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After Microsoft having released his new Internet Explorer 7 web browser with some hickups this week, the Mozilla Foundation today announced that it will make the version 2 of its popular Firefox browser available for download on next Tuesday 24-October-2006.
PC World has created a review of the IE7 and Firefox 2 comparing the new features of each of the browsers side-by-side.
More information and download links can be found on the Mozilla Firefox web site.
From today you can explore the history and culture of computer games at the London Science Museum huge interactive computer game exhibition Game On. More then 120 classic and modern games - from the world’s first computer game of 1962 up to the latest of todays advanced computer games - will be shown and can be played at the exhibition in 13 rooms.
Visitors “playing” their way through time at the exhibition will also be able to try out “Spacewar!” the world’s first video games created in 1962 by Steve Russell. One of the highlights of the exhibition is the DEC PDP-1 computer on loan from Massachusetts Institute of Technology that ran “Spacewar!” –back in 1962.
The exhibition aims to “explore the history, technology, and culture of computer games. …Nowhere else will people be able to see the entire history of the games industry laid out, explained and ready to play…” says Science Museum’s programme developer Gaetan Lee.
Many Arcade games are on display as well. Among them is the 1971 game “Computer Space”, the world’s first coin-operated video game, and “Pong”, a basic version of table tennis which was launched in 1972.
Visitors can test their skills on older two-dimension games, often in black and white with simple computer music, such as “Space Invaders”, “Pac-Man” and “Donkey Kong” and later ones like “Mario Bros.”, “Zelda” or “Pokemon” up to the most recent highly sophisticated releases.
The exhibition will also showcase Wii, Nintendo’s new, seventh-generation video game console, to be launched on November 19 in the United States and December 8 in Europe
Another highlight of the exhibit is a special section on Japanese game culture, displaying mangas and anime, which have influenced video games, and playable Japanese games, including Densha De Go! and Dance Dance Revolution
As part of the London Science Museum’s Game On exhibition, several talks by key UK game industry members have been announced. These include Eidos Interactive’s Ian Livingstone and David Braben, who developed the classic game Elite in the 1980s
Game On is organized and toured by Barbican Art Gallery‚ London. It is sponsored by Nintendo and will run from 21-October-2006 to 25-February-2007.
More information:
Science Museum Game On web site
List of games on display
Classic gaming web site
Information on the highly popular Videotopia exhibition that focused on Arcade games and was touring the USA until 2005.
[GAME OVER. INSERT COINS]
When the first version of the eStarling Wi-Fi enabled photo frame hit the shelves last time earlier the year it sold out almost immediately.
A new version of the eStarling is now available at ThinkGeek with a more stylish look and improved 7″ screen.
The eStarling frame is a standalone Wi-Fi LCD photo frame that connects to a wireless network and automatically displays photos e-mailed to it in a slideshow format. Additionally you can specify an RSS photo feed from Flickr based on your own tagged keywords. You can also shoot photos on your mobile phone and then e-mail them directly to the photo frame for display..
ThinkGeek sells the eStarling for about USD 250. More information on the gadget can be found on the eStarling website.
Those interested into wireless photo frames might also have a look into the newly introduced MF8104 from Digital Spectrum Inc.
With the weekend coming up we would like to suggest to you something different: Cloud watching or cloud spotting as its also called by UK based Pretor-Pinney who has founded the Cloud Appreciation Society. The society now has about 5000 members from 39 countries.
38 year old Oxford University graduate Pretor-Pinney who calls himself a former science nerd has been obsessed with clouds since childhood.
…Cloud watching is like a form of meteorological mediation. It slows down your pace because clouds move at a slower pace than things down on the ground. It is a beneficial thing for our souls…
he says.
…At The Cloud Appreciation Society we love clouds, we’re not ashamed to say it and we’ve had enough of people moaning about them…
Members share photos of clouds that look like animals, objects, show beautiful effects, or just extraordinary formations. You can join the society for a minimal postage and administration fee and receive your very own official membership certificate and badge.
