Big Brother Inside!??!?!?

Strike a match- and serve a webpage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, none of us smoke or anything, so we don't really need any safety matches!!!!!! Unless of course our electricity gets cut off!!!!! But in future we might be using a matchbox all the time- to serve webpages!!!!!!!!!! That's because the world's smallest webserver hardware has been made, and it's the size of a box of matches!!!!!!!!! Check it out on this webpage, which is served by the same webserver!!!!!

http://wearables.stanford.edu/

Going Down(load) to Rio!!!!!!! (Doh!!!!!!!!!!!)

Well, we might have been a bit retisent (Is that how you spell it?!?) to get one of those Rio MP3 players, because after all it's the first of the bunch, and you can imagine what the first Sony Walkman was like!!!!!!!!! But we might get one now!!!!!!!! That's because, thanks to some spiffy new open source software, you can now use it as a mobile hard drive!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, that's right, thanks to this stuff, you can download and upload files from your Rio, and not just MP3/Wavs either!!!!! There are two versions of this software, one is more "Windowsy" and the other is more "Linuxy"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://welcome.to/riogeo

http://www.world.co.uk/sba/rio.htm

We found out about this by way of a very nice new MP3 news site called MP3 Place!!!!! Check it out!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.mp3place.com/

At least they haven't gone completely mad about this new development!!!! Unlike Wired News, who seem to getting more hysterical of late!!!!!!!!!! Which we're sure is nothing to do with the fact that they're now that they're basically just a big news service after all the "trendy" bits of Wired Digital were chopped by their new owners!!!!!!!!! (See issue 8...) We've already reported on them trying to get "hip" again with that "drugs" story, (See issue 22...) now they're reporting this story, giving it an "Oh woe is MP3 now!!!!!!! And all because these wily hackers have torpodoed the Rio by making it doing something that the Recording Industry of America won't like!!!!!!!!" type spin!!!!!!!!

http://www.wired.com/news/print_version/email/
explode-infobeat/culture/story/17529.html?wnpg=all

2987: What the f$&^%s going on?!?!?!

If you as old as me, you might dimly remember a spiffy little musical group called The KLF!!!!!!! You might even remember that they were also called The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu or The JAMMs, and they did this interesting album called "1987: What the F@&%s Going On?", which had loadsa samples on it!!!!! Unfortuntely one of the people sampled was Abba, and their manager decided to sue their rear entrances off the JAMMs unless they destroyed the album and it's master tapes!!!!!!!!!!!! So they did!!!!!! And it's now an extremely difficult album to get hold of!!!!!!!!!!!

Fast forward 12 years later, and we were checking out the latest new music in the vaults of http://www.mp3.com/ , and we found a section for a group called "The Jams", and yep, apparently it's the same lot!!!!!!! And there's two new tunes from them on their section!!!!!! The first of them is called "3AM Impure Trance, which is billed as "The White House Music Anthem, featuring the vocal talents of Mrs.Hillary Rodham Clinton."!!!!!! The second is called "Viva Viagra", and I bet you can't guess what that's all about!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.mp3.com/jams

But that's not all!!!!!!! These two tracks are apparently tasters for a new JAMMs album called *"2987"*, which is being released on 23rd February!!!!!! Why the music papers haven't reported on this momentous occasion, we do not know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But you can read about it on their slightly cheapo looking website here... Well, they've burned a million pounds, what do you expect their website to look like?!?!?! Really professional?!?!?!?!

http://members.xoom.com/2987/

Clothes- with a command line!!!!!!!!!

Have you ever wanted what sort of clothes "The Gimp" from "Pulp Fiction" might wear in the future!?!?!?! Well, he might wear these clothes, as he'll be able to run "Gimp" on it!!!!!!!!!!! Because these clothes have "the computational power of a UNIX workstation"!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, that's right, they're wearable computes!!!!!!!!!!! You'll proably need to type "startclothes &" at the command line to put them on tho!!!!!

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/hightech/990118/2191075.html

A (w)hole (Website) in one!!!!!!!!!

Well, you might be eagerly playing "Tiger Woods 99 PGA World Tour" whilst searching for the South Park anim on it, (See issue 2...) but what if you're a really really crap player?!?!?!?!? Well, you might want to read this publication called "Bad Golfing Monthly"!!!!!! So if you get a "birdie", then you don't need to be too worried!!!!!! Unless of course the RSPCA is in the area!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.badgolfmonthly.com/

In the new millenium- play pinball!!!!!!!!

