The Underwear of the Future?

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Boxers, briefs, or high-tech underwear that can monitor your health?

No joke, gentlemen: Scientists have just filed a new patent for underpants that monitor your blood pressure.

The special skivvies come equipped with waistband sensors that use conductive rubber to measure how fast your blood is pulsing through your body.

“Electrodes are so arranged as to measure the passing of pulses of the central artery, and the left and right femoralis, as well as the ECG,” the patent says.

“The system may also be arranged to monitor the temperature, the posture, and the level of activity of the subject.”

Hmm. No word what the system indicates if you happen to be in the midst of viewing Tila Tequila pictures on the internet.


Open Culture – one of the best sites on the internet

By Mark O’Neill

There are a lot of crap websites on the net that I wouldn’t miss for an instant if they disappeared. But if Open Culture vanished, I would be really hacked off. This is one website that I monitor constantly for updates because everything they post is interesting.

I mean, look at what they have right now.   A recording of what is supposedly Walt Whitman reading his poem “America” (which then makes you wonder if the recording is real or not).   Then a rare early recording of the human voice (which made me comment that it isn’t really a recording of a human voice at all but more a recording of static!).

They also collect together essential jazz albums, books you should be reading, YouTube videos you should be watching, free podcasts you should be listening to, blogs you should be reading, and much more.    I am still wading my way through a free Mozart symphony that I found on iTunes thanks to Open Culture pointing it out to me.

This is definately one website you should have in your RSS reader.    You could easily waste an entire day going through Open Culture’s archives.

Surveillance Through Your Home Appliances

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

All right, surveillance junkies, I’ve got a new one for you: a just-developed device that can turn your air conditioning system into a sophisticated home monitoring tool.

Shwetak Patel of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta came up with the protocol, featured in New Scientist today. The tool monitors changes in air pressure to detect human movement. It uses five air pressure sensors inside the AC’s filter to figure out when doors open and when someone walks in or out of a room. Scientists say it functions on a real-time basis.

The implications are endless. The technology could lead to energy efficient systems that sense what rooms are occupied or empty and adjust temperatures accordingly. It could also be used for burglar alarms that detect unexpected activity in a home or area of a building, or for any number of other surveillance-related purposes.

Patel will present his invention at an international conference in Australia later this month.

This isn’t the first time regular home appliances have been used for monitoring. As New Scientist points out, a Seattle engineer also created a tool that places microphones on a home’s plumbing system to detect and monitor activity. That’s right, on the plumbing system. I don’t even want to think about the kind of data that thing has collected.

Are all mathematicians geeks?

By Mark O’Neill

I had to laugh at this one because to me, being viewed as a geek is probably not the only reason people don’t continue to study mathematics. I didn’t continue it because I sucked at it and my maths teacher begged me to leave her class before I forced her into a mental breakdown.

I have always adhered to the Billy Connolly philosophy when it comes to mathematics. He has always maintained that he has never seen the point of things like algebra and their practical use in the world. He famously told Conan O’Brien that the only two things that a school needs to teach kids today are “how to make money and how to get laid. Nothing else matters”. Conan choked on his coffee and the audience went into an uproar.

So do you agree with the study? Is it hard these days to get people to seriously study mathematics? Does the geek stereotype get in the way?

Control Your Appliances With Your Mind

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Prepare yourself for what may be the most powerful remote ever made: the mind-reading hat.

Scientists from Taiwan have just finished developing the first protocol of this thing. Aside from a rather obvious antenna jutting out the back, the hat looks stylish enough. But this baby isn’t about fashion; it’s about function. Inside, its electrodes can monitor the EEG signals from your brain and translate them into action.

So far, the hat’s been tested to read how alert users are and tell them whether they should be driving. But it’s the future possibilities that will blow your mind.

The researchers say they’ll eventually be able to have the hat sense your thoughts about appliances like your TV or computer, then act on them. So you could think, “I wish my TV would turn on,” and — boom! — it happens.

Coolness aside, the technology would have huge implications for people with disabilities who can’t physically get to their televisions to adjust them. The engineers are also looking at using the hats for medical monitoring and exercise training.

The hat operates on a completely wireless system, sending data via Bluetooth to a remote receiver. Its batteries can power it for two days before a recharge is needed.

The research was published in a medical journal called IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. You can read more about it here.

Will MySpace Suicide Case Set Dangerous Legal Precedent?

By Mark O’Neill

A dangerous legal precedent could be set if a woman is convicted of harassing a clinically depressed girl on MySpace to later commit suicide. This is because the only crime in which prosecutors could charge the woman with was violating the MySpace Terms Of Service contract (TOS) which you agree to when you set up your MySpace profile for the first time.

Although what Lori Drew allegedly did to Megan Meier was despicable, it is a bit of a stretch to charge her with “unauthorized access” to MySpace’s computers. Since no cyber-bullying laws exist, they are using the fact that Drew used an account with false details to harass Meier – which is a violation of the MySpace TOS contract – to charge her under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In other words, because she failed to give her real name on her online profile, she’s screwed.

Why is this dangerous? Because if Drew is convicted for violating the TOS of MySpace, then ANYONE in the future caught violating the TOS of any website can also theoretically be charged under the same law. As the Wired Story says, some TOS prohibit you from saying negative things about the company. So if you say anything bad about MySpace, can you be charged with a crime? Other TOS’s have also banned linking. Is that a crime too?

How many online social network users use false names? Are all these people in violation of the law too? Do they all have to be arrested for violating MySpace?

More to the point, how many people actually read a TOS before clicking “I accept”? So how many people could commit a crime without realizing it?

As I said, if Drew is guilty, then I don’t condone what she did in any way. But in their over-zealousness to get a conviction for the Meier family, prosecutors may have gone a bit too far.

So next time you are presented with a TOS on the screen, you might want to hesitate a few moments longer before clicking “I accept”.

Via Wired

Can someone be forced to hand over a domain they are wasting?

By Mark O’Neill

Now here’s the situation. There’s a domain I’ve had my eye on for the past several years but the current owner has had an “under construction” sign on it for as long as I can remember. About two years back, I started emailing him, asking him if he ever planned to use the domain, and if not, would he release it back into the public arena so I can take it? I have some big plans for it if I ever get my hands on it.

At first he ignored me, but I can be a pretty persistent stubborn kind of guy when I want to be (just ask my former journalism professors). Eventually he emailed me back and told me rather irritably that he had no intention of doing anything with the domain but he planned to keep it nonetheless – now get lost.

Now to me this is inexplicable. Why keep a website domain if you don’t plan to use it? Why waste it? Why not release it back into the public arena so it can be claimed by someone else? But he wasn’t willing to explain his reasons and I suppose he doesn’t have to. If he wants to act weird, I guess that’s his perogative.

Now before anyone asks, I’m not going to name the domain. The domain owner and I are not getting along and naming the domain would just inflame things between me and him. But what I started thinking today is ‘can someone be forced into giving up a domain? If someone has a domain and they are needlessly wasting it, is there a procedure in place to force them to relinquish it? If so, what is that procedure? If not, why the hell is there not a procedure?’

If there is such a procedure, has anyone here been through such a procedure and what was the outcome?