Zap!
Check out this nice set of thirty two-color illustrations somebody flickered that depict dozens of ways the working class might unwittingly electrocute themselves, from Germany, back in the day. Looks like touching just about anything could kill you. It'll make you glad we tamed the electric beast. And do not pee on the electric rail line from a bridge!
Notable for:
- Pissed off, old world expressions on faces
- Babies, rats, washer women, farmhands, everyboodies getting electrified!
- Routine inclusions that are odd (babushkas, labor, a giant transformer mounted to the wall of your living room...)
To Infinity.... etc.
Awfully cool footage of a jet-powered flightsuit!
The future is here (again) and for once it didn't come from California, which can only bring us men marrying men these days, harumph! ...just kidding! As soon as I get my airplane suit I'm jetting out west and coming back with a husband. For maximum gayness, we'll be holding hands as we swoop back over the Rockies.
Yes, it's real.
Merry "Tater Mitts" Christmas!!!
I dare any man not to wince during the carrot peeling portion of this TV commercial . . . it's like they've harnessed the worst aspect of sex on a beach.
Hellvis
A robot Elvis head is now available, presumably to address your unmet social needs.
The king, sharing his tasteful pink undercoating with you
UK RFID Passports: Cracked
Gee, what a surprise. Apparently it took all of 48 hours.
"The reader - I bought one for £250 - has to say hello to the chip and tell it that it is authorised to make contact. The key to that is in the date of birth, etc. Once they communicate, the conversation is encrypted, but I wrote some software in about 48 hours that made sense of it.
"The Home Office has adopted a very high encryption technology called 3DES - that is, to a military-level data-encryption standard times three. So they are using strong cryptography to prevent conversations between the passport and the reader being eavesdropped, but they are then breaking one of the fundamental principles of encryption by using non-secret information actually published in the passport to create a 'secret key'. That is the equivalent of installing a solid steel front door to your house and then putting the key under the mat."
SawStop: Keep your hot dogs safe!
SawStop is a pretty cool table saw that keeps you from using it to cut hot dogs. It's got a built-in safety braking system that automagically shuts down upon contact with a hot dog. I'd imagine it also works if you accidently shove a digit or limb into it. Cool for woodworkers, not so cool for those bad movie woodshop fight scenes.
I'd imagine that my grandfather, a hobbyist woodworker in his day, would've said, "Bah! In my day, you lost the finger, and ya liked it!" (Note: grandpa died with 10 fingers.)
In all seriousness, watch the "Why SawStop?" video, which shows how it works a little over halfway through. It's pretty amazing.
[via the boing]
Help squash the Broadcast Flag
The EFF needs your help to kill the Broadcast Flag in Congress. Write your representative and tell them what you think of crippled, big brother-infected technology.
If you need any ideas
THIS is what I want for my Birthday!
"Tulip E-Go notebook inlaid with solid palladium white gold plates in which thousands of brilliant cut diamonds have been set. The quality is V.V.S. top-Wesselton and the total weight is 80.00 Crt.
The brilliant cut diamonds are microscopic and pave set with surgical precision. This magnificent end result is possible thanks to the use of brilliant cut diamonds with a large variety of diameters."
Progress: Mac sucks just like Windows
Mac iTunes for PCs may be the the most garbage-y software I have ever loaded. Seriously, RealPlayer may have caused me less pain. In spite of everything wrong with it, thank god they got all the plastic-look buttons to match. It's real pretty.
Bud Light Presents...
...Real Men of Genius
(a fresh rant from jpeg, in a new format)
This one's for you Mister computer "soft" on-off switch inventor. For millions of years, machines knew their place, and humans held dominion. If you understood cause & effect, you could operate the space shuttle. But YOU had the courage to ask "What if the power switch only worked some of the time?"
Now whether your cd drive is grinding your Lindsey Lohan porno cd to plastic shavings or sparks are shooting out of your keyboard, you're not turning your system off till IT decides it's ready.
It might take a few minutes. It might take till Arbor Day.
Thanks to you, our computers sneer, "Push that On/Off button all you want, tech-wussie! I'm in control here."
