Sequoia National Park: Cave Found

Amateur scientists find huge cave

David Pescovitz:Amateur scientists have discovered an unknown massive cave filled with crystals in California's Sequoia National Park. The spelunkers from the Cave Research Foundation found the cavern last month. It's been named Ursa Minor (Latin for "small bear") in honor of the skeleton of what appears to be an ancient bear found in the cave. From National Geographic:

Only a small portion of the cavern has been explored so far. But researchers say they have already found several large chambers with a variety of formations, including thin curtains of minerals several feet tall, slender "soda straws" up to six feet (two meters) long, and sheets of glimmering crystals on the cave's floors and walls...

"There are things in the cave that could really open windows into our knowledge of geologic history and the formation of caves throughout the West," park cave manager Joel Despain told the Associated Press.

Link

technorati tags:Cave, Calinfornia, Sequoia+National+Park, Spelunking

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Design Your Own Mini-machines

The Modern Compendium of Miniature Automata

The Modern Compendium of Miniature Automata has been around for a while, but nowhere else can you create you own nano-scale cog-driven beasties that then scurry around yellowed paper.  Sent to me by MChristian, I think I must have last seen it four or five years ago, but it now seems all the lovelier for its quirky Victorian styled title and Steampunk in microscopic form.  Go ahead - make your own little nano-contraption, it’ll be yours to configure, name, describe and then let free on the great big papery universe.

technorati tags:Flash, Miniature, Automata, Machines, Game

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Zombies March on Texas

Zombie Rights March Protested by Pirates

Xeni Jardin:

Shannou says,

Here's a flickr set of pictures documenting the zombie rights march to Austin's City Hall last Friday. The zombies' signs in the march included badly spelled slogans such as "Mairage = 1 Zombie + 1 Zombie", "More Binifits for Zombie Vets in Our Necronomoconomy", "Brains...The Other White Meat", "We're here, we're dead, get used to it!" and "Zombies Was People Too." The zombies, shouting "What do we want? Brains! When do we want them? Brains!" was unhindered by a group of pirates protesting the undead's demands for their rights.

Link. You know, when I was in Seattle last week ( self-important clearing of throat ) visiting the Allen Institute for Brain Science and researching this story, I couldn't help but wonder -- what would zombies do with that open, 3D, digital atlas of brains? Plan dinner parties, perhaps.

technorati tags:Zombies, March, Texas

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Link Graffiti

Melbournian Zelda Graffiti

The Amazing Mr. Pee — a Wildeian wit — sent us this shot of some graffiti in Melbourne, New Zealand. That's not just any Link you're seeing there: that's Link from The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap!

Mr. Pee explains:

It's actually been made out of Carlton draught beer coasters from a pub that have been painted and stuck on the wall.Found near Swanston Street, near RMIT university in Melbourne, Australia.

Is it still graffiti if it's just been taped to the wall? Oh, no matter, it's still cool. Any Melbournians willing to go out to Swanston street and have their hot girlfriends pose naked next to Link, perhaps bent over in an accomodating position? Let us know! Florian Eckhardt

technorati tags:Link, Zelda, Graffiti, Art

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Mega Man!!!

Mass Ave. Mega Man!

I think this is my favorite bit of gamer themed street art we've ever posted. I like to think that this is less deliberate art than a miraculous coincidence — the sole remaining piece of a Byzantine mosaic's millennia-spanning decay. The rusted pipes give it an air of almost Turkish squalor.

Unfortunately, Etherfreak dashed my own feverish imaginings. It's actually from my home town! "I found this little megaman stuck onto the back of an art store on mass ave in boston. looks like it was composed of many little "pixel" squares separately adhered to the wall. Funny thing is, about an hour after snapping this shot I walked by again, only to see a couple dudes pulling out camera phones and shrieking in revelrous glee at their discovery. Something makes me think that you guys have probably already seen this one. Just in case you haven't...."

I don't think we have (who can tell with our search system so hopelessly broken?), but anything this cool deserves to be posted again, and I deserve to be paid for posting it. Florian Eckhardt

technorati tags:Mega+Man, Art, Graffiti

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Oasis is #1 independent game of 2006

Top 10 independent games for 2005

Game Tunnel is a website dedicated to the independent gaming scene. Independent games are conceptually different from the mainstream games you typically find. They often represent the work of a small group of programmers and graphic artists who share a specific vision that the large game publishers don’t want to be involved with. For that reason, the games made by the “independents” are often quite unique, innovative and interesting.

