A lot of the weirdness of contemporary life can be laid at the cyborgian feet of media technology. We don't just live in a world of the talking, life-like facsimiles of Dan Rather and Bill Clinton and Tom Cruise--a veritable Hades of talking ghosts. No, our lives are set within a history of fake-live personas. That is, we live in a world where television and film aren't just real; they're even dated. For most of human history, the idea of literally listening to dead people, with them visibly standing right there, in front of you, was the stuff of magic: a sacred, or at least ethereal, experience. Now, it's still magic, but our all-consuming drive for technology has multiplied the number of talking ghosts so far that they now outnumber the living. Our ghosts are common and banal.
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
'Found' Poem from the Web
Submitted by Judith Cosby, discovered on June 23rd, in the A.M.
ENENEWS
Energy News
news item:
Tsunami shoes...Canadian island
ENENEWS
Energy News
news item:
Tsunami shoes...Canadian island
(Haida Gwaii)
COMMENTS:
Tacomagroove
I've sent samples to a lab.
Soon we will have proof of the derbies showing levels of radioactive contamination.
Flapdoodle
Is it supposed to read "debris"?
Richard Given time, derbies too, sure.
Tacomagroove I hate iPhone's auto-correct.
Flapdoodle
I can understand your frustration. I designed a time travel app for the iPhone--
and because of auto-correct it only lets you travel into the furniture!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Whichbook.net - An amazing tool for booklover's who don't know what to read next
Too cool for school, bookhounds! Check this baby out: http://whichbook.net/
Monday, March 12, 2012
Book News Courtesy of Sheppard's Confidential
We have publishers withdrawing e-books from Amazon, and there's an internecine row where author Seth Godin‘s new book Stop Selling Dreams is not available in the iBookstore because the bibliography contains links to books on Amazon. Read more. There have also been other examples leading up to last week's news.
This week, we learn that card companies and banks are putting pressure on PayPal - widely used by our readers - to cease allowing transactions by publishers when the book being sold contains 'erotic' material. These sales are quite legal even if many do not want to read them. PayPal is contesting the issue but the move is a 'slippery slope' towards widespread censorship.
But the over-riding issue is that we are witnessing, for whatever reasons, pan-national companies attempting to dictate their own rules over national laws. Should we be fearing these companies more than nation states? What can national governments do to combat this trend?
The news that Firefox has developed a programme to expose the 'watchers' - businesses and websites that send cookies to your PC when you access their websites is good news. They may be harmless but the user should have the right to see when they are present. If it is illegal for a commercial company to listen in on your private telephone conversation, or for someone to open another person's mail, surely such practices on the Internet should come under the same laws?
_____________
NEWS |
International: PayPal and Censorship
News of another 'big-brother' incident has come to our attention. It is certainly troubling sellers and the central companies involved - PayPal and Smashwords [a USA-based company which specialises in selling e-publications for publishers). But it is not PayPal that is driving this censorship - it is a group of banks and credit card companies which are placing pressure on PayPal.
Two weeks ago, PayPal contacted Smashwords and gave the company a surprise ultimatum: Remove all titles containing bestiality, rape or incest, otherwise the company's PayPal account would be deactivated. Discussions have taken place since this was instruction was issued and at the moment, a reprieve has been give until a suitable solution can be reached.
As Smashwords see the problem - 'PayPal is asking us to censor legal fiction. Regardless of how one views topics of rape, bestiality and incest, these topics are pervasive in mainstream fiction. We believe this crackdown is really targeting erotica writers. This is unfair, and it marks a slippery slope. We don't want credit card companies or financial institutions telling our authors what they can write and what readers can read. Fiction is fantasy. It's not real. It's legal.' Also read
News of another 'big-brother' incident has come to our attention. It is certainly troubling sellers and the central companies involved - PayPal and Smashwords [a USA-based company which specialises in selling e-publications for publishers). But it is not PayPal that is driving this censorship - it is a group of banks and credit card companies which are placing pressure on PayPal.
Two weeks ago, PayPal contacted Smashwords and gave the company a surprise ultimatum: Remove all titles containing bestiality, rape or incest, otherwise the company's PayPal account would be deactivated. Discussions have taken place since this was instruction was issued and at the moment, a reprieve has been give until a suitable solution can be reached.
