.: Kobot :.

VAN HALEN'S ERUPTION FOR VIOLIN| Here is streaming video of Van Halen's classic "Eruption" solo as interpreted and performed by Atlanta rock violinist Bobby Yang. All acoustic, no pedals, no amp, no wires. |Reblog||Wax Org|

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THE MFA IS THE NEW MBA?| In Break Through Ideas for 2004 published by Harvard Business Review, Daniel H. Pink claims that businesses have come to realize that the only way to differentiate their offerings is to make them beautiful and emotionally compelling - which explains why an arts degree is now such a hot credential in management. Meanwhile, MBA graduates are becoming this century's blue-collar workers: they entered a workforce that was full of promise only to their jobs move overseas. |Challis Hodge|

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ROBOT HALL OF FAME| The Robot Hall of Fame recognizes excellence in robotics technology worldwide and honors the fictional and real robots that have inspired scientific accomplishments. It was created by Carnegie Mellon University to call attention to the increasing contributions of robots to human endeavors. Each year, Carnegie Mellon assembles a jury of scholars to select real and fictional robots for recognition and induction into the Robot Hall of Fame. The robots selected are honored at an annual induction ceremony conducted with partner institutions at various locations by the School of Computer Science and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. The First Annual Robot Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony was held on November 10, 2003, at the Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. |Metafilter|

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TECH VALLEY LOOKS UP BUT SIGNS OF THE BUST LINGER| If looking strictly at job loss, the San Jose metropolitan area, which includes much of Silicon Valley, suffered the worst collapse of any metropolitan area in the United States since the Great Depression, surpassing Detroit, which lost 13 per cent of its jobs in the early 1980s). Yet "Silicon Valley is back" is on the lips of eager entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, who are rejoicing over the success of Google and pointing to the modest comeback in computer sales. The three-year-long depression, they say, is over. The optimists tend to compare today's prospects with that of the mid-'90s, when Netscape Communications' initial public offering in August 1995 touched off the greatest boom the area has ever witnessed. They believe a new era, which some are calling Web 2.0, is here. If looking strictly at job loss, the San Jose metropolitan area, which includes much of Silicon Valley, suffered the worst collapse of any metropolitan area in the United States since the Great Depression, surpassing Detroit, which lost 13 per cent of its jobs in the early 1980s). |Times of India|

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BIRTH OF THE PSEUDOSTATE| With nearly 140,000 American troops on Iraq's soil, plus tens of thousands of additional foreign soldiers and civilian security guards armed with everything from submachine guns to helicopters, most military power will not be in Iraqi hands, nor will the power of the budget, largely set and paid for in Washington.

If the new Iraq-to-be is not a state, what is it? A half century ago one could talk about colonies, protectorates, and spheres of influence, but in our supposedly post-colonial world, the vocabulary is poorer. We lack a word for a country where most real power is in the hands of someone else, whether that be shadowy local militias, other nations' armies, or both. Pseudostate, perhaps. From Afghanistan to the Palestinian Authority, Bosnia to Congo, pseudostates have now spread around the globe. Some of them will even be exchanging ambassadors with Iraq.

Pseudostates, in fact, are nothing new. They have a long and fascinating history, and two notable groups of them had surprising fates near the twentieth century's end. |Alternet|

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THESE CARS RUN ON VEGETABLE OIL| When Josh Tickell drives his 1971 Datsun 240Z, powered by a straight six-diesel engine, he gets 44 miles to the gallon. He also gets disbelieving stares from everyone else on the road. The bright-red hot rod, with flames shooting out of a dandelion-rimmed globe on the hood, proclaims in fiery yellow letters: "Powered by vegetable oil."

Electric and hybrid cars may be getting more attention from the car-buying public, but in the past year the number of biodiesel fueling stations jumped nearly 50 percent.