Here are the top 10 for 2005. Click on the images to see more.

technorati tags:Oasis, Number+One, Independent, Game, 2006

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Email Addiction:

This is a wonderful article on email addiction. I just need to drop my news feed addiction... Damn you Flock, you just make it too easy with your bright orange reinder grabbing my attention.

Why email is addictive (and what to do about it)

Email is addictive

Like lots of people who sit in front of a computer all day, I am addicted to email. This worries me for two reasons. The first is the sheer strength of my compulsion. I must hit the 'get mail' button at least a hundred times a day. Sometimes, if I don't have any new mail, I hit it again immediately, just to check. I interrupt my work to check my mail even when I know that I'm not going to find anything interesting and that I should just concentrate on what I am suppossed to be doing. When I come back to my office it's the first thing I do. If I'm prevented from checking my mail for more than a few hours I get a little jumpy and remain that way until I have.

This is all rather sad, but the second reason I am worried by my email addiction is that I work in a psychology department and we're supposed to understand how these things work. Now email isn't a drug - it doesn't deliver a chemical into your bloodstream. Yet it is clearly addictive. I'm a normal rational person (which is to say I'm just normally maladjusted) and I know that I don't need to check my email as often as it do - certainly not immediately after checking it the first time for Goodness' sake! - but still I am compelled. What's going on, and can psychological science help me out?

Read more below the fold

Why is email addictive?

So, I think I've got an idea of what's going on with email, and if I'm right it should provide some clues as to how I can stop myself being so addicted. The key is what psychologists call 'operant conditioning'. This means the mechanisms by which behaviour is shaped by its consequences; how what we do depends on the rewards and punishments of what we did last time. This topic is the heart of behaviourism, that school of thought which dominated psychology for most of the last century. Many lab animals, and many person-hours, were recruited to help understand exactly how rewards and punishments could be arranged to influence behaviour. One suprising finding is that if you want to train an animal to do something, consistently rewarding that behaviour isn't the best way. The most effective training regime is one where you give the animal a reward only sometimes, and then only at random intervals. Animals trained like this, with what's called a 'variable interval reinforcement schedule', work harder for their rewards, and take longer to give up once all rewards for the behaviour is removed. There's a logic to this. Although we might know that we've stopped rewarding the animal, it has got used to performing the behaviour and not getting the reward. Because 'next time' might always be the occasion that produces the reward, there's never definite evidence that rewards have stopped altogether.

Email is addictive because it is a variable-interval reinforcement schedule

We're animals - we have animal brains. All animal brains have the circuitry in place for producing operant conditioning. It's a fundamental psychological process, and just the sort that can create behaviours what operate automatically, or in spite of our consciously telling ourselves we should do otherwise. Like me checking my checking my email. Checking email is a behaviour that has variable interval reinforcement. Sometimes, but not everytime, the behaviour produces a reward. Everyone loves to get an email from a friend, or some good news, or even an amusing web link. Sometimes checking your email will get you one of these rewards. And because you can never tell which time you check will produce the reward, checking all the time is reinforced, even if most of the time checking your email turns out to have been pointless. You still check because you never know when the reward will come.

I have just proved to myself how automatic my email checking behaviour has become. I am writing this in a hotel room which doesn't have internet access. When sorting through my email (you don't need a connection to delete email you've replied to, or are never going to reply to) I still hit the 'check mail' button at the rest points of the read-consider-delete cycle I am performing. My reflective self knows that there is no internet connection, so there is no way in hell I'm going to have new email - but that knowledge doesn't filter down to the part of me hitting the 'check email' button. The habit, engrained in my mind by operant conditioning, is isolated from conscious knowledge, and in part from deliberate control; it can start without me thinking about it or even me wanting it to.

How can we design in solutions?

If operant condition is at the root of the problem, what's the solution? Over a hundred years of experimental psychology has provided a rigorous characterisation of behavioural conditioning, and of the process by which reinforced behaviours disappear - known as extinction. By looking at each stage of the process by which a behaviour becomes conditioned, we can throw up ideas for addressing the problem of 'unconditioning' them.

Weakening the action-reward link

If a behaviour isn't rewarded then it will gradually disappear. The problem is that we don't want to remove the reward (email), so we need, instead, to weaken the strength of the link between the action and the reward. A simple delay would do this - imagine a five minute delay between hitting the check email button and getting new email. A delay is doubly-effective because the longer the delay the more likely you are to have email and so the more consistent the reward will be - and hence the less strong its reinforcing effect (I can see this is action when I go away for a week and check my email when I come back. I might have hundreds of emails, but there's often nothing that seems very interesting. The combined effect just isn't as rewarding as the anticipation of getting one hundred single emails). In theory, the opposite end of this 'consistency strategy' would be to check email constantly. If you check your email every second then the consistency of the reward increases - you consistently get nothing! The action-habit might extinguish because the action is now rewarded so infrequently relative to the number of times it is performed. How to do this practically? Have your inbox constantly visable, so that there is no jump from wondering if you have new mail/seeing a 'new mail' alert and knowing that it isn't that important (although a down side is that if the new email is intrinsically distracting - such as a good joke, hot piece of gossip or invite out - it will now definitely interrupt when it arrives).