As Smashwords see the problem - 'PayPal is asking us to censor legal fiction. Regardless of how one views topics of rape, bestiality and incest, these topics are pervasive in mainstream fiction. We believe this crackdown is really targeting erotica writers. This is unfair, and it marks a slippery slope. We don't want credit card companies or financial institutions telling our authors what they can write and what readers can read. Fiction is fantasy. It's not real. It's legal.' Also read
International: Firefox outs the watchers
Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has unveiled a new add-on for the popular web browser that gives web users an instant view of which companies are 'watching' them as they browse. The news broke soon after Google pushed ahead with its controversial new privacy policy, which we reported on last week.
The add-on, called Collusion, is likely to be warmly welcomed by users everywhere. As anyone knows who owns and runs anti-malware programmes there are always numerous hidden links left on your PC after visiting websites most of which are harmless. Read more
[Harmless they may be, but many Internet users object to be monitored and watched. The Internet has so much to offer yet it is also allowing organisations and individuals to eavesdrop and spy on unsuspecting citizens. Firefox's new add-on could be a very useful tool to help block unsolicited communications. Do you have a view or an opinion? Ed.]
Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has unveiled a new add-on for the popular web browser that gives web users an instant view of which companies are 'watching' them as they browse. The news broke soon after Google pushed ahead with its controversial new privacy policy, which we reported on last week.
The add-on, called Collusion, is likely to be warmly welcomed by users everywhere. As anyone knows who owns and runs anti-malware programmes there are always numerous hidden links left on your PC after visiting websites most of which are harmless. Read more
[Harmless they may be, but many Internet users object to be monitored and watched. The Internet has so much to offer yet it is also allowing organisations and individuals to eavesdrop and spy on unsuspecting citizens. Firefox's new add-on could be a very useful tool to help block unsolicited communications. Do you have a view or an opinion? Ed.]
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Is the Personal Library Doomed?
This editor/bookseller/reader/writer doesn't think so. Good article, go to the link 'cause the comments are worth a gander as well, thanks PW:
Is the Personal Library Doomed?
by Elizabeth Bluemle
My nephews are both avid readers, a happy coincidence that brings their book aunties much joy. Their house in Burlington is rich in bookcases. They spend summers at the lake, where more bookcases sport ragged, well-loved mysteries and fantasies, Mythbusters and Star Wars books, copies of comics collections like The Order of the Stick, Calvin and Hobbes, all of the Harry Potters. You know, summer staples. When their friends come over, books are readily shared and shown off, shelves pored over, volumes handed between kids like candy bars. Recently, I was lounging on the dock near my nephew Jake and his friend Riley, who were both reading ARCs I’d brought (Super Diaper Baby 2 andSquish). Utterly lost in the companionable habit of reading, they finished their books at exactly the same time and, without a word between them, exchanged books and started reading once again. It was a classic moment and one that made me think, yet again, about the way the reading experience changes with Kindles and Nooks and iPads.
Children, both experienced bookavores and those just learning to read, are SO PROUD of their libraries. “Want to see my books?” they exclaim, leading you by the hand over to the shelves to marvel, especially proud of the sheer number of volumes they have read. There’s something about the physical mounting up of books, the scale of stacks, that cannot be replicated with a gadget. And the thickness of books! Everyone who knows kids knows how Extremely Important a book’s length is, how proud kids are of having waded successfully through all the pages of Inkheart or Harry Potter V.Waving around a Kindle saying, “Look at all the books I’ve … downloaded!” just doesn’t have the same impact as twelve feet of worn spines and pages softened by lingering fingers.
The same is true for adults. When new romances are blooming, bookavores spend a lot of time surreptitiously checking out their dates’ bookcases (and, let’s face it, assessing at least their literary compatibility). At dinner parties among new acquaintances, conversations are often sparked by titles—intriguing or familiar—spotted on nearby shelves. It’s the best kind of snooping, poking around other people’s libraries. Our book choices are intimate, revealing, our discoveries meaningful and serendipitous.
Looking over someone’s Kindle contents tells me something, but not much. Was this title even read? Has it been re-read, loved, slept with? Read in the bath and therefore slightly waterlogged? Where are the dog-eared pages, the satisfying kinesthetic memory inherent in heft, shape, size? And don’t forget about bookmarks: those tell their own stories. In my own books, I re-discover bookmarks from long-defunct bookshops I loved, receipts and restaurant napkins I used to mark my place that now serve as travel diary entries, photos and other random flat paper items I grabbed to use as placeholders and then left there, giving me sudden bright glimpses of my own forgotten past. And there are items in the pages of books that were left there by other readers, little messages in bottles from across mysterious seas. My sister gave me a beautiful old King James Bible, an ornate leather-bound version from the 1800s, with illustration plates protected by onion skin. Pressed into the heart of the book, between onion skin and paper, was a four-leaf clover. I love this so much I can hardly stand it. A person of faith, perhaps, who owned this book before me, hedged his or her bets with a little piece of pagan luck! Show me an e-reader that can provide that kind of wacky archaeology.