At a time when the ups and downs of gas prices are front-page news, autos that can run on soybean oil - even after it's been used to cook French fries - are getting a fresh look. The concept isn't new, and the price isn't quite right (still a bit higher than gasoline). But America's new awareness of its fossil-fuel vulnerability is at least raising the question of whether people like Mr. Tickell are visionaries - not just garage-bound tinkerers. |CS Monitor|

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HYDROPOLIS UNDERWATER RESORT HOTEL| Hydropolis is to be located on the coast of Dubai. As the world's first underwater luxury hotel, the plan is to construct three distinct areas: one on land, a connecting tunnel, and the submarine complex. There will also be a ballroom, spa, restaurants, shops and separate underwater villas. From the Hydropolis press kit: the medium WATER as a basic aetiological elixir of life is of great significance. Simply the fact that man himself consists to 75% of water, and that his well-being requires regeneration of his basic substance "water" makes this element so significant. "Sanus per aquam" (health through water), commonly abbreviated as SPA, is therefore not a trend, but rather an expression of health-consciousness, a synonym for well-feeling, and of harmony of body, mind, and spirit. |Roland Piquepaille|

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USE EXTREME CAUTION WHEN SURFING WITH IE PART 2| More on Internet Explorer's incredible security flaws. This one may really bring down the house. Users are being told to avoid using Internet Explorer until Microsoft patches a serious security hole in it. The loophole is being exploited to open a backdoor on a PC that could let criminals take control of a machine. The threat of infection is so high because the code created to exploit the loophole has somehow been placed on many popular websites. Experts say the list of compromised sites involves banks, auction and price comparison firms and is growing fast. |Julia Set|

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THIS IS MASS-DISTRACTION| This is a thesis project from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea taking the form of a series of three jackets (the Coin Jacket, the Hood Jacket and the Game Jacket) designed by Agnelli Davide and Drori Tal and intended to provoke thought and discussion about the idea of presence: physical presence no longer guarantees a person's availability and attentiveness. Nowadays the user of a mobile communication device often splits his attention between the people in his surroundings and the person to whom he's linked remotely. Often, in order to remain connected the people both near and far, the mobile phone user multitasks between the two communication channels. Whether disguised or not, this practice degrades the quality of the interaction with the people in his immediate presence. |Smart Mobs|

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FREE-BSD POWERED MOTORCYCLE| Yes, finally a motorcycle that runs unix!! Modestly described as a highly-mobile BSD computer, this 2003 Kawasaki Z1000 holds a P3 Coppermine 1Ghz CPU and 256MB of RAM. Beneath the 'case', or whats left of it is a 40GB Seagate hard drive. |Slashdot|

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THE NEXT BIG THING IS ACTUALLY ULTRAWIDE| Freescale is one of the leaders in a new kind of digital technology called "ultrawideband" that's being described as the next big consumer wireless technology, thanks to its ability to pump out massive amounts of data. But even though some ultrawideband devices will come to market this year, the technology is still hobbled by regulatory challenges and a long-running clash between two incompatible ultrawideband systems. According to Bob Heile, the Attleboro physicist who leads a wireless standards-setting committee for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), "Right now, it's 10 percent technology and 90 percent politics."

Most radio devices send out a signal over a narrow band of frequencies. For example, WiFi data networks use a small set of frequencies in the 2.4 gigahertz range. But ultrawideband works by broadcasting over a much larger chunk of the radio spectrum -- from 3.1 to 10.5 gigahertz -- all at the same time. As a result, even a low-powered ultrawideband radio signal can carry huge amounts of data.

Ultrawideband technology has other powerful attributes. Because the signal can penetrate solid objects, police forces and armies use the technology in radar systems that can see through walls. The precise digital pulses of an ultrawideband radio make it possible to locate a transmitter with an accuracy of a few inches, so automakers are working on ultrawideband detectors that can spot oncoming cars and prevent collisions. |Metafilter|

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CLAUDIA CORTES' COLOR IN MOTION| One of the most effective uses of flash in recent memory. This is Claudia Cortes' thesis for the Master of Fine Arts in Computer Graphics Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. |Metafilter|