Removing the action all together, so that you cannot demand an email check, doesn't solve the problem - we just move the association from the action of hitting 'check mail' to the action of opening your email client to see if there is any mail there. One strategy is to wait 30 seconds from the appearance of the alert before checking to see what kind of mail has arrived - if you can internalise the delay.

Weaking the stimulus-action association

Automatic behaviours such as email are contingent on environmental triggers - they need the right circumstance to become active, since they aren't invoked by a smart, deliberate consicous process. So one way to decrease email checking behaviour might be to decrease the association between stimuli and the action. Moving or removing the 'check mail' button will stop it hijacking your action-stream when it is in your field of view. Similarly, so will stopping email alerts all together, but it leaves you with the problem of wondering what is going on while you're attention is on another app (are you missing out on some important information?). Changing the consistency of the environmental trigger could work. If the 'new mail' appeared slowly, so it didn't grab your attention, was in a different place each time, or was a different shape/colour/icon then your low-level monitoring systems wouldn't be able to form an association between its appearence and automatically triggering the 'check mail' interrupt habit. When you wanted to check your email you could scan for the icon - it could still be perfectly obvious, but the lack of consistent appearence would prevent it getting wired into a direct channel in your brain.

Social solutions

I don't think the solution is social - getting people to never email you urgent information wouldn't work. There would always be invites for coffee that someone didn't feel like knocking on your door or phoning you to make, but which they'd still like you to know about (and you'd still like to know, so you'll be checking your email for them). Plus there'll always be important information which isn't urgent, but which we're still going to want to know as soon as it is available (look at news - it rarely has any immediate consequence for our daily lives, but checking it is how many of us start the day).

Shifting the cost-benefit ratio

A classical approach to changing habits is to shift the cost-benefit pay-off. If checking or reading email is made harder to do, mayhbe we can increase the cost of the action and hence make the overall reward of getting email less. More difficult interfaces maybe? Several screens to click through to get the email? Passwords and 'are you sure' dialogue boxes? Punishment is the ultimate ingredient that you can add to alter the pay-off matrix. Except for those of us with immense self-disicipline ("if i check email in the next hour, no coffee at lunchtime") self-imposed punishment isn't an obvious strategy (and are those with self-discipline likely to have a problem with getting distracted anyway?).

[Although, on reflection, I don't think this question is as rhetorical as it sounds here. The problem is not with your ability to deliberately schedule and implement actions (including actions such as self-punishments), the problem is with automatically evoked actions (i.e. checking email) and then getting distracted by the consequences. These are two types of actions and it is entirely conceivable that they might be differently ammeanable to the deliberate control of our reflective selves]

Rewarding an alternative, incompatible behaviour

A final strategy, and one that is used in animal training to remove problem behaviours, is to reinforce an alternative, incompatible action. If you have a problem with your pet eagle landing on your head the most efficient way to stop it is to reward landing on a mat at your feet, rather than struggle with extringuishing head-landing. What this would mean in the context of email checking I will leave as an exercise to the reader.

Over to you

So, what I'm really interested in is in seeing what people think. If some of what I've said makes sense, what other ways are there to use it to make email less addictive? Or maybe I've got the solution completely wrong. Or the problem? I'd like to hear either way

Some things I read while writing this follow (thanks to Marc Baizman for the Katie Hafner article in the NYT)

Links:

Andrew Brown on why the internet-addiction will be like alcoholism for this generation of writers

'Husband training', New York Times article about using behaviourist principles in your marriage

February 10, 2005 New York Times, You There, at the Computer: Pay Attention by Katie Hafner (designing interfaces that work with our attention, rather than distract)

technorati tags:Email, Addiction, Technology, News+Feed

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USB AA Batteries

Moixa USBCELL AA Batteries Charge via USB

Rechargeable batteries that charge via USB? Sure, why not? The Moixa USBCELL batteries can be charged using a regular charging station as well as the USB port in your PC, laptop, Xbox 360, or USB car charger. At this point, a USB port is so readily found in your home or office it may be easier to charge it using that instead of lugging around a charger.

