Category: outside

The FDA has approved an RFID chip designed to be implanted in humans. RFID chips are the things used by major store chains to track inventory electronically… sort of a digital barcode. The chip is intended to be used for medical purposes, and I do see some benefits there, but it sounds like they haven’t put a lot of thought or effort into the privacy issues. There’s some interesting commentary on Ars Technica. Apparently, the Bush administration plans to push for RFID-based passports. Somebody save us from our country, and quick!

A study conducted by the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm has found that the longterm (10 or more years) use of cell phones can dramatically increase the risk of developing a benign tumor on the auditory nerve. If this study is corroborated by more evidence I predict the market for cell phone headsets will grow very quickly.

The company behind Virgin Megastores and Virgin Atlantic has announced it will begin offering commercial space flights to well-to-do types for £100,000 a pop. They’ve secure a licensing deal with Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the company behind SpaceShipOne and the current front-runner to win the $10M X-Prize. According to the Wired article, the new venture is to be called ‘Virgin Galactic’. How cool is that? I love it.

Sony has developed a 200GB 8-layer version of their Blu-ray disc technology they are pushing as the successor to the current DVD format. The forthcoming Playstation 3 will most likely use the 54GB version of Blu-ray Discs. The competing technology is called HD-DVD. It only holds about 30GB of data, but it is much easier (read cheaper) to produce and existing DVD production plants can be converted over with little effort. A couple of years ago my money would have been on the Sony format, but they’ve been increasingly flailing with their proprietary formats… witness Minidisc and ATRAC-3. Sony is also pushing their new SACD format as the successor to the CD, but I suspect the competing DVD-A format will ultimately win out due to the large technical hurdles present in creating SACD content. Blu-ray does seem pretty darn cool, but I don’t think it’ll end up as the next generation DVD.

Paris police stumbled upon a working modern cinema in the catacombs underneath the city. I so want to be one of the Paris ‘cataphiles’ mentioned in the article. I think I need to visit Paris pronto! (via Zannah)

A company called Transitive has developed software called QuickTransit that allows software written for other operating system and hardware combinations to run on basically any other. It’s essentially an emulator, but they have made some significant breakthroughs in performance. Sounds pretty cool. They’re going to target the server market first and then look towards the consumer desktop.

There may be some hope for the future yet… Some scientists in Dublin have discovered a bacterial strain that can consume styrofoam waste and turn it into a useful biodegradable plastic. Win/win? They still need to do a lot of work to scale the process up to levels useable by industry, but it sounds pretty cool to me. It may look like exploitation of the bacteria to some poeple, but it seems ok to me.

The Freddy vs Jason movie apparently did MUCH better than any of the most recent just Freddy or Jason movies so they’ve decided to continue on with a sequel in typical Hollywood fashion and there are now talks about also including Ash from the Evil Dead movies in a 3-way mashup. I’m sure it would be cheesy as all get out, but sometimes cheese can be a good thing, right?

A group of major record labels has announced plans to begin releasing albums in a a ‘DualDisc’ format with CD on one side and DVD on the other. The DVD side may include a higher quality version of the album along with special video, photo and other multimedia (gotta love catchall identifiers) content. I’ve been saying for awhile (to myself mostly) that the record labels need to produce more compelling and diverse content to get people more interested in buying their product. You may be able to get the music itself for free, but the album as a whole may still be worth shelling out the cash. Hopefully they’re not going to be idiotic and charge more for the DualDisc versions.

Hmm.. eBay has invested money in Craigslist and has received a 25% stake in the company in exchange. Things like are rarely fully positive in the long run, but we shall see.