So go cook a turkey, it's going to be a while,
and while you're at it, crack open a Bud Light
(bg vocals: Mister computer "soft" on-off switch inventor)
Designed by a team of researchers from Institut National des Sciences Appliquées and the Hôpital de la Croix Rousse, both in Lyon, France, the device simulates the delivery of an infant using a hydraulic system which simulates the movement of a baby through its mother's pelvis.
Big is the new Small
Dorkbot looks for gigantor cellphones thinking it'll help him pick up chicks.
"Imagine this: I'll walk into a bar and ask for a girl's number, then break out my phone," he said. "How could you say no to that?"
Uh, Eugene, like this: "No, gigantic cellphone dork."
via kottke
New Jargon
Today I saw the word "Digicam" in type so small on a website that I thought it said "Digician," as in 'someone who works magic with digital technology.'
It's so horrible I'm thinking of putting it on my business cards.
Use it this week in a bullshit sentence of your own making.
Remember, you heard it here first.
Looks like a cool phone....
Even if it is from Samsung
Continue reading "Best Cell Phone Commercial. Evah." »
What a Country
"It may soon be possible to carry around an AK-47 assault rifle and an iPod with you down the street - and be arrested for carrying the iPod."
...
In his floor speech introducing the measure, [Utah Senator Orrin] Hatch said that once people are given PCs, they are bound to infringe. (Many would agree with him there). So he frames his bill as a protection. Hatch said people weren't aware that they were breaking the law by running P2P software, (citing work by Harvard's Berkman Center, which says the Senator quoted them out of context) and therefore running "piracy machines" that had been designed to mislead their users. Therefore, his argument goes, the users are in need of protection from 'inducement'.
Guh. So, according to that logic, why don't we just start charging gun owners with murder right now? 'Cause you know eventually someone's gonna be induced to pop a cap in someone.
"But officer, I didn't mean to run that red light, my car induced me with all that horsepower!"
Would someone introduce a bill to protect me from uptight, ancient, out-of-touch Senators who will flip flop on an issue over a steak dinner and a lobbyist blowjob? Loosen the collar, Orrin, I think your brain is in need of oxygen.
article
Intelligent MIDI Sequencing with Hamster Control
This project was initially fueled by the desire to explore the MIDI protocol. It was decided that this would be accomplished by building a MIDI device. I also aimed to make something novel that had never been done before. But to balance out the unusual nature of its design, I wanted to also to create something that was very musical.After much consideration of different technical design aspects and contemplating various musical ideas, I was able to arrive at a project that would fulfill all of my musical and engineering goals.An intelligent MIDI sequencer was designed with hamster control.
My theory is that Levy came up with the term Hamster Control after a couple of Cornell U. bong sessions and reverse engineered everything else. Unfortunately the mp3 example is less like Richard D. James (what I was hoping for) and more like... something definately not created by hamsters.
This is why I don't shave
Boycott Gillette uncovers Gillette's nefarious plans to track and photograph people who buy their products.
Jpeg was right!
Thanks Adream!
Realplayer rant
This site leaks internal memos (with commentary) about the evil thinking behind Realplayer, which I recall as the worst internet product ever devised.
"Real would resort to disgusting (and probably illegal) tricks. One page in the process would show the user some very legitimate choices above the "fold." However, beneath the fold, Real had options for additional plug-ins with dubious value such as sound enhancers and web accelerators, that were selected BY DEFAULT. If a user did not scroll down (and there was no indication that a user might need to do so) they would not see that there were choosing to purchase around $50 in additional software."
Dutch firm Philips Electronics said on January 26, 2004 it was preparing to mass-produce a slim, book-sized display panel onto which consumers could download newspapers and magazines -- then roll up and put away. The 5-inch display, which can show detailed images, can be rolled up into a pen-sized holder. If connected to a mobile phone, it can also be used to download web pages, a book or email. Examples of the display are shown. (Philips via Reuters)
Another article on the devices
Make your browser window smaller and check this out...
When you first meet Steve Mann, it seems as if you've interrupted him appraising diamonds or doing some sort of specialized welding. Because the first thing you notice is the plastic frame that comes around his right ear and holds a lens over his right eye.
