It's like they planned it this way all along.

From TheNewspaper.com:

Private companies in the US are hoping to use red light cameras and speed cameras as the basis for a nationwide surveillance network similar to one that will be active next year in the UK. Redflex and American Traffic Solutions (ATS), the top two photo enforcement providers in the US, are quietly shopping new motorist tracking options to prospective state and local government clients. Redflex explained the company's latest developments in an August 7 meeting with Homestead, Florida officials.

"We are moving into areas such as homeland security on a national level and on a local level," Redflex regional director Cherif Elsadek said. "Optical character recognition is our next roll out which will be coming out in a few months -- probably about five months or so."

The technology would be integrated with the Australian company's existing red light camera and speed camera systems. It allows officials to keep full video records of passing motorists and their passengers, limited only by available hard drive space and the types of cameras installed. To gain public acceptance, the surveillance program is being initially sold as an aid for police looking to solve Amber Alert cases and locate stolen cars.

"Imagine if you had 1500 or 2000 cameras out there that could look out for the partial plate or full plate number across the 21 states where we do business today," Elsadek said. "This is the next step for our technology."

Scary, ain't it.

Here's an excellent argument for NASA to get out of the way.

This one is for you Objectivists out there.
From Kushal Sharma @ TheAtlasphere:

When most people hear about open source software, they think of charity, altruism, and "free stuff." At a deeper level, however, the open source movement is often highly individualistic.

I am a fan of Ayn Rand’s writings, and I deeply admire and follow Objectivism to the extent of my understanding.

I consider rational selfishness to be a great virtue, and anyone who understands its value would scoff at anything that has an altruistic motive.

For this reason, some Ayn Rand fans might disagree with the premise of the open source software movement. That, however, could be a mistake.

What exactly is open source? Open source is a movement started by people who believe that when customers buy software, they should have the actual source code to the software.

This means anyone capable of making changes to the source code and customizing the software to suit their needs, can do so without worrying about whether they’re infringing upon copyright or trademark laws.

It also follows that you are free from mandatory updates and have a choice about whether to use any updates you receive. Unlike some commercial products, once you buy or download open source software, you get the entire software with redistribution rights and not just the “right to use it for a limited time.”

This freedom, coupled with the availability of the source code, is the backbone of open source. This has made it possible for people to incorporate a great number of important changes to the software and make it truly world-class.

This also makes the nature of development in open source community-based, which is the reason why almost all open source software is available free of cost.

The open source movement has developed an intricately balanced, yet surprisingly robust, community for developing software.

However, since open-source software is available free of cost, most people outside the movement — and within it — mistakenly see it as an altruistic undertaking.

Quite a few of them have even forgotten that it is not intended to be free as in "free beer" but free as in “freedom of speech.”

Either way, most of them fail to realize that there is an individualism at its core. And it is this spirit, not altruism, which lies at the heart of the open source movement.

The article had alot of excellent premises and definitely made me rethink my views on open source software.

I just finished reading Little Brother by BoingBoing.net's very own Cory Doctorow, and I must say I was floored by the by the scope of this "young adult" book.

This is some of the best near-future sci-fi I've read in a very long time. The political tone of the book and the ideas about how technology enriches the lives of those who use it and transparency in government are extremely thought provoking.

I would recommend to anyone, even those over 25 (wink,wink), to go out right now and buy the book.

Believe me, you will not be disappointed.

Would vegetarians refuse to eat meat if that meat came from a test tube rather than from a dead cow? Apparently not.

From wired.com:

In a measure to protect animals by any means necessary, PETA is offering a $1 million prize to the first scientist who can produce lab-grown meat in bulk.

For me, this is way better than the Ansari X Prize: Why visit space when you can just as easily take a trip to heaven with some cantaloupe wrapped in high-tech prosciutto? As a vegetarian and a biological scientist, I'm thrilled by yesterday's announcement and eager to start loading my plate with tissue-engineered bacon.

More here.

Mmmmmmm.......Test tube bacon.........

And, just for the record, I think PETA sucks. They use brute force and bullying to get their point across instead of using logic and persuasion to foster real debate.

From Cosmos:

Nuclear energy produces no greenhouse gases, but it has many drawbacks. Now a radical new technology based on thorium promises what uranium never delivered: abundant, safe and clean energy - and a way to burn up old radioactive waste.

More here.

Now there are no excuses to fear and/or hate nuclear energy, you eco-nuts, i mean environmentalists.

More from TED here.

More from TED here.

