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Category: Technology
24 Hour US Air Traffic Animation
This is a very interesting sight. It depicts flights across the U.S. in time-lapse over a couple of 24 hour periods.
It has already garnered nine awards:
#49 – Most Viewed (All Time) – Arts & Animation – All #39 – Most Viewed (All Time) – Arts & Animation – English #87 – Top Rated (All Time) – Arts & Animation – All #37 – Most Discussed (All Time) – Arts & Animation – All #27 – Most Discussed (All Time) – Arts & Animation – English #46 – Top Favorites (All Time) – Arts & Animation – All #39 – Top Favorites (All Time) – Arts & Animation – English #79 – Recently Featured – All #16 – Recently Featured – Arts & Animation – All
AT&T: No Fiber to the Home
Well, we Wisconsinites subject to AT&T’s new monopoly can pound sand. No fiber for us…. Reuters:
“Our view at this point is that we’re not going to have go ‘fiber to the home.’ We’re pleased with the bandwidth that we’re seeing over copper,” Chief Financial Officer Richard Lindner told a Credit Suisse conference.
“On average, at this point, we’re producing about 25 megabits (per second). But in many many locations, we’re producing substantially more than that.”
Nice to see the status quo – standing still while the rest of the world moves on.
A New Goofy Short: “How to Install Your Home Theater”
It is not surprising that Mr. Lasseter is using short films to train and test the artists: he and his fellow Pixar animators spent almost 10 years making shorts, learning how to use computer graphics effectively before they made “Toy Story” and the string of hits that followed. Pixar continues to produce a cartoon short every year, and has won Oscars for the shorts “Tin Toy,” “Geri’s Game” and “For the Birds.”
Four new shorts are in development at Disney: “The Ballad of Nessie,” a stylized account of the origin of the Loch Ness monster; “Golgo’s Guest,” about a meeting between a Russian frontier guard and an extraterrestrial; “Prep and Landing,” in which two inept elves ready a house for Santa’s visit; and “How to Install Your Home Theater,” the return of Goofy’s popular “How to” shorts of the ’40s and ’50s, in which a deadpan narrator explains how to play a sport or execute a task, while Goofy attempts to demonstrate — with disastrous results. The new Goofy short is slated to go into production early next year.
I’ve long enjoyed short films. Clusty has more.
Synchronize Your Music
This looks Handy: Supersync.
More Controversy Over Web Tracking Cookies
Specifically, the groups want the FTC to require advertisers to alert consumers when tracking cookies and other such files are present on sites, and then let consumers choose whether they are willing to be monitored. “Most consumers have no idea of the extensive system of online data collection and targeted marketing that has evolved,” says Chester. “They need to know that data is being collected about their viewing, that data is being sent back to a computer based on their tastes…there needs to be an opt in.” Some companies that specialize in behavioral advertising are already getting the message.
The complaint says Microsoft (MSFT) and TACODA, the largest behavioral targeting ad network, are among companies that use behavioral targeting without sufficiently alerting Web surfers. A Microsoft representative didn’t return a call seeking comment. TACODA says it plans to be more upfront about targeting practices.
Honda’s Fuel Cell Car
This car “is not just some far-out, pie-in-the-sky exercise in what may or may not come to fruition some day in the distant future,” said John Mendel, Honda’s senior vice president. “This is a real car.”
Honda has said it will put a fuel-cell vehicle into limited production in 2008. Company insiders say it will closely resemble the FCX Concept. The company hasn’t said how many will be made or how much it will cost to lease the car.
Interesting Data Mining Article: “I have Nothing to Hide”
But you need to understand the basic principles of data mining to understand why the world of spooks and the world of search engines are about to overlap, and why you should be nervous about this.
The lesson here is one I call “The Sainsbury’s Lesson” when doing presentations for technical audiences, because I was taught this by a data miner who worked for the giant British supermarket of that name.
The story, summarised, is that Sainsbury’s was spending an absurd amount of money sending people promotional coupons, money-off special offers, and other junk mail to encourage them to swing by the Sainsbury’s supermarket next time, rather than Waitrose or Safeway or Asda – and it was pretty hard to be sure it was actually doing any good.
The trouble was simple: they were sending girly shampoo promotions to households with six rugby-playing male students, or home improvement promotions to households with one elderly pensioner with osteoporosis, or bulk beer deals to households where they were all strictly teetotal. Not profitable stuff. And their IT staff heard about this and said: “But you don’t have to do that!”Worry about governments who will make “pre-crime” a reality.
Interesting MetaData: Madison Air Travel Searches
Rhetoric & Reality: Mapping Congress’ Voting Records on Technology
Ever since the mid-1990s, politicians have grown fond of peppering their speeches with buzzwords like broadband, innovation and technology.
John Kerry, Al Gore and George W. Bush have made fundraising pilgrimages to Silicon Valley to ritually pledge their support for a digital economy.
But do politicos’ voting records match their rhetoric? To rate who’s best and who’s worst on technology topics before the Nov. 7 election, CNET News.com has compiled a voter’s guide, grading how representatives in the U.S. Congress have voted over the last decade.
While many of the scored votes centered on Internet policy, others covered computer export restrictions, H-1B visas, free trade, research and development, electronic passports and class action lawsuits. We excluded the hot-button issue of Net neutrality, which has gone only to a recorded floor vote in the House of Representatives so far, because that legislation has generated sufficient division among high-tech companies and users to render it too difficult to pick a clear winner or loser.
The results were surprisingly mixed: In the Senate, Republicans easily bested Democrats by an average of 10 percent. In the House of Representatives, however, Democrats claimed a narrow but visible advantage on technology-related votes.
John Kerry finished second last in the Senate. Locally, Ron Kind, Mark Green and Tom Petri “scored” above 50%. Senate / House scoring methodology. For example, both Senators Feingold and Kohl voted for the National ID card and linking databases while Representative Baldwin voted against it.