But quickly you see that there's more to his contraption: A tiny video camera is affixed to the plastic eyepiece. Multicolored wires wrap around the back of Mann's head. Red and white lights blink under his sweater.
Mann greets you, warmly at first, though he soon gets distracted by something on the tiny computer monitor wedged over his eye.
In fact, being with Mann sometimes feels like the ultimate, in-your-face version of having a dinner companion who talks on a cell phone.
...More about the cyborg experiments here.
Bombardier Embrio
Holy crap this is cool. This seems like the type of vehicle that would "hum" in that sci-fi vehicle sort of way.
Bombardier Press Release
via more like this
That's some crazy messed up Star Trek shit right there, boy...
via Coudal
Everyone else is doing it, why can't I?
Cripees! It ain't even Halloween yet, and holiday shit has been out for weeks. So let's hop to it, lil' consumers! Feed the beast that is the good ol' U.S. of A. economy!
My Christmas List.
What do you want?
Walkie-talkie type messaging on your cell phone (via software). Not earth shattering, but still kinda cool.
Nerds on wheels
Classes haven't even started yet and I've seen more than a few Segways zipping around campus. It turns out that Houston is a Segway test market with the first dealership (Segway of Texas), which provided them to some of the faculty at Rice.
Here's a kinda long article about Segways at Rice from the Houston Chronicle
Hey Chris! You thought Galaga was annoying? Wait 'til I got hippos bellowing on my phone. Yee haw!
via boing boing
It's the same guy who jumped off the Statue in Rio...
via Drudge
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysian (Reuters) -- Malaysian Muslim men can divorce their wives through text messages on mobile telephones...
The developers of the Bowlingual dog translator device have continued their quest to bridge an understanding between different species with the introduction of Meowlingual, which they claim translates cat cries into human language.
---- snip ----
The dog translator was awarded the 2002 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for promoting harmony between the species by the US humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, July 16, 2003)
Because surely the demographic that uses Wi-Fi is also the one that enjoys low grade fast food.
Ronald and an anonymous pink friend give it a try: "...single, very white clown transvestite with huge feet seeks voluptuous, kinky female for anonyomus drive-through service. Must be into burger grease, McNuggets..."
Can't quite get motivated today?
Take a break and zone out to Hektor the wonder spraypaint-inkjet printer. Watch the movie.
via boing boing
Apple jumps the gun a bit on offering G5 towers... at G4 prices!
via Gil
Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA plan to send a satellite to crash into a comet in 2005 and aboard the craft will be a CD with the names of perhaps thousands of Earthlings.
Deep Impact will be the first mission to make a spectacular, football-stadium-sized crater, seven to 15 stories deep, into the speeding comet.
If you'd like your name on the CD, submit it here.
You get a nifty certificate too...
I'm gettin an AK-MP3! Think anyone on the train would tell you to turn down your music with one of these on your hip?
via boing boing
Bring pleasure to your Nokia phone...The Purring Kitty transforms Nokia mobile phones into discrete, vibrating massagers.
Its tender purring vibrations provide perfect company on even the loneliest winter nights.
It's like do-it-yourself bartering!
(Note: I am in no way condoning this type of behavior. I just think it's clever.)
via boing boing
Next thing you know, they'll be giving their soldiers sticks...
via the morning news
Judging from the cooing at a demonstration of Sony Corp.'s diminutive SDR robot, few would dispute just how cute the humanoid machine is.
Its creator Masahiro Fujita, who called it "him" instead of "it," seemed to feel genuinely guilty as he pushed it over to show how easily it gets back up.
"I don't like this," he said.
But while Sony, the world's largest consumer electronics maker, may have succeeded in creating a cuddly humanoid robot, it still faces a daunting question.
Who would buy it?
Javelin missle test
Q passes on a frighteningly cool movie of a Javelin missle test-fire. Holy crap.
QT movie 4.3 MB
Photos of test
via Q
Japan's Sony Corp said on Monday it would start sales next month of the world's first DVD recorder that uses blue laser light and can pack a two-hour high-definition TV program onto a single disc. It won't be cheap, with a retail list price of 450,000 yen ($3,800) while low-end DVD recorders using conventional red lasers go for as little as 50,000-70,000 yen.