Well, it's great to see that when 2000 comes around, not all of us will be playing gigantic 3D texture-phong-shade-mapped Quake XVVXIIIVa type games!!!!!! Some are going to be playing pinball!!!! At least this lot think so!!!!!!!!!!!! Because they've launched a pinball machine called "Pinball 2000"!!!!!! On this web page, they say : "Introducing Pinball 2000, the most TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED pin the world has ever seen." Which of course is not really interesting to most people, as they want to know about the pinball machine!!!!!! I mean, who's really interested in knowing about the pins holding it together?!?!?!?!?!

http://www.pinball2000.com/home.html

Computing- with dots!!!!!

Have you ever recently played a game of dominoes, looked at the pieces, and thought: "Wouldn't it be great if I could base a new method of computing on this?!?!?!?!?" Well, if you haven't it's a bit late now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Because someone's already started working on using quantum dots- for quantum computing!!!! Apparently it uses electrons or something.

http://customnews.cnn.com/cnews/pna.show_story?p_art_id=3372002
&p_section_name=Sci-Tech&p_art_type=9540&p_subcat=Nuclear
&p_category=Sciences

This computing lark is chaos- literally!!!!!!!!

That Jon Katz person certainly knows how to get people annoyed!!!!! One of his recent columns on Slashdot tangled with the throny issue of articifical intelligence, and whether it's possible soon or not... Katz argued it was!!!!!!!! Just add more fuel to the fire, he argued it in the middle of a book review by some bloke, who had also argued in favour of artificial intelligence soon-ish, but had done so in such a way as to hype up his own consulting agency!!!!!!!!

The comments following it were even more enjoyable!!!!!!!! They started off with the usual "Woah!!! Kewl!!! Hook me up, man!!!" type comments, then the "Oh, it'll never happen!!!!!!!!" type guff took over!!!!!!!! At which point things degenerated to the point where people were arguing about the Turing Test, (Where you have a conversation with someone over a text console linkup, and you've to determine on that basis alone whether or not you've been talking with a computer or a real person!!!!!) with the usual "But, even if they do pass the Turing Test, computers don't have any soul, man!!!" type arguments (Which is completely irrelevant to the Turing Test anyway!!!!!!), and there was even a spot of Evolution vs Creationism arguments!!!!!! All in all, the most hilarious load of comments we've ever seen, since we looked at ITV Teletext Viewer Letters on p327 yesterday, anyway!!!!!!!!

http://cachedot.slashdot.org/books/99/01/18/198243.shtml

But Katz and co. may soon have the last laugh!!!!! Apparently some clever scientest people have perfected a "dynamics-based computation" technique that uses chaotic elements to "evolve" answers!!!!! This is apprently a new alternative to the usual digital computing methods, and apparently "may be well suited for optical computing using ultra-fast chaotic lasers and computing with silicon/neural tissue hybrid circuitry"!!!!!!!!

Argh!!! "Silicon/neural tissue hybrid"?!?!?! Isn't that what the Borg are made of, or something?!?!?!?!? I wouldn't like to be assimilated by a dynamics-based computer whilst trying to get it to "evolve" an answer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/res-news/DYNAMIC.html

Ideas to make your 'box' hot!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's an interesting ideads site- and for a change it's actually from Britain this time!!!!!!!!! However, there's one prob- this spiffy UK new ideas site is called Hotbox!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (!!!!!) We were half expecting to hear lewd and suggestive noises when we got onto this website!!!!!!!!!!! But it's not like that!!!!!!!! There are in fact a lot of interesting "hardware" ideas- and not the sort of you thinking dirty persons!!!!!!!!!!!

One interesting idea is to transform any b/w photo into the first few thousand numbers of Pi, arranged in such a way as to look like the original photo!!!!!!!!!!! So, if you're ever calculating the circumference of a circle, and you're wondering what the first few thousand numbers of Pi are (in order to be really accurate!!!!), you can just look very carefully at this special photograph of yourself, and find out!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.hotbox.co.uk/

Homepage on tha NetWeb- literally!!!!!!!!!!!

When you chuck the rubbish into the bin, have you ever thought: "It's a shame I don't have a barcode reader with me, or I would be able to scan the items, and post the results on the Internet, so that everyone would know what's in my rubbish bin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"!??!?!?! Well, that what this guy has done!!!!!!!!!!!! In fact, he's wired up his toilet, as well as a few video cams in his house, to the megamighty Inphopipeweb!!!!!!!! So now you can find out when gets food out of the fridge, when he eats it and throws away the wrapper into the bin, and when it comes out at the other end and he flushes the toilet!!!!! You can even see a webcam of his PC desktop, and find out what he's playing in Winamp!!!!!!! (When we looked, it was: "Find a way to my heart" by Phil Collins- groovy!!!!)