If you looking for some inspiration or guidance how to start this unusual hobby have a look at Pretor-Pinney recently published book the “The Cloudspotters’s Guide (available in the US and Europe).
The Cloud Appreciation Society web site has a gallery with hundreds of great photographs with interesting cloud formations (some shown as thumbnails below).
Yesterday Russia has suspended the activities of more the 90 foreign non government organizations (NGOs) including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and Human Rights Watch, saying they failed new registration requirements recently introduced with a controversial law.
The law that was signed by President Putin earlier this year allows authorities to ban financing of specific NGOs if they are considered to threaten the country’s national security or “morals” and it requires foreign and domestic organizations to report in detail how much money they have received and from whom. The law is seen as another step within the general rollback of civil and democratic rights in Russia. Activists see it also as part of the Kremlin’s effort to silence critics before the parliamentary elections in 2007 and the presidential election in 2008.
Many of the NGOs that could not re-register with the government promote human rights or provide humanitarian aid. President Putin, who has warned foreign organizations again recently, called the restrictions introduced with the new law necessary to prevent foreigners from interfering in the country’s political process.
The re-registration process introduced with the new law includes complicated and lengthy bureaucratic procedures. 99 NGOs succeeded in completing the process on time, but 96 other mainly foreign NGOs that had submitted documents to re-register until this week did not. According to ITAR-TASS, their applications are still under consideration. Amnesty International London said that the organization had spent a few months preparing the documents but because of a lack of clear guidelines had only managed to submit them beginning of this week.
But even if organizations successfully re-register their work will then be under constant scrutiny of the Justice Ministry. They will have to report on planned activities for the year, and NGOs are worried that officials could reject their plans or penalize the groups if they deviate from the plans.
While Russian officials stressed that suspensions are temporary, activities of the NGOs remain suspended until further notice. Members of the groups in Russia where not able to comment on the situation due to the strict rules the suspension imposes including banning interviews or participate in public events.
[various sources]
Timing couldn’t have been worse - with the Military Commissions Act of 2006 just signed out- the U.S. Dept. of Justice announced that the FBI has today awarded a contract to develop the NGCODIS (next-generation combined DNA index system) to a group of providers.
Unisys together with IBM, government service provider iSYS LLC and two US universities will provide the FBI with software development and operations services over the next two years.
The FBI expects that the Unisys solution will allow for …scalability and flexibility to meet increased demand… together with highly sophisticated search engine technology and to further enable the FBI to share information with federal, state and local labs.
The current system includes 178 participating national DNA labs (126 local and 52 state systems) including the FBI, the U.S. Army and Puerto Rico. Its database contains approximately 3.7 million offender profiles and 150,000 forensic profiles. Through August 2006, the existing CODIS system has aided 38,295 investigations in 49 states and two federal laboratories.
The new solution will be deployed to all U.S. labs and to crime labs in 26 countries.
While the CODIS system originally has been established to collect DNA information only about convicted sex offenders, its reach has long been extended and the push to expand continues. This includes (in some states) to take samples from almost everybody who is arrested as well as to do so called partial-match searches i.e. doing near-match searches with the DNA of relatives of criminals and non-relatives with similar DNA profiles.
With so many advances - believers - sorcerer apprentices - many of them surfacing again today and knowing that certain DNA defects can explain potential “behavior” i.e. guilty by birth, this is something that will have a reach into many people’s live - maybe not immediately but soon. You have to be a very strong believer that if something is stored in a government database it will disappear without a trace when law would require this - will it be deleted or just stored by another agency - lets say in/for times when national security is of high concern.
Never forget almost anywhere you go you making free DNA traces available to anyone with the right equipment. Itiswas just the law that protected you from officialabuse (but not from doing it).
If thought through further in a new reversal of the burden of proof soon you might be guilty until you can prove otherwise - and you wont be able to - unless you or anybody else with a DNA lab proves you right in case those who want to prove you wrong would voluntarily provide you the evidence to do so.
