Category — other research

Robbers Scared by GTA: “HellSpam writes ‘Some robbers tried to burglarize a poor old lady and her 3 grandsons. Her grandsons happened to be playing Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas, and the sounds of the police from the game scared them away! From the article: ‘The police in the game were saying, ‘Stop, we have you surrounded. This is the police.’ The burglar, unknowingly, thought this was the actual police and panicked … being apprehended by Playstation.’ Now, no more saying games are bad for you…’”

(Via Slashdot.)

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accidents will happen. though this sounds suspiciously like urban myth.

Penn State Tells Students To Ditch IE: “Hoyceman writes “About 80,000 students and staff are being told to use an alternate browser. The Penn State ITS department sent the alert ‘because the threats are real and alternatives exist to mitigate Web browser vulnerabilities.’ InformationWeek is carrying the story.”"

(Via Slashdot.)

i’ve told everyone that reads this blog several times to ditch ie.

Work. This new quarterly magazine from New York lo…: ”

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(Via Creative Generalist.)

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this looks like it could be interesting…

UNESCO Free Software Portal: The UNESCO Free Software Portal gives access to documents and websites which are references for the Free Software/Open Source Technology movement. It is also a gateway to resources related to Free Software.

http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=12034&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

(Via Information Policy.)

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this could be handy.

Declaration from Buenos Aires – Social Forum of Information 2004: “Information, knowledge, documentation, archives, and libraries are communal cultural goods and resources. They are based upon and promoted by democratic values, such as: freedom, equality, and social justice, as well as tolerance, respect, equity, solidarity, communities, society, and the dignity of individuals.

Every documentation center contributes to democratic practice in the social and political spheres. Conscious of this dimension, the foundation and organization of these cultural goods and resources must be constructed under the principal of knowledge and information access that is free, open, and egalitarian for everybody.

Social and political elements also are present that librarians, documentalists, and archivists must take into account in order to contribute to the formation of cultural and civic identities sustained by civil and socially responsible values.
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this is important stuff…

Can You Retire on One Meal Per Month?: “

Angry Bear has an interesting post on the further decline in the US savings rate (go read it) which contains this arresting statistic:

The personal saving rate fell to just 0.2% of after-tax income in October. That means that an average family that earns $75,000 per year, with take-home pay of about $5,000 per month, is saving about $10 per month. That’s it.

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(Via Discourse.net.)

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hmm, i can’t, but then again i doubt the u.s. can either….

frontline: the persuaders: neuromarketing | PBS: “But 30 years after the commercials debuted, neuroscientist Read Montague was still thinking about them. Something didn’t make sense. If people preferred the taste of Pepsi, the drink should have dominated the market. It didn’t. So in the summer of 2003, Montague gave himself a ‘Pepsi Challenge’ of a different sort: to figure out why people would buy a product they didn’t particularly like.

What he found was the first data from an entirely new field: neuromarketing, the study of the brain’s responses to ads, brands, and the rest of the messages littering the cultural landscape. Montague had his subjects take the Pepsi Challenge while he watched their neural activity with a functional MRI machine, which tracks blood flow to different regions of the brain. Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of them said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too. Coke “lit up” the medial prefrontal cortex — a part of the brain that controls higher thinking. Montague’s hunch was that the brain was recalling images and ideas from commercials, and the brand was overriding the actual quality of the product. For years, in the face of failed brands and laughably bad ad campaigns, marketers had argued that they could influence consumers’ choices. Now, there appeared to be solid neurological proof. Montague published his findings in the October 2004 issue of Neuron, and a cottage industry was born.”

(Via .)

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manage my brain, know my interests, make me happy…..

well, this is perhaps not as interesting as one would hope, but it does show the extent that the market is reconstructed as scientific object…..

Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources: “

From Marcus Zillman, this “Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation white paper titled Academic and Scholar Search Engines and Sources is

…”

(Via beSpacific.)

this could be handy….

Gamers Eye Open Virtual Worlds: “Fans of open-source programming and multiplayer gaming explore ways to bring the concept of the metaverse — an infinitely expandable virtual world — closer to fruition. By Daniel Terdiman.”

(Via Wired News.)

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expect big things in this area soon….

Amateurs and professionals: “The distinction between professionals and amateurs is one that’s so familiar today as to seem perfectly natural. Professionals are serious, amateurs are dilettantes; professionals know what they’re doing, and have credentials and training, amateurs don’t; professionals get paid, amateurs are hobbyists. Of course, in a few fields there are exceptions to the rule: astronomy, for example, continues to have a place for amateur comet-watchers. —snip—

(Via Future Now.)

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I generally term this the professionalization of leisure in the DIY culture. this theory fits with some of my thoughts though.