New Hitchhikers Guide book to be written

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

A sixth installment of the “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” is to be written – despite the fact that its author and creator, Douglas Adams, died in 2001.

Instead, the book entitled “And Another Thing…” will be written by Eoin Colfer, who is most well known for his Artemis Fowl series of childrens books.   I am a big fan of Artemis Fowl and I have all the books here at home.   I personally think Colfer is a really good author, but good enough to write a Hitchhikers Guide book?  Hmmm…I don’t know.   I don’t know if his writing skills extend THAT far.

The last book, “Mostly Harmless” was released 16 years ago and Adams’ widow has given her consent to Colfer writing the next book.

Colfer has said in a statement :

“My first reaction was semi-outrage that anyone should be allowed to tamper with this incredible series. But on reflection I realised that this is a wonderful opportunity to work with characters I have loved since childhood and give them something of my own voice while holding on to the spirit of Douglas Adams.”

He added: “I feel more pressure to perform now than I ever have with my own books, and that is why I am bloody determined that this will be the best thing I have ever written.”

This isn’t the first example of a sequel to a book written posthumously.  A new James Bond book “Devil May Care” came out earlier this year and another example is “Peter Pan in Scarlet”, an official sequel to JM Barrie’s Peter Pan.

So what do you think?   Will you read the new Hitchhiker’s book when it comes out?   Are they right to tamper with Douglas Adams’ legacy or should they have left it well alone?    Is Eoin Colfer the right man for the job?


Don’t Believe Everything You Read

by Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

What do United Airlines, War of the Worlds, and the upcoming “massively-multiplayer forecasting game” Superstruct have in common? According to one of the game’s designers at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, more than you might think.

When I was in high school in the nineties, a friend of mine wrote an essay about how the Internet could never be a legitimate research tool because the majority of people are stupid enough to believe everything they read without verifying its validity. I couldn’t help but remember this the other day when reading about the Google/United Airlines fiasco in which the accidental resurfacing of a six-year-old news story about the airline’s flirtation with bankruptcy caused stock prices to plummet by 75%. Of course, the truth became clear fairly quickly and the stock recovered by the end of the day, so no harm done, right? Tell that to the people who sold their stock while it was near the bottom.

The United Airlines story might have simply been old rather than fake, but as the Superstruct designer mentioned above pointed out, the War of the Worlds radio broadcast is proof that something doesn’t have to be real to cause a panic. The key is just the right amount of plausibility. What if the mistaken posting of Steve Jobs’ obituary had stayed up long enough to affect stock trading? And if things like that can happen so easily by accident, then what’s to stop someone from throwing together a political/economic version of War of the Worlds in a malicious way?

The concern with Superstruct is that participants are supposed to document their future lives using different kinds of media, such as Twitter and YouTube… which could lead to passerby reading about “Police fir[ing] on secessionist demonstrators in Oregon” and thinking that it’s true. So here’s the question: was my high school friend wrong? Are people actually smart enough to parse out fact from fiction? What about the difference between reading a headline on Google news and reading a Twitter feed? What about Wikipedia? How do you decide what to believe?

Link-love etiquette

By Sterling “Chip” Camden
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I’m frequently asked “Is it OK if I link to your post?”  The short answer is “Absolutely!  Any time!”  Links from other blogs increase a blog’s reputation, not only among readers but also among search engines.  Perhaps someone who never saw that blog before will become a new reader, or maybe they’ll submit the post to reddit or digg.  Link-love can help bloggers in many ways, but there are some unwritten rules to help make the experience good for both sides of the lovin’.

If your link doesn’t quote anything from the linkee’s post, then you really need to use a tease to get the reader to click through (assuming you want them to read it).  Or, you can briefly state exactly what they can expect to find on the other side.  Or some combination of the two.

It’s OK to quote a passage from the content, as long as you provide a link to the full post.  Quote the part that will make your reader say “Wow” and click through.  Or perhaps something that will make them mad.

Some people think it’s fine to quote an entire post as long as you provide a link — after all, there could be no greater flattery for the content.  But to my mind, this borders on content theft.  Just quote a few relevant passages, and then encourage your readers to go read the full post over on the author’s site.

Before we go on, lets define some terms.  If you already know all about automated linkback, then you can skip this paragraph.  I’ll skip over RefBack, because as far as I know nobody uses that to automatically create links on their posts (maybe I’m wrong?).   Trackback is an API that requests a site to provide a link (usually in the comments section) to ostensibly relevant content.  Pingback performs the same function, but the linked-to site reads the linking page and hunts down the reciprocal link before complying.  Trackback is therefore much more susceptible to spam.  But if a link is genuine, then it benefits both parties, because the content you linked to is also linking back to you.

