Category: Geek

Let’s hope this doesn’t become a trend. I think you should only use version numbering when you cybernetically upgrade yourself, like I did.

Sincerely,
Gareth 2.0

Street Tech pal Cory Doctorow’s new novel, Eastern Standard Tribe, starts shipping today. A free e-book version is also now available for download from his Web site He writes:

As with Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, my first novel, I’ve made the whole text of the novel available as a free download in a variety of open, standards-defined formats, under the terms of a Creative Commons license — and I’ve written a short essay explaining why I’ve done it: in a nutshell, this worked really well for my first book, and I’d be crazy not to repeat the experiment with my second novel.

Check out this project called ARQuake that overlays Quake game elements (monsters, health packs, ammo packs, etc) on to the real world for users wearing VR goggles, allowing the user to play Quake in the real world. While in early stages right now, there is a functional demo that looks amazing (well, in a retro 1992 kinda way). While the possibilities for VR technology are endless, there is no doubt that gaming is going to push the market, and this is a demonstration of the kind of things we can expect.

Via BoingBoing

Lovecraft and manga…two great tastes that taste great together!

While we’re on the topic of robots (a seemingly never-ending topic now that Gar has published his book) we might as well mention that the first annual Carnegie Mellon Robot Hall of Fame inductees were announced yesterday. The group of four robots included some fictional and some real. Of the fictional, R2D2 was inducted for hyr portrayal of a humble servant with a bit of an independant streak, HAL 9000 was recognized for setting the benchmark for robot intelligence (and for being the first robot capable of pre-meditated murder).

“Real” robot incductees included the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner Rover for hyr remarkable interplanetary robotic acheivement (and not mixing up the kilos and the pounds) and the little known Unimate, the first industrial robotic arm, was recognized for years of hard labor in the service of mankind.

Make sure to visit the Hall of Fame website and vote for Gareth for induction next year. While not as cute as R2D2, not as smart as HAL, not as mobile as Sojourner and not as strong as Unimate, we here at ST think he’s the best mix of all four.

Street Tech pal and Chairman of the Cyberpunk Faction of the AARP, Bruce Sterling, has a new Wired-sponsored blog.

Check out the item about our former bOING bOING (the print zine) and Beyond Cyberpunk! (the e-book) mascot Kata Sutra, apparently now a sleeper agent at the Business Software Alliance. Their character, Meg A. Byte, sure does remind us of our favorite hacker grrrl. I sure hope they’re not playing fast and loose with our intellectual property! That would be wrong.

One of our favorite shows here at Street Tech Labs last year was Mythbusters. It’s a Discovery Channel offering where two geeks set up elaborate experiments to test out the voracity of common urban myths.

Can your ass be so large that it forms a seal over a toilet bowl such that you can’t get off and the toilet needs to be broken to break said seal? The Mythbusters built a giant latex ass to find out. Apparently it’s a myth. Big ass. No seal.

Is it possible for a can of dinner roll dough to explode all over the back seat of a car on a really hot day (such that the driver thinks she’s been shot and the sticky stuff on the back of her head is her own brainmatter)? Yes! They tried it and proved it could theoretically happen.

A new season of this seriously fun geekly goodness starts tomorrow night (Friday) at 9pm on Discovery.

From the Oddly Enough column, reports of a British man with a power tool who responds to calls from people who have been booted by the cops for illegal parking, and frees them of their shackles. Using an angle-grinder (hence this self-styled superhero’s name: Angle Grinder Man) this guy will cut the boot off any stranded motorist’s car for free. And he actually wears a blue bodysuit with AGM on the chest while doing it. Brilliant. Unfortunately only people in the England can call on this hero, as he does not seem to be able to fly at super-sonic speeds, but people all over the world can enjoy his “money shots” on his website, if a naked man with a power grinder is your cup-of-tea. I don’t know how long this guy is going to be able to continue doing this though, since he doesn’t seem to get the whole “secret identity” thing…

Though of dubious utility, some intrepid hackers have managed to pare a working, fully-functional (well, mostly) Windows 95 installation down to fewer than 5 MB (mirror). Though it lacks support for sound or a TCP/IP stack, it’s still an impressive proof-of-concept. Apparently a project is in the works to add those features back in, and other, similar projects with Windows NT, 2000, and Office, as well as a version of Windows 98 that’s bootable from a CD are in the works. The original site was Slashdotted most swiftly.

I just want to know how fast it boots.

I am saddened to announce that another friend of Street Tech has passed away. Street Tech co-founder Peter Sugarman’s dad, Marvin Sugarman, died last week. Marvin was a TV production guy, working in sports television. He taught Peter a lot of what he knows, about media production, and lots of other things. Peter’s been one of my mentors, so there’s a direct connection.

Marvin financed the creation of Beyond Cyberpunk!, the masive 1991 HyperCard e-book on cyberpunk sci-fi and pre-Web cybercultre that Peter, Mark Frauenfelder, Jim Leftwich, and I did. If BCP! earns a paragraph in the cyber-history books, Marvin should be in the group photo.

Happy trails, Marvin. Thanks for giving us Peter. He’s one ornery mofo (did he get that from you?), but we love him just the same.