Sony's Blu-ray machine will be able to play red-laser discs using the DVD-R and DVD-RW formats, but not those using the DVD-RAM or DVD+RW formats.
-----------------------
Someone ought to send out an internal email:
The music industry this week condemned the launch of two recording systems that will let people copy between 30 and 100 hours of music onto a single disc. The launches, from electronics giants Sony and Philips, are being seen as a potential pirates' charter.
"It's a no-brainer. Anything which lets people pirate more music like this has to be very bad news for the music industry," says a spokesman for Britain's record industry trade association, the BPI.
Why Sony should want to launch a recorder that might make piracy easier may seem surprising, as its Sony Music division makes and sells CDs. While Sony Music did not want to comment on its sister company's launch, Mike Tsurumi, a president of Sony Consumer Electronics in Berlin, insists that the move makes sense. "The music companies need to change their business model," he says.
If you thought it would be impossible to make mass music any more flat and uncreative, think again. This program is sure to do the job. Take all the uniqueness and human idiosyncracies out of pop music and replace it with market-proven pop algorithms through the magic of machine logic.
Kill me now.
via Jim MacGregor
Disclaimer: We're not saying these particular things were used in a nightclub disaster. As with all things flaming, be careful. Your results may vary.
Using a combination of trade tricks and clever programming, hackers have thoroughly compromised security at America Online, potentially exposing the personal information of AOL's 35 million users.
The most recent exploit, launched last week, gave a hacker full access to Merlin, AOL's latest customer database application. As a security measure, Merlin runs only on AOL's internal network, but savvy hackers have found a way to break in.
The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted here.
Close to home...
via Qs Pal KK
We do...
I give them props for trying this...
A Japanese scientist has developed a coat which appears to make the wearer invisible.
Perhaps this is the answer to John's post.
"Dan, it's your father!" she shouted.
"Give me the phone," her husband replied. "You're messing with me."
"I just about fell out of my chair," Al Kinkade said. Kinkade, 49, had called to solicit a donation to a police and sheriff's Explorer Scout program.
(Not a good enough reason to ditch Privacy Manager)
What happened to moving toward the relatively successful unmanned, lower-cost probes and robotics projects at NASA? Who doesn't love a spunky lil' robot explorer that can be re-sold as a LEGO kit?
Capitalism, of course, is supposed to weed out such inefficiencies. But in the American system, the shuttle's expense made the program politically attractive. Originally projected to cost $5 million per flight in today's dollars, each shuttle launch instead runs to around $500 million. Aerospace contractors love the fact that the shuttle launches cost so much.
Throwaway rockets can fail too. Last month a French-built Ariane exploded on lift-off. No one cared, except the insurance companies that covered the payload, because there was no crew aboard. NASA's insistence on sending a crew on every shuttle flight means risking precious human life for mindless tasks that automated devices can easily carry out. Did Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon really have to be there to push a couple of buttons on the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment, the payload package he died to accompany to space?
And perhaps most sickenly:
The bottled water alone that crews use aboard the space station costs taxpayers almost half a million dollars a day. (No, that is not a misprint.) There are no scientific experiments aboard the space station that could not be done far more cheaply on unmanned probes. The only space-station research that does require crew is "life science," or studying the human body's response to space. Space life science is useful but means astronauts are on the station mainly to take one another's pulse, a pretty marginal goal for such an astronomical price.
via the morning news
Fascinating article from 1980 on Columbia.
The main cause of delay is currently the shuttle's refractory tiles, which disperse the heat of reentry from the ship's nose and fuselage. Columbia must be fitted out with 33,000 of these tiles, each to be applied individually, each unique in shape. The inch-thick tiles, made of pyrolized carbon, are amazing in two respects. They can be several hundred degrees hot on one side while remaining cool to the touch on the other. They do not boil away like the ablative heat shieldings of capsules and modules; they can be used indefinitely. But they're also a bit of a letdown in another respect-they're so fragile you can hardly touch them without shattering them.
