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Kotaku -
4 hours and 52 minutes ago
This will be the first time I've ever worked on Crecentral Time, as I'm
in Colorado hanging with Kotaku alum Adam Barenblat for the weekend. It's also a shortened two
days thanks to July 4.
But to everyone who might be kicking back, lighting up and/or grilling out this weekend -
Francophones, we realize you're waiting on Bastille Day - we start with a roundup of our
reporting highlights, led by the Summer of Gaming package. McMike also got a look inside Blizzard
and Starcraft.
Hey, wasn't Frank O'Phone a reliever for the New York Mets? I digress. The week in original
coverage.
Summer of Gaming
Sink Or Swim? The
Game Designer's Conundrum
Kotaku's 2009 Summer Reading
List
Kotaku's Summer of Gaming
Blizzard/Starcraft
No LAN Play For Starcraft
II
Three
Things We Weren't Allowed To Photograph At Blizzard HQ
Ogle Blizzard HQ's
Epically Mounted Orc
StarCraft II
Beta Planned To Last 4 To 6 Months
What's Inside
Blizzard's Library?
StarCraft II Hands-On:
Round Three
Features
How To Name A Video Game Studio - And Hopefully Get It Right
In Defense Of The
Classic Controller
Previews, Reviews, Hands-On and Impressions
Transformers:
Revenge Of The Fallen Review: Clench The Difference
Battlefield
Heroes Review: The Great (Cartoon) War Frankenreview: The Conduit
Mecho
Wars Micro-Review: Landians Versus Wingians... Really?
Sony Expands
"Official Licensing Program"
Let's Take A PlayStation
Home Survey!
Captain Blood
Preview: Errol Flynn He Ain't - But He'll Do
Dreamkiller
Impressions: "Emotional Painkiller" Doesn't Sound As Cool
The Conduit
Review: A Bland, But Enjoyable Shooter
Death
To Spies 2: Moment of Truth Preview: SMERSH is a fun word to say
Bit.Trip: Core
Preview: Thumb-Aching Good Fun
Gunstar Heroes
Micro-Review: The Perfect Shot
MySims Agents Preview: Spy
vs. Sims
Fight Night Round
4 Review: Boxing Beautiful
Rumor
Foot Controlled Silver
Surfer Game?
News
PS3 Bundle Includes MGS4,
Killzone 2
Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma Premium Box Pack Premium Price
How
Many Hours People Play Nintendo's Wii Games (Sorry, Donkey Kong) Square Enix Brings
Hammer Down On French Retailer Midway
Sale To WB Clears Court, Staff At Two Studios Given Notice
Grand Theft IV
Auto Goes Discount In Japan
Xbox 360
Game Creation Tool Kodu Now Live - Got Any Ideas?
Dave Perry: How Gaikai Goes Beyond OnLive, Could Spread Gaming Everywhere
Square Enix
Mystery Solved - The Four Warriors Of Light
Ninja
Gaiden Sigma 2 Dated And Detailed For Japan
Damnation Developers Laid
Off
Nintendo Patents
WarioWare Take On Othello
Carmack: Just
About Everything id Makes Coming To iPhone
Doom
Resurrection: The iPhone Game That Nearly Wasn't
Would Natal Enable
User-Generated Mo-Cap?
Kotaku Reader K6
Swag and Toys
Wish I Had A Record Player
Kotaku Kard Man
Check Out This Awesome
Akuma Statue
At the Half
2009 Is Half-Done:
What's Been Great So Far?
Facts and Figures
How
Many Hours People Play Each Wii Sonic Game, Music Games Too
The Ten
Most Avidly-Played Wii Games In America (As Of July 1)


|
Joystiq -
20 hours and 22 minutes ago

We'd be lying if we didn't say we're a bit worried about the future of gaming controllers. Between
the Nintendo's MotionPlus, Microsoft's Project Natal and Sony's ... erm ... motion thing, our precious game pads
get more and more antique looking every day. And according to a recent patent filed by Sony that
Siliconera found, our precious controllers have one more thing to fear: everyday objects.
That's right, friends -- in the future, we could be using our real-life keys to open
doors, our swords to slice up fools, and our guns (not outside of the US) to shoot up the screen
"accidentally." The patent shows off a PlayStation Eye-based system that can recognize 3D
objects and use them in-game based on various actions taken by the player -- something Microsoft
claims it's Natal is also capable of doing. Various household items will be affected in different
ways, the example given being a U-shaped object that, when turned upwards, becomes a sword, versus
a U-shaped block when facing downwards (think Halo's Covenant Energy Sword). Apparently the system
is able to scan a whole mess of objects and store them in a databank for future use. Like so much
future tech we've seen recently, we're taking this one with a full truckload of salt until we get
some face time.
Sony
patents more motion tech, uses everyday objects originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email
this | Comments


