StonyandCher writes with a ComputerWorld story about new efforts by Nissan to reduce the danger of intoxicated drinkers through technology. A trio of new features installed in a prototype vehicle demonstrated this past week are designed to minimize the damage a drunk behind the wheel can cause. "The first [system] attempts to directly detect alcohol in the driver's sweat and gear shift lever. A second system in the car uses a camera mounted in front of the driver to monitor eye movement. If the driver is drowsy it triggers the seat belt to tighten and this movement will hopefully snap the driver out of their drowsiness or prompt them to take a rest. A third system monitors the path of the vehicle to ensure it's traveling in a straight line and not weaving about the road, as is common with a drunken driver."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Frauenfelder: Plastic God has made a series of plastic figurines of leaders who have made a lot of people miserable. The Saddam Hussein doll glows in the dark to indicate his posthumous status.

Plastic God’s Axis of Evil is a limited edition boxed set of 5” rotocast collectibles, featuring everyone’s favorite cast of current political icons: Saddam Hussein, Tony Blair, Kim Jong-il, George “W” Bush and Osama bin Laden. The dolls have 7 points of articulation and come packed together in a flip open window door box.

Link

David Pescovitz:
In April, former Microsoft exec Charles Simonyi took the longest space tourist trip in history. He spent two weeks aboard the International Space Station, having traveled there aboard a Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Simonyi documented his experiences in training, in space, and back on terra firm on his terrific site Charles In Space. (Image at right shows the view from his window in the descenet capsule.)

Today, I had the opportunity to talk with Charles at Science Foo Camp, a mind-blowing "unconference" of scientists, big thinkers, and other people much smarter than I, hosted this weekend by O'Reilly Media, Nature Publishing, and Google. Charles is quite, er, down-to-Earth, but when he reminisced about his astronaut experience his eyes lit up with wonder. His enthusiasm was infectious--this is the space age, and we are here to go! Sign me up! I hope you enjoy this brief audio interview with Charles Simonyi about his spaced out adventure. (Music is "Theme from 2001" by The Ray McVay Roadshow, 1974).

theodp writes "Come Monday, no more Indiana University searches will be powered by computer-driven Google. Only by people-powered ChaCha. The move was announced by new IU President Michael McRobbie, who until recently sat on ChaCha's Board of Directors (5-29 SEC filing, PDF). IU will draft hundreds of librarians and IT employees to be ChaCha Guides for the university's websites, although a FAQ accompanying IU's press release tells librarians not to expect any checks for their efforts from ChaCha, which IU notes is backed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Compaq founder Rod Canion."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This NY Times article finally gets the story of Silicon Valley.

For so many years they carried the myth, the genius, driven to create, to make his or her mark on the world, doing technology because it's so challenging, so mysterious, so enabling. The people who have their eye on the future, like people nowhere else do. The air they breathe is finer than us mere mortals do.

The truth is that the people of Silicon Valley toil to find security in money, never getting there, while avoiding the pleasures of life, including the mythological creativity, spinning on a treadmill, doing nothing but striving to make money, but it's never enough.

"Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent."

The problem could be solved by an engineer, if there were any left. You can't find security through money, because security is impossible. We die. Deal with it.

I left because, even though its climate is ideal, the place lacks heart, the patient is dead, there is no pulse. A friend from New Orleans said it well. "It doesn't feel homey."

You might as well live somewhere else and create, the network effect of being in the valley is negative. At least it was when I left, in 2003. It seems from the Times article that it's getting worse. It's great to see people on the east coast getting the message. Don't live in the shadow of this place. There's nothing there but people trying to make money, without a good idea why.

If you like the climate, as I do, Berkeley ain't a bad place to park your kiester. Or so it seems, so far, knock wood.

Cory Doctorow:
Andrew Macrae creates lovely text art on acid-free paper using a 1965 Olympia SG3 and a 1968 Hermes 3000 typewriter and colored ribbons. No Wite-Out, either! Impressive. Link (Thanks, Andrew!)