These are the wild, uncharted rivers of space. Unknown; unknowable; beyond programming. To find out if your ship can cope with them, you have to take it up there.
Also see Go at Throttle-Up, a 1996 examination of the state of NASA and the shuttle. Both articles
via scripting news
Holy crap! We need one of these!
via boing boing
Are you Sarah Connor?...
The Dodge Tomahawk concept motorcycle was unveiled this week at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
The 500-horsepower Viper V-10 engine gives the vehicle a potential top speed of nearly 400 miles per hour.
...which I find is so practical...
The team of designers (all under 5'4") were too busy playing with action figures to make an appearance.
(cape sold separately)
It seems Apple has filed a patent for a 'color changing case' that has the geeks atwitter...
Imagine tooling around town on one of these... with everyone thinking you're a tool.
Interestingly, the name "Algorithm" takes its name from Albert Gore Jr., the man who invented the internet.
Just kidding.
: )
How do ya get there?
How does it get here?
Dulles, hell.
How do you want your modem?
Hacking Saddam's mailbox?
Because I am a geek, distributed computing is cool to me. If finding signals from space through SETI@Home was never your thing, perhaps curing Alzheimer's or Parkinson's is.
Head on over to Folding@Home and help really smart brainiacs figure out what makes proteins go wrong and cause diseases. If you'd like to join the House 8 Network team, the team number is 11615. (I'd link to the stats page, but it looks like the protein folders are too busy folding proteins to maintain their web server.)
See also: Adam Beberg's Distributed Computing Design Manifesto.
All of this
via boing boing
A fascinating (if you're into that sort of thing) article on the development of wireless technology and providers in the US.
via DanSays...
Leave a message while some really smart person takes a dump.
(Huh? Go here.)
via svn
The next word in security is a system so thorough that it will reveal even the contents of a cigarette pack hidden in your coat pocket.
Developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory , the scanner uses holographic imaging technology to provide full-body, 360-degree coverage of a person in near real time. Unlike the technology displayed in Schwarzenegger's sci-fi thriller Total Recall and most of today's scanning devices, this 3-D Body Holo Scanner doesn't use X-rays to obtain its comprehensive images.
These workers are sorting plastic by heating it with a cigarette lighter and sniffing the fumes. They complained of headaches.
This reminds me of the shipbreaking villages in India.
The scrap metal to be had from such an operation could be profitably sold, because of the growing need in South Asia for low-grade steel, primarily in the form of ribbed reinforcing rods (re-bars) to be used in the construction of concrete walls. These rods, which are generally of a poor quality, could be locally produced from the ships' hull plating by small-scale "re-rolling mills," of which there were soon perhaps a hundred in the vicinity of Alang alone. From start to finish the chain of transactions depended on the extent of the poverty in South Asia. There was a vast and fast-growing population of people living close to starvation, who would work hard for a dollar or two a day, keep the unions out, and accept injuries and deaths without complaint. Neither they nor the government authorities would dream of making an issue of labor or environmental conditions.
(William Langewieshe article from The Atlantic Monthly, who has also written the fascinating piece on unbuilding the WTC.)
via svn
I hear the NVU employees are sporting these babies now...they even come portable!
Asked whether Apple is now mooting a move to x86 chips, Jobs noted that that couldn't happen until the vast majority of its users and - more importantly - its developers have migrated to the Unix-based Mac OS X. That won't have happened until the end of this year, he added.
"Then we'll have options," said Jobs.
Asynchronous chips improve computer performance by letting each circuit run as fast as it can
When I was about 12 my Dad and I had a discussion about electricity, and how the timing of it was important to everything that relied on it.
This theory pretty much throws that out the window.
Dad would dig it.
via Scientific American via FreshNews
Gene Kan died as a result of an accident, according to a statement released Monday by his employer, Sun Microsystems Inc. At the request of his family, no other details of his June 29 death were being released, Sun officials said.
-------
Here's an interesting interview with Gene Kan...
In case you missed it, you can "watch" (create) the Chicago Fireworks Show.
This is pretty cool...
