Category Pointers

Liquid Haptics

One thin container (transparent plastic bag) full of dark coloured liquid, one webcam and a glass table and you get your own multitouch interface. Ingenious and very simple. Tom White seems to have come up with this for his Master's Thesis at MIT in 1998 (check out the comments on the page linked to by the title). Here's a video of someone who --- seems to have independently thought of the same idea and --- actually implemented it on their Mac, using his iSight and writing the necessary control software in Cocoa.

Διαπλέουμε τη Μεταδημοκρατία της Δυσφορίας

Εύστοχα και εύγλωττα ο Νίκος Ξυδάκης παρουσιάζει, με καυστικά διαμαρτυρόμενο τρόπο και γκρινιάρικο τόνο το υπόβαθρο των πολιτικών θέσεων, τάσεων και ύφους στην Ελλάδα του 2007. Αποτύπωση των καιρών, πρωτίστως κοινωνικές και όχι πολιτικές ματιές σε μια Ελλάδα που βυθίζεται στη μιζέρια. Κι'όμως, πότε δεν βυθιζόταν;

Thirty years of Voyager

The most distant ambassador of human civilisation, the Voyager probes, turn thirty. Wired has an excellent image set covering schematics and planetary imagery. I think we need more programmes like these. More on the Voyagers here.

Phrack Issue 64

In the latest issue of Phrack, you can find, among others, a very interesting 'paper' on shellcode and rootkit authoring for Mac OS X. While some of the techniques presented are not new, there are few --- if any --- publicly available texts that present them in such a concise manner. The paper focuses mostly on the Intel platform although there are descriptions and some code for PowerPC too. Worth a read.

Dangerous Knowledge

In order to break the stream of posts helping me vent my frustration about Hellenic politics and the upcoming elections in that country, here's an excellent documentary by the BBC (who else?). Its subject matter covers the work and lives of some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the last 200 years and specifically those of Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. A common theme among them is the fact that they all committed suicide. The documentary vaguely attempts to link their prolific scientific and intellectual output and the primitive social environment in which they lived to their death, something which while possible, is vastly more complex correlation to what is presented in this documentary. Still, it is an interesting presentation, especially for those interested in the biographical details of these brilliant thinkers.

Eκκλησία ≠ Κράτος

Ενώ διαφωνώ με ένα μεγάλο μέρος των θέσεων/προτάσεων της Φιλελεύθερης Συμμαχίας, το παρακάτω κλιπάκι -- καθώς και το ευρύτερο ζήτημα του διαχωρισμού της Εκκλησίας/Θρησκείας και του Κράτους, τόσο στο τυπικό/θεωρητικό επίπεδο του Συντάγματος και της νομοθεσίας όσο και στο πρακτικό επίπεδο της χρηματοδότησης, επιρροής, εξουσιοδότησης με βρίσκει απολύτως σύμφωνο και αποτελεί ένα σημείο που ελάχιστοι εκλγεμένοι πολιτικοί μέχρι σήμερα έχουν τολμήσει στη πράξη να αγγίξουν, παρ'ότι βρίσκεται στο μυαλό και το στόμα ολοένα μεγαλύτερου μέρους του πληθυσμου αυτής της χώρας, ανεξαρτήτως των υπόλοιπων πολιτικών του θέσεων.

Confirmation? No, thanks.

Ever since Safari 3 β came out, I've been feeling a bit like the archetypal Windows Vista user. You see every time I enter text on a page and proceed to close the tab or window it asks for confirmation. This is a new behaviour in Safari 3 and one that I don't like at all, although I can see why it's there. 'strings' came to the rescue and less than a minute later I got the answer. Open the com.apple.Safari.plist and edit it as follows --- or simply type the following in your terminal (make sure you type the whole thing in one line): 
defaults write com.apple.Safari
DebugConfirmTossingUnsubmittedFormText NO
Safari won't ask you for confirmation again. To re-enable the confirmation, replace the NO with a YES and you're done.

Fonejacker

A friend just told me about 'the fonejacker', a new show on Channel 4 that features real prank calls with an accompanying graphical presentation. All the pranks are real and performed by one man who does a decent range of characters some of which appear more than once. Hilarious.

Σκαι Youtube Debate

Σκάι Youtube DebateΤο ποιοτικότερο, μέχρι στιγμής, ιδιωτικό τηλεοπτικό κανάλι της Ελλάδος φαίνεται πως 'εισάγει' την πρωτοπορία της πρόσφατης τηλεοπτικής 'αψιμαχίας' που οργάνωσε το CNN σε συνεργασία με το Youtube στις ΗΠΑ, αυτή τη φορά φυσικά με πρωταγωνιστές τους έλληνες αρχηγούς κομμάτων. Παρ'ότι δε βλέπω κατα κανόνα τηλεόραση, θεωρώ πως η πρωτοβουλία του Σκάι είναι ιδιαίτερα αξιόλογη και αξίζει να τη παρακολουθήσετε εαν όχι να συμμετάσχετε σε αυτή.

Rapid Fire Exchange

Back in the days of 35mm film, Nikon was the undisputed king of high-end SLR cameras. Yet, this changed with the coming of digital photography. After several years of utter defeat by Canon, Nikon keeps hitting back hard at the No.1 manufacturer of high-end DSLR cameras with increasingly impressive models. Just a few days after the Canon EOS 1Ds MkIII and the EOS 40D were announced, Nikon strikes back with the high-end D3 and the mid-range D300. They look cool, but can they displace Canon's lineup? What will Canon's response be with EOS 5D's successor? The linked NYTimes article seems to gloss over some important details, but is, nevertheless, a decent read.