] A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players
] trampled the first woman in line and knocked her
] unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a
] Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Dashing through the snow... on a one horse open sleigh!

Christmas Kills

] It's called the Segway Human Transporter, but
] the Pentagon is drafting the two-wheeled scooter
] as part of a plan to develop battlefield robots
] that think on their own and communicate with troops.

Just in case you were wondering; Yes, Virginia, they are making Terminators in a lab somewhere...

The Pentagon starts building Terminators

You have the impression that the disasters of the world do not touch you anymore? You feel vaguely sorry for other people's misfortunes but you don't feel the inner urge which used to make you help your neighbour ? WiFi-SM is the solution !

WiFi-SM is an Internet connected wireless device that you can fix on any part of your body. It automatically detects the information from approximately 4,500 news sources worldwide updated continuously and analyses them looking for specific keywords such as death, kill, murder, torture, rape, war, virus etc.. Each time the text of the news contains one of these keywords, your WiFi-SM device is activated through the Wi-Fi network and provides you with an electric impulse. This impulse is calibrated so that you can feel a certain amount of pain, but is completely safe.

WiFi-SM: feel the global pain

"That's why I call telephones an interrupting technology," said Patel, whose girlfriend always seemed to be in a meeting or driving her car when he called. "I didn't want to talk to her, necessarily. I wanted instead to find a way to feel connected to her, or reassured that she was there."

What I find most interesting about this experiment is its motivation...

Ubicomp tables interconnected via the internet

I think this movie will be underseen domestically, as it covers a geeky subject, isn't violent enough, offers no love interest, and doesn't involve Americans. However, I enjoyed it alot. Escapism? Maybe. Its a Star Trek episode set in the 1700s. You get an impression of the life of the olde Navy, back when sailing the South Seas was to push the edges of human experience.

Master and Commander doesn't suck

The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study in 2000. It found:

Low-income families (less than $30,000 annual income) are less likely to have computers, Internet access or newspaper subscriptions. However, they are equally likely to have a video-game player and their children are more likely to have TV sets in their bedrooms.

Family income is an inverse indicator of media use -- children from high-income families spend the least amount of time with media and children from low-income families spend the most time with media.

Kids are plugged in, parents have tuned out, studies show

] Cones, signs, and other strange photos, from our original
] research as well as the work of thousands of interested
] parties from around the world.

A collection of pictures showing how orange cones have a thriving subculture right under our noses . . .

The Cone Epicentre

] E-mail list manager OptInBig found that the federal
] legislation is good for business. "Our January bookings
] skyrocketed after the passage of the Can Spam Act," said
] CEO Scott Richter, because its marketer clients no longer
] have to worry about California's strict law, which
] Federal law would supersede.

So, one the one hand, legitimate marketers are instantly freed of all of the state level regulations controlling SPAM, which is clearly to their economic benefit. Congressmen also have a story for their district about what they are "doing" about the problem. At the same time we also pre-emptively ban any business the cypherpunks ever thought of.

What I'm getting at there is that there are plenty of economic motivations to pass this law that really have nothing to do with actually stepping up enforcement against open relay abusers and porn spammers. I think this means its even less likely that they are actually going to start enforcing once this is on the books. I think this is likely to be a wash, with no actual enforcement at all. Just like all the other ones... Time will tell...

The truth about CAN SPAM

] The cryptographer David Chaum, through discussion with
] top cryptographers such as Ron Rivest, has designed a secure and
] verifiable voting system.

I haven't read this yet, but Chaum rocks...

A Secure and Verifiable Voting System

Finally, I have to ask what these tools do to the old, low-tech concept of friendship. In some way, with their numbers and lists and classifications, these services can subtly make a social network into a trophy collection. Technology has made it easier than ever to count your friends -- but that doesn't mean you should.

Esther Dyson weighs in on the trends in social networking software.

Buying and Selling the Little Black Book