Soldiers in Iraq, dissatisfied with the limited and censored Internet service available officially, build their own. It’s impressive, even though the main demand is to download filthy pictures and order foodstuffs forbidden by the chain of command – which, I suppose, gives it a sort of charm. As one of Robert Graves’ comrades said, marching…
Read More The trench art of networkingIn Trafalgar Square on Sunday, something remarkable – artificial life, or a stab at it. Dutch artist Theo Jensen has been building curious walking machines, strandbeesten, out of lengths of plastic pipe selected by a computer program that simulates an evolutionary process. After a while, he took them out to the beach to race, and…
Read More StrandbeestenI’ve expected a lot of good things from Nokia’s decision to open up to software developers. They’ve been putting more and more stuff in open source, up to and including chunks of the Series 60 OS itself, and have provided a lot of tools, APIs, etc, not to mention a version of Python for S60.…
Read More Mobile Web ServersAnd, it would seem, phone tappers..After the Vodafone Greece hack of their Ericsson AXE switches led to the Greek elite’s phones being monitored by persons unknown, a new phobia has spread through the Greek meme-pool: surveillance phobia. The afflicted show all the signs of a classic phobia,’ said Dr Dimitris Souras, an Athenian psychotherapist. ‘I…
Read More Nothing to fear..but fear itself