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USE EXTREME CAUTION WHEN SURFING WITH IE| Mike at Techdirt writes: It really is getting ridiculously dangerous these days for anyone to keep using Microsoft IE. People always talk about the day when scammers will start to use "zero day exploits" to smash through security holes before they're patched, and that's clearly already happening. The latest move, which is fairly advanced (and many assume is being done by organized crime groups in Eastern Europe) is to hack into a variety of popular company websites and install some code to exploit a known IE vulnerability that has not been patched by Microsoft. Once this is done, any IE user visiting any of these websites (which they obviously would assume to be safe based on the companies involved) ends up with some of the most insidious keylogging spyware. The article won't list the companies, but from the descriptions they sound like sites anyone might visit on a regular basis (banks, auction sites and comparison shopping engines). This sounds quite similar to the Interland hack from last year, but could impact many more users. |Techdirt|

On a related note:

Wired rates Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.3 very highly. It's free - donations are welcome by the creators via paypal. It's an application to scan for spyware, adware, hijackers and other malicious software. User-friendly and very powerful. |Wired|

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MARK PESCE: REDEFINING TELEVISION| In the earliest days of television, writers like George Orwell in 1984 and Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 projected television as the instrumentality of a totalitarian future - a monolithic entity dispensing propaganda. And, if any of you occasionally watch Fox News, you can see they weren't that far off the mark. But here's the thing: the monolithic days of television are numbered. Actually, they've already passed - though, as yet, very few people realize this. |Roland Piquepaille|

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A VIEW FROM THE EYE OF THE STORM| The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that no country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister, because such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protected by their Government or society. International law does not know how to handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government. International law does not know how to deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted by a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be too weak to arrest him. The amazing thing is that all of these crooks demand protection under international law, and define all those who attack them as "war criminals," with some Western media repeating the allegations. |Metafilter|

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THE ART OF WAR KAYAKING| Phillip Torrone: As the summer approaches, we crawl out of our protective wired covered lairs to sometimes partake in outdoor activity. Last weekend, we went kayaking around Lake Union in Seattle, WA and of course, we couldn't help but bring along a lot of equipment and decided we'd hunt for open wireless spots, this friends- was "War Kayaking" we found a ton, charted it with GPS, Wifi finders and we'll show you how we did it for this week's HOW-TO Tuesday. |Phillip Torrone|

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NEW TECHNIQUE DEVELOPED FOR DECIPHERING BRAIN RECORDINGS CAN CAPTURE REAL-TIME THINKING| A team led by University of California San Diego neurobiologists has developed a new approach to interpreting brain electroencephalograms, or EEGs, that provides an unprecedented view of thought in action and has the potential to advance our understanding of disorders like epilepsy and autism. The new information processing and visualization methods that make it possible to follow activation in different areas of the brain dynamically are detailed in a paper featured on the cover of the June 15 issue of the journal Public Library of Science Biology. The significance of the advance is that thought processes occur on the order of milliseconds--thousandths of a second--but current brain imaging techniques, such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and traditional EEGs, are averaged over seconds. This provides a "blurry" picture of how the neural circuits in the brain are activated, just as a picture of waves breaking on the shore would be a blur if it were created from the average of multiple snapshots. |Smart Mobs|

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AOL ENGINEER SOLD 92 MILLION NAMES TO SPAMMERS| A software engineer working for America Online was last night charged with stealing the internet service provider's entire subscriber list and selling it to spammers, the senders of unsolicited junk emails. Jason Smathers, 24, was arrested on conspiracy charges at his home in West Virginia, close to AOL's headquarters, where he had worked since 1999. Sean Dunaway, 21, who bought the list of 92m screen names, was arrested in Las Vegas. |Guardian|

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FUTUREME: TIMELY ASOCIAL SOFTWARE| Here's the story: two fellas started this so that you could write yourself a letter to be delivered at a later date. We've all had to do them in high school and college. It's sorta cool to receive a letter from yourself about where you thought you'd be a year (two years? more?) later. FutureMe.org is based on the principle that memories are less accurate than emails. We strive for accuracy. |iWire|

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MICROSOFT PATENTS BODY POWER| Matt Loney writes: Microsoft has been awarded a patent for using human skin as a power conduit and data bus. Patent No. 6,754,472, which was published Tuesday, describes a method for transmitting power and data to devices worn on the body and for communication of data between those devices.

In its filing, Microsoft cites the proliferation of wearable electronic devices, such as wristwatches, pagers, PDAs (worn on people's belts) and small displays that can now be mounted on headgear.