|
Joystiq -
20 hours and 22 minutes ago

We'd be lying if we didn't say we're a bit worried about the future of gaming controllers. Between
the Nintendo's MotionPlus, Microsoft's Project Natal and Sony's ... erm ... motion thing, our precious game pads
get more and more antique looking every day. And according to a recent patent filed by Sony that
Siliconera found, our precious controllers have one more thing to fear: everyday objects.
That's right, friends -- in the future, we could be using our real-life keys to open
doors, our swords to slice up fools, and our guns (not outside of the US) to shoot up the screen
"accidentally." The patent shows off a PlayStation Eye-based system that can recognize 3D
objects and use them in-game based on various actions taken by the player -- something Microsoft
claims it's Natal is also capable of doing. Various household items will be affected in different
ways, the example given being a U-shaped object that, when turned upwards, becomes a sword, versus
a U-shaped block when facing downwards (think Halo's Covenant Energy Sword). Apparently the system
is able to scan a whole mess of objects and store them in a databank for future use. Like so much
future tech we've seen recently, we're taking this one with a full truckload of salt until we get
some face time.
Sony
patents more motion tech, uses everyday objects originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email
this | Comments

|
Slashdot -
20 hours and 50 minutes ago
theodp writes "Three Amazon inventors set out to correct what they felt was a real problem: that
'out-of-print or rare books ... typically do not include advertisements ... the content is fixed
and, therefore, has not been adapted to modern marketing.' Their solution is spelled out in
newly-disclosed Amazon patent applications for On-Demand Generating E-Book Content with Advertising
and Incorporating Advertising in On-Demand Generated Content. From the patent apps, here's what the
future of reading may look like: 'For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the
advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants,
wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining.' So, what would a
delightfully-tacky-yet-unrefined Hooters ad do for your Hemingway experience?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.

|
Slashdot -
20 hours and 50 minutes ago
theodp writes "Three Amazon inventors set out to correct what they felt was a real problem: that
'out-of-print or rare books ... typically do not include advertisements ... the content is fixed
and, therefore, has not been adapted to modern marketing.' Their solution is spelled out in
newly-disclosed Amazon patent applications for On-Demand Generating E-Book Content with Advertising
and Incorporating Advertising in On-Demand Generated Content. From the patent apps, here's what the
future of reading may look like: 'For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the
advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants,
wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining.' So, what would a
delightfully-tacky-yet-unrefined Hooters ad do for your Hemingway experience?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
|
CNET News.com - Personal Tech -
1 days and 2 hours ago
Three just-published patent applications hint at the company's future plans. But it could be a
while before we see any of the functionality built into iPhones or other Apple devices. 
|
CNET News.com -
1 days and 2 hours ago
Three just-published patent applications hint at the company's future plans. But it could be a
while before we see any of the functionality built into iPhones or other Apple devices.
|
CNET News.com -
1 days and 2 hours ago
Three just-published patent applications hint at the company's future plans. But it could be a
while before we see any of the functionality built into iPhones or other Apple devices.
|
GamesIndustry.biz -
1 days and 2 hours ago
Following its unveiling of a new EyeToy-compatible motion controller at this year's E3, Sony has
patented more motion control related technology which lets users dynamically map everyday items
for use in a game.
The patent details a system where a camera can map in any real world item, reports Siliconera.
Examples given include a coffee mug, drinking glass, books and bottles, however the mapping
system is expected to be able to identify any three dimension object.
Sony uses a U-shaped block to show how the technology will work, explaining the player must show
the object to the camera, rotate it and save it to a file. The system can then analyse movements
and transfer them into in-game actions.
Read
more...
|
MacNN | The Macintosh News Network -
1 days and 2 hours ago
Future iPhones and iPods from Apple could come in "active packaging," a recently-published patent
application hints. Apple observes that while standard product packaging serves its essential
purpose, it is also subject to limitations, such as an inability to showcase electronics in action
without completely draining batteries. Similarly, should firmware updates become available, a
store's invent...

|
iPodNN | The iPod News Network -
1 days and 2 hours ago
Future iPhones and iPods from Apple could come in "active packaging," a recently-published patent
application hints. Apple observes that while standard product packaging serves its essential
purpose, it is also subject to limitations, such as an inability to showcase electronics in action
without completely draining batteries. Similarly, should firmware updates become available, a
store's invent...

|
MacNN | The Macintosh News Network -
1 days and 2 hours ago
Future iPhones and iPods from Apple could come in "active packaging," a recently-published patent
application hints. Apple observes that while standard product packaging serves its essential
purpose, it is also subject to limitations, such as an inability to showcase electronics in action
without completely draining batteries. Similarly, should firmware updates become available, a
store's invent...

|
iPodNN | The iPod News Network -
1 days and 2 hours ago
Future iPhones and iPods from Apple could come in "active packaging," a recently-published patent
application hints. Apple observes that while standard product packaging serves its essential
purpose, it is also subject to limitations, such as an inability to showcase electronics in action
without completely draining batteries. Similarly, should firmware updates become available, a
store's invent...

|
EVWorldwire -
1 days and 3 hours ago
Toyota has amassed some 2,700 patents on its Hybrid Synergy Drive system.
|
Engadget -
1 days and 3 hours ago

