Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Tron Legacy

New bilboard featuring Olivia Wilde


Tron Legacy opens December 17.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Você sabia que a Estação Espacial Internacional é visível a olho nu?

Através do site você pode selecionar a sua cidade que o site te dá como resultado os próximos dias e horários que a ISS pode ser vista a olho nu.

E para ser mais exato, o resultado fornece também a duração da visibilidade e as direçôes no céu com exatidão, como elevação máxima em graus. Por exemplo, escolhendo Campinas, temos o seguinte resultado:






No mesmo site, é possível usar um applet que calcula em tempo real o trajeto do satélite. Muito interessante!

Apesar das poucas durações, acredito que não custa nada tentar.

Nunca tinha ouvido falar que era possível avistar satélites artificiais e acho que muita gente também não, descobri essa informação por acaso.

Deve valer a pena!

Uma foto de exemplo da visibilidade tirada da wikipedia:

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

In the end, we´ll all want to be Star Children

The extraterrestrial life that we're looking for might be artificial intelligence


That´s what this article from io9.com says.

Excerpt:

"SETI experts are rethinking what sort of life we might expect to find out there. SETI astronomer Seth Shostak thinks it's entirely likely that it won't be biological aliens we make contact with, but their artificially intelligent successors."

Well, after giving much thought on the matter (not TOO much), my thinking got me back to 1969, or was it 2001? More specifically, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

If you haven´t watched it yet, GO NOW.

If SETI experts are right, we might make contact with this:


Yes, the monolith.

And what exactly is the monolith?, you might ask.

Well, let me explain, in a few words.

The monolith is a super computer devised by an alien race to upload their consciousnesses into it, allowing them for space travel and to watch and cause the evolution of another species they might encounter in space.

So, SETI scientists are right and we make contact with something resembling a monolith - what would happen?

Still following 2001, we would become Star Children:





The next step in the evolution of man.

What do YOU think?

Friday, August 20, 2010

Ghost in the Shell Review

Ghost in the Shell is one of the landmarks of the cyberpunk genre. Released in 1995 simultaneously in Japan, Britain and United States, it didnt fare well at first, only becoming a hit when it was released on video.

Right along Blade Runner (movie) and Neuromancer (book), GitS is one of the three crown jewels of the cyberpunk genre - it has all the elements a good CP story must have in order to, at least, be successful:

- a kickass hero, in this case, heroine;

- realistic near future;

- philosophy on what means to be human and the blurry line between human and machine.

On top of that, GitS offers truly outstanding animation, even 15 years after its release. Animation that pushes the boundaries and breaks free of its anime conventions, something that happened some years before with Akira and some years later with Innocence: Ghost in the Shell.

The movie follows Major Motoko Kusanagi and Section 9 operactives on the run for the hacker known only as Puppet Master.

What ensue is a plot, character driven movie with a few but breath taking action scenes in between and political intrigue to boost.

Also, it is philosofically heavy themed, e.g, what means to be human, what makes us human, self-aware Artifical Intelligence and many more questions. GitS is handful on questioning the human nature and man-machine interface but it does not provide answers. Even now, fifteen years later after its release, we do not have the answers for these questions. It is up to the viewer´s personnal interpretion.

Mamoru Oshii is known for a deliberate, slow moving pace and Ghost in the Shell is a prime example of his style.

Running at 01 hour and 25 minutes, GitS is intercut with scenes not relating directly to the plot, but with Kenji Kawai´s masterful score, it helps to put the audience in the mood and feel Motoko´s displacement and questioning.

At least two scenes have no dialogue and are only moved by Kawai´s music; another moves the plot along with no dialogue as well, showing only the characters action throughout.

Ghost in the Shell is a classic, an influencial masterpiece for many filmmakers across the globe, like the Wachowski Brothers and The Matrix, a influence it cannot be denied, whether is on anime or live action field.

A landmark that 15 years later still holds up.

Rating: 10 out of 10.

