PlanetLab

A consortium of universities and high-tech companies Tuesday formally launched a joint Internet-based test-bed platform for developing massive online services using distributed computing and overlay networks.

The Incas Used Binary Code?

But a leading scholar of South American antiquity believes the Inca did have a form of non-verbal communication written in an encoded language similar to the binary code of today's computers. Gary Urton, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has re-analysed the complicated knotted strings of the Inca - decorative objects called khipu - and found they contain a seven-bit binary code capable of conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information. (Thanks Christy!)

Ann Coulter to Get Her Own Blog

COULTERGEIST! Have fun, Ian!! You still have that sexy picture of her with her rifle of choice? (**Grin**)

An Effective TAZ

I got my MaiTai, my WiFi, sitting and enjoying my TAZ...(Can you hear the Jimmy Buffet-like personage beckoning?)

The Internet Users Society - Niue (IUS-N), today announced that it has launched the world's first free nation-wide WiFi Internet access service on the Polynesian island-nation of Niue. This new free wireless service which can be accessed by all Niue residents, tourists, government offices and business travelers, is being provided at no cost to the public or local government.

Blood and Asphalt (Salon)

A new documentary pays tribute to "Signal 30," "Highways of Agony" and the other ghoulish, crudely made yet unforgettable driver-training films of the '60s and '70s.

Starting in 1959, a small Ohio production company began producing a series of films that continue to enjoy a reputation (if "enjoy" is the proper word) as some of the goriest, most psychological-scar-inducing motion pictures ever made in the United States. Many of them had no plot whatsoever, instead consisting of one graphic, blood-soaked image after another -- hideous corpses, crushed and mutilated bodies, people screaming helplessly in nightmarish agony. These films were not marketed to the gore-movie enthusiasts who haunted the grind houses of Times Square and other seedy urban districts of the period. Rather, they had titles like "Wheels of Tragedy" and "Highways of Agony," and were widely distributed throughout the American high school system by a company called the Highway Safety Foundation.

Reputations Research Network

"Welcome to the Reputation Research Network

A reputation system gives people information about others' past performance. It can enhance an on-line interaction environment by:

helping people decide who to trust;
encouraging people to be more trustworthy;
discouraging those who are not trustworthy from participating.

This site is for researchers who are studying how reputation systems should work in theory, how they actually work in practice, and how they could work better. You can find out about people, papers, and practical systems. And you can contribute pointers to useful information."

The Tyranny of "Community"

"If there is a sustainable way for corporations to embrace community, it starts, paradoxically, with the understanding that companies can never be communities themselves. People expect that a community will be committed to them, nurturing them and responding to their needs wholeheartedly. Corporations can't make that kind of commitment. They are too tied to special interests: the major stockholders, chief executives, and other "core groups" who must be satisfied by every corporate decision. Any company that pays its top executives more than, say, 25 times what its lowest-level people make will have a hard time casting itself credibly as a "community.""

The McLuhan Project in Culture and Technology

The McLuhan Program's mandate is to encourage understanding of the impacts of technology on culture and society from theoretical and practical perspectives, and thus to continue the ground-breaking work initiated by Marshall McLuhan.

The Program offers courses, conducts and supports research, and draws together members of the worldwide community whose interests lie in the inter- and trans-disciplinary studies of culture, communications, technology and gaining new awareness of the actual effects of all of these.

Through its research, course offerings, publications, speaking engagements, and experimentation in new and old media, the Program also provides a nexus among the University of Toronto, other institutions throughout the world, all levels of government, industry, educators, artists and the general public.

Cool links and a decent webblog...

Fibbing It Up at Fox by Dale Steinreich

"Since the Iraq conflict began on March 20, Fox News has been on a mission to legitimize it. One problem for Fox's protracted apologia is that despite promises of evidence of current weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) by the Bush Administration, the evidence has been ambiguous at best. Unfortunately for the network, I’ve been keeping a scratch diary of their reports since the war began."

Born Shy, Always Shy?

Whether a person avoids novelty or embraces it may depend in part on brain differences that have existed from infancy, new findings suggest in the 20 June 2003 journal Science. When shown pictures of unfamiliar faces, adults who were shy toddlers showed a relatively high level of activity in a part of the brain called the amygdala. Adults who were more outgoing toddlers showed less activity in this brain structure, which is related to emotion and novelty.