Electronics packaging has been growing steadily smaller and
less annoying over recent times, but here comes Apple adding complexity where we didn't know it
was needed. The bright sparks at Cupertino envision powered, data-transmitting boxes that will
ensure the device within is fully juiced, packing the latest firmware, and capable of pumping out
video demos so that the packaging needn't get in the way of wooing customers. Sure, up-to-date
firmware and a full battery sound nice, but we can't help but wonder about the price premium we'd
have to swallow to be able to see our new toy dancing before we've even set it free from its
box.
[Via
Phone Arena]
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Apple's 'active packaging' patent application tries to reinvent the box originally appeared
on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:53:00 EST. Please see
our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email
this | Comments

|
Engadget -
1 days and 3 hours ago

Electronics packaging has been growing steadily smaller and
less annoying over recent times, but here comes Apple adding complexity where we didn't know it
was needed. The bright sparks at Cupertino envision powered, data-transmitting boxes that will
ensure the device within is fully juiced, packing the latest firmware, and capable of pumping out
video demos so that the packaging needn't get in the way of wooing customers. Sure, up-to-date
firmware and a full battery sound nice, but we can't help but wonder about the price premium we'd
have to swallow to be able to see our new toy dancing before we've even set it free from its
box.
[Via
Phone Arena]
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Apple's 'active packaging' patent application tries to reinvent the box originally appeared
on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:53:00 EST. Please see
our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email
this | Comments
|
BetaNews.Com -
1 days and 5 hours ago
By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff, Betanews
Seattle nerds are hereby ordered to appear in costume
and with a canned-food donation in Fremont at 6:00 pm PDT today (Friday) to help set the world
record for largest gathering of lurching zombies. (Zombies and silly world-record attempts: It
doesn't get geekier. Xbox 360's even co-sponsoring, for pete's sake. Also, BRAAAAINS!) The pyrotechnicans among us are
enjoined to keep safe.
Federal judge admonished (and that's all) for explicit material on personal
site
The 21st century, believe it or not • Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex
Kozinski, legendary for concluding his opinion in a certain high-profile free-speech case with
"The parties are advised to chill," has been reprimanded after a yearlong investigation for
having various explicit (but legal) photos and videos on his family's Web site.
The panel had investigated claims first made in the Los Angeles Times stating, according
to the decision yesterday, "the "website" -- http://alex.kozinski.com -- included 'a photo of
naked women on all fours painted to look like cows,' 'a video of a half-dressed man cavorting
with a sexually aroused farm animal,' and 'a graphic step-by-step pictorial in which a woman is
seen shaving her pubic hair.' Regarding the alleged public accessibility of the 'website,' the
article reported that the Judge 'said that he thought the site was for his private storage and
that he was not aware the images could be seen by the public, although he also said he had shared
some material on the site with friends.'"
Friends? Oh, well...With apologies to the jurist, who once called blogs "hateful
things", we link to three for the more interesting coverage of the decision. Law.com explains the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals' reasoning. Ashby Jones at The
Wall Street Journal (its Law Blog, in fact, but shh!) reached Judge Kozinski for a quote and
reports that he is "pleased that today's unanimous decision reaffirms what I have
said all along about my private files: They were kept on a private server and were not intended
to be shared publicly." And AmLaw Daily, which does a nice job of explaining how a disgruntled lawyer started this particular ball
rolling, links to the 41-page opinion, originally filed last June 5.
Californians gain access to database of lawmakers' votes
June 16, 2009 • MAPLight
and the California First Amendment Coalition have prevailed in one of those lawsuits you can't
believe anyone would have to file in the 21st century: Announced only yesterday, they've settled
a freedom-of-information lawsuit against the Office of Legislative Counsel of California. And
what do they win, Johnny Olsen? Why, a machine-readable database of state lawmakers' votes,
upgrading the previous plain-text dump on the California Legislative Information site.
The two groups filed suit in December 2008 after repeated requests to the Office of the
Legislative Counsel for access to the database used to create the previous plain-text site, which
was clunky and very hard to search. Since then, the OLC has stepped up its game, launching a Web
site that indeed provides the data -- to the two public-interest groups or anyone else visiting
the site -- in a structured and
machine-readable format. Thus propitiated, the CFAC and MAPLight.org withdrew their suit. Going
forward, MAPlight will combine the legislative database with data on donations to California
legislators, in hopes of daylighting the connections between money and political capital. And
both CFAC and MAPlight will be keeping an eye on the next big legislative database, known for now
as "Inquire."
Conviction stemming from MySpace suicide tentatively overturned
July 2, 2009 • There's a difference between not being convicted of a crime
and being found innocent of doing wrong. Daily Kos, covering what appears to be the conclusion of the Lori Drew case, accurately states that the decision is
most likely a win for free speech on the Internet... and now, please, may the grown woman who
tormented a fragile 13-year-old experience "nothing but pain and anguish for what she's done."
Other pertinent words in the piece by AmbroseBurnside include "vile human being," "disgusting,"
"people we hate or abhor," and "a true victory for all of us who love the freedom the internet
allows and want to keep it safe from more government intrusion."
Would Albert have really signed his name to this?
July 2009 > Once again, AT&T is crawling into bed with the NSA to screen
computer traffic.
Last May, President Obama made an explicit pledge not to use federal government resources to
spy on private Internet users. "Protecting this infrastructure will be a national security
priority...[which] will not include monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic," the
President said at the time. "We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil
liberties that we cherish as Americans."
Despite that pledge, as first reported by the Washington Post this morning, DHS Secretary Janet
Napolitano told reporters that her department would proceed with a plan initiated by the Bush
administration to screen Internet content, with the help of carriers such as AT&T, but
presumably in a manner that would protect civil liberties.
The "Einstein 3" plan would, among other things, route Net traffic from civilian agencies through
a monitoring system designed to parse for attacks or other intrusion attempts. The Obama
administration has been figuring out which pieces of that system they mean to keep. Privacy
advocates have been briefed, and say there's a lot of work to do to make this system work.
Green Dam is offline and China is on the fence
Perhaps no time after July 1, 2009 > The Chinese government hasn't given up
on the Green Dam project, but between diplomatic protests, inadequate notice to manufacturers,
and no strategy for controlling Mac or *nix machines, Beijing appears to have put the stewpot
back on the stove.
The Chinese government has not issued any new statements on the matter since June 30, although
multiple sources are reporting that PC manufacturers have been allowed to go ahead with their
plans to install the "Green Dam for Escorting Children" filtering software on their systems
if they want to.
The question is now, do they really want to, especially in the wake of last month's University of Michigan security report from Prof. J. Alex
Halderman and his team, who discovered that Green Dam may not only be un-authentic but could
cause a greater security problem than it solves.
"We examined the Green Dam software and found that it contains serious security vulnerabilities
due to programming errors," Prof. Halderman's team wrote. "Once Green Dam is installed, any Web
site the user visits can exploit these problems to take control of the computer. This could allow
malicious sites to steal private data, send spam, or enlist the computer in a botnet. In
addition, we found vulnerabilities in the way Green Dam processes blacklist updates that could
allow the software makers or others to install malicious code during the update process. We found
these problems with less than 12 hours of testing, and we believe they may be only the tip of the
iceberg."
Loretta Chao and Ting-I Tsai, writing for The Wall Street Journal this morning after
weeks of great coverage of the situation, aren't so sure that by "postponement," China's IT ministry means "doing this
within our natural lifetimes." Chao and Tsai noted that "obfuscating" by Chinese officials in the
press could mean that the project's simply headed for permanent limbo.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset will appeal RIAA case
Apparently until hell freezes over > Think about it: Based on trial outcome,
Ms. Thomas-Rasset is a less sympathetic defendant than Lori Drew. Copycense beats its collective head against the desk on our behalf.
Asteroids: The Movie
Coming in 2010 to a theater near you > Cue the Jerry Goldsmith music, and the
Genesis effect creating a brightly-colored planet. The "Universal" letters come into orbit and
the cloudless planet settles into place. A triangular ship comes into focus, fires little white
pellets into it, and blows it into pairs of smaller planets. First two, then four, until the
screen is full of them.
How much do you want to bet? Seriously, as The Hollywood Reporter first reported, some of the team who's
bringing you the GI Joe movie this year is working on a script for Universal next year
for the film adaptation of the immortal Atari 1978 coin-op game "Asteroids." No casting has been
done yet, and no plot points have yet been revealed (or probably yet even created).
You think it even needs a theme song? Or just BOM-bom-BOM-bom-BOM-bom-BOM with a siren or
something in the background?
Friday's tech headlines
The Register
• Police serving in the UK's Crown Prosecution Service are being encouraged to prep for
court testimony by doing research on Wikipedia.
• Apple may just keep coming at Psystar with the lawsuits, but the Mac-clone maker is on its
way out of bankruptcy and refuses to lie down: "When life gives you apples, make applesauce." Oh my.
• Apple has applied for a patent for software that'll help bad karaoke singers improve their
grasp of pitch and key. Alert Stockholm.
San Jose Mercury News
• The next time someone tells you that bloggers can't also be serious journalists (good
morning, Judge Kozinski), you tell them about Alison van Diggelen, the proprietor of Fresh
Dialogues. She's not making money from it, but her brand of interview-based environmental
coverage is professional in just about every other way that matters. Mike Cassidy tells her story.
• Clean tech took a beating like everything else during the recession, but biofuels, better
batteries, and the like saw improvements in venture-cap funding during the quarter just ended --
and confidence in the sector is up too, Tracy Seipel reports.
Washington Post
• Prisons in Maryland hope to cut down on inmates' mobile-phone communications by jamming
signals near the facilities, but there are legal and technical consequences. Henri E. Cauvin has details.
Los Angeles Times
• The Performance Rights Act, which would put over-the-air radio stations on the hook for
paying royalties to artists (as well as composers, which they do now), is making those stations nervous. More on that in a minute -- but first, 22 straight
minutes of commercials and three replays of the latest Beyonce single!
• Some products just don't sell outside the brick-and-mortar environment: Hershey, the
chocolatier, will close
its online store as of July 31. There are closeout discounts over there if that kind of thing
interests you.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009