"As a result of carrying multiple portable electronic devices, there is often a significant amount of redundancy in terms of input/output devices included in the portable devices used by a single person," says the filing. "For example, a watch, pager, PDA and radio may all include a speaker." |Slashdot|

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CAVEAT LECTOR: ET TU AD ROCK?|
To: BugTraq
Subject: Caveat Lector: Beastie Boys Evil
Date: Jun 16 2004 8:10AM
Author: Dragos Ruiu
Message-ID: <200406160110.23023.dr@kyx.net>

Well I truly regret actually purchasing a copy of the new Beastie Boys album to support them.

It seems that Capitol Records has some sort of new copy protection system, that automatically, silently, installs "helpful" copy protection software on MacOS and Windows as soon as you insert the CD into default systems.

I'm not sure exactly what it does yet, but I am sure regreting actually purchasing said media now... they don't deserve my money if they chooseto pull stupid stunts like this. Installing software without your permissionsounds like viral malware behaviour to me. I certainly hope the AV companiesput signatures into their products for this crap.

They include some sort of uninstaller buried on there for Windows, but I see no such thing for MacOS. If anyone has disassembled the
aforementioned malware already and can save us some time with
instructions on how to remove it... thanks in advance.

caveat emptor,
--dr

|Kottke|

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37 SIGNALS ON PRINCIPLE| Given everything that's transpired, the only language we can accept is "Rights are not transfered until payment is made in full."

And, frankly, I'm starting to wonder if COMPANY is the type of company we want to do work for. We completely enjoyed working with you on the original redesign. Just loved it. But, the new corporate mentality - especially from legal - it has me questioning if this is a good fit for us.

We feel taken advantage of (we have to use your contract even though we're doing the work, we have to abide by your payment terms even though we're the ones submitting the invoices, we have to abide by your promotion restrictions even though you wouldn't have found us originally if all our other clients also prevented us from using their name in our client list, etc).

We've always stood for fairness - and we demand this from our clients as well. It's nothing personal, but I'm not feeling good about this and think we're going to have to turn down this project at this time. It's a big project to walk away from, but we have to stand up for what we believe in. I'm sorry. |IA Slash|

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OXYGEN BURST| MIT's Project Oxygen -- so named because founder Michael Dertouzos believed computers should be as invisible to their users as the air they breathe -- has begun to bear technology fruit.

Last week, in a series of demonstrations at MIT's futuristic Stata Center, researchers showed off a new reconfigurable microchip that enables a mobile device to change, chameleon-like, from cellphone to hand-held computer to music player; a 1,020-microphone array that can isolate a single voice or conversation at a cocktail party; a family of kiosks that use wireless technologies to provide a building's employees and visitors with maps, up-to-the-minute information about events in progress, and people's locations; a sensor network that can track the movements of autonomous robots; and a voice-activated software program that, in response to questions, dispatches intelligent agents to crawl hundreds of thousands of Web pages and recite weather forecasts or financial data. |Kurzweil AI Net|

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"All universities have been progressively organized for ever finer specialization...if the total scheme of nature required man to be a specialist she would have made him so by having him born with one eye and a microscope attached to it...what nature needed was man to be adaptive in many if not any direction." |Buckminster Fuller|

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WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES: INTERACTION IVREA GRADUATION SHOW| On Monday 14 June Interaction-Ivrea organises its second Graduation Ceremony. Twenty graduating students will be awarded the Masters in Interaction Design. The event, which runs from 10:00 to 13:00, takes place at the Interaction-Ivrea building, Via Montenavale 1, Ivrea. Prior to the graduation ceremony, students will present their thesis projects in the exhibition When Lightning Strikes. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, takes place on Friday 11 June from 15:00 to 22:00 and on Saturday 12 June from 11:00 to 19:00 at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Interaction-Ivrea invites all to the Graduation Party on Saturday 12 June, starting at 21:30, at the Talponia Student Residence, Via Carandini 6, Ivrea. |Core77|

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BURROUGHS CLASSES ARCHIVED ONLINE | The most historically significant archive of Beat and post-Beat recordings is now free for the downloading. Lossless or lo-fi, saved or streamed -- the tape vault of Naropa Institute is unlocked on archive.org as the Creative Commons grows. |Metafilter|

