Category — other research

The Chronicle: 10/29/2004: Video Games With a Political Message

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ian’s in the chronicle, he’s doing good work.

Worship the yellow:

National Geographic Prints The Greatest Ever Scientific Article In the History of The World..

You get the feeling someone just lost it one day in the editorial meeting. Frankly, I’m going to have this one framed. Worship the Yellow, my young friends.

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clearly the National Geographic gets it right.

Grace Hopper Celebration Coming up soon: The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, October 6-9 in Chicago Illinois. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2004 is the fifth in a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career…

Lessig “Where is the political party that demands respect for principles that I thought were fundamental.” [Scripting News]

It must be time to hand out copies of Nietszche again, because some people still seem to think that principles are fixed and not mere functions of transvaluation… Lessig though has some points in his short essay that are worth considering on your own as he is comparing soviet systems to our current state, which in my opinion is looking more and more alont the lines of stalinism than anything else, but who knows what tomorrow brings.

Well two of the books that were gifted to me for xmas were the new version of McLuhan's Mechanical Bride put out by Gingko press and Marcuse's Technology, War, and Fascism edited by Doug Kellner. Both have been fascinating reads so far. Though I admit that I have been reading a bit too much fiction, I'm working through David Lodge right now, it is hilarious especially his work on academics.

AOL Quietly Wins IM Patent. Tony Kontzer in Information Week is reporting that AOL has been awarded an important patent covering much of the technology behind instant-messaging services.

In the latest example of a potentially market-defining patent being granted without fanfare, AOL Time Warner quietly has become the owner of a patent, granted in September by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, that covers much of the technology behind instant-messaging services. Patent No. 6,449,344 appears to be a far-reaching one, with more than 200 claims that give AOL exclusive rights to a “communications system for facilitating locating a user who is connected to a communications network, preferably for the purposes of establishing point-to-point communications.” [Living Without Microsoft]

This patent will be busted, i think there is enough evidence to bust most of it as I type this. We've been debating this for some time on air-l the list of the association of internet researchers, and I'm fairly convinced that most of the claims can be insubstantiated due to prior art

Computer games 'to be classified'. Violent computer games are to receive film-style classifications so parents can monitor what their children are viewing, it is reported. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

I had thought I'd posted on this before, but you know, this is nothing new, the u.s. has this type of thing, oz was working on it a few months back. I'm really very much against it on a wide variety of levels. I remember back when Tipper was promoting this type of thing to the world. I wonder why she shut up….

In Post-Soviet Russia, The Peace Corps Gets Sent Home To YOU!. Plastic::Work::International: In another sign of growing anti-Americanism, Russia has given the Peace Corps the boot. As an added afront, the Russians cite possible spying as an explanation. [Plastic: Most Recent]

This seems to me to be another indicator of the second rise of the nation state, i think we may be heading toward a reactionary phase toward globalization in which citizens and other state entities begin a round of isolation and reentrenchment. In this case, in the former Soviet Union, one can see this even more, but i guess the big indicator will be China.

POMO Programming. Dethe has found a very funny … well, here's the relevant excerpt from the email he sent me: …there's a wonderful paper on Postmodern Programming. The authors presented this at OOPSLA last month, and it was one of the highlights of the conference for me. My favorite part is when they define the essence of the PoMo programming language: Languages get defined by the problems they solve. The first exercise for many programmers is to compute the first thousand prime numbers. Here's their solution: http://www.google.com/search?q=first%20thousand%20primes I thought you'd enjoy that, seeing as how it combines PoMo, Google, and a wickedly… [Joho the Blog]

i find this striking, moreso that other people find it so funny