The future arrives in strange ways
A decade ago we didn’t even have a working model for a P2P file sharing network, and today, in 2006, a swedish company has launched an insurance against being sued by the RIAA and such. For a mere $19 a year, they will pay your fines if you’re caught P2Peering copyrighted content, and even give you a t-shirt. Via BoingBoing.
Want to feel small?
Check this wonderful page out. I knew we were small…. but this puts it into a whole new perspective. I think the tabletop setting enhances the differences. I haven’t been astronomically impressed like this in a long, long time. Via boingboing.net
Now that’s a bit more like it….
From all the things promised us from times immemorial (such as our own flying cars and such), researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have apparently solved (or started to solve) one very important computing problem, the automatic creation of 3D models from 2D pictures. Besides from the advantages for 3D designers, the creation of “on the fly” models from a 2D video source (which is what we humans do with our eyes and brain) might be a great boon for robotics. The question on my mind now is: will M. C. Escher crash it? 
Two improvements for the Mac OS X dock
Having the option of:
- double clicking to open an application (how many times have you opened an application by mistake when you were trying to switch to the one next to it?)
- hiding an application that has focus when you click its dock icon (very useful to check hidden windows without having to command-h them hidden again)
GNU Radio + USRP
GNU Radio + USRP = SDR
GNU Radio is a project started in 1998 to have a common open source toolkit to interface with software defined radio hardware.
The USRP (the Universal Software Radio Peripheral) is a $550 ready-to-use hardware module that interfaces with a linux box through a USB 2.0 port, capable of emulating several different standards, from a simple FM receiver to a GPS receiver, or as a GSM terminal, or even as a DBT television receiver.
Imagine something like this on a single chip… a $10 chip!
