Just saw this lovely machine on TV. It is a Wireless enabled rabbit with rather good speech.
You can send messages to the rabbit or ask it questions. It will connect to different services. It also has the ability to interact through a couple of lamps and by moving its ears.
Denon has these wonderful (probably UTP) cables on offer for $500. The cable has the following benefits (taken from the Denon product page):
Attention to detail when building this cable was used by employing high quality insulation, tin-bearing alloy shielding and woven jacketing to reduce vibration and to add durability. Additionally, signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer.
Amazon has the cable on sale and the comments people give there are just hilarious. Here are a couple of good examples:
A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the “directional markings” on the cables, your music will play backwards. Please check that before mentioning it in your reviews.
If I could use a rusty boxcutter to carve a new orifice in my body that’s compatible with this link cable, I would already be doing it. I can just imagine the pure musical goodness that would flow through this cable into the wound and fill me completely — like white, holy light. Holding this cable in my hands actually makes me feel that much closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.
For $500 I would have expected these cables to be worn in. They aren’t. The procedure for pre use wear in of digital cables is significantly different to analog cables. They should be worn in for a period of 24 hours in each direction. Use a unidirectional protocol! _Never_ use TCP for wearing in digital cables, as TCP uses return packets for acknowledging, causing interference in the uplink channel being pre worn.
I’m an engineer, so trust me on this one. Sound is a wave, moving in one direction. A uni-directional cable such as this is needed for optimum listening pleasure. Some other poster, incorrectly I might humbly add, said using it backwards causes the music to play backwards. Installing it in reverse causes the 1’s and 0’s to start to clog the line since they have no where to go. As a result, you’ll get no sound at all. If you do that, be careful when you turn the cable around as all the 1’s and 0’s will come out at once, potentially overloading your ethernet connection and exceeding your ISP’s bandwidth caps.
Some guy built a Panzer for around 10.000 US dollars (currently around 6400 Euro). It is only half the size of the real one, but it could be your first step in concurring the world.
Lifehacker has the 10 best ways to get rid of your cablesalad.
When you finally decide it’s time to do something about that rat’s nest of cables that’s spreading like kudzu, you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money to get it under control. Whether you’re looking to stow your headphone wires tangle-free in your gym bag, hide the ugly wire spaghetti you keep kicking further under your desk, or organize your gadget chargers and power plugs, we’ve got some cord management tricks for you. Hit the jump for photos and videos of our top 10 favorite ways to get cables under control.
The first thing I thought when I saw this nice little device was: wow this would make an excellent remote control for my mythtv box at home.
But with 300 Euros it really makes for a very expensive remote control. So I’m now looking for an alternate excuse to buy this ultimate gadget. Maybe someone around me ‘needs’ it.
I found this beautiful website of the “Universität der Künste in Berlin”. It features some of the most interesting gadgets I have seen in years. If only they would be available. Two fine examples include:
The CharmingBurka:
The Charming Burka deals with Freud’s idea that all clothes can be positioned between appeal and shame. The Burka was chosen, because it is often perceived in the west as a symbol of repression. A digital layer was added so that women can decide for themselves where they want to position themselves virtually. The Burka sends an image, chosen by the wearer, via Bluetooth technology. Every person next to her can receive her picture via mobile phone and see the women’s self-determined identity. In the artists interpretation the virtual appeals can not be gathered by the laws of the Koran and so the Charming Burka fulfills the desire of living a more western life, which some Muslim women have today.
Therefore the Burka is equipped with bluetooth antenna/micro-controller and uses the OBEX protocol, already working with most mobile phones.
The Vanity Ring:
Update of the ring as a status symbol. It shows the number of Google hits you get, when you search for the name of the person who wears it.
While in earlier times richness and importance were equal to the amount of money or jewels someone possessed, in a post information society it’s the attention you get from the worlds people, that counts. Being in people’s mind means being important, whether they think about you in a positive way our not doesn’t matter. And what people have in their mind is what they read in the media. In the future this will mean, what they read/see on the net. Every content creator that copies and pastes your name will rise the value of your virtual mirrored importance. And there is a hard mechanical algorithm on the net, that extremely objectively measures your appearance, it’s called Google and has already passed the “line of no return” (Bruce Sterling). In most job interviews the personnel manager will already use this machine to check your importance and have a look at the first answers this mirror tells about you. Your mirror identity strikes back on your chances in the real world.
Oberwelt e.V., a German artists collective presents a nice device which can protect you from all the infrared security cameras installed on public roads. It sends out an invisible infrared light that will make your face show up as a white bulb.
I-R.A.S.C is a device giving every citizen a reliable protection from governmental security measures. I-R.A.S.C. is security against security and therefore a response to the dissymmetry of the forces between state and individual.
Instead of showing and interaction among human-beings, or between man and machine, I-R.A.S.C. demonstrates an interaction among machines. This is part of an absurd situation - while the time and effort invested into protection measures aims at the alleged safety of the citizens, the individual looses importance in this safety concept.
I-R.A.S.C is an infra-red device working as a protection shield from infra-red surveillance cameras. Everybody can rebuild this device without special technical skills.
The Kill Bill’s Browser site is trying to get people to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. It features a cool and well known design plus 13 reasons to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox:
1. YOU’LL ONLY SEE PORN WHEN YOU WANT TO.
Sick of seeing pornographic pop-ups all over your computer while you’re helping your daughter with a research project? Since Firefox blocks pop-ups, you won’t get tons of porn in your face when you’re least expecting it. On the flip side, since Firefox stops spyware from taking over your computer, there will be nothing to slow you down when you go and look for porn.
2. YOUR KIDS WILL ONLY SEE PORN WHEN THEY WANT TO.
Sorry, buddy… the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
3. YOUR COMPUTER WON’T SPEND ITS FREE TIME TELLING THE WORLD ABOUT VIAGRA SOFT TABS.
Experts say 80% of spam comes from hacked PCs. Firefox has much better security, so your computer will get hacked less. Do it for the children, the children! (caveat: reducing Viagra spam may also reduce total number of children.)
4. MOZILLA DOESN’T INFLATE PRICES AND USE THE MONEY TO VACCINATE CHILDREN IN AFRICA.
Uhh… wait a second. Maybe Microsoft’s monopoly hasn’t been all bad. Better donate to Oxfam. Seriously, you should.
The site even states that if you own your own site you can get $1 from Google for each Soul you save from the IE hell (I wish more of my friends were still using IE now…). They also have a script that can tell each IE user to switch to firefox.
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I-R.A.S.C is a device giving every citizen a reliable protection from governmental security measures. I-R.A.S.C. is security against security and therefore a response to the dissymmetry of the forces between state and individual.
