by cameron | Aug 4, 2007 | technology
The original shield on my video ipod (the “invisibleShield”) was starting to look very tacky after almost a year – the edges had started to slightly peel away and all manner of disgusting shit was getting stored under them, I was starting to worry I was breeding a new form of life – so yesterday I dropped into an Apple store and bought a packet of eShields. Got home, peeled the invisibleShield right off, and the iPod was covered in gluey shit. So this morning, like an idiot, I pulled out some nail polish remover to try to remove the glue.
Yeah. Idiot.
Especially when I tried to use it on the screen.
A tip for the kids out there – DON’T DO THIS. My screen is now covered in smudgy patches which look like microscratches. Gah! Of course, I googled it AFTERWARDS and there is like a million sites warning DON’T DO THIS which I am reading too late.
Now I’m trying to figure out if the much-ballyhooed BRASSO strategy from last year is worth a go or will just make things worse. Anyone out there tried it or got a better idea?
by cameron | Aug 2, 2007 | Podcast, science, singularity
Rodney Brooks is Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also Chief Technical Officer and sits on the Board of iRobot Corp. From July 1, 2003 until June 30, 2007, he was director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; prior to that, he was director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
He chatted with me this morning about my deep-seated obsession to have a humanoid robot and HAL-like AI.
Prof Brooks will be speaking at the Singularity Summit in California next month. Get your tickets here.
For more reading about the current state of robots:
NY Times article “The Real Transformers”
Honda’s ASIMO
The robot fly spy
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:
Friends Of G’Day World
MODM
The Podcast Network
If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.
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The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Jul 31, 2007 | Podcast, singularity, transhumanism
Today I had the fortune to chat with another living legend – Vernor Vinge (pronounced “vin-jee” as in, he explained off air, “stingy”). While VV may not have the public profile of a William Gibson or Neal Stephenson, in geek circles no SF author carries more respect. Why is it so?
In 1981 Vernor wrote a novella called TRUE NAMES which was the one of the earliest stories to present a fully realized concept of cyberspace which he called the “Other Plane” and which people accessed by attaching electrodes to their scalp. Inside the Other Plane, people hid their “true names” from the Government by creating avatars with pseudonyms – sound familiar? This was several years before NEUROMANCER (William Gibson, 1984) or SNOW CRASH (Neal Stephenson, 1992) and is therefore a seminal work in cyberpunk fiction.
Vinge’s novels A FIRE UPON THE DEEP (1992) and A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY (1999) both won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. In 1993 he wrote an essay called “The Coming Technological Singularity” which popularized that term.
His latest novel, RAINBOWS END, is a masterpiece of near-future Sci-Fi which explores the world circa 2025. Marc Andreessen called it “the clearest and most plausible extrapolation of modern technology trends forward to the year 2025 that you can imagine.” It has been nominated for the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
You can learn more about the huge potential ramifications of the Singularity by attending the Singularity Summit 2007.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:
Friends Of G’Day World
MODM
The Podcast Network
If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
Add me to your Twitter account.
Do me a solid and digg the show.
Get the TPN version of Particls.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Jul 17, 2007 | technology
What is it with all of the Facebook phobia I’m hearing lately? Today alone I have had three people tell me they either don’t want to sign up to Facebook or that they have signed up begrudgingly.
Here’s one email I just received from someone I’ll keep anonymous to protect the innocently luddite:
You’ll be highly amused to know that after so much hassle about FaceBook I’ve been bullied into setting up a profile. Don’t get too excited, I’ll
continue to be old, grumpy and curmudgeonly about having yet another online community tool to maintain and it will probably go the same way
as my abused and very neglected Second Life avatar.
Now this person isn’t a luddite at all. He is an industry insider. That’s what makes this phobia all the more concerning.
Listen – I have no problem with people not “getting” the whole online social networking thing. I’m not sure I get it myself. It might be an age thing. And yes, I avoided Twitter for a few months. But not because I was scared of it or scared about my privacy. I just didn’t see the point. Now – I do. Like most web-related things, you don’t really see the point until you’re using it. I can remember like it was yesterday when most people I knew didn’t see the point of email. Or mobile phones.
And I understand that Facebook isn’t nearly mainstream yet. I don’t expect my mum to be on Facebook yet. Or my sisters for that matter. But what I don’t get is geeks being worried about it.
Here’s another email I got today from a friend of mine who is a certified geek:
I nearly didn’t join Facebook. As someone with an unusual name, it’s a much bigger invasion of privacy than some systems and is not crystal clear about what information can be seen by who.
Now, she probably knows something I don’t, but here’s what Facebook say when you sign up:
At Facebook, we believe you should have control over your information and who sees it. So in addition to the basic visibility rules – only your friends and people in your networks can see your profile – we also give you granular control over the information you post to the site.
According to this recent Wired story, “No profile information is available to search engines.” Previously, some of your most basic profile information was available to spiders, but Facebook took that out as well.
In another recent article on BoingBoing, a security expert noted:
Facebook has very very fine grained privacy controls – which most users clearly do not know how to use.
So I am hoping if you folks can help me understand the current Facebook phobia. Personally I love Facebook as a way to interact with communities of interest and keep track with what my friends and audience are doing/thinking/reading. I find it’s events module far superior for managing events like MODM than Yahoo’s Upcoming site. I’m playing around with it trying to figure out how we use it at TPN to building tighter communities with our audiences and our hosts.
But if you can see problems with it, let me know so I don’t waste time and effort.
by cameron | Jul 8, 2007 | science, technology
Thank Science! I finally found out how to stop Vista opening links in IE instead of Firefox! This has been bugging the hell out of me since I started using Vista months ago. I found the answers on this site. The secret formula is:
Start button > Control Panel > Programs > Default Programs > Set program access and computer defaults
by cameron | Jul 7, 2007 | Podcast, science, singularity, technology
Wendell Wallach is a lecturer and consultant at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics where he chairs the working research group on Technology and Ethics, leads a seminar for bioethics interns, and functions as a senior coordinator for other working groups and projects. He has lectured worldwide, published many articles, and is presently writing two books. Cybersoul explores the ways in which cognitive science and the Information Age are altering our understanding of human decision-making and ethics. Machine Morality: From Aristotle to Asimov and Beyond, which Wendell is co-authoring and which will be published by MIT Press, explores the prospects for designing computer systems capable of making moral decisions. Wendell is recognized as one of the leaders in the new field of Machine Ethics, and designed the first course anywhere on this subject, which he has taught twice at Yale.
Wendell is one of the speakers at the upcoming Singularity Summit.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
Add me to your Twitter account.
Do me a solid and digg the show.
Get the TPN version of Particls?
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
