Today I chatted via IRC for the first time since ages. Crazy of Max Payne Area (MPA), a German fanpage, wanted to do an interview with Wook and me on the Lightsaber mod. So Wook and me showed up there, but Crazy didn’t. It was for the first time that the two of us ‘spoke’ to each other in real time—we ‘talked’ for 49mins without idling. Mostly about Lightsaber of course, about MaxEd’s pecularities, and about the problems to keep a modding-team together.
“A half century of artificial-sight research has succeeded. And now this blind man can see,” ↑reports Wired with an impressive, well written story about an american laboratory, which is working with cameras that bring vision directly by cables into the brain of a blind man: From a few steps closer, I see that the wires plug into Patient Alpha’s head like a pair of headphones plug into a stereo. The actual connection is metallic and circular, like a common washer. So seamless is the integration that the skin appears to simply stop being skin and start being steel. … Continue reading
↑Forarea, a bavaria-based, interdisciplinary community of about 200 scientists, concerned with the understanding of ‘other cultures’, has launched a computer game called ↑Xenophilia [=”the liking of the other”]. The game’s aim is to mediate an understanding of people who were socialized in cultures different from the ‘western’ one. Children and teenagers are to be reached by the game’s message. Xenophilia was presented at this year’s ↑Frankfurt Book Fair and instantaneously was awarded the ↑Giga-Maus, a german software award. Two versions of Xenophilia are available: One for everyone and one specially designed for the use in schools. original version at ethno::log … Continue reading
Not only gamer- or modding-communities are very conscious of the history of technology, but it seems to me that ‘online culture’ in general is—Éric Lévénez maintains a ↑Unix History website, featuring “a simplified diagram of unix history. There are numerous derivative systems not listed in this chart, maybe 10 times more! In the recent past, many electronic companies had their own unix releases. This diagram is only the tip of an iceberg, with a penguin on it ;-).” For your convenience he stores several printable formats of his unix family tree for download … in case you still are searching … Continue reading