|
-
1 days and 5 hours ago
p2pnet news |
Open Source:- Debian
has no plans to include the Mono programming environment in the default GNOME installation, says
Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Debian developer and spokesman for the GNU/Linux distribution.
The news comes in response to the open letter written by Free Software founder Richard Stallman
about the “Mono problem,” says Heise Online.
Says Stallman »»»
Debian’s decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which
is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to
depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.
The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The
danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground
some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org and
http://progfree.org.) This is a serious danger, and only fools
would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect
ourselves from this future danger.
This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. Free C# implementations permit users to
run their C# programs on free platforms, which is good. (The GNU Project has an implementation of
C# also, called Portable.NET.) Ideally
we want to provide free implementations for all languages that programmers have used.
The problem is not in the C# implementations, but rather in Tomboy and other applications written
in C#. If we lose the use of C#, we will lose them too. That doesn’t make them unethical,
but it means that writing them and using them is taking a gratuitous risk.
We should systematically arrange to depend on the free C# implementations as little as possible.
In other words, we should discourage people from writing programs in C#. Therefore, we should not
include C# implementations in the default installation of GNU/Linux distributions, and we should
distribute and recommend non-C# applications rather than comparable C# applications whenever
possible.
But Reichle-Schmehl says this
isn’t the case, and the default installation hasn’t changed, stating
»»»
… in answer to your open letter Why
free software shouldn’t depend on Mono or C# I like to explain a small misunderstanding
that seems to have been spread pretty wide recently.
Debian has not to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy. The default
installation – or to be more precise: The default GNOME installation (there
are installation media which install an KDE, Xfce or LXDE desktop by default, too)
– hasn’t changed. It still installs a more or less minimal Gnome Desktop
without tomboy and without mono. As far as I know there haven’t been major changes in
package selection for the GNOME installation media, nor are there major changes planed.
What really has changed is that one of our meta packages, which are mainly used to install a set
of packages. Indeed our meta package to install everything gnome related got a dependency on Tomboy and will indeed
pull in mono, too.
That doesn’t have any effect on the default installation (which doesn’t use that
package) nor does it effect a major part of Debian’s GNOME users, who prefer to install
gnome-desktop (a meta package
to pull in a simple GNOME Desktop) or even the gnome-core meta-package (which installs the bare
necessities to run GNOME applications). Please see the numbers at our popularity contest system for yourself.
So, Debian didn’t change the default installation (whatever that’s supposed to be)
but the dependency of a package which is used by a minority of our users who explicitly wishes to
install everything GNOME related (which is to the best of my knowledge in accordance with
upstream developers who added tomboy to the default GNOME installation, too).
Stay tuned.
Follow p2pnet
on Twitter.
More
Heise Online - Debian - Mono is
not in our default installation, July 2, 2009
Stallman - Why free software shouldn’t depend on Mono or C#, June 26, 2009
Reichle-Schmehl - Dear Richard, June 30, 2009
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
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|
PlayStation 3 -
1 days and 9 hours ago
When Sony showed off its new motion control tech at E3 last month, the demo featured a LED
wand as a controller. A recently published patent, however, hints
that Sony may also be working on tech that would let players use everyday objects as
controllers.
According to Siliconera, the patent details a system where any three-dimensional object can be
mapped by a camera for use in a video game. Say for example you're playing a driving game. You can
map in a plate, your shoe, heck maybe even a severed head and use it as a steering wheel. The
mapping part is explained in the second and third images below:

The patent also includes some examples of how the tech can be used. In the first image below, a
U-shaped object is used to simulate some sort of lightsaber-like sword. When the object is pointing
upwards the sword is on and it turns off when the object is pointed down. Other examples mostly
deal with usage in sports games.


Related articles:


