All – night – long
- Ars Technica: New Orphaned Works Act would limit copyright liability: Huge, important story from last week and NO MENTIONS on the New York Times or any other major news outlet. Shameful. Anyway basically there are now House and Senate bills that would limit your exposure to litigation if you make a good-faith effort to determine the status of an orphaned copyright, fail, and republish it in some form yourself. So like Amazon and Google could put up full text of every single book they’ve scanned that’s in a grey area – and Amazon could actually sell these things on Kindle and deal with rights owners in a uniform way if they pop up and demand compensation. AWESOME. Link via Louis.
- Matt Prager on the WGA strike (PDF LINK): Now this is interesting: Matt Prager asserts that spec screenplays which get bought and produced can never count as work-for-hire, and writes an essay about the consequences. You may not be interested in this, but it’s interesting. Via Lessig’s blog, where I went to check to see if he was involved in the 2008 version of the Orphaned Works Act – if he is, he’s not saying. (You know Prager works in Hollywood because his essay is set in American Typewriter.)
- Engadget: Disney/WowWee Wall-E robot: I might just have to get these for my nieces and nephews.
- Music: Kevie Kev, All Night Long (Waterbed). Old school Sugarhill classic. It’s long, really really long, six minutes long, and you have to be in the right mood, but girl, will you meet me at the waterbed tonight?
- Movies: Guy Maddin – Brand Upon The Brain! The Rapidshare links still work…
Rise of the robots
- Modular robot reassembles when it’s kicked apart: everywhere on the internet today. Skynet rises. Seriously though, how long until these modules are itsy-bitsy? See also the NeoCube.
New BMW M1: sexxxxxxy. The body looks like two layers, as if the black underneath is cracking through, trying to escape. And check the I Ching rims! In other car news, the 2009 Prius will be bigger inside, longer, 100hp engine, 50-55 miles per gallon. My car, with a 275hp 4.2l V8, gets 15-17mpg.- MSNBC: Smiley-Face Killer. Sounds like a direct-to-video thriller, but real.
- Movies: I saw Teeth yesterday and liked it enough to recommend. Just campy enough. Jess Weixler was brave to take the role and gave a great performance, I thought. Directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, son of Roy.
If you’ve ever wanted to play a Wu-Tang Clan rougelike, your time has come.- Song of the day: HNIC 2 FINALLY dropped, so here’s Prodigy Raining Guns and Shanks from the mixtape. Looking forward to that new Mobb Deep record in 2011, keep your head up P!
What’s up Monday
Kitsune Noir: House Uc by Miyahara Architect Office: Great use of concrete. I wonder what’s on the roof. - Wired: Deutsche Bank Loves Shai Agassi’s Plan to Bring Us EVs (Electric Vehicles): “Bean counters at Deutsche Bank absolutely love Shai Agassi’s plan to sell electric vehicles like cell phones and think it could be a “paradigm shift” that causes “massive disruption” to the auto industry… a typical contract would cost $550 a month and provide 18,000 miles a year.” Basically, energy is 7¢ a mile versus 24¢ a mile for gas in Europe. This should work, right? People who would buy a loaded Smart would just lease this instead?
Ian Albert – Video Game Maps: Amazing maps of territories I know well. The San Andreas map effort is a real marvel. The clickable version to the left is scaled down to 11% of a version already scaled way down from a gigapixel. (via Selectbutton forums.)- Music music music music: Pilooski edit of Alan Parson’s Project I, Robot for D*I*R*T*Y Edits Vol.1.
Galatea and Repliee
Two new links in the sidebar – to David Byrne and Insert Credit, the Pitchfork of video game sites. Their thematic joint – android girls. On August 17 (you gotta scroll down – no permalinks) David posted about Hiroshi Ishiguro’s android woman and compared them to Pygmalion and Galatea. I want to address Ovid’s preface:
Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor the sex, and resolved to live unmarried.
I don’t think loving an android would entail hating women. Unless an android had a distinct personality – we’ve written them as servile but strong, which means that’s how they’ll be when they arrive – falling in love with one would be a boring fetish, mere displacement. I think the desire for robot girls is a desire for a fourth sex – a category without exhausting baggage.
See, I told you I’d come back to android girls.
Aphrodite animates Galatea (Edward Burne-Jones )
Absurd thought
When robots become easier to build, will people go to android school to learn how to design people as we now go to architecture school to learn how to design buildings? No – they’ll be like computers, mass produced but configurable. Funny how houses have resisted mass customization for so long. Whither a ‘Dell’ for housing?
sigh
Robots.
Totally nice Nike robot soccer commercial. Looks like CGI, but who can tell? Link via Freshness.
I don’t think any company has been so successful in buying the cool for so long. Co-opt, co-opt, co-opt.
Robot News
Finally, Sony’s QRIO (nee SDR-4X) is coming out. No pricing yet. Picture via AllRobots.com, a great personal robotics blog.
I love robots.
7 April 2003
Robodex 2003 is on, and they’re celebrating the creation date of Astro Boy. Sony has a new, more powerful version of their bipedal bot, the SDR-4X II, and lots of other stuff is going on. Wish I was there!
Bluetooth robots
I don’t even know why I blog tech stuff with Gizmodo around. Anyway, here’s another stolen link: Seiko Epson Develops Power-Saving, Bluetooth-Controlled Micro Robots. Pretty cute, for a motor with wheels. What would you use one of these puppies for? Well, if they were $1/each…
I write