Elonka wrote:
] ] For some little girls, it's a favorite doll; for others,
] it's a
] ] dress-up set. But when Elonka Dunin of St. Charles,
] Missouri,
] ] was little, her favorite toys were puzzles.
]
] Let's hear it for geek girls! :)

Thats awesome Elonka...you deserve it:) I am very proud to know you. -Nano

RE: Elonka in 'Woman's World' magazine

]
] VeriSign plans to unveil on Wednesday a digital identity
] program for school-age children, which it says will
] bolster online safety for the growing number of young Web
] surfers.

Whoa...

[Bleah....this seems shady as all hell - Nano]

VeriSign works to ID kid surfers

] People who know they're being watched, and that their
] innocent actions can result in police scrutiny, are
] people who become scared to step out of line. They know
] that they can be put on a "bad list" at any time. People
] living in this kind of society are not free, despite any
] illusionary security they receive. It's contrary to all
] the ideals that went into founding the United States.

A fairly good article on why profiling doesn't work.

How We Are Fighting the War on Terrorism / IDs and the illusion of security

] Nokia will make an internal version of the Perl scripting
] language for Series 60 smartphones available to its
] developer community, Lee Epting, Nokia's VP of Developer
] Relations, tells us. Nokia acknowledges a demand for more
] developer options as Nokia's Symbian-based Series 60
] platform reaches mass market volumes.

This qualifies as "rad".

The Register | Nokia to release Perl for smartphones

] SAN FRANCISCO -- Lots of people wish they could jack
] their brain directly to their computer and toss out those
] annoying keyboards and joysticks -- especially people who
] can't use keyboards or joysticks.
]
] Five quadriplegic patients might be months away from
] testing a brain-computer interface created by
] Cyberkinetics, a privately held company in Foxboro,
] Massachusetts. The company's system, called BrainGate,
] could help patients with no mobility to control a
] computer, a robot or eventually their own rewired
] muscles, using only their thoughts. If the trials go
] well, a product could be on the market by 2007

Wired News: Transforming Thoughts Into Deeds

A California inventor has developed a book-binding machine that makes it cheap and easy to print professional-quality books within minutes. Industry analysts say the device could make it possible for consumers to purchase previously hard-to-find texts at most bookstores.

Brewster Kahle likes it.

In a few years, the term "bookstore" may refer to one of those little kiosks in the mall, where today they sell incense, neckties, cheap jewelry, and what-not. It will consist of a keyboard, a plasma display, and a small box resembling an inkjet printer.

One could envision using this flexible technology to sell 'scalable' books. If the 1,181 page version of "The Codebreakers" is too much detail for you, perhaps you'd prefer the 500 page version, or the 250 page version with a focus on pre-20th century technology.

Interested in the latest Harry Potter book? Choose anywhere from 100 to 1,000 pages in length, depending on how much time you have to spend. Buying it for the kids, and want to delete the dark parts of the story? Easy.

How about a version of the LOTR trilogy without all of the poetry and the songs? Done. Care to drop the pages-long descriptions of minutia unrelated to the plot, too? Done. Illustrated, or text only?

Music retail outlets could do this today with audio CDs; it's not clear why they don't. There is simply no good reason why you should ever walk out of Tower Records empty handed because the clerk said, "we don't have that in stock, but we could order it for you and have it here in seven to ten business days."

A good-sized Tower Records has on the order of $1 million in inventory on hand. For a million dollars, the store could buy more than a petabyte of online disk storage, on which they could store more than two million different full length albums in CD quality (not MPEG encoded), along with high quality cover art and liner notes. By comparison, online music services like iTunes and Rhapsody offer only 30,000 to 40,000 different CDs.

Book-Binding Technique Could Revive Rare Texts

Decius wrote:
] When people heard about the iPod mini they were thinking mini
] means smaller means cheaper. Unfortunately, thats not at all
] what Apple was thinking. In this case mini apparently means
] more feminine, while also being less useful, for about the
] same price. This is the Paris Hilton of iPods. You can pay
] $299 for a 15 gig hard drive, or $250 for a 4 gig hard drive.
] Really a no brainer unless you care more about pastel colors
] then you do about your money. A real disappointment. There is
] a significant market segment here for people who want a well
] designed device that holds enough music for a plane flight but
] doesn't cost more then the ticket. Apple has missed the boat.
] I don't think these are going to sell very well.

Damnit. Thats disappointing. See, there was a company that makes some of the hardware for the ipods that came out with a 2gb drive for $70. So the rumor mill people picked up on that and decided that apple would use that and charge less for the ipod. Too bad...I was going to get one if they were only $100...Apple needs to consider the grad student market damnit:) We spend hours in the lab, and it would be useful to have a good mp3 player to listen to while working....but none of us can afford apples prices.

RE: Apple - iPod mini - Smaller, Dumber, but not Cheaper

] analysts and Web sites that track Apple Computer Inc. are
] speculating that the company will unveil a line of
] smaller, cheaper versions of its popular but pricey iPod
] digital music players.

Steve Jobs talks tommorrow (tuesday) morning at the Macworld convention in SF....lets hope the buzz of the unveiling of the mini-ipod are not unfounded rumors:)

iPod at center of buzz / Rumors predict new affordable player at Macworld

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have crossed a robotic arm with the bottom half of a Segway to make a robot named Cardea that can traverse hallways and push open doors.
...
Cardea consists of the Segway base, sonar sensors that help in navigation, a pair of cameras that form a rudimentary vision system, and a single arm capable of five degrees of freedom -- two at the shoulder, one at the elbow, and two at the wrist. It also has a kickstand.

Technology Review: Segway Robot Opens Doors

] Like the Segway, Bombardier's Embrio concept--a prototype
] that may or may not make production--uses gyroscope
] technology to balance riders but adds a dash of flair
] absent in the Segway, which we as car nuts find slightly
] nerdy.

leet!!

Canadian Segway