Pick up two for £12.99 ($24). – Jason Chen

Product Site [USB Cell via Far East Gizmos]

technorati tags:USB, Battery, AA

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Tanagrams For The Wall

Tangram bookcase

Cory Doctorow:The Tangram bookcase system comprises simple polyhedrons that you stick on the wall in any pattern you choose -- just like playing with blocks as a kid, only vertical, and you can stick your books in them when you're done.Link(via Cribcandy)

technorati tags:Tanagram, Bookcase, Wall, Book

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Wonderful Mario Flick

Mario Does Miserlou

The still at right is a cap from a Mario fan flash that protrays the ubiquitous plumber sucking cancer sticks and kicking ass to Dick Dale's Miserlou. It was sent in by the extremely enthusiastic tipper Barry, who says the "troll imps" might cry old meme.

But I've never seen it before, and a quick search for the creator's name yielded no related Kotaku archive.

I dig the art style in this quite a lot. It's sketchy and deranged without being overworked, overthought, or pretentious. It's just fun with a flipoff. Eliza Gauger

Mario Short Movie by Jeremie Duval [Extreme Funny Humor (worst site name ever?)]

technorati tags:Mario, Kick+Ass, Gun, Smoking

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Another Anime Music Video Mashup RACER!!!

World's greatest anime mashup

Cory Doctorow:Last week I saw the most incredible piece of mashup video I've ever seen -- "The Race," a mashup of over 100 anime clips. It's characters from over 100 cartoons participating in a rotoscoped "Whacky Race," while high-octane music jabbers in the background. The creators at Istiv Studios graciously granted me permission to post a copy of the video online. Now you can see it too.

After a few minutes of editing i realize that, just putting characters in a race, make them run from a point to an other, should be boring. So i had the idea to put in it some "Chibi Things"-like fighting. Now my race became a fighting race. A sort of "Wacky Race" with participants, tricking, cheating, to win the great prize. I was prepared to do a lot of rotoscoping, but at this point i never imagined how much of cutings i'm going to do, to complete this project. After 1 year of editing, and many stops caused by boringness, world of warcraft or my Ph D. rush ... i finally finish the vid.

Link

technorati tags:Anime, Video, Mashup, Race

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Climbing Iceberg

GIant inflatable climbing-iceberg for your pool

Cory Doctorow:This 14-foot-tall inflatable pool-iceberg will set you back about $9,000 (not including the pool and the back-yard), but it looks like it just might be worth it. it doubles as a climbing-wall, with ascents from easy to pro.Link(via Wonderland)

Update: Linoma Beach, halfway between Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska, sports one of these -- thanks, Willa!

technorati tags:Inflatable, Climbing, Iceberg, Pool

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Ahhh... Flash Harddrive

TDK Shows 32GB Flash Memory Drive for Notebooks

Samsung commanded our undivided attention when it announced its 32GB flash drive, and now TDK rolls out its interpretation of a 32GB NAND flash memory drive. This one hooks up to a standard IDE connector and fits easily into a notebook with room to spare; the drive's just 80% the size of a regular garden-variety 2.5-inch hard disk.

Better yet, it uses less power, even while moving data along at a snappy 33.3MB per second. We're happy to predict that it won't be long now until moving parts are completely eliminated inside laptops, desktops soon thereafter, and not a moment too soon. Bring it on. – Charlie White

TDK samples 32GB Flash disk [Reg Hardware, via CrunchGear]

technorati tags:Flash, Harddrive, Notebook, IDE

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Pretty damning stuff from Amazon.

Amazon Unbox to customers: Eat shit and die

Cory Doctorow:Amazon's new video-on-demand store may sound like a good idea, but once you take a look at the "agreement" you enter into by giving them your money, that changes. The Amazon terms-of-service are among the worst I've ever seen, a document through which you surrender your rights to privacy, integrity of your personal data, and control over your computer, in exchange for a chance to pay near-retail cost to watch Police Academy n-1. As Ben Franklin might have said: They that can give up general purpose computers for the sake of a little eye candy deserve neither computers nor eye candy.

I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon. A lot. I won't ever be buying one of these movies. Amazon has a great and well-deserved reputation for amazing customer service. The rare occasions where I've gotten a lemon or ordered the wrong product from Amazon, I've been treated like royalty, with Amazon making every possible accommodation to help me out. Their Look Inside feature and the used goods marketplaces are a tremendous boon to me.