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YOUR LAPEL IS WRINGING!| Wrist-watch phones, minute handsets woven into clothes, and more are already on sale in Asia. Expect to see them soon in the U.S. Over the years, the cell phone has gone through a transformation even a chameleon would envy. In the 1970s, cell phones the size of lunch boxes seemed amazingly clever. Since then, the device has shrunk, becoming rounder and sporting every imaginable color. Now, chic designs can be sleek as roadsters or menacing as winged predators. Now, get ready for another big makeover: In the coming year, you'll see cell phones that are cleverly disguised in watches, bracelets, jacket lapels, backpacks -- any imaginable place that will make gabbing a fashion statement (see accompanying Photo Essay for examples of several wearable devices discussed here). In the past year, European and Asian consumers have had a taste of wrist watches, pendants, and powder cases -- all doubling as cell phones. Such wearable devices already account for between 1% and 5% of all cell phones sold worldwide, says analyst Michael King of consultancy Gartner. U.S. consumers, always behind the Old World in most things wireless, have been left out. |Slashdot|

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BLOOMSDAY VIRUS INFLICTS JAMES JOYCE ON MOBILE PHONES| The first ever computer virus that can infect mobile phones has been discovered, anti-virus software developers said today, adding that it has the potential to render many phones virtually useless. The French unit of the Russian security software developer Kaspersky Labs said that that virus - called Bloomsday - appears to have been developed by an international group specialising in creating literary viruses that try to "show illiterate technophiles the power of the written word."

Bloomsday takes its name from the James Joyce novel Ulysses. June 16, 1904 is the day Joyce's protagonist Leopold Bloom famously made his travels through Dublin, and is celebrated annually by bibliophiles worldwide. Ulysses parallels a story about a day in the life of an ordinary Dubliner with Homer's Odyssey. The virus was apparently released in time for the 100th anniversary of the eponymous literary holiday. It infects the Symbian operating system that is used in several makes of mobiles, notably the Nokia brand, and propagates through the new bluetooth wireless technology that is in several new mobile phones. |Metafilter|

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BRIAN ENO'S VISIONARY FUTURE POP| In 1973, Brian Eno was not yet the superstar producer of groundbreaking albums by David Bowie, Talking Heads, and U2. He hadn't become a prime architect of the "ambient" genre that pulses underneath the dance music, film soundtracks, and TV commercials of today. What he was was the keyboardist/sonic theoretician/orange-haired cross-dressing freak of the pioneering British glam-rock band Roxy Music. And he was bored out of his skull. When Roxy played one particular gig and he found himself thinking more about his laundry than the music, Eno knew it was time to quit. |Disinfo|

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HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL: INTERVIEW WITH NOAM CHOMSKY| Despite the lack of media exposure, Noam Chomsky is at the top of his game. His slim book entitled "9/11" has sold more than half a million copies. He blew away a 15,000 person stadium full of cheering anti-corporate globalization activists at last year's World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Millions of college students still revere him as their hero. Bono calls him the "Elvis of Academia." His new book, "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Domination" has just been released, and the response has been heady. A Business Week reviewer wrote, "With relentless logic he bids us to listen closely to what our leaders tell us - and to discern what they are leaving out...Agree with him or not, we lose out by not listening." He must be doing something right.|GNN|

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INTRODUCING MINDBALL| For those who are just too competitive to relax by playing - Mindball is a game where two players control a ball with their brainwaves and the one who's the most relaxed wins. This is how it works - The brain waves are detected by sensors attached to the headbands which are connected to a biosensor system. The biosensor system, registers the electrical activity and the player who is the most relaxed can make the ball roll over to his opponent's goal with his brainwaves. Developed by Interactive Instititute, a Swedish research institute, the product is being marketed by a Interactive Productline which intends to market and sell products the originate from the institute. |Gizmodo|

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CYBORGS OF NEW YORK| Luskin is one of several hundred New Yorkers who since the turn of the 21st century have become figures seemingly out of science fiction: they are cyborgs (an abbreviation of "cybernetic organism," a NASA-coined term that describes a person whose physiological functioning is aided by, or dependent on, a mechanical or electronic device.) In city cyborgs, hardware (a computer) is directly connected to "wetware" (the brain) in an attempt to regain control over bodies wracked by Parkinson's disease, essential tremor or dystonia - the ailments for which such treatment is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. |Smart Mobs|

