] This ad is most definitely a nod to the filmmakers Peter
] Fischli and David Weiss. Their 1987 film, "The Way Things
] Go" is a 30-minute-long showing of a contraption they
] built out of household items.

WOW.

Honda's New Accord

] Adam Osborne, 64, a technical writer, business executive
] and computer pioneer whose Silicon Valley achievements
] included the introduction of the Osborne 1, the first
] portable personal computer, died March 18 at his home in
] Kodiakanal, India.

Awww. The "Osborne I" was my first personal computer, and I still have many fond memories of playing the early Infocom games on it. I still have my old CP/M operating system diskettes, though the only times I dig the Osborne out these days are to take it to the "historical" displays at the occasional technology convention. I was also pleased to see an Osborne I on display in the Smithsonian when I visited Washington DC.

I have many memories of my time in the service that are wrapped up with the Osborne, since I would carry it with me whenever I was assigned to temporary duty somewhere. I lugged the Osborne (we used to joke that it was "transportable" but not necessarily "portable") through many an airport, and would set it up in my tiny barracks room to play games such as "Zork I" and "Deadline" off the 5 1/4" diskettes, when I wasn't working on the U-2 aircraft!

A toast to Osborne -- I'm sorry to see you go.

Elonka

Computer Pioneer Adam Osborne Dies at 64

Jeremy wrote:
] Peter Wayner, the author of _Disappearing Cryptography_,
] writes about online gaming in the New York Times.
]
] An arms race is underway ... Bots can do drudge work to earn
] extra cash for their owners; video cards can be reprogrammed
] to let players see and attack through walls; and much more.
]
] It's all here ... black markets, weapons inspections, test
] bans, treaty verification regimes ...
]
] There's probably some good academic work in this space. Can
] you design a provably fair massively multiplayer online game?

Um, mine? We've got massively multiplayer games that have been running for several years (one for over a decade), with relatively stable economies, game systems, and player-bases.

There's still a certain amount of black market trading that goes on in the background -- by my guesstimates, each of our major products has a black market (some call it grey market) of about $50,000/month in transactions, with about 20% of that being out and out fraud. We can't stop all of it, and we definitely don't actively encourage it, but we do track it. For example, in one of our games, DragonRealms, there's effectively an exchange rate of in-game currency (platinum kronars) to real world dollars. If we see that exchange rate making sudden changes, it gives us a good heads-up that there's some new bug or other problem that's throwing the game economy out of balance, and we can increase steps to find and plug the hole. Over the last few years though, things have been running pretty stable... The game's producer refers to it as "our platinum kronars are running at about the same exchange rate as the Canadian Dollar"!

RE: Do Cheaters Ever Prosper? Just Ask Them

] There's a new breed of combat personnel at the war front:
] soldier "bloggers."
]
] Once the narrow domain of geeks and technology
] journalists, "Web logs" -- or diary accounts published
] online -- have gone mainstream, making it possible for
] even soldiers to transmit daily updates to Web sites
] about the rigours of battle.
]
] War-themed blogs, appearing on sites such as
] www.blogsofwar.com and www.sgtstryker.com, have become a
] popular alternative news source since fighting broke out
] in Iraq a week ago, sometimes beating newspapers and
] television with war developments.

I actually wish more of the soldiers could access Email and blogs. I have a cousin who's currently deployed somewhere in or around Iraq (I don't know exactly where). He was shipped over there in January, and then he and I were Emailing back and forth regularly until last week, when he sent me a short letter saying, "I won't be able to send Email for awhile." So I follow the war developments, and try to make educated guesses about where he is, and every time I see pictures of killed or captured soldiers, I have a little mental cringe, wondering if I'm going to see his face.

I still strongly support him, and the war effort, and I know he's there of his own free will. But I'll still be incredibly relieved when I know he's able to logon again and send me an Email to let me know he's okay!

Soldier 'bloggers' report from war

] "Afghanistan is officially planting its flag in
] cyberspace, gaining full legal and technical control of
] the '.af' Internet domain," the organization said.
]
] "For Afghanistan, this is like reclaiming part of our
] sovereignty," Communications Minister Mohammad Moassom
] Stanakzai said in a statement on Sunday.

Congrats to Afghanistan! Welcome to international cyberspace. :)

Wired News: Afghan Internet Domain Launches

] Interesting article, but the links are even more interesting.

Perspective: The first 'e-war'

All you need is a GPS, a car, and a printout, and it's off to treasure-hunting you go!

Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site

] Workers at businesses and municipalities
] that have tested the transporters aren't exactly sending
] in rave reviews, either. "You can't keep warm if you're
] not walking," says a postal worker in Concord, N.H. "You
] end up like a frozen popsicle on a stick."

I wasn't particularly enthused about the Segway when I first started reading the "It" hype. So far, aside from seeing a few on TV, I've only seen one "in the wild" -- Atlanta cops were using them to patrol the streets downtown during Dragon*Con last year. But when I read the above comment, I almost fell out of my chair laughing. :) "Popsicle on a stick," indeed!

Is Segway Going Anywhere?

] "On Nov. 21, U.S. Air Force officials got their hands on
] the ultimate global video game. Thanks to a system
] upgrade by defense contractor Lockheed Martin (LMT ),
] flyboys (and girls) could hop onto a special Air Force
] network from any PC equipped with a Web browser and
] special military encryption and authentication software.
] Once on this network, they could call for air strikes,
] direct reconaissance planes, or plot the movements of the
] most powerful flying force on Earth -- all from their
] laptop in a café (or, more likely, at a secured
] facility). "All you need is Internet Explorer...""

Ender's Game, anyone?

The Network Is the Battlefield

From Logickal:

"Bing Fung and colleagues at the University of Oklahoma found that the 19 hydrogen atoms in a lone liquid crystal molecule can store at least 1024 bits of information. The data are stored in the complex interaction of the protons' magnetic moments."

Elonka: Fascinating stuff. And a whole new way to hide information steganographically!

New Scientist - Digital Image stored in single molecule