|
Wired: Beyond the Beyond -
1 days and 10 hours ago
Imaginary Gadgets 0005: The fantastic machines of Leonardo
Who: Leonardo da Vinci
What: plans and sketches of imaginary objects from Da Vinci’s surviving codices.
When: circa 1480 – 1519
Where: Florence, Milan, Rome, Bologna, Venice, Amboise
How: schemes of cosmopolitan polymathic artist-engineer.
Why: glory, intellectual mastery, royal commissions.
Leonardo da Vinci is the world’s most famous inventor of imaginary objects. At his death,
he left some 18,000 pages of plans, schemes, drawings and writings. About 6,000 pages have since
been rediscovered and published. They are the largest trove of writing by any Renaissance
technologist.
These works were never published in his lifetime. Some of his writings seem clearly intended for
an audience other than himself. Yet the pages of his journals are intermixed with accounts,
lists, personal jottings, and so forth.
Da Vinci did built some real and functional devices: they were festival stage machineries,
musical instruments, and (in one case) some palace plumbing. His other devices — and there
were hundreds — never came to fruition. He also trifled with painting, a minor aspect of
his work.
What was he thinking?
Da Vinci was extremely intellectual active. He also had a long career, so his engagement with
physical objects came in intellectual phases.
A. The apprentice period. At fourteen, Da Vinci enters the Florentine atelier of Verocchio, an
artist-engineer whose busy cultural factory involves drafting, painting, plaster casting,
sculpture, metal-casting, architecture, carpentry and mechanics. As a famous craftsman in the
most advanced city in the wealthiest region in the world, Verocchio is an urban contractor and a
general factotum. Verocchio works on large-scale commissions and can be depended-upon by his
patrons to carry out broad-scale commissions in a high style. The crew in his employ has a can-do
attitude, similar to a movie crew. They do not much trouble themselves with specialization,
because the technical professions have not yet been invented. There are no formal schools of
engineering. Artist-engineers tackle creative problems as they find them. They rely on rules of
thumb, revived ancient learning, and gossip.
As a teen, Da Vinci carefully studies the advanced machinery in Florentine construction sites,
and draws the public works in detail. As an appentice to Verocchio, he likely has his first
exposure to the semi-secret manuals of machines and engines, known as “theaters of
machinery,” that were circulated in manuscript among adepts. He starts keeping notebooks of
his own.
B. Hoping to ingratiate himself into the urban canal-building craze, Da Vinci studies dredges,
locks, hoists, and dams. He becomes convinced that water is poorly understood, and that
canal-builders get poor results because they rely too much on rules of thumb.
Da Vinci spends several years drawing water in motion. He creates a private physics / metaphysics
of fluid mechanics. Occasionally he’s a minor consultant in urban water projects. He is
never in charge of one, but these mighty efforts have such large budgets that his modest fees
vanish into the haze. Da Vinci doggedly sketches and maps many superbly ambitious water projects
which are never carried out.
C. Hired by an aggressive Duke of Milan, Da Vinci amuses his patron by creating large numbers of
sadistic cartoon war machines, none of which are ever built or deployed in battle. The years in
Milan are his most commercially successful period. He mostly works on directly-commissioned toy
special-effects for Milanese court masques and parades. At this work he truly excels. Eventually
a real war breaks out, the Duke is swiftly defeated and Da Vinci has to flee.
D. Da Vinci is introduced to geometry by a learned friend from the
court of Milan, now also in exile. Since geometry is composed from “elements,” Da
Vinci becomes convinced that machines also have “elements.” Da Vinci now excels at
drawing all the parts of all extant known machineries.
He spends many years ingeniously recombining the “elements” into
more-or-less plausible contraptions. Many look prophetic, and vaguely
anticipate future technical developments, but none are actually built.
Other Renaissance engineers such as Taccola and Francesco di Giorgio create illustrated catalogs.
Da Vinci is familiar with these works. At one point he is employed by Cesare Borgia to loot a
major library. Da Vinci never publishes any such catalog himself. He seems torn between an urge
to publicize himself and and urge to hide his actual plans.
“Imaginary gadgets” are common rhetorical devices in the Renaissance.
Artist-engineers will take a relatively straightforward device, publicly known, and throw in a
few excess working-parts to give the gadget an extra baroque gloss. These fantasy-machines are
promotional brochures, meant to snow aristocrats into hiring their authors as wizardly experts.
No strict guidelines exist to separate practical from impractical machines, so most anything
visually plausible will pass muster among high-ranking but technically illiterate patrons.
Genuinely functional devices have a high risk of being stolen by rivals, since a patent system
does not exist.
A great deal of borrowing, swapping, stealing and annotation goes on as gadget manuscripts are
stolen, borrowed, looted or copied. Many Renaissance machine designs survive and thrive for
centuries, although the names of their artist-engineer originators are lost or deliberately
obscured.
E. Having broken machines into constituent “elements,” Da Vinci becomes obsessed with
similarly dissecting animals and human beings. He becomes heavily reliant on first-hand visual
observation. He distrusts the Latinate literary “learning” of traditionalists, who
excel as political courtiers and can therefore frustrate his schemes.
Da Vinci regards the human body as a complex of machine elements and hydraulic forces. He invents
a private physics involving “movement, weight, force and percussion” as the four