This site has also been mentioned in Slashdot!!!!! Quite a few people noted that he was using Windows 95 and various Microsoft stuffs, leading to the really odd commment from someone: "I'd rather have a house without windows"!!!!!!!! Won't it be a bit dark then?!?!?!??!!

http://www.icepick.com/

NASA: We're full!!!!!!!

Now some of you readers might have occasionally had their disk drive filling up, and have had to get rid of all the rubbish files on the drive to get more space!!!!!!!!! Well, whatever you do, don't get rid of your back copies of SENIOR CITIZEN!!!!!!!!! Erm, anyway!! If you've had that problem, then you might want to give advice to NASA!!!!! That's because NASA are currently having a bit of a problem with storing all the data from their records!!!!!! They're especially having problems with updating out of date data formats- it takes four years to convert to new data format which will probably have to be converted again within 6 years anyway!!!!!!!

http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1999/0125/fcw-newsstorage-1-25-99.html

It's War... On Tha NetWeb!!!!!

People always say I look as if I'd been through "the wars"!!!!!!!!!! Mind you, they're right!!!!!!!!!!!!! But the same might happen to you if you go online!!!!!!!! That because apparently the first online military action between two countries has taken place!!!!!!!! And the two countries are: West Timor vs East Timor!!!!!!!!!! If you don't know, West Timor occupies East Timor and says to the rest of the world that it's really part of West Timor!!!!!! Some people from East Timor who are a little miffed-off at this state of affairs started a server based in Ireland for their protests, and this week people from West Timor launched a hacking attack against it!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_263000/263169.stm

Pentium IIIs- you're banned!!!!!!

Imagine you're an important lawyer person in Arizona!!!! What sort of flagship law would you try and get passed?!?!?!?! Well, how about a law banning the successor to the Intel Pentium II processor?!?!?!?!?!? Well, that's what this law-person has done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,31482,00.html?st.ne.fd.gif.e

You might notice from that article that there's a privacy issue involved!!!! Apparently each of these new Pentium III chips has a unique serial ID, and this can be found out by software, which means that when you're online, outside software can potentially track you as your surf using the ID number in your Pentium III chip!!!!!!!! Some people are now calling a boycott on Intel groups!!!!!

Faced with all this, Intel has decided it would a nice idea (Especially for their factories in Arizona!!!!!!) back down a bit.... Apparently, you'll be able to "switch off" the reporting of the ID num!!!!!!!! But the number's still there!!!!!!!! So, the privacy groups are still not pleased!!!!!!! And the boycott is still going on!!!!!!!!

http://www.internetnews.com/Reuters/1999/01/2601-intel.html

Here's one of the protest groups... We like their "Big Brother Inside" logo!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.privacy.org/bigbrotherinside/

Circuit City!!!!

Hello readers!!!!!! Have you ever wanted to spy on neurons?!?!?!? Or listen to amplifiers smaller than grains of sand?!?! How about listening to the sound of 100 neurons clapping?!?!?! Or maybe looking at a bridge over troubled neurons!?!?!? Before you think I'm on drugs or something, I should explain here that I'm actually talking about the various things mentioned by this really spiffy science article about really small circuits!!!!!!!!!

http://www.omnimag.com/live_science/circuit/

If you read this, a virus will vapourise your Pentium!!!!!!!!!!

Only joking!!!!!!!!!!! But some people aren't!!!!!!!!!!!! Since that "Good Times" virus scare a couple of years ago, there seems to be lots of people who keep passing on these silly messages that say something like "If you see a message with the subject "TEST", don't read it!!!!!! It contains the computer equivalent of BSE, and it will destroy your hard drive, then send your processor into an nth complexity binary loop that will cause the chip to collapse in on itself and generate a minature black hole, which will destroy your computer, before decaying through quantum leakage into a nuclear explosion, equivalent to 5 megatons!!!!!! Then you'll get squished by a meteorite."!!!!!!!!!!! The viruses are obviously bogus, but that doesn't stop people forwarding these messages on!!!!!!!!! In fact, some people say that it's the *messages* that are really the viruses themselves!!!!!! Anyway, if you want to find out about all the various types of these really stupid messages, then go to this interesting page!!!!!!!!! And you'd better be quick!!!!!!!! Because if you continue to read this message, a virus will erase you from time and space!!!!!!!!!!!

Only joking!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm