TheWorld

[TheWorld] Casual Surveillance

It is the second time, I got this message on my cell phone: "Hi! I found your phone number, could you call ma back?". This reminds me an old txt Watching the Watcher Watching You (1984-85 NPI/Appa Teleworks I):

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THIS ON YOUR FAVE RAVE PHREAK BOARD: "LEAVE ME A PHONE NUMBER AND I WILL GET IN TOUCH WITH YOU..WE CAN TRADE SOMECODEZ..."

THIS PERSON IS OBVIOUSLY BLOTTED OUT OF HIS GOURD, OR HE IS TRYING TO GET SOME INFO ON YOU! FEDS WANT TO KNOW PEOPLE AND KNOW AS MUCH ABOUT THEM AS THEY CAN WITHOUT GETTING FOUND OUT. SO, DONT MESS WITH THESE KINDS OF PEOPLE.

[Space and Place] Ubicomp: no expansion of the smut industry?

fredshouse questions the fact that the very field of Ubiquitous Computing have no sex-related applications...

Museum guides, elder care, memory prosthetics and ornithology, for sure. But how about teledildonics?

- Maybe ubicomp isn’t the right kind of medium... - Maybe it’s too early. There are almost no commercial ubi-products, and thus no real channel exists yet for delivering the goods and taking money in return - maybe we haven’t reached the right level of sophistication in our thinking about ubicomp’s potential imprint on the sensual fabric of society.

[TheWorld] Amazing list of skateboarding tricks

I have always been amazed by the name of skateboarding tricks. My favorite is the "stale fish".

ollie/switch ollie/kickflip/heelflip/varialflip/180 kickflip/180 heelflip/pop shuv-it/360 shuv-it/outward varial heelflip/inward varial heelflip/hard flip/360 flip/180/big spin/grind-slides/50-50/5-0/board slide/lipslide/noseslide/tailslide/crooked grind/feeble grind/nose grind/salad grind/smith grind/stances/dropping in/ollieing off kicker/ollieing stairs

[TheWorld] Do you prefer GMT or local time?

It seems that some people like to use GMT hours and never forget to add "local time" when they talk about local time, which nobody normally does. Let's call those people "gmt freak".For those lost with UTC/GMT concepts: UTC/GNT conversion, you will better ground your conversation with your gmt-freak friends.

Since radio signals can cross multiple time zones and the international date line, some worldwide standard for time and date is needed. This standard is coordinated universal time, abbreviated UTC. This was formerly known as Greenwich mean time (GMT). Other terms used to refer to it include "Zulu time" (after the "Z" often used after UTC times), "universal time," and "world time."

[TheWorld] Now beta-testers show off

Read in NYT, software testing used to be done by serious computer users. Now, testers are motivated less by service than by the status of being among the first to try the newest software.

"There's a lot of cachet associated with being an early adopter," said Nicco Mele, 26, a former Internet strategist for Howard Dean's presidential campaign who runs the Internet consulting firm EchoDitto. "It's similar to how, every time you're in a meeting, everyone wants to show off who's got the coolest new phone."

[TheWorld] Incredible Statement from a French Media CEO

Taken from Le Monde. This is incredible.

Patrick Le Lay, PDG de TF1, interrogé parmi d'autres patrons dans un ouvrage intitulé Les Dirigeants face au changement (Editions du Huitième Jour), livre sa conception de la télévision. "Il y a beaucoup de façons de parler de la télévision. Mais dans une perspective 'business', soyons réaliste : à la base, le métier de TF1, c'est d'aider Coca-Cola, par exemple, à vendre son produit", estime M. Le Lay.

"O,r pour qu'un message publicitaire soit perçu, il faut que le cerveau du téléspectateur soit disponible. Nos émissions ont pour vocation de le rendre disponible : c'est-à-dire de le divertir, de le détendre pour le préparer entre deux messages. Ce que nous vendons à Coca-Cola, c'est du temps de cerveau humain disponible", poursuit le PDG de la Une.

"Rien n'est plus difficile, assure-t-il, que d'obtenir cette disponibilité. C'est là que se trouve le changement permanent. Il faut chercher en permanence les programmes qui marchent, suivre les modes, surfer sur les tendances, dans un contexte où l'information s'accélère, se multiplie et se banalise." "La télévision, c'est une activité sans mémoire. Si l'on compare cette industrie à celle de l'automobile, par exemple, pour un constructeur d'autos, le processus de création est bien plus lent ; et si son véhicule est un succès il aura au moins le loisir de le savourer. Nous, nous n'en aurons même pas le temps !", constate Patrick Le Lay.

"Tout se joue chaque jour sur les chiffres d'audience. Nous sommes le seul produit au monde où l'on 'connaît' ses clients à la seconde, après un délai de vingt-quatre heure", se réjouit enfin le PDG de TF1.

[The World] Fungus that eat ants

Totally unrelated with all my stuff, I stumbled across the interesting fact: ants can get fungal infections, which literally eat them alive. You can read here that the Texas Farm Bureau attempted to use one type of fungus to control Red Imported Fire Ants.

[The World] TV and on-screen logos

Some people hates on-screen logos. They are not alone as stated by the BBC annual report:

Nick Higham: there is something that annoys a lot of people about the new digital channels and that is that they always have this little logo in the corner, telling you what you are watching and sometimes getting in the way of the pictures. There is indeed a campaign for logo-free television and I suspect they've been sending us quite a lot e-mails about today because we've had several. (...) When is the BBC going to bow to public opinion and remove those permanent on-screen logos?

Gavyn Davies (BBC Chairman): Well this is one of those things that really does split viewers. Some viewers are very agitated about this and believe the logos spoil their enjoyment of the programmes. And often they say the programmes are wonderful but why have a logo. Other viewers - and to be honest I think this is the overwhelming majority - say that in a 200 channel universe, it's very, very helpful to have a logo that tells you what you're watching. Increasingly - and I regret this even when I do it myself - people are watching television by flicking the remote control through hundreds of channels and in that kind of world, at least until people familiarise themselves with what's on where and where to find things on the satellite guide etc. - on balance, we think it's a good thing to put the logo on the screen. Although I agree there are quite a lot of people who really don't like that.

[TheWorld] A GI Joe-like situation

GI Joe according to :

G.I. Joe is a popular cartoon television show that ran in the 1980s. The basic premise being good vs.evil, GI Joe is America's highly capable branch of military whose purpose is to defend America and the world against enemy attack and all other evils, their main adversary being Cobra, a terrorist organization who'll stop at nothing to control the world.

Cobra?

[ResearchWorld] Emergence de modes de travail plus collectifs dans la recherche en science humaine

Mon ancien prof de linguistique à Lyon, Jean Marie Hombert essaye de chambouler un peu le fonctionnement de la recherche en sciences humaines en France. je suis assz d'accord avec lui, lu dans le monde:

Arrivé en 2002 à la tête du département des SHS du CNRS, le linguiste Jean-Marie Hombert a fait de l'émergence de modes de travail plus collectifs l'un de ses chantiers prioritaires. "L'individualisme qui prévaut dans la recherche en SHS, au détriment d'une vie de laboratoire, nuit à l'encadrement des jeunes. Il ne donne pas non plus aux équipes la taille critique nécessaire pour être compétitives dans la course aux programmes internationaux", justifie-t-il.

Un champ de recherches est privilégié : les sciences cognitives, aux frontières des sciences de la vie, des sciences de l'information et des sciences du langage. "Mon credo est qu'il existe en France une trop grande coupure entre les sciences humaines et les sciences exactes, et que cette coupure est dommageable pour les unes comme pour les autres", insiste M. Hombert.

[TheWorld] What is a jobzine?

A jobzine is a fanzine (ezine or not) that focuses on a specific job, and tells stories about it...An example: guinea pig zero is a jobzine for people who are used as medical or pharmaceutical research subjects.

A jobzine about R&D structures (public or not) might be interesting.

[TheWorld] What is "Orpheus process"

Via wikipedia:

Leadership by a group: In contrast to tolerating leadership as a position of authority, some highly successful organizations have adopted a pragmatic approach when they found that the role of boss costs too much in team performance. That is, in some situations, the maintenance of the boss is too expensive by either draining the resources of the group as a whole or impeding the creativity within the team, even unintentionally.