powers uniting the macrocosmos and man, the microcosm. Drawings such as the famous Da Vinci
“Vitruvian Man” are a scientific visualization of his theories.
F. Da Vinci further refines his drafting skills, becoming the best technical draftsman in the
world. He is convinced that he has attained a new, more complete comprehension of nature, which
combines precise perspective drawing with a deep understanding of primal forces known only to
himself. Since he lacks any functional, experimentally grounded physics, he becomes convinced
that an accurate, properly scaled drawing of an object implies that it will function in real
life.
Da Vinci also creates a few three-dimensional models, mostly modelling human body parts.
A combination of bad luck, political turbulence and a well-deserved
reputation for missing deadlines denies Da Vinci any large-scale technical commissions. He never
gets a chance to field-test his giant fantasy machines, yet his public reputation is extremely
high. He works for powerful patrons and is widely considered one of the cleverest people in the
world. His personal charisma frees him of any need to rely on publication for fame. He is accused
of necromancy at one point, but the charge doesn’t stick.
Da Vinci spends a great deal of effort and time drawing flying machines. The machines look very
much like living birds and bats. After years of drafting effort, Da Vinci manages to do some
weight-ratio analysis. He then realizes that the human body lacks the strength to lift itself
with flapping wings. He turns his attention to gliders but, since gliders don’t exist in
nature, he can’t copy them by direct visual observation. His attempt to fly is stifled.
G. Da Vinci announces various plans to create a comprehensive encyclopedia of his immense hoard
of autodidactic knowledge. This plan is never carried out. He is defeated by old age and the
colossal size of his own archive. He spends a peaceable retirement chatting about philosophy with
the young King of France, who is an ardent and generous admirer.
H. The posthumous period. Leonardo’s works are scattered by his heirs. Collectors and
curiosa hunters have a hard time making any coherent sense of the great man’s eclectic
musings. The papers are bundled in various ways that destroyed their original chronological
order. Two thirds of the writings vanish.
I. Moderns re-interpret Da Vinci’s work. They are considered prophetic, although Da Vinci
never describes futurity, or casts his work as something that people will do in the future. He is
never plotting a future course for civilization; he is always planning schemes that he himself,
his followers or patrons might care to do, if they can find the resources.
He makes no effort to advance learning in general. If a project fails to find financing, he
abandons it. In certain especially hasty sketches, he seems to be ridding himself of nagging
ideas in order to free himself to turn his attention to something more mentally refreshing.
Leonardo leaves no direct intellectual heirs; he founds no schools of thought; he invents nothing
that goes into common technological practice. His ideas about physics are entirely idiosyncratic
and see no further development.
His imaginary devices become extremely popular and are much admired
five hundred years later. Even then, however, nobody builds full-scale
replicas of his machines; nor do they develop them.
*******************************************
Atemporal Leonardo, or, a design exercise in the prepostmodern archaeofuturistic
Let’s now turn our attention to what it might mean to create Leonardo-style imaginary
devices “in the Leonardo tradition.” How might his efforts achieve some vitality in
contemporary circumstances? Is it possible to create/recreate an imaginary Leonardo
imaginary-gadget?
A. Find and unite a group of “Renaissancepunks.” Attempt to please their tastes.
These pastiches would lack “authenticity” — they would be pastiches of a period
aesthetic. However, they might have pop-appeal. Fifteenth-century devices of wood and bronze
would be fairly easy to mimic with contemporary hobby techniques. It should go without saying
that few or none of them would “actually work.”
B. Study the Leonardo oeuvre with care. See if there are any obvious gaps in his combinations of
the “elements of machines.” Since so much of his work is lost, Leonardo must have
created hundreds of imaginary gadgets now lost. By filling any missing combinations, one might
re-invent these. They would seem very Leonardo-like, and no one but a scholar would be able to
tell that they were modern fakes/recreations.
C. Study Leonardo’s “machine elements” and create a generative-art program that
combines them, generating thousands of “potential Leonardo machines.” Select the most
appealing candidates and manufacture them.
D. Start a design-school project that models “Renaissance society.” Appoint a
“Renaissance Lord” as judge. Distribute wood and bronze tinkertoy elements. Tell the
students to create amazing model “war machines” so as the please the tyrant.
E. Model Leonardo’s elemental design approach, then apply it to modern materials such as
plastics, aluminum, epoxy and so on. Alternately, take clearly implausible Leonardo schemes and
see if they can work with more advanced materials. Alternately, take functional objects and make
them unworkable in a Leonardo style.
F. Release an actual Leonardo plan as an “open-source instructable.” Pretend that you
invented the device yourself. Give it to the “community.” See what happens.
G. Find a gifted painter who fully understands drafting and perspective. Hire him to become an
engineer strictly *because* of his ignorance
of math and physics. See what he “invents.”
H. Reinvent “Leonardo physics.” Pretend that these late-medieval concepts represent
actual physics. Make applied devices that would “work” in those parallel-world
conditions. Game physics could be adapted to this.
J. Choose an imaginary Leonardo device, build a full-scale prototype, then tinker with it until
it functions.
***********************************************


