We have all heard of road rage and air rage. Now we have web rage.
More than half of all internet users admit to losing their rag with the net at least once a week, according to a Mori study. High on people’s stress meter is the length of time it takes websites to appear, help buttons that do not offer any help and requests for personal details before being allowed into a site.
NASA’s Earth – Most Detail Picture Ever
BBC News has a story on how scientists created the most accurate and detailed image of our planet yet, composing the image from satellite data, and adjusting it for the correct colours. Composite satellite images showing the cloud-free Earth have been made before, but Nasa’s latest image beats all others in terms of accuracy and the amount of data that went into it.
Museum Explains Why Snot Exists
The London Science Museum is inviting children to learn about the “impolite” science of the human body in an exhibition at which they will be offered the chance to scale a wall of human skin — warts and all — and generate volcanic flatulence. Grossology is coming to London.
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Bob Bemer – Inventor of the Hyperlink – Goes to War
Wired Magazine reports, “Nobody should be more outraged over British Telecom’s claim that it owns the patent to hyperlinking than Bob Bemer, who believes he may be the world’s oldest, living computer programmer.
Bemer, 82, isn’t just taking a political stance against the recent legal filing by British Telecom that claims the company owns a patent on hyperlink technology. In 1960, Bemer — whose coding contributions form the foundation of many modern computer systems — came up with a critical coding concept that is now used in hyperlinks.”
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Finally, An Opera Without Any Humans
Stardust is a new opera that features no human actors. It’s an extravagant multimedia production. Not only are there no bearded tenors in frilly shirts, Stardust boasts that it has no singers at all. This is an opera where humans are conspicuous only by their absence: no actors, no dancers and, heaven forbid, no fat lady.
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NASA Funding Problems Slows Space Progress
Space.com reports, “…at the dawn of the 21st century, with hundreds of people having now circled our planet, just what trajectory is human spaceflight really taking? Apollo, for all its glory and foot stomping moonwalks, is today a dusty, historical artifact of the Cold War.
As the International Space Station faces size and budget reductions and as human missions back to the moon or on to Mars are put on the backburner or dismissed, human spaceflight appears to have been placed into a neutral parking orbit.
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T3: Rise of the Machines
Reuters reported – On Friday, the producers of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “T3: Rise of the Machines,” now in pre-production, announced that the mega-budget project will shoot entirely in Los Angeles, with interiors shot at L.A. Center Studios and exteriors shot in various locations throughout the city.
“T3” is set for worldwide release in summer 2003.
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Monty Python Tops Poll of Favorite Films Lines
Monty Python’s cult comedy “The Life of Brian” has topped a poll of UK internet users’ favorite film lines.
More than 20 years after it was banned in parts of Britain for its supposedly blasphemous content, the biblical satire dominated a survey for online shop bol.com.
Director Terry Jones, who played the mother of Brian, a young man mistaken for the Messiah, delivered the winning line to a crowd hoping to catch a glimpse of their idol — “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.”
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Glow In The Dark Graves Attract Crowds
Word has spread that the al Qaeda graves in Afganistan have magical healing properties, and scores of people congregate there every day, some to pay their respects, and others hoping their diseases or disabilities will be cured.
“One man buried electric bulbs in the graves and told people it was magical light that could heal them,” a senior police official said. “He has been arrested. We respect the graves but we do not respect such people.” More weirdness here.
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Weather Balloons – The Next Wireless Satellites
Weather balloons launched every day would be used to provide wireless telephone service in rural areas under a plan devised by a Chandler, Ariz., company.
Space Data Corp., which is located at the Stellar Air Park, demonstrated its SkySite concept this week at the IDG DEMO 2002 conference at the Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs resort in Phoenix.
Space Data has not yet finalized negotiations with the National Weather Service on joint use of balloons, and it has not yet completed any agreements with wireless carriers. Still, the company hopes to begin commercial service in the southwestern United States in 2003.
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The Segway Auction
This is your exclusive opportunity to be one of the very first consumers to own a Segway Human Transporter. The first-ever consumer models of the Segway HT are now available in this exclusive Amazon.com auction. The Segway HT is the first self-balancing, electric-powered personal transportation machine. Don’t expect a bargain. As of this writing, all three have bids over $40K.
Women love a man and his Segway.
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Disinformation.com
Slashdot reports, “Sure, we are being lied to by bloated, corporatized media all the time. What else is new? The great promise of the Net and Web has always been more truth: a great, hyper-linked network of diverse, individual expression, a vast, linked alternative subculture. There is hope. You can go to the Disinformation Web Site to see that idea in action, despite the AOL-ing and MSN-ing of cyberspace. This trove — its content ranges from “The X-Men” and “Space Mutation” to “The Matrix” to pieces on Radiohead — is what the Web is really about.”
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