Just like in human love, you can run into bad link-love.  Some automated sites will repost your entire content, but link to your original in the hope that pingback will create a link from your site to theirs.  Others use a similar strategy, but only post an excerpt with a link.  The latter seem like they’re playing fair, but in reality they’re only sploggers or spammers — trying to game the search engines in order to gain page rank.  The really scuzzy ones try to trackback your post without so much as providing a link.  Fortunately, there are plugins available to detect that type of trackback spam.  Akismet is also pretty good at weeding those out along with pingback spam, although I have seen a few false positives.

Finally, when you use images from another site, it’s customary to copy the image to your site, and provide credit with a link to the source.  In the image at the top of this post, the original site is hyperlinked, but the image itself resides on our server.  Don’t hot-link images!  That uses someone else’s bandwidth without their permission, and can be embarrassing for you if the linkee notices your requests in their referrer logs and replaces the image with something inappropriate.  Here’s a way to prevent hot-linking of your images if you use Apache and have mod_rewrite enabled.

Wednesday Afternoon Fun: The Evil Kangaroo Prankster

Ok, I know some of you won’t find this funny, but it certainly made me laugh my ass off. (Warning: Contains 5 seconds of topless female nudity)

The man you just saw in the kangaroo suit is named Rémi Gaillard, and he’s a renowned French prankster. Mr. Gaillard has been known for wearing all kinds of costumes to slip by security and cause mischief at various events, all for the glory of the camera.

[Via Neatorama]

Life-Sized Terminator Endoskeleton

Produced by Sideshow Collectibles as a highly rare collectible item, this life-sized Terminator Endoskeleton is currently for sale on eBay for the hefty amount of $19,999. The reproduction stands at 6 feet tall and is made out of chromed metal, fiberglass, and an assortment of other materials to make it look like the real thing. If you’ve got the wallet to go with the price tag, this reproduction would make a splendid addition to any large home cinema room. Additional picture after the jump.

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IMDB now offers video clips to its users

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has always been one of my favourite websites.    It has never failed me when I’ve had an obscure movie query and has saved me a lot of money in potential cinema tickets by warning me in advance about terrible movies (although I still went to see Eragon!).   Now the IMDB has gone one step further in its usefulness by offering video clips.

It doesn’t seem to have that many clips at the moment though so they must be slowly introducing them.   The ones that ARE there are only a minute or two long and are preceded by a 30 second advert (I had to watch an advert extolling the virtues of Colgate toothpaste before I could watch some Star Trek clips).

To see some clips, just search for a TV programme and then choose a particular season and episode.   If clips are available, they will then appear on the page for you to click on and watch.

I haven’t searched for movies yet but I’ll do that next.   I’m sure they will have trailers and short clips of movies available too.    If you find anything like that yourself, let us know in the comments what you found.

Some bloggers have criticised the IMDB for trying to copy YouTube and Hulu and getting into the video content game, but I think this is actually a good move on the IMDB’s part.   They already have a superior website and by offering clips, they are just complementing their content.    If you are already searching for a movie or a TV programme on the IMDB, wouldn’t you like to be able to watch a short video clip of that movie or TV programme as well?  Of course you would.

In no way is this going to threaten YouTube, Hulu, or anyone else for that matter.    Everyone should stop getting their knickers in a twist.    Kudos to the IMDB for improving an already brilliant site.

A brain scan decides a woman is guilty of murder

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I’m not sure whether to be fascinated about this or totally horrified.

An Indian court has convicted a woman of murdering her fiancé.    Prosecutors managed to get a conviction on the basis of a brain scan which allegedly showed areas of the brain “lighting up”. This apparently proved that she had “experiential knowledge” about the crime “that only the killer could possess”.

The process started with an Electroencephalogram (EEG). The resulting brain waves were then fed through a program called a “Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test”, or BEOS.  This was developed by Champadi Raman Mukundan, an Indian neuroscientist.

In this particular case, Aditi Sharma voluntarily took the test (probably thinking she would breeze through it).  Investigators read aloud to her a version of events that they think transpired when the murder took place, reading in the first person (“I bought arsenic;” “I met Udit at McDonald’s”).   It is claimed that during this session, the area of the brain where memories are stored buzzed.    This has led forensic investigators to claim that Sharma has “experiential knowledge” of having committed the murder, rather than just having heard about it.    That immediately earned Sharma a life sentence in prison, despite her protestations that she is innocent of the charges.

I’m sure the appeal will be interesting to listen to (assuming she decides to appeal).

Law enforcement experts worldwide are split over the reliability of the technology.   Some are extremely interested and want to know more about it.    Others have dismissed the work as “shaky at best”.    Those who support the technology say it marks the beginning of the end for people who commit crimes and then try to lie their way out of it.   All a police officer has to do is hook the person up to an EEG and watch for the brain to light up.

Henry Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford Law School, had a warning though : “if brain scans are widely adopted, the legal issues alone are enormous, implicating at least the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

What do you think?   Is this a bit too draconian and risky for your liking or a step in the right direction for upholding the law?

India’s use of brain scans in courts dismays critics – International Herald Tribune