BobB writes "Two universities — Bowdoin in Maine and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles — have entered a unique arrangement under which they are backing up each other's web sites, email and servers on different ends of the continent. They say this could be a disaster recovery model all sorts of organizations could follow. From the article: 'When Bowdoin switched over to Exchange e-mail, so the schools would have similar e-mail infrastructure, LMU staffers were their guides and advisers. "We implemented that pretty quickly," says Davis, the Bowdoin CIO. "When we launched Exchange, we had just eight calls to our help desk." And the shared experience of the infrastructure components then forms a kind of informal help desk, where managers and staff can reach out for advice, brainstorm and troubleshoot problems with their colleagues a continent away.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

exeme writes "Ubuntu developer Matthew Garrett has recently analyzed famed Ubuntu illegal software installer Automatix, and found it to be actively dangerous to Ubuntu desktop systems. In a detailed report which only took Garrett a couple of hours he found many serious, show-stopper bugs and concluded that Ubuntu could not officially support Automatix in its current state. Garrett also goes on to say that simple Debian packages could provide all of the functionality of Automatix without any of the problems it exhibits."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It isn't all World of Warcraft at BlizzCon this year. That little sequel they're making to StarCraft has gotten quite a bit of attention as well. Gamespot has a liveblog transcript of a StarCraft II demo. This one, unlike the last, focuses on the Terrans rather than the Protoss. Several new units and build options are described, along with a bit about the single-player campaign. The campaign is the focus of Kotaku's game coverage, starring Jim Raynor and the crew of the Hyperion. "Part of the campaign in StarCraft II will be focused on Raynor's efforts to make money but taking jobs like this one, missions that ultimately tie into a larger plot. As you earn money, those funds will be put into purchasing technology--upgrades for units and units themselves. Pardo purchased (read: unlocked) the Viking ship for his next mission. This has been done to give players control over the tech progression of the game, instead of following a locked down set of upgrades. Hiking back up to the bridge, Raynor checks out the Star Map. This is where you'll choose your missions. They're much more open ended than in the previous StarCraft campaigns. You'll be able to pick the planet or system you want to tackle next, progressing the story in your own way. Mission briefings provide the summary, objectives, bonus objectives, mission bounty, and recommended technology, so you'll have to choose which best suits your current needs and matches your current level of tech."

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1. Register three pieces of info with the TwitterGram site: username, password, and phone number.

2. Call 646-716-6000. Record your message. Hang up.

That's it. There is no step 3.

mcgrew writes "PC world is reporting that Diebold's super-popular voting machines are coming under even more scrutiny. A security review has revealed that they are simply 'not secure enough to guarantee a trustworthy election.' This is according to a report from the University of California Berkley, who did a two-month top-to-bottom review of all California e-voting systems. That's a subject we've discussed before, but Diebold's setup is truly unsettling. An attacker with access to a single machine could disrupt or change the outcome of an entire election using viruses. From the article: 'The report warned that a paper trail of votes cast is not sufficient to guarantee the integrity of an election using the machines. "Malicious code might be able to subtly influence close elections, and it could disrupt elections by causing widespread equipment failure on election day," it said. The source-code review went on to warn that commercial antivirus scanners do not offer adequate protection for the voting machines. "They are not designed to detect virally propagating malicious code that targets voting equipment and voting software," it said.' Oddly, my state of Illinois, long known for election fraud, has paper trails (at least in my county) and according to Black Box Voting doesn't use Diebold anywhere."