The convenience of e-readers is handy, but libraries are treasure troves. I have so many friends and acquaintances who have shifted the bulk of their book buying to e-readers that I am starting to think about more than the usual anxiety about the future of publishing and bookselling. Book fanatics will always be here, and our libraries will survive. But I am starting to wonder whether the casual personal library is in danger.
This idea of the empty library haunted me enough that I asked phenom New Yorker cartoonist and children’s book illustrator (and Vermont neighbor) Harry Bliss if he’d like to draw it up. This is what I sent him:
“A guy leading a tour of his home to guests in a room full of emptied built-in bookshelves. On the tabletop of one of the bookcases is a stand with a Kindle on it. Guy is gesturing proudly toward Kindle. Caption: And THIS is my library.
Sad. True. Sob.”
Here’s what he sent back (with a note saying, “The Kindle or ipad, I thought was too difficult to read, so I made it a laptop….“)
And that vision, people, is my nightmare.
By the way, how amazingly, unutterably COOL is it to have talented artist pals who can actually take an idea and DRAW it up?! For those of us without the art gene, pretty darned cool. And, um, Harry BLISS. Whee! (Public service announcement: If you don’t already subscribe to his daily cartoons, which are hilarious, you can do so on his website.)
So, what do you think? Is the casual personal library doomed? And what impact will that have on kids, not to mention our ability to judge potential mates? Inquiring minds (don’t) want to know….
Is the Personal Library Doomed?
by Elizabeth Bluemle
My nephews are both avid readers, a happy coincidence that brings their book aunties much joy. Their house in Burlington is rich in bookcases. They spend summers at the lake, where more bookcases sport ragged, well-loved mysteries and fantasies, Mythbusters and Star Wars books, copies of comics collections like The Order of the Stick, Calvin and Hobbes, all of the Harry Potters. You know, summer staples. When their friends come over, books are readily shared and shown off, shelves pored over, volumes handed between kids like candy bars. Recently, I was lounging on the dock near my nephew Jake and his friend Riley, who were both reading ARCs I’d brought (Super Diaper Baby 2 andSquish). Utterly lost in the companionable habit of reading, they finished their books at exactly the same time and, without a word between them, exchanged books and started reading once again. It was a classic moment and one that made me think, yet again, about the way the reading experience changes with Kindles and Nooks and iPads.
Jake, Harry Potter, and a cozy blanket: perfect afternoon.
The same is true for adults. When new romances are blooming, bookavores spend a lot of time surreptitiously checking out their dates’ bookcases (and, let’s face it, assessing at least their literary compatibility). At dinner parties among new acquaintances, conversations are often sparked by titles—intriguing or familiar—spotted on nearby shelves. It’s the best kind of snooping, poking around other people’s libraries. Our book choices are intimate, revealing, our discoveries meaningful and serendipitous.
Looking over someone’s Kindle contents tells me something, but not much. Was this title even read? Has it been re-read, loved, slept with? Read in the bath and therefore slightly waterlogged? Where are the dog-eared pages, the satisfying kinesthetic memory inherent in heft, shape, size? And don’t forget about bookmarks: those tell their own stories. In my own books, I re-discover bookmarks from long-defunct bookshops I loved, receipts and restaurant napkins I used to mark my place that now serve as travel diary entries, photos and other random flat paper items I grabbed to use as placeholders and then left there, giving me sudden bright glimpses of my own forgotten past. And there are items in the pages of books that were left there by other readers, little messages in bottles from across mysterious seas. My sister gave me a beautiful old King James Bible, an ornate leather-bound version from the 1800s, with illustration plates protected by onion skin. Pressed into the heart of the book, between onion skin and paper, was a four-leaf clover. I love this so much I can hardly stand it. A person of faith, perhaps, who owned this book before me, hedged his or her bets with a little piece of pagan luck! Show me an e-reader that can provide that kind of wacky archaeology.
The convenience of e-readers is handy, but libraries are treasure troves. I have so many friends and acquaintances who have shifted the bulk of their book buying to e-readers that I am starting to think about more than the usual anxiety about the future of publishing and bookselling. Book fanatics will always be here, and our libraries will survive. But I am starting to wonder whether the casual personal library is in danger.