Major Motoko Kusanagi



Diving



Technology abound



Dolls - a major theme



The Puppet Master



Self-aware A.I



Another doll



The now



Amazon.com has the best GitS deal out there, check it out:

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Internet Map

I believe this was done a few years ago.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Deus Ex 3 Gameplay

First video showing DE3 gameplay



My notebook just got a headache running this video, cant even imagine running the game.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Realidade aumentada

O que é

É a realidade física aumentada, reforçada em tempo real por elementos virtuais gerados por computador.

Informações artificiais do mundo real são armazenadas em dispositivos, como um celular ou um display, e são projetadas como uma camada em relação ao mundo físico.

Head Mounted Display:



As implicações da RA no mundo atual

Existem softwares como o Wikitude para smartphones que pode ser usado como guia de viagem - o wikitude disponibiliza informações dos lugares e ambientes, pontos de interesse, restaurantes, museus e etc:



Wikitude em funcionamento



Projetos de urbanização podem ser pré-visualizados em 3D tempo real, como por exemplo um modelo para melhorias em sistemas de transporte.

Compras podem ser feitas com a ajuda da RA: o consumidor usa o seu smartphone e consegue acessar em uma base dados uma comparação de preços do produto em relação a outras lojas e até mesmo a opinião de outros sobre o produto, ajudando a decidir em uma possível escolha.
Até já existem brinquedos que, com a ajuda de uma webcam, se transformam em peças interativas, proporcionando uma interação totalmente imersiva.


As possibilidades são muitas.
A realidade aumentada já é realidade.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Google - Fuck You

Yes, my AdSense account was just disabled.

So, Google, fuck you hard in the ass.

Here´s the email they just sent me:

"Hello,

After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account
poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a
responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due
to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense
account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will
both be fully refunded to the affected advertisers.


What about MY fucking refund? I had money there that i could use, thanks very fucking much!

Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the
effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the
advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that
this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and
cooperation."

So, fuck you. Hard.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Pattern Recognition

Cayce Pollard is a cool hunter hired to find the responsible on disseminating movie clips on the internet.

The book then follows Cayce search.

And we follow Cayce along.

And what follows is Gibson´s mastery on setting the characters and ambience right moods. You can almost feel as if you are on London, Tokyo or Moscow, the books main sites.

Gibson surely evolved his writing, too, which many may say is too distracting, but is only a matter of getting used to and is a device for him to getting the moods in his readers.

If you want something like Neuromancer or his other cyberpunk books, forget it. Pattern Recognition is set in the modern, present world, a Gibson first, and in the modern world, all too familiar, is where Gibson truly shines.

One narrative only, and not interwoven ones like Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, is a plus and help things getting not too distractive.

And once again Gibson predicts the future. Pattern Recognition was published in 2003 and in 2006 we had the lonelygirl15 phenomenon; the way people in the book discuss and analyze to exhaustion the various slices of footage and how we participate in social networks, message boards. It´s all in PR.

You might even feel CayceP´s jet leg. I did.

PR covers around the globe

Thought-controlled prosthetic limb system

Thought-controlled prosthetic limb system to be tested on human subjects

But DARPA?

"APL scientists and engineers developed the underlying technology under DARPA's Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program."

Always affraid when defense or military agencies are somehow involved in this kind of thing.

Concept art for Neuromancer

Just found this concept art for the Neuromancer movie that was supposed to be directed by Joseph Kahn, as was twitted by Mr. Kahn himself a few hours ago.



Splice director Vincent Natali took the reigns on the adaptation on the classic and genre defining novel.

Thank God.

Gagdet alergy??

Taken from wired.com

"Altough no medical authority has recgonized this affliction, symptoms may include: tinnitus, memory lapse, or irregular heartbeat after prolonged exposure to your computer monitor? Does proximity to a Wi-Fi network give you nausea, headaches, or fainting spells.

James Rubin, a psychiatry research fellow at London’s King’s College, attributes EHS - Electromagnetic hypersensitivity - to the “nocebo effect”: “You expect something to cause symptoms, get anxious about it, and start looking out for those symptoms in your own body,” he says. Sure enough, you sometimes find them."

Modern day anxiety, i would say.

Even tough i stay around a Wi-Fi network all day, i surely do avoid the IPhone like the plague!