The difference between Amazon and Amazon Unbox is like night and day. When you sign onto Unbox, you sign away all the amazing customer rights that Amazon itself is so careful to protect. Amazon Unbox takes away your privacy and every conceivable consumer right you have, and then tells you that the goods you buy from them don't belong to you, and they can take them away from you at any time, or change the deal you get from them without any appeal by you.

Amazon Unbox's user agreement isn't just galling for its evilness -- it's also commercially suicidal. No sane person will agree to this. Amazon Unbox user agreement is only a couple femtometers more dignified than being traded to another inmate for a couple packs of cigarettes.

Click below for a blow-by-blow analysis of the crummy deal you get from Amazon Unbox:

Section 3: "The Software may operate on your Authorized Device continuously for a variety of reasons, including the management of your Digital Content."

What this means is that there's no way to switch off the Amazon Unbox software. Once you install it, it does what other programs that remote-control your PC against you do: stays resident and refuses to budge. It might phone home, it might check and re-check your licenses. Who knows? This is a cop that you're installing on your machine, and you're the perp. Its job is to watch everything you do and keep you in line.

Section 3a: "The Software automatically checks for upgrades, but the Software will not automatically upgrade without your consent, except as provided herein. If you do not consent to an upgrade that we make subject to your consent, the Digital Content may no longer be viewed on your Authorized Device. You must keep the Software on your Authorized Device current in order to continue to use the Service. We may automatically upgrade the Software when we believe such upgrade is appropriate to comply with law, enforce this Agreement, or protect the rights, safety or property of Amazon, our content providers, users, or others."

The software you're agreeing to install today isn't the software you're going to have to run. Tomorrow, the day after, next week, and ten years from now, we plan to be forcing you into ever-tighter nooses. You don't have to install the updates, but if you don't, kiss the movies we sold you goodbye. We're going to update the software any time Hollywood tells us to, in order to protect their "safety." You might be used to disabling the DRM on your DVD player (Amazon even sells region-free players that come pre-hacked!), but forget about doing the same thing for your Amazon Unbox property: if someone figures out how to add a feature to your Unbox player, we will promptly confiscate that feature.

I once attended a DRM negotiation where an MPAA vice-president said, "Watching a show that's being received in one room while you're sitting in another room has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it." Siva Vaidhyanathan calls this the "if value, then right" theory -- if something has value, someone must have a right to sell it. So while you might be accustomed to extracting unexpected value from your old media -- ripping a CD to play it on your iPod, copying a cartoon and sticking it on your fridge, taking your books with you when you move overseas -- forget about it from now on.

Every conceivable source of value for DRM digital movies is now potentially for sale. I've heard proposals for "discounted" movies that you can't fast-forward ("discounted" in the sense that products you buy with a store loyalty card are "discounted" -- they raise the price unless you use the card). Prepare for the future where every button on your remote has a price-tag on it.

Section 3b: Amazon respects your privacy, and the Software will not access computer files or other information on your computer that are not used by or otherwise related to the Service. Among other things, the Software will provide Amazon with information related to the Digital Content on your Authorized Device and your use of it and information regarding your Authorized Device and its interaction with the Service. This information will enable Amazon to manage rights associated with the Digital Content, allow Amazon to help you use the Service more effectively and otherwise help Amazon to enhance and improve the Service. For example, the Software may provide Amazon with information about the Digital Content from the Service on your Authorized Device, whether it has been deleted and whether it has been viewed. The Software may also provide Amazon with information about your Authorized Device's operating system, software, amount of available disk space and Internet connectivity, such as whether your computer or other device is available online. This information will, among other things, help us deliver Digital Content to you more efficiently and effectively. The Software may also provide Amazon with information about the transfer of Digital Content to portable devices to help us ensure compliance with our rules concerning portable devices.

Amazon says it respects your privacy, but this clause tells the real story. Click "I agree" and you've just signed away permission for Amazon to wiretap all of your viewing habits, and to search your entire hard drive continuously and report back on all the software you've installed. The entertainment industry can produce a blacklist of legal software that it just doesn't care for -- say, software that lets you take screenshots, or screen-movies -- and refuse to allow your movies to run if you've installed it. In other words, this clause lets Hollywood specify how you must configure your PC.

Section 3c. Removal of Software. If you uninstall or otherwise remove the Software, your ability to view all Digital Content you have downloaded to the Authorized Device will immediately and automatically terminate and we reserve the right to delete all Digital Content from that Authorized Device without notice to you.

Surprise! If you delete our software, we delete your movies! Imagine if selling your old DVD player gave Jack Valenti permission to come over to your house and take away all your DVDs, too.