This idea of the empty library haunted me enough that I asked phenom New Yorker cartoonist and children’s book illustrator (and Vermont neighbor) Harry Bliss if he’d like to draw it up. This is what I sent him:
“A guy leading a tour of his home to guests in a room full of emptied built-in bookshelves. On the tabletop of one of the bookcases is a stand with a Kindle on it. Guy is gesturing proudly toward Kindle. Caption: And THIS is my library.
Sad. True. Sob.”
Here’s what he sent back (with a note saying, “The Kindle or ipad, I thought was too difficult to read, so I made it a laptop….“)
And that vision, people, is my nightmare.
By the way, how amazingly, unutterably COOL is it to have talented artist pals who can actually take an idea and DRAW it up?! For those of us without the art gene, pretty darned cool. And, um, Harry BLISS. Whee! (Public service announcement: If you don’t already subscribe to his daily cartoons, which are hilarious, you can do so on his website.)
So, what do you think? Is the casual personal library doomed? And what impact will that have on kids, not to mention our ability to judge potential mates? Inquiring minds (don’t) want to know….
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Libraries in crisis and possible related lawsuit
The American Library Association is urging Random House Inc. to reconsider increasing the price of e-books for library wholesalers.Random House, the country's largest trade publisher, has informed libraries that wholesale charges for e-books would rise by more than 20 percent for new adult releases and more than double for new children's books. Random House noted that e-books can be "repeatedly circulated without limitation," unlike paper books, which eventually become worn or damaged. It also asked that libraries provide more information about patrons' "borrowing patterns."
"Currently absent such information in quantity, it is important to reiterate that our guiding principles in setting these new e-prices are the unrestricted and perpetual availability of our complete frontlist and backlist of Random House, Inc. titles under a model of one-copy, one user," according to a statement issued Friday by Random House.
In related news, the Justice Department has warned Apple Inc. and five of the biggest U.S. publishers that it plans to sue them for allegedly colluding to raise the price of electronic books, according to people familiar with the matter.
Several of the parties have held talks to settle the antitrust case and head off a potentially damaging court battle, these people said. If successful, such a settlement could have wide-ranging repercussions for the industry, potentially leading to cheaper e-books for consumers. However, not every publisher is in settlement discussions.
The five publishers facing a potential suit are CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster Inc.; Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group; Pearson PLC's Penguin Group (USA); Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and HarperCollins Publishers Inc., a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.
Read On! [FULL STORY]
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Welcome to the Future of Automobiles
Tata Motors of India
It is an auto engine that runs on air. That's right; air not gas or diesel or electric but just the air around us. Take a look.
Tata Motors of India has scheduled the Air Car to hit Indian streets by August 2012
The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy N. For Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air to push its engine's pistons and make the car go.
The Air Car, called the "Mini CAT" could cost around 365,757 rupees in India or $8,177 US.
The Mini CAT which is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis, a body of fiberglass that is glued not welded and powered by compressed air. A Microprocessor is used to control all electrical functions of the car. One tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, turn signals and every other electrical device on the car. Which are not many.
The temperature of the clean air expelled by the exhaust pipe is between 0-15 degrees below zero, which makes it suitable for use by the internal air conditioning system with no need for gases or loss of power.
There are no keys, just an access card which can be read by the car from your pocket. According to the designers, it costs less than 50 rupees ($1) per 100 KM (62 miles), that's about a tenth the cost of a car running on gas. It's mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car, a factor which makes it a perfect choice for city motorists. The car has a top speed of 105 KM per hour or 60 mph and would have a range of around 300 km or 185 miles between refuels. Refilling the car will take place at adapted gas stations with special air compressors. A fill up will only take two to three minutes and costs approximately 100 rupees (about $2) and the car will be ready to go another 300 kilometers.
This car can also be filled at home with it's on board compressor. It will take 3-4 hours to refill the tank, but it can be done while you sleep.
Because there is no combustion engine, changing the 1 liter of vegetable oil is only necessary every 50,000 KM or 30,000 miles. Due to its simplicity, there is very little maintenance to be done on this car.
This Air Car almost sounds too good to be true. We'll see in August. 2012
Friday, August 5, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Dripread - A Drop of Knowledge Each day
An interesting take on reading in an increasingly mechanized, digitized, scheduled age.
dripread (v) To break up the reading of information into bitesize installments.
Love reading but don't seem to get time to finish a book?. Dripread converts your book into a daily digest that you can read by email.
Dripread is free and simple to use:
Choose a book or upload your own.
Subscribe for free with just your email address.
Enjoy five minutes a day of reading pleasure.
Bask in the warm fuzzy feeling of completing your book.
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