|
PMP Today -
1 days and 18 hours ago
Want to a peek into the crystal ball and see what the future holds for you iPhone owners out there? Well, read on
and be amazed at these potential iPhone 4.0 features that may soon be available in a firmware
update down the road.
Discovered in a bunch of pending patent applications, this first one is called “Event-based
modes for electronic devices.” What this basically does is allow your iPhone to
automatically adjust its setting based on your location and “life events”. So, what
exactly are these “life events”?
[via
unwiredview]
More details after the break.
Based on the
patent application, “life events” can be any one of the following:
any location-based event (e.g., the device entering or exiting a specific geographical location,
such as a country, or a specific type of location, such as a movie theater, etc.), any
environment-based event (e.g., the device being subjected to a specific physical orientation,
movement, temperature, sound, light, etc.), any calendar-based event (e.g., the device reaching a
specific time of day, day of week, date, etc.), any usage-based event (e.g., the device being
used for a specific function, for a specific period of time, the device’s battery having
less than half of its capacity remaining, etc.), any news-based event (e.g., the device receiving
information about a particular worldly occurrence, such as a weather forecast, news report, or
sport score, etc.), and combinations thereof.
Another
pending patent is called “User-programmed automated communications.“ This feature
allows your iPhone to perform an appropriate action based on a particular event, location, caller
and other similar conditions. Say, for example, it’s your wife’s birthday. This new
feature will allow your iPhone to automatically send an SMS to your wife greeting her on her
special day.
Last, but certainly not the least, there’s also a “Systems and methods for
intelligent and customizable communications between devices” that’s also waiting for
patent approval. Simply put, these allow you to set up your iPhone to respond accordingly and
differently to your various contacts depending on your current situation and availability.
As you can see, these new iPhone features is all about automation, but being that these are all
just patent applications, there’s really no guarantee that these will make it into the real
world. These do, however, give us an idea of what to expect, and based on what we’ve seen
so far, it sure looks good. How about you guys? What do you make of these iPhone features waiting
for patent approval?