Section 4: The Service allows you to (i) pay a fee to view Digital Content for a limited specified period of time ("Rental Digital Content"), and (ii) pay a fee to view Digital Content a repeated number of times ("Purchased Digital Content"). As used herein, (i) "Residence" shall mean a private, residential dwelling unit or a private individual office unit, but excluding hotel rooms, motel rooms, hospital patient rooms, restaurants, bars, prisons, barracks, drilling rigs and all other structures, institutions or places of transient or work-related residence as well as places, areas, structures, rooms or offices which are common areas or open to the public or to occupiers of separate Residences or for which an admission fee is charged; (ii) "Permitted Non-Residential Use" shall mean the private viewing by one or more persons on a video monitor (desktop, television monitor, laptop, hand-held device or otherwise) in a Non-Residential Venue; provided, however, that any such viewing for which an access fee or other admission charge is imposed (other than any fee related only to access such Non-Residential Venue for other general purposes) or any such viewing that is on a monitor provided by such Non-Residential Venue (or by a third party under any agreement or arrangement with such Non-Residential Venue) for display of programming in a common area shall not constitute a "Permitted Non-Residential Use"; and (iii) "Non-Residential Venue" shall mean any place, area, structure or room other than a Residence.

Remember when you used to watch DVDs in the break-room at work, or in the common room at school? Remember when you used to bring movies for your kid to watch in hospital after she had her tonsils out? Forget about it. These movies can only be watched where and when we say. This might be "Purchased digital content," but don't ever mistake it for your property. Like feudal times: lords get to own property, and everything we serfs have belongs to the lord.

Section 4a. Rental Digital Content. Upon your payment of the rental fee, Amazon grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited right and license to view, use and privately display in your Residence or for Permitted Non-Residential Use, the Rental Digital Content purchased by you, by way of one (1) non-portable Authorized Device (e.g., a laptop or desktop computer) connected to the Service over the Internet as specified on the detail pages of the Rental Digital Content or other help or informational pages of the Service at the time of your payment. Unless otherwise designated on a detail page for Rental Digital Content, the license for Rental Digital Content is limited in its term and duration to thirty (30) days from your payment of the rental fee or twenty-four (24) hours from the time you start viewing the Rental Digital Content, whichever is sooner. The Software may automatically delete Rental Digital Content that is beyond its limited license term from your Authorized Device, and you consent to such automatic deletion. You may not copy or move Rental Digital Content from their originally stored location(s) on your Authorized Device. There can only be 1 (one) account for the Service on an Authorized Device.

So this is just like renting a movie from Blockbuster, except that while you can give your Blockbuster movies to your boyfriend to watch after you're done with them, these movies are only for you. Oh, and they cost more. Oh, and you have to pay for the bandwidth to transfer them to your home. Oh, and you have to wait for them to download. Oh, and you have to let them invade your privacy.

Section 4b. Purchased Digital Content. Upon your payment of the license fee, Amazon grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited right and license to retain a permanent copy of Purchased Digital Content and to view, use, and privately display the Purchased Digital Content in your Residence or for Permitted Non-Residential Use as specified on the detail pages of the Purchased Digital Content or other help or informational pages of the Service at the time of your payment. You may exercise these rights on up to 2 (two) non-portable Authorized Devices (e.g. laptop or desktop computers) and two (2) portable Authorized Devices as specifically designated by Amazon from time to time. There can only be 1 (one) account for the Service on an Authorized Device. You may make a back-up copy of Purchased Digital Content on removable media (e.g. recordable DVD) or on an external hard drive in the same format as the original downloaded file to play on your permitted Authorized Devices. Any back-up copy of the Purchased Digital Content on a DVD will not be playable on a traditional DVD player, but only on a permitted Authorized Device.

You can purchase our "digital content," but that doesn't mean you own it. You can't sell it, give it to your kid's school, or donate it to a homeless shelter. Also, you can only play it on two portable players, and only the models we approve. And if you buy an approved portable player, we can later nullify your investment by canceling that device's permission to play your movies.

Section 4c. Downloading and Risk of Loss. It is your responsibility to download Digital Content promptly after purchase. If you are unable to complete a download after having reviewed our online help resources, please contact Amazon customer service. You bear all risk of loss for completing the download of Digital Content after purchase, once we have made such content available to you (in Your Media Library or otherwise), and for any loss of Digital Content you have downloaded, including any loss due to a file corruption or a computer or hard drive crash. Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available in your Media Library for download to a second of your Authorized Devices (or re-download to the first Authorized Device you designate for the content), but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions and for other reasons and Amazon will not be liable to you if content becomes unavailable for further download.