Monday, August 9, 2010

TorrentReactor buys Russian Town

Russian based torrent site Torrentreactor has bought some land of their own, without any help or funding from the outside. TorrentReactor founder Alex informed TorrentFreak about the peculiar move which puts the torrent site on the map in rural Russia.

The town of Gar, founded in 1958 by a religious group connected to the Russian Orthodox Church, was bought for 4.5 million rubles ($148,000 or 115,000Eur). Gar is located in the center of Russia and has only 214 inhabitants who make a living from selling home-grown vegetables in a nearby town.

With the financial injection from TorrentReactor the people of Gar (now the people of TorrentReactor) will be able to get connected to the Internet. Right now, there are only three computers available in the entire town, and just one is connected to the Internet via a dial-up connection.

“Most of it will be split among villagers and the rest will be used to re-equip the local school, repair roads, purchase agricultural equipment and machinery. Also torrentreactor.net company decided to pay for broadband Internet connection in the settlement which will result in about 900,000 rubles ($30,000) because there are no networks nearby,” TorrentReactor says.

Although some might see it as a vanity buy, or an overly expensive marketing campaign, the TorrentReactor team stresses that the humanitarian motive came first.

Hmmm humanitarian, they say.

Also:

Earlier this year their partner site shipped condoms to the RIAA, MPAA and various other anti-piracy outfits, informing them that their bullying tactics are not appreciated.

Although the condom action was verified and legit, TorrentReactor’s latest announcement has not yet been officially confirmed by Russian authorities.

No official announcement so far?

Probably a stunt move on their part, since no one confirmed - or denied - this story.

Torrentreactor, formerly Gar

Use Web for Education

"Bill Gates attended the Techonomy conference earlier this week, and had quite a bold statement to make about the future of education. He believes the Web is where people will be learning within a few years, not colleges and university. During his chat, he said, 'Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.'" Of course, the efficacy of online learning is still in question; some studies have shown a measurable benefit to being physically present in a classroom. Still, online education can clearly reach a much wider range of students. Reader nbauman sent in a related story about MIT's OpenCourseWare, which is finding success in unexpected ways: "50% of visitors self-identified as independent learners unaffiliated with a university." The article also mentions a situation in which a pair of Haitian natives used OCW to get the electrical engineering knowledge they needed to build solar-powered lights that have been deployed in many remote towns and villages.

I know a couple of people that attended online university and are being successfully career-wise.
So, why not?

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Deus EX 3: Human Evolution

Here´s a batch of pictures from the third entry in the Deus Ex series, Human Evolution, slated for february 2011 release date.

Human Evolution will take place in 2027, 25 before the first Deus Ex.

Hyper-developed Detroit - one of the main settings:



Our hero - biomechanically augmentated:



Detroit street - shades of Akira, Blade Runner, Fear Effect, Ghost in the Shell, Shibuya.



Clearly a conceptual design - for a Tachikoma?

Terry Childs Case Verdict

Source:

Terry Childs Verdict

How can they give admin powers of a single city network to a SINGLE person?
If this is common practice, people seem to be not aware of their powers, just read the article and the consequences are clear.
Terry did not want to give the passwords as some third party was involved, but was not some other way to prevent this from happening?
I can only see the outcome of this case on not only his company but on companies across the globe. Way to go, Terry Childs.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Google and Verizon vs Net Neutrality

Full report on:

http://gizmodo.com/5605310/google-just-killed-net-neutrality

Quote:
"It's notable that the Google denial says very specifically that Google has not had discussions about paying for carriage of Google and YouTube. But that doesn't mean they haven't spoken with Verizon about creating a framework that would undermine net neutrality generally."

Here´s hoping this turns out to be false but after the NYTimes first reporting and the Comcast vs FCC case (which Comcast won), i am affraid. Affraid this might get under the slips and not receive world wide attention, for crying out loud.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Google Wave Dead

I remember a few months ago, back in my former work-place, everyone talking about it. And by everyone, i mean three people, tops.
Sometime later, no one ever talked about it again.
Now, i still couldn´t care less.

Source: Google Wave Dead

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Ghost in the Shell

Not the review i´ve been meaning to write for well, almost a month now, but for something completely different!
Or is it unintentionally funny?