Via Bill Blogins @ Wicked Theory (via TED)

For those of you who are sick and tired of having a singular view of global warming (or climate change I think it's now called) shoved down your throat; There is an excellent website called Climate Debate Daily that I think you would all enjoy.

Good day and safe surfing.

Nothing, aside from the panic that most older adults have that the Internet is turning their brains into gray goo.

From Salon.com:

The other week was only the latest takedown of what has become a fashionable segment of the population to bash: the American teenager. A phone (land line!) survey of 1,200 17-year-olds, conducted by the research organization Common Core and released Feb. 26, found our young people to be living in "stunning ignorance" of history and literature.

This furthered the report that the National Endowment for the Arts came out with at the end of 2007, lamenting "the diminished role of voluntary reading in American life," particularly among 13-to-17-year-olds, and Doris Lessing's condemnation, in her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in literature, of "a fragmenting culture" in which "young men and women ... have read nothing, knowing only some specialty or other, for instance, computers."

More here.

From CrunchGear:

Remember the X-ray technology from Total Recall? A British company has developed what it calls “ThruVision” — a similar technology that “uses what it calls ‘passive imaging technology’ to identify objects by the natural electromagnetic rays — known as Terahertz or T-rays — that they emit,” according to Reuters. “Depending on the material, the signature of the wave is different, so that explosives can be distinguished from a block of clay and cocaine is different from a bag of flour.”

More here.

From MetaFilter.com:

Would you like a latte while I print that up for you? The Espresso Book Machine that was in the New York Public Library has just moved to the Northshire Bookstore in Vermont. The beta versions of this portable book-making machine are pumping out paperbacks around a book a minute at the Open Content Alliance, The Library of Alexandria, The New Orleans Public Library, and the University of Alberta. The mass produced commercial version of the machine is scheduled to roll off the assembly line within the year and will be priced between $50,000 and $20,000. Combined with one of these, publishing as we know it may never be the same.

From Wired.com:

Fred Krupp is not your typical tree hugger. Chided by radicals for wooing corporate partners, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund is revered in Silicon Valley for championing a capitalist approach to clean energy. His new book, Earth: The Sequel (with Miriam Horn), spotlights the most promising climate solutions, from nanotech to flying windmills. Wired asked Krupp how these technologies can compete.

More here.

From Wired's Threat Level Blog:

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

"What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment," Babak Pasdar, now CEO of New York-based Bat Blue told THREAT LEVEL. "I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that."

More here and here. (via boingboing.net and wired.com)

From FoxNews.com:

The research began with the discovery of black fungus growing on the walls of the damaged, highly radioactive Chernobyl nuclear reactor and collected by robots.

The fungus was rich with melanin, the same pigment that gives human skin its color, protecting the skin from solar and ultraviolet radiation. Melanin is found in many, if not most, fungal species.

More here.

From BBC News:

A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers.

The as-yet-unnamed material - a form of artificial rubber - is made from vegetable oil and a component of urine.

This could have a huge impact commercially. I can think of three or four products that would benefit from this right off the top of my head: Tires (no more worrying about that pesky nail you just ran over), shoe soles (or hell, even whole shoes [no more resoling your shoes or worrying about you soles flapping around in the breeze]), the list goes on.

This marvel of technology has potential (was that a bit over the top?).

More here.

Where's the future we were promised we should have had by now, like fish bowl swimming pools, flying cars, and mining on the moon.

In the 1930s scientists were trying to come up with anti-gravity and flying cars-- now it's more than 50 years later and we're still waiting on hoverpads and personal air vehicles.

As a matter of fact, the only two things that were predicted by futurists that we actually got are the electronic home library, and robot warehouses where the bots fetch your orders. Sometimes futurism is more hopeful than predictive.

One such futurist was Arthur Radebaugh, who was also an illustrator who came up with many of the "world of tomorrow!" style ads that you'd see gracing the inside pages of magazines like Motor, Esquire, Fortune and Advertising Agency throughout the 1930s. He even coined the term "imagineering" back in 1947.

Here's an online exhibit of Radebaugh's art at the Palace of Culture called "The Future We Were Promised, where you'll see art like the picture above.

A cartoon from the 50s that thinks it can predict the future...




Where the hell are the flying cars and super skyscrapers that they promised us?

...but they can "hear you now".

Sat phones on the moon, huh? What'll they come up with next?

From Engadget:

Did you know that NASA was building a base of operations in the south pole of the Moon? Did you know colonists would be living and working there? Did you know that plans are in motion to establish a satellite phone network which would allow said colonists to communicate with one another? Well, it's all true... and more!

Check here for more details.