Movies from Amazon don't come with the same rights as DVDs from Amazon -- DVDs can be sold, given away, and watched on any player. You don't have to give up your privacy or control over your property to watch a DVD.

If Amazon sells you a DVD but it never arrives in the mail, Amazon gives you a full refund. But if you buy an Unbox movie and your download fails, Amazon has no obligation to get you that flick. Naturally, replacing your Unbox movies costs nothing, while shipping you a replacement DVD costs quite a lot.

Section 5: From time to time, Amazon will automatically deliver promotional video content (e.g., movie trailers, celebrity interviews, reviews, etc.) to your Authorized Device. Amazon may automatically delete such promotional video content from your Authorized Device without notice to you.

We will put commercials on your computer without your permission. But you can't keep the good ones.

Section 6: Except for the rights explicitly granted to you in this Agreement, all right, title and interest in the Service and Digital Content are reserved and retained by Amazon and its licensors, and Amazon and its licensors do not transfer any right, title or interest in the Digital Content to you. You do not acquire any ownership rights in the Digital Content as a result of downloading Digital Content.

We call it "purchased content," but you don't own it.

Section 7: The Services are available only to customers located in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, you may not use the Services and you may not transfer Digital Content outside the United States. As used herein, "United States" refers to the 48 contiguous United States, the District of Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii.

If you move, or if you travel, we'll take your movies away.

Section 8: 8. All rentals and sales of Digital Content are final when you click the "Buy Now" button.

It's a "Sale" but you haven't bought it -- you've only licensed it.

Section 9a: a. If you violate any of the terms or conditions of this Agreement or otherwise abuse the Service, your license to Rental Digital Content and Purchased Digital Content will immediately terminate and Amazon may, in its discretion, immediately revoke your access to the Service without notice to you and without refund of any fees. In such event, you must delete all copies of Digital Content that you have downloaded, and Amazon shall have the right to automatically delete all Digital Content on your Authorized Device without notice to you.

If we think you've done something naughty, we can take away all the movies you've bought, without appeal. Better not do anything we think is naughty. What do we consider naughty? We're not telling.

Section c. If Amazon changes any part of the Service or modifies license terms applicable to Rental Digital Content or Purchased Digital Content, which it may do in its sole discretion, you acknowledge that you may not be able to access, view, or use Digital Content in the same manner as prior to such changes, and you agree that Amazon shall have no liability to you in such case.

We can change the terms of this deal at any time. Today you can play it on two portable players -- maybe it'll be zero tomorrow. Today you can only watch these movies in the US, tomorrow, maybe only west of the Mississippi.

Section d: Amazon reserves the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the service at any time without notice to you, and Amazon will not be liable to you should it exercise such rights.

Even if you're not doing something naughty, we can take away the movies we "sold" you.Link(Thanks, Xeni!)

technorati tags:Amazon, Unbox, User+Agreement, Ridiculous

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Magnetic Bike Lights

Reelight: The Motion-Powered Bike Light

Giving bikers even more protection against being hit by cars, the Electrodynamic Bike Light attaches to both wheels and shines forward and backwards to improve visibility at night. Instead of being powered by batteries or friction, like rim mounted dynamos, these use electromagnetic induction. For those who skipped physics class, that means two magnets, in this case neodynium magnets, pass by each other as the wheels spin, which generates current, which then powers the lights.

The only downside is that there's no light when you're not moving, so be careful at those traffic lights. Available now for €18 ($22) for one or €34 ($43) for a pair. Ships out of Copenhagen. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Reelight via Treehugger]

technorati tags:Reelight, Bike, Light, Magnetic

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When I build a house...

CEDIA 2006: First Look at Monster's Einstein Intelligent Home Control System

I got a chance to sneak into a custom installer-only demo that was showing off Monster's very hush-hush Einstein home control system. This system supposedly makes up the "home of the future." It's pretty fancy, but we'll have to wait and see how futuristic it really is. The system is made up of six creatively named components. Jump to see the low-down.

Pardon the low-quality picture above, they wouldn't let me get any closer (I think because they were non-functional units, disguised as functional units).

Nucleus: This is essentially was it sounds like. The Nucleus is the brain center of the entire Einstein system. It is where you set up programming, communication and other overall aspects of the Einstein system. It can also be controlled by a variety of devices, including Bluetooth-enabled cellphones and VoIP devices. It has dual 80 GB hard drives running RAID.

Photon: This is a 200-disc changer. One of the highlights about this unit is the ability to play two separate DVDs at once, on different displays around the house. I'll get to how multiple displays are used in a bit. The Nucleus can have up to five Photons connected, therefore 1,000 DVDs stored and up to 10 simultaneous streams of movies (given that your network can handle that).