You a hobo with a wireless card? Also, Let's WARCHALK!
via Evhead
quote of the day
"He's a big boy, it's not like you go to Fisher-Price and ask for 'My first collaborative-internet-project-management tool.'"
Thus spoke falconer! Andrew venting at me after I recommended setting up a dummy site to show a client how something should work.
In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful
Microsoft error messages with their own Japanese Haiku
poetry, each only 17 syllables, five syllables in the first
line, seven in the second, five in the third ...
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
via My Brother Neal
Flushed with his success, he took latent fingerprints from a glass, which he enhanced with a cyanoacrylate adhesive (super-glue fumes) and photographed with a digital camera. Using PhotoShop, he improved the contrast of the image and printed the fingerprint onto a transparency sheet.
Between this and the Celine Dion encryption bypass, I hardly feel safe anywhere.
Demetri Terzopoulos, from New York University told the Boston Globe : "This is really groundbreaking work, but we are on a collision course with ethics. If you can make people say things they didn't say, then potentially all hell breaks loose."
Kathleen Hall Jamieson from the University of Pennsylvania added: "There is a certain point at which you raise the level of distrust to where it is hard to communicate through the medium. There are people who still believe the moon landing was staged."
It was Capricorn One, lady. All star cast. It coulda happened...
In a lesser car, you might simply twist a knob. In the 745i, tuning the radio is an interactive experience at 75 m.p.h.
Dr Doolittle, step aside.
I'm bow-lingual!
this is a pretty cool piece of technology...hard rock has a web cam set up at their las vegas hotel pool side - you can zoom in and check out the action.
With Jonny Glow, trips to the bathroom can now be taken without turning on the bathroom light! Jonny Glow lights the rim of the toilet for use in the dark, eliminating unwanted mess.
And they have a theme song!!
It's large, takes up tons of space, and is not all that ergonomic, but it makes up for all of these detriments by having a blue glowing light in the creature's mouth.
via boing boing
Should my loved one be placed in an Assisted Computing Facility?
Sometimes referred to as "Homes for the Technologically Infirm," "Technical Invalid Care Centres," or "Homes for the Technically Challenged," Assisted Computing Facilities, (ACFs), are modeled on assisted living facilities, and provide a safe, structured residential environment for those unable to handle even the most common, everyday multitasks. Most fully accredited ACFs, like Silicon Pines, are oases of hope and encouragement that allow residents to lead productive, technologically relevant lives without the fear and anxiety associated with actually having to understand or execute the technologies themselves.
Be sure to read the 10 Warning Signs to see if you or a loved one need help.
via Gil
I know I'm way behind the curve on Segway and all...
But this is funny.
via Segway News
Upload an image file of someone's face and morph it with an ass.
[ image removed due to excess of "man ass" - MGMT ]
via
Boing Boing
More on Ginger (now termed "Segway")
"Cars are great for going long distances," Kamen told a reporter from Time. "But it makes no sense at all for people in cities to use a 4,000-pound piece of metal to haul their 150-pound asses around town."
Another mnore technical article on IT from Wireless.
Time Magazine has a cool graphic explaining IT.
Apparently, it's NOT Ken, after all. His Mom and Dad are soooo relieved.
via here
Cool passive technology at work as leave-behinds in Afghanistan.
The guy's from Iowa. 'Nuff said.
via Backup Brain
The Dockers Mobile Pant. For people with too much shit to carry and a tee time.
via being inundated with the ad on Yahoo! mail
I'll probe the obvious: what the fuck does Michael Jordan have to do with a Palm Pilot? He probably doesn't even use one! This is pure stupdumbity!
via who cares! It's everywhere!
Dan Lewin (The First Victim)?
Daniel Lewin
31 years old
Chief technical officer, Akamai Technologies Inc.
Before he turned 30 years old, Danny Lewin had several lifetimes of accomplishment. He had done prize-winning work in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had been a captain in the elite Israeli special forces. He had co-founded Akamai Technologies Inc. and become an Internet billionaire.
On the morning of Sept. 11, wearing his usual T-shirt and jeans and carrying his laptop computer in his backpack, he boarded American Airlines Flight 11 in Boston, heading to Los Angeles to
speak at an Internet conference.
