Broadband Networking Via Human Skin

“NTT, the Japanese communications giant, has recently developed a technology called RedTacton, which it claims can send data over the surface of human skin at speeds of up to 2Mbps — the equivalent of a fast broadband data connection.

To work, a transmitter is attached to a portable device, such as an MP3 player, which then uses the human electrical skin field to send data to another receiving device. The transmission is achieved by minutely modulating the electrical body field in the same way that a radio station wave is modulated to carry broadcast data.”

It’s certainly interesting, and I’m sure it could have potentially useful applications, but the whole idea just sounds a little…. filthy to me; I can envision a scenario in which some unfortunate person accidentally emails naked photographs of themselves to their parents/boss/priest/etc just by touching their Blackberry, webcam and/or genitalia in the wrong order - but that’s probably just because I have an over-active imagination

Google has mapped the moon with data provided by NASA, marking the 36th anniversary of the Moon Landing. This amusing little experiment also serves the purpose of giving some publicity to the Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (or “G.C.H.E.E.S.E” for short), their planned* lunar base apparently dedicated to discovering the answers to such questions as “Can the World Wide Web become an interplanetary utility?”, ” What happens to PageRank in the proximity of a black hole?”, and “Does spam go on forever?”.

Incidentally, if you crank the zoom all the way up on the moon map, you get confirmation of what many of us have known all along:

*For fuck’s sake, do please remember that this is Google we’re talking about, and that only an idiot would go to the trouble of pointing out to me that maybe, just maybe they’re having a bit of a larf.

StreetWars:Killer is a round-robin, all city, 24/7 water-gun assassination tournament. At the start of the game you will receive details of your target. You can hunt your target down any way you see fit; you can pose as a delivery person and jack them when they open the door, disguise yourself and take them out on the street, etc.

If you are successful in your assassination attempt, the person you killed will give you their envelope and the person they were supposed to kill becomes your new target. This continues until you work yourself through all the players and retrieve the envelope with your (or your team’s) picture(s) and name(s). Then you win. Cash… but first live in fear.

The inexplicably popular David LaChappelle directs a pointless but entertaining promo for the UK airing of LOST, featuring the song “Numb” by the sorely missed Portishead.

If you’re one of those obsessive Matthew Fox fans you can download this Hi-res MPEG version of it, courtesy of Voodoo_In_TX. Alternatively you can use the link below if you do not wish to put up with Rapidshare’s delayed downloads.

Lost Promo (UK)

File Name: lost_uk_promo1.mpg

OK, so it’s probably not entirely scientific, but LJ today has been a fair indicator of the international mood, just look at the dozens (if not hundreds) of posts in Livejournal_UK and the new London_070705. Similar spikes occur when you select “Distressed”, “Enraged”, “Infuriated”, “Numb”, “Sad”, “Scared”, “Shocked”, “Stressed” and “Worried”; though the resulting graph for “Depressed” is pretty consistent, but that’s probably just because it’s LiveJournal

Well you know what? Fuck that - as a nation we’ve been subject to loads of attacks over the years, and we have never let it get the better of us. You only have to watch the news today to see this for yourself; none of the people that have been interviewed at the scene has been blubbering wrecks crying into the camera, and there hasn’t been footage of crowds of panicked people fleeing for their lives. We’re not going to shut down our entire infrastructure just because somebody thinks they can scare us into capitulation.

Anyone who thinks that we can be intimidated is a fucking idiot.

This is pretty cool - you can download George A. Romero’s Night of The Living Dead from the Internet Archive; apparently the film is already in the public domain due to some mix-up regarding the copyright.

Many people seem to be reporting problems viewing the 4.1gb MPEG2 file, so it’s probably best to opt for the smaller 622mb MPEG1 version instead.

Source: Reuters

Is it wrong that I’m really intrigued by the idea of eating at the lavatory-themed Martun restaurant in Taiwan? Although, a fairly disturbed part of me hopes that the toilets actually work in order to get the most value out of those “all you can eat” deals…

Cheers Michael (Fruitless Labour)

I Used To Believe: The Childhood Beliefs Site

“I Used To Believe is a collection of ideas that adults thought were true when they were children. It will remind you what it was like to be a child, fascinated and horrified by the world in equal parts.”

This site is really cute, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I wasn’t the only child that believed tiny people lived inside my TV and acted out whatever show was being watched. Sadly, I do seem to be the only child that believed everybody lived for 100 years, then as soon as they blew out the candles on their 100th birthday cake, died peacefully, surrounded by family.

I was an odd child, for sure.