For example, the Orpheus orchestra, which has performed for over thirty years without a conductor--that is, without a boss--for a team of over 25 members, has drawn discriminating audiences, and has produced over 60 recordings for Deutsche Grammophon in successful competition with the other world-class orchestras with the autocratic or charismatic conductors

Referential papers: The Conductor-less Orchestra by Harvey Seifter.
Seifter's interview

[TheWorld] Reality Hacking Definition

According to wikipedia,

A reality hacker is an urban spelunker. "Building hacker" is a better term than "reality hacker" for participants in urban exploration activity. Using the definition of hacker that the mainstream media uses, a reality hacker is like a computer hacker but instead of hacking into computers, a reality hacker "hacks" (enters without authorization, trespasses, explores) in real life.

This reminds me a chapter of "The Happy Mutant Handbook" by Simon Garfield (Building Hacker). The author explained the pleasure of discovering new places or new way to manipulate the surroundings. He also gave tips.

[TheWorld] DorkBot: "People doing strange things with electricity"

"People doing strange things with electricity" is the motto of Dorkbot. This groupd of people (localized all over the world) organize meetings where everybody can present electronic art projects. According to the New Yorker:

Dorkbot was founded by a young man named Douglas Repetto, who teaches computer music at Columbia. “The idea of dorkbot was to reach people who had nowhere to talk about these projects,” Repetto says. “Some might appear in a gallery, perhaps, but many are too odd, or they’re unfinished, or it’s not even clear what they are.” Dorkbot presentations typically feature novel ways of using electrical devices, especially uses that don’t require much money. “Dorkbot is about what you can do on the cheap in a back room somewhere,” he says.

I already mentionned the next dorkbot camp in denmark. I now notice that there is a dorkbot swiss chapter :)

[TheWorld] Bilderberg in Italy on june 3rd

Thursday the next Bilderberg meeting will be held at Hotel des Iles Borromees - Corso Umberto I, 67 - 28838 Stresa - ITALY

The meetings now take place by informal rotation in countries of the Atlantic community.

Some 100 or more attend, by invitation of a steering committee. The meetings happen once a year, in the spring. They last 2.5 days (Thursday night until Sunday lunch) and are held in varying but always comfortable surroundings. A mixture of able and distinguished folk attend - a sprinkling of serving prime and cabinet ministers, central-bank governors, defence and other experts. They talk, often to galvanising and fascinating effect, about the main issues of the day - East-West relations, arms control, deficits, debt, the Falklands, sanctions, whatever. Their thoughts may not be repeated outside the meetings and never are. This frustrates outsiders but helps 100 great and good people be frank with each other, as does the fact that Bilderberg members are limited to people of NATO and West European countries who know how to be kind or rude to each other without causing such misunderstandings as would occur if Indians, Fijians, Africans, Chinese or Japanese were also present.

For curious who wants the reports...

[Weird] using old game boy as electrocardiograph

A french electronic teacher came up with a cool project that aims to use old game boy as electrocardiograph. He is going to carry out this project with his students in order to give them to Madagascar. The idea is to use them because it is way cheaper. The only modification will be done on the game card. It seems that some people already thought about it.

Un professeur d'électronique strasbourgeois a trouvé le moyen de transformer de vieilles Gameboys en électrocardiographes qui permettront, pour un coût modique, de surveiller le rythme cardiaque de malades dans des pays en développement.

L'appareil a été conçu pour des malades malgaches qui sont privés actuellement d'un médicament anti-paludique efficace faute de pouvoir être suivis de manière constante pour prévenir des effets secondaires du rythme cardiaque potentiellement mortels. (...) Le boîtier de cette console de jeu portable n'est absolument pas touché. Seule la cartouche de jeu est modifiée et la nouvelle carte permet ainsi, en la reliant à trois électrodes placées à un pied et aux deux poignets, de vérifier à l'écran que le coeur se relâche normalement et au bon moment après sa contraction.

(TheWorld) Prison Outsourced Abroad

Read in Le Temps.A new weird concept after the use of privatized army: prison outsourcing, a project in Austria (an maybe in Switzerland):

Inspiré par un projet autrichien, Christoph Blocher songe à délocaliser des prisons JUSTICE. En réaction au problème de la surpopulation des geôles et par souci d'économie, l'Autriche envisage de construire une prison en Roumanie, où elle enverrait «ses» détenus originaires du pays. Le conseiller fédéral pourrait s'inspirer du concept.(...)    Concrètement, l'Autriche veut justement se lancer dans la délocalisation de ses prisons dans les pays «sources de criminalité». Pour faire des économies et répondre au problème de la surpopulation des prisons

It seems that we are on a kind of downhill...