Friends speculate Mr. Lewin may have been the first victim. He was sitting in business class where the hijackers sat. A flight attendant reportedly called her supervisor and said a "businessman" had been killed.
Marco Greenberg, a New York public-relations executive and close friend since Mr. Lewin's high school days in Israel, says: "I'm convinced that given his character and military background, Danny probably got out of his seat" to battle the terrorists. At a memorial service, Mr. Greenberg said: "Our friend is quite probably the first fatality in the first war of the 21st century."
Mr. Lewin's friends say they find it poignant that the technology he invented for Akamai helped keep the Internet running smoothly on Sept. 11 -- a day when millions relied on it for information and communication.
Mr. Lewin's mathematical algorithms, or complex calculations, helped prevent bottlenecks on the Internet by distributing material to Web servers located near users.1
Mr. Lewin grew up in Denver, but at 14 his family moved to Israel. Although he initially struggled with the language and the culture, he gravitated to the gym, becoming Mr. Teenage Israel as a body-builder, Mr. Greenberg says. While doing compulsory
military service, Mr. Lewin was selected for the elite commando group. One of the unit's training tasks is to cross 100 miles of desert in three days. Mr. Lewin did it twice.
He earned two university degrees while working full time in the Haifa computer labs of International Business Machines Corp., then went to MIT for a master's degree. Tom Leighton, an MIT math professor, recalls that as his graduate assistant in a course on parallel algorithms, Mr. Lewin "asked for hard problems. ... Most graduate students want to do easy problems, write their thesis and move on."
He developed the algorithms for a research paper, and then wrote a business plan adapting the algorithms to the Internet for a contest for MIT students. The plan won second prize, and Mr. Lewin
persuaded Mr. Leighton to pursue the idea. "We decided the best way to have an impact with the technology was to create a company," Mr. Leighton recalls.
Mr. Lewin became the quintessential Internet entrepreneur. Technically brilliant and driven to succeed, he was able to get by on four hours sleep a night. He challenged associates to work harder, friends recall, leaving their offices with the mantra, "You're behind."
In 1998, when told it would take three months to install Akamai's first network of servers, Mr. Lewin "went out over Christmas vacation and installed 200 servers in 11 cities," Mr. Leighton says.
In October 1999, Akamai went public, rising a spectacular 458% on its first day. By January it had doubled again. Mr. Lewin's stake alone was valued at as much as $3.2 billion. Paul Sagan,
president of Akamai, recalls that two years earlier Mr. Lewin had been living in married-student housing at MIT with a wife and two children, and he didn't even own a credit card.
As the Internet-stock bubble burst, Mr. Lewin sold about $50 million worth of stock, according to filings. In Akamai's latest proxy filing, he had 7.3 million shares valued at $26.3 million. Besides a house, his major purchases were two fast motorcycles.
The day Akamai went public, employees gathered in the early afternoon to watch the stock soar. After 15 minutes, "Danny barked out the order to get back to work," Mr. Sagan says. "He said it really didn't matter. We had to build the company."
--William M. Bulkeley
I know this is a long and unusual posting for House8 but I felt that since we owe our livelihoods to his technology we shouldn't forget Dan Lewin. I wish the fucking media would focus on this instead of congratulating themselves for being anthrax targets.
BTW, the city of New York lists the first official victim of the attacks as Father Mychal Judge.
And this is (c.) The Wall Street Journal, 10/11/01. Posted for education and discussion only.
via Wall Street Journal
File under "You know it's a slow news day when..."
[Her Majesty] is [...] understood to use it to telephone horse racing contacts.
The phone is not thought to yet have a customised ring tone.
When she does get a custom ring, it'd have to be this, wouldn't it?
LONDON (Reuters) - Devoted mother Carol Dukes traveled 900 miles (1,450 km) so her son, the apple of her eye, could play with his GameBoy on a school trip.
Dukes, 41, spent 150 pounds ($220) on planes and taxis in the mad dash from her home in Berkshire to London's Heathrow Airport and on to Scotland to catch 11-year-old Charlie after she realized he had left the handheld computer game at home.