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INVISIBLE CLOAK INVENTOR PLANS INVISIBLE WALLS| The inventor of an "invisibility" cloak has said that his next project will be to develop the technology to allow people to see through walls. Susumu Tachi, who showed off the cloak at an exhibition in San Francisco earlier this month, said he was hopeful of providing a way to provide a view of the outside in windowless rooms. "This technology can be used in all kinds of ways, but I wanted to create a vision of invisibility," he told BBC World Service's Outlook programme. "My short-term goal would be, for example, to make a room that has no outside windows appear to have a view to the outside, then the wall would appear to be invisible." |BBC News|

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1984 OR ANIMAL FARM?| Virtual, moving fences controlled from a laptop could one day herd cattle to fresh fields for grazing, a roboticist told the MobiSys 2004 conference in Boston, Massachusetts, on Sunday. A farmer would control multiple herds from a single server at home as if they were playing a video game, said Zack Butler, of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Although static virtual fences already keep dogs inside yards in affluent US neighbourhoods, no-one has attempted a moving virtual fence before, nor attempted to apply the idea to large herds of animals. "Basically we download the fences to the cows," says Butler. "We say: 'Today stay here, tomorrow go somewhere else." Butler and his colleagues have written software that transmits the chosen GPS co-ordinates of a virtual fence to head-collars worn by the cows in the field. When a cow strays towards these co-ordinates, software running on the collar triggers a stimulus chosen to scare the cow away, such as a sound or a small electric shock - this is the "virtual" fence. The software also "herds" the cows when the position of the virtual fence is moved. |Smart Mobs|

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QUEST FOR ENERGY IS RACE AGAINST TIME| New forms of energy need to be developed quickly or else the world faces a cataclysmic economic and environmental future writes Jeremy Leggett. There are two reasons why society has to get out of oil, and at first sight, they seem contradictory. Firstly, oil is running out. Secondly, we cannot afford to burn it all. Oil is running out because it is a finite resource. Optimists, like the US Department of Energy and the oil companies, estimate that around 2,600bn barrels are left in known deposits and predictable future discoveries. Pessimists, like the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, reckon on more like 1,000bn barrels.

In a society that has allowed its economies to become geared almost inextricably to growing supplies of cheap oil, the difference is seismic. If there are 2,600bn barrels left, the topping out point - or the so-called peak of depletion - lies far away in the 2030s. |Guardian|

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ARTIST RUN LIMOUSINE| The Artist Run Limousine (ARL) is a mobile artist run center in the shape of a white Cadillac Fleetwood stretch limousine conceived and operated by Matt Smith and Sandra Wintner in Vancouver, Canada. It serves the artistically inclined community and is host to a gamut of projects. It encourages dialogue through symbolism and is a means to stimulate contextualised interpretation of the urban and suburban landscape. |Coin-Operated|

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GOOGLE'S SECRET: MORE PHDS| Hey, it's not rocket science. And it's not brain surgery. But if your background is in either, you're welcome to take a shot and apply at Google. The company's employees include a former rocket scientist and a former brain surgeon. Mostly, Google has concentrated on recruiting those with a background in what you would expect: computer science. Founded by two near-Ph.D.'s who have purposely placed Ph.D.'s throughout the company, Google encourages all employees to act as researchers, by spending 20 percent of their time on new projects of their own choosing. |Slashdot|

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SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW 'ATLANTIS'| A scientist says he may have found remains of the lost city of Atlantis. Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia. Dr Rainer Kuehne thinks the "island" of Atlantis simply referred to a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC. |BBC News|