|
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) -
1 days and 19 hours ago
Filed under: iPhone
 While most of us at TUAW (in the
US, anyway) are staring out the window, running down the clock to hit the lake or ocean or pavement
in some manner, the intrepid bloggers of Engadget never take a vacation. Here are three* iPhone
stories they posted today:
Apple patent applications offer glimpses of haptic screens, RFID readers, fingerprint
ID
Oh man, haptics on the iPhone would be so sweet, and finally give us a little more than annoying
clicks when typing. RFID and fingerprints? Well, that I'm not so keen on.
Apple patching
nasty iPhone SMS vulnerability
Good ol' security maven Charlie Miller poked into the soft underbelly of the iPhone and discovered
a pretty gnarly SMS hack that could potentially have your phone activating GPS, the phone's mic,
and other nastiness. Perfect setup for a Tom Clancy novel or totally scary vulnerability? Read the
HotHardware piece
and see for yourself.
iPhone
facing potential trademark issues in China?
Yeah, who'd have thunk there would be a trademark dispute over the name iPhone in China, right?
Funny thing is, Apple has a trademark on iPhone in China... just not on mobile phones.
Oops.
[Thanks to the tipsters who sent these in a while ago, there's fresh beer in the fridge in the
garage!]
*OK, four stories. MG Siegler over at TechCrunch has a linkalicious report on
Facebook's upcoming new iPhone app featuring... video uploads! (gasp, applause, nausea, use as
directed)
TUAWBecause
you can never have enough iPhone news... three more stories originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:00:00 EST.
Please see our terms for use of
feeds.
Permalink | Email
this | Comments

|
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) -
1 days and 19 hours ago
Filed under: iPhone
 While most of us at TUAW (in the
US, anyway) are staring out the window, running down the clock to hit the lake or ocean or pavement
in some manner, the intrepid bloggers of Engadget never take a vacation. Here are three* iPhone
stories they posted today:
Apple patent applications offer glimpses of haptic screens, RFID readers, fingerprint
ID
Oh man, haptics on the iPhone would be so sweet, and finally give us a little more than annoying
clicks when typing. RFID and fingerprints? Well, that I'm not so keen on.
Apple patching
nasty iPhone SMS vulnerability
Good ol' security maven Charlie Miller poked into the soft underbelly of the iPhone and discovered
a pretty gnarly SMS hack that could potentially have your phone activating GPS, the phone's mic,
and other nastiness. Perfect setup for a Tom Clancy novel or totally scary vulnerability? Read the
HotHardware piece
and see for yourself.
iPhone
facing potential trademark issues in China?
Yeah, who'd have thunk there would be a trademark dispute over the name iPhone in China, right?
Funny thing is, Apple has a trademark on iPhone in China... just not on mobile phones.
Oops.
[Thanks to the tipsters who sent these in a while ago, there's fresh beer in the fridge in the
garage!]
*OK, four stories. MG Siegler over at TechCrunch has a linkalicious report on
Facebook's upcoming new iPhone app featuring... video uploads! (gasp, applause, nausea, use as
directed)
TUAWBecause
you can never have enough iPhone news... three more stories originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:00:00 EST.
Please see our terms for use of
feeds.
Permalink | Email
this | Comments


|
Gizmodo -
1 days and 19 hours ago
MacRumors found three interesting patents that point to various new interaction techniques. The
most interesting is the fingerprint ID directly on the screen so that the iPhone can see which
finger...
|
|
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