"If you decide to do something you do it and worry about the money later," Dukes told Reuters Tuesday. "But I think everyone was quite surprised to see me."
Charlie and 39 classmates were bound for the isolated island of Iona to learn about life without modern amenities.
When Charlie's mum caught up with her son's train at Dumbarton, near Glasgow, he was understandably embarrassed.
"He was a bit diffident when I caught up with him and I guess he was a tad embarrassed," Dukes admitted.
Dukes said she was not an overindulgent mum but she felt responsible for repacking Charlie's bag and forgetting to replace the game and his pencil case.
"I wanted Charlie to have a good time and the only option I had was to get the GameBoy to him in person," Dukes said.
Here's what happened when Arnold called the Gateway help desk.
via Hari
"I don't think people get many visceral experiences these days," Pauline said. "Humans are made to have extreme experiences. They are landmarks in your life."
Mark Pauline and Survival Research Laboratories have been fusing theatre and technology since the late seventies. This article covers The Arbitrary Calculation of Pathological Amusement show in Tokyo where they, for the first time, allowed an SRL robot to be tele-operated, unsupervised, over the Web by non-SRL crew in a full-scale show.
I dig the Konrad Adenauer quote at the beginning of the article: "The good Lord sets definite limits on man's wisdom but sets no limits on his stupidity Ð- and that's just not fair."
The Telebuddyª is a "mobile buddy" who accompanies people at events and - through its physical presence - is easily integrated into live conversations. Internet chat becomes a live puppet show!
What will those wacky germans come up with next??
If you're sick of the hideous Pontiac Aztek, the Ford Focus, and the Isuzu whatever, you'll really hate what detroit has in mind for you down the road.
It opened with the message: "Hi and welcome to the
homepage of my death. I assume that if you are
reading this, then I have died."
Warning to all you angst-filled dotcom worker bees.
The internet can kill!
A company in Cheshire is designing a futuristic toilet which can monitor human waste and spot health problems.
At the first sign of a medical condition, the Versatile Interactive Pan (VIP) would contact a GP via the internet.
Only a country that brought us Princess Di and Boy George could be counted on to develop a toilet that diagnoses what you expel.
Give it a starting line, and the Heretical Rhyme Generator will finish 'er off for ya.
Let's give it try, shall we kids?
House 8 Network is the bomb
Pulling my trousers down gently in the mist
Crawl from the wreckage, return to the womb.
Thus was the armed knight enticed from the list
Uhhhh...
via Somnolent
Until he went on the lam in the early nineties, Las Vegas was a home-away-from-home for the world's most famous hacker, Kevin Mitnick, who had family in town. And from approximately 1992 until his February 1995 arrest, Mitnick says he enjoyed substantial illicit access to the Vegas network. What's more, he recalls once being approached with an offer to redirect calls from an adult entertainment service for a single weekend, for $3,000. "They wanted me to somehow take control of the line and forward it," Mitnick recalls."
"It would have taken, had I wanted to do it, all of three minutes."
via Follow Me Here
No Coins? You Can Dial a Coke Instead
Because, obviously, the only reason to carry cash anymore is to buy a soda...
MELBOURNE (Reuters) - You're out and about, thirsty, and have no change to get a drink from a machine.
No problem. If you're in Sydney's Central Station, you can dial up a Coke.
In the first trial of its kind in Australia, Telstra Corp Ltd, Australia's largest telecoms carrier and global drinks giant Coca-Cola Co are testing a new service called Dial a Coke. It lets Telstra mobile customers grab a drink from a vending machine and have the A$2 (US$0.97) billed to their phones.
"How many times have you stood in front of a machine and not had the right change?" said Coca-Cola spokeswoman Michelle Allen.
"This eliminates the need to be carrying cash," said Telstra OnAir spokeswoman Lisa Johnston.
All you have to do if you want a drink is call a telephone number on the drinks machine, then choose the drink you want.
The cost of the drink will show up on your next mobile phone bill with no extra fees charged for the phone call.
The mobile-, or m-commerce trial is the first of several Telstra is considering, including dial-up parking, shopping and ticket purchases, Johnston said.
Coke is running a similar trial in Chile.