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BILL JOY ARTICLE IN TIMES MAGAZINE| Four years ago in an article he wrote for Wired magazine, Joy declared that the headlong race in biotechnology and nanotechnology might prove catastrophic. In the time since, he has continued to explore and advance this concern. Joy says he thinks the probability of a ''civilization-changing event'' is most likely in the double digits, perhaps as high as 50 percent. He doesn't merely ascribe these odds to terrorism; he suggests a pandemic disease might arise from a sudden accident or as a consequence of cutting-edge research. For disquieting evidence, he points out that a couple of years ago scientists assembled polio in a lab. That in late 2002 J. Craig Venter, the founder of Celera Genomics, announced plans to create organisms from scratch. That only a few months ago scientists were tinkering with deadly strains of bird flu in less-than-top-security labs. That the genomic sequence for the plague is now on the Web for anyone to see or make use of. |Slashdot|

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WIRELESS PROTEST BICYCLE DESIGNED FOR RNC| Joshua Kinberg's MFA thesis Bikes Against Bush, now on display at Parsons Design and Technology Thesis show, transforms ordinary bicycles into Internet enabled, tactical media weapons for non-violent, creative resistance to the RNC. First and foremost, Bikes Against Bush is a wireless bicycle consisting of an ordinary bicycle with an embedded laptop computer, a bluetooth-enabled cell phone affixed to the handlebars, a bluetooth-enabled GPS device, and a webcam. Additionally, the device incorporates a homemade, robotic printing device consisting of a series of spray-chalk aerosol cans that can print chalked text messages on streets and sidewalks while the bicycle is in motion. Once an initial prototype bicycle is created, Kinsberg plans to work with various creative resistance groups opposing the 2004 Republican National Convention to replicate the design. |Gothamist|

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(BIO)DIESEL VEHICLES|Diesel vehicles are meta-efficient when run with Biodiesel fuel. Some cars are listed as "TDIs", meaning they have a Turbo-Charge Direct Injection Engine - these cars can also be run on Biodiesel. Diesel engines are fuel-efficient, for example VW Jetta TDIs get around 47 mpg. Earlier diesel cars, produced in the 1960s and 1970s were noisy and produced noxious emissions. However, new models are much less noisy, and when run on biodiesel, produce less toxic emission that regular, gasoline-powered cars. Check out these deisel vehicles currently available in the U.S. |Meta-Efficient|

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NIKE INTRODUCES RECYCLABLE RUNNING SHOE| Nike has come out with a new running shoe called the Mayfly. It weighs only 4.8 ounces which is due to leaving out padding and shocks and as a result lasts for only 62 miles, or 1/10th what a normal running lasts for. Included with the shoe is an envelope with postage paid for customers to send it back to Nike for recycling. Mayfly was first introduced in Europe and they have yet to receive one returned pair. Nike is marketing the shoe mainly to "experienced" runners. |Core 77|

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ROBOCOPS PREPARED FOR HOOLIGANS| English football fans heading to Euro 2004 were warned today they face a force of hi-tech "robocops". Portuguese police have spent £8 million on an armoury to crush hooliganism at the tournament and will have on standby a rapid-reaction force of specially trained riot officers. The list of how the money has been spent shows the scale of preparations for the arrival of 1.2 million fans on 12 June. It includes 17,640 pepper sprays, 1,465 riot truncheons and 40 stun-grenade launchers. |Smart Mobs|

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FAHRENHEIT 9/11 TRAILER IS NOW ONLINE| Moore interviews politicians, soldiers and bereaved parents in his film. The trailer for Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 has made its debut on the movie's official website. The trailer will also be shown in cinemas across the US from Friday. The documentary is being released in the US on 25 June by Miramax heads Bob and Harvey Weinstein, through a deal with two outside companies. Miramax's parent firm Disney refused to distribute the film, which criticises President Bush's response to the 11 September attacks on the US. |BBC News|

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WIRELESS UNLEASHED| Kevin Werbach, Andrew Odlyzko, Clay Shirky, and David Isenberg have launched a group weblog on unlicensed wireless issues. "Current wireless regulation actually prevents communication from taking place. Even in prime low-frequency spectrum, vast amounts of capacity lies idle due to old rules and old thinking. We have come together to advocate freeing up this un-used capacity. Opening up wireless capacity could improve broadband connections to the home, spark deployment of peer-to-peer or location-based wireless applications, and more. In the developing world, unlicensed wireless devices could create economic opportunity by bootstrapping network connectivity. The potential benefits are enormous, and the consequences for business and social interaction are significant." |Wired|

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