Neutron: This is the storage unit. It can store up to 7.5 TB of data. Allows ripping of music CDs to the unit, no DVDs, though.

Astro: The Astro is a SIRIUS satellite radio tuner capable of 3-zone. Meaning it can stream three separate stations in different rooms, for example. This is the lone unit featured that can function stand-alone.

Electron: Remember how I mentioned streaming DVD's to multiple TVs. The Electron is what makes this happen. The Electron is an individual unit that will go with every TV/home theatre in your house. It connects to the Einstein system via a cat6 network and allows you to use all functions of the entire Einstein system anywhere in the home.

Tron: This is the remote control that controls the entire system. Like mentioned above, Bluetooth phones, Wi-Fi devices, and VoIP devices can do some controls, but Tron can do everything. It is fairly large—.maybe six-inches diagonal and the Monster folks seemed to believe this is a remote that will travel around with you from room to room. It's a little too big for that.

More details on this system, including true, functional units will be on display at CES and we will be there to give you the scoop. The hard launch will be in March of 2007 for custom installers only with the Einstein system moving into a more consumer electronics market a few months after. The estimated price for this entire system, which includes one of every product mentioned above, is $8,000, which isn't that bad compared to some of the competitors.

technorati tags:Monster, Einstein, Intelligent, Home, Control System

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You Tube video test

Billiard and domino

Merlin has sent this awesome video, we are appreciated. Don’t forget to check these amazing stuff also.

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Mmmm... Japanese Fetish Club.

Tokyo's fetish-clubs - photo-essay

Cory Doctorow:Radar has posted a photo-essay on the fetish-clubs of Tokyo's red-light district, where you can hire out fantasy rooms inhabited by brides, unsuspecting subway riders, anime characters who jump on the bed and giggle, Nascar babes, or whatever tickles your fancy.Mildly NSFW Link(Thanks, Mario!)

Update: Xeni points out that these photos are excerpted from a forthcoming book, Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs, by photographer Joan Sinclair, which comes in a PVC slipcase.

technorati tags:Japan, Sex, Fetish

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Is it Graffiti?

Man washes of surfaces to create writing. Cleaning up the city one word at a time.

Reverse graffiti confounds authorites

Mark Frauenfelder: Paul "Moose" Curtis creates his art by erasing dirt from public surfaces.

British authorities aren’t sure what to make of the artist who is creating graffiti by cleaning the grime of urban life. The Leeds City Council has been considering what to do with Moose. "I’m waiting for the kind of Monty Python court case where exhibit A is a pot of cleaning fluid and exhibit B is a pair of my old socks," he jokes.

Link

technorati tags:graffiti, art, clean

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I Started This Today.

They even have a linux version of the 'game'. It's pretty difficult and I'll have to experiment with it at home.

Fight to the death with AI robots

NERO is an award-winning futuristic computer game where the player trains squadrons of android soldiers, to be released and pitted against soldiers trained by another player.

Crucially, the android soliders learn using a neural network that adapts via a genetic algorithm.

For the NERO project we are using a specific neuroevolutionary algorithm called NEAT, Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Topologies. Unlike most neuroevolutionary algorithms, NEAT starts with an artificial neural network of minimal connectivity and adds complexity only when it helps solve a problem. This helps ensure that the algorithm does not produce unnecessarily complex solutions.

In NERO we are introducing a new real-time variant of NEAT, called rtNEAT, in which a small population evolves while you watch. (Most genetic algorithms use generation-based off-line processing, and only provide a result at the end of some pre-specified amount of training.)

The neural network is based on published research and the documentation page contains a raft of information on game play and the science behind the software.

There's screenshots and video of the game in action, and it's free to download.

Link to website for NERO.

technorati tags:NERO, neural+network, robot, gaming

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I just really like the pic.

The news article is nice, but the picture of Bush. That is wonderful.

A Few Segways Go Haywire, All Are Recalled

Segways are just for cops and dorks, and now even they won't be riding them for a while because all 23,500 of the two-wheeled personal transporters have been recalled. A software problem was discovered that could cause a Segway to suddenly reverse direction, dumping the dorks on their duffs.

Speaking of dorks, take a look at that pic there, why, it's our beloved president taking a spill on a Segway. Maybe the thing just has good logic in its electronic brain, which will now be assimilated. Back to the hive, Segways. Mommie's calling. – Charlie White

Consumer Product Safety Commission Recall [CPSC, via Jalopnik]

technorati tags:Bush, Segway

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