb which must be properly defused to prevent a super loud alarm from sounding. Gets those brains started nice and early.
I suppose that if you aren’t a geek (like me) you may not have heard of the “Net Neutrality” debate. I think that it’s actually quite an interesting (and important) argument.
What is net neutrality? Net neutrality is the principle that network operators (like Telkom or AT&T) should give equal treatment to all the traffic on their networks.
Currently, the internet blindly delivers data packets regardless of what they contain. The network just gets data and passes it on – no matter what is in there. This is what makes the internet flexible – anyone can send anything they want.
In the US the telecoms firms (AT&T, Verizon, etc) want to be allowed to charge content providers (e.g. Google, BBC, any web site) a fee for providing their content on a faster connection. In effect, they plan “express toll lanes” alongside the internet’s existing highways.
They are promising to leave the normal traffic as it is – they just want to have special lanes for people who pay more. Sounds fair(ish).
There are a few reasons why I don’t like this idea:
So I don’t like the idea of allowing operators to violate network neutrality. But, I hate over-regulation so I don’t think that over-strict rules should be put in place the preserve neutrality. As usual, I think the guys at The Economist have got the right idea:
“A minimal set of rules to protect net neutrality would still leave room for operators to experiment with new premium services.”
Google’s stance on net neutrality
Game theory model of the effects of removing network neutrality
What the? Lorem Ipsum you too man…
Actually, Lorem Ipsum is the name of the dummy text that is most commonly used for layout previews/examples. It’s used to show what a webpage/pamphlet/book/etc would look like populated with text. The guys who do this for a living know that the reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout.
So instead they use a passage of classical Latin literature written in 45 BC. The really cool thing (in my opinion) is that it has been in use since the 1500’s!
Here is a page devoted to it. Also has a generator.