While we neither want to insinuate or believe that any of the current participants is meaning ill - for common sense - just remember the old “slogan” of all secret and not-so-secret services around the world: what can be done will be done…
So something like this would, until recently had to comply with constitutional and other laws, always requiring accountability, control mechanisms and stop gaps but that all now is seemingly not required anymore.
P.S: Speculum justitiae - Mirror of justice - the term is potentially best known from the Litany of Loreto and Leopold Mozart setting it to music . You can listen to it at: Amazon - Speculum justitiae ora pro nobis -
Much talked about social network site for political issues HotSoup has a few hours ago opened its gates and is now online.
Created by …four Democratic strategists, three Internet entrepreneurs, two Republican strategists and one journalist… they are planning to bring together 80+ celebrity opinion leaders with grass roots opinion drivers (?consumers) to engage them in a dialogue around the most pressing issues of the day
Some quotes from their celebrity opinion leaders:
…People want to get involved and participate in their communities, but they really don’t know where to begin, said Jon Bon Jovi, lead singer of Bon Jovi
…Today’s leaders are found in State Houses, as well as coffee houses. They shape everything from public policy to where people eat… said Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney
The complete list of the “gang of 80″ celebrity participants is available here. HotSoup.com has already announced that the following opinion makers will join the discussions in the coming weeks and months:
- Former US President Bill Clinton
- Senator Hillary Clinton
- Governor Mitt Romney
- Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes
- Entertainer Jon Bon Jovi
- Producer/American Idol judge Randy Jackson
- Lead Pastor of the National Community Church, Mark Batterson
To us this all sounds like a moderated version of MySpace.com meets Washington meets The Huffington Post etc. Another online source believes that the list of 80 celebrities contains about half-dozen potential presidential candidates. Anyway the idea of live online opinion surveys must be thrilling for anybody in politics or many others. You get the opinions first hand, no more waiting for poll results, and you can even interactively influence it…
In the moment its Lance Armstrongs turn as the celebrity “opinion maker” on …What is the most important issue ignored by mainstream media and our leaders? He’s joined by 4 opinion drives and a nice chart shows us that 69.7% of the HotSoup.com members currently agree.
When we were accessing the web site this morning it was an endless wait until the whole page was displayed. It took us also quite some time to understand their user interface. Nevertheless its their first day and we wish them all the best. The idea behind HotSoup.com is very interesting and it will be great to see it work.
While already out since quite some time, its still great to have a look again. In his book New York changing Douglas Levere presents images taken by himself and pairs them with those of Berenice Abbott’s from the 1930s.
Levere used the same camera Abbott had used and returned to the same locations at the same time of day and the same time of year only 60 years later. When pairing the pictures side-by-side they reveal much about the change and urban transformation N.Y. has gone through and is going through every day.
The Morning News Gallery has excerpts from the book online. Douglas Levere is providing the photos side-by-side in a smaller format on the New York changing web site.
Those of you American citizens that would like to know who is so freely giving away your civil rights should check the BORDC website.
Currently only the Senate voting record is online but the house voting from yesterday should be available soon.
More on the Military Commissions Act of 2006: UK’s highly popular website The Register has yesterday put up an article commenting on the act. We now sadly have to wonder how long they still will be allowed to write such critics….
P.S: the map pictured above shows the Senate vote on the act from 29-September-2006
Anew breath analyzer system from DoCoMo that is connected to a mobile phone is becoming popular with bus and transport companies in Japan.
The new system that uses a 3G handset, is considered to be foolproof. Before a driver starts every day or at certain intervals, (s)he makes a video-phone call to the company and breathes into the analyzer connected to their cell phone.
A video image showing the driver blowing into the analyzer and data regarding the alcohol concentration is transferred in parallel to the office and registered / confirmed by computer there. As the company can see the video image, it is almost impossible for the driver to have someone else breath into the analyzer for him. The system costs about 270,000 yen (about USD 2,300).