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A judge has ruled that the RIAA can subpoena the defendant's employer in a case pending in Manhattan federal court, Atlantic v. Shutovsky. The judge's order (pdf) contained eight separate rulings deciding 19 pages of discovery disputes (pdf), resolving virtually all of them in favor of the RIAA. Other decisions made include: 'The plaintiffs were permitted to take depositions of Mr. Shutovsky's wife and his brother. Plaintiffs were required to produce all non-privileged documents or materials relating to any investigation and any sound files on their computer, and to produce a privilege log as to any claimed to be privileged. Defendant was required to provide the name and address of each person who used his computer during the three years prior to commencement of the lawsuit.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Pescovitz: Bibliomulas are mules toting mini-libraries to remote communities in Venezuela in an effort to encourage reading. Sometimes, the mules also carry projectors and laptop computers. A BBC News reporter recently took a trip with the Bibliomulas through the foothills of the Andes. From the BBC News:

Anyone who was not out working the fields - tending the celery that is the main crop here - was waiting for our arrival. The 23 children at the little school were very excited.

"Bibilomu-u-u-u-las," they shouted as the bags of books were unstrapped. They dived in eagerly, keen to grab the best titles and within minutes were being read to by Christina and Juana, two of the project leaders.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

I just checked to see how I'm doing on Technorati and found that not only did I break into the Top 100, but I'm actually number one!

Goodbye Engadget, siyonara TechCrunch, kissmyass BoingBoing.

Who's your Daddy?

Heh. It's a joke. Technorati is broken. Again.

Oooops.

necro81 writes "The Mars Phoenix lander, built from the ashes of two earlier Mars missions, successfully launched atop a Delta II rocket from Canaveral this morning. The mission takes the 350-kg lander to northern latitudes (comparable to Greenland or Siberia) to investigate subsurface ice for the chemical precursors of life. The lander should arrive on Mars on May 25, 2008. 'NASA has never attempted to land a spacecraft on Mars at such a high northern latitude. A lander intended for the red planet's South Pole went silent immediately upon arrival in 1999. That failure, combined with the loss of the companion Mars orbiter, prompted NASA to cancel a 2001 lander mission. The parts from that scrapped mission were used for Phoenix, thus its name, which alludes to the mythological bird that rises from its own ashes.'"

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Yesterday I said the movie theater was totally broken and hopelessly out of date. It's true. One of the movie companies ought to invest a billion dollars in upgrading their theaters to HD. Double the ticket price. How many people who drive Hondas get a chance to drive an Audi? How many people who would love to have a kickass home theater would pay $20 to see a movie, no matter how mediocre, in an HD theater that blew them away? I'd pay for sure, if it were better than my home theater. I want to know what I can aspire to.

Anyway, I digress....

Even if the Simpsons Movie were playing in one of those theaters, it would still suck bigtime. Just to be sure I watched a random Simpsons episode this morning. Yup. It's still good. Irreverent, abusive, horribly politically incorrect. That's why it's such a great show!

But the movie was edited by the censors who edit all Hollywood fare. That meant the plot followed the normal Star Wars plot, problem created, live with the problem for a while, solve the problem, everyone is happy. Scroll the credits.

That's not The Simpsons!!

There was one scene, where they had Bart throwing something at Homer over and over. I don't remember what it was, but it was so funny I couldn't see through my eyes I was laughing so hard. That's The Simpsons. Ths film was the creation of the ghost of that horrible Hollywood dwarf guy who used to be Lyndon Johnson's personal elf.

The rest of the movie was so lame even Dr Nick couldn't save it.

Xeni Jardin:

Video and performance artist Amber Hawk Swanson ordered a life-sized, realistic sex doll made to look just like her, and named it Amber. The couple scampered off to Vegas and got married. "Their wedding video and other footage documenting their relationship will screen for the public this week," reports the Chicago Reader. Link. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)

rs232 writes with a link about a disheartening observation on the GPLv3. Unless there's something more specific in the Novell agreement that would fall within the new version of the GPL, Microsoft should have no trouble slipping free of it. Silicon.com has a piece speaking with a leading intellectual property lawyer from Australia. She says, "'I would be very surprised to see this upheld. It was a nice try on the part of (the FSF), but at this stage, I'd say it's not going to be an effective strategy. It will be tough to hold up in court.' In this case, she said, Microsoft never acted — never 'entered' into the agreement, and the terms and conditions can only apply to new actions by Microsoft, not older ones. She said: 'Their actions so far are not enough to say that they are bound.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.