March 17, 2011
A paywall blocks access to a webpage with a screen requiring payment. Web sites that use them include some owned by periodical publications. In 2002 the Financial Times started charging for Web access to published stories. The Wall Street Journal has almost one million paying online readers, which generates about $65 million a year.
Utilities to circumvent paywalls are available. RefSpoof for Mozilla Firefox spoofs the referrer to Google so that multiple ‘first click free’ links can be performed. BreakthePaywall adds an option to Internet Explorer’s context menu which uses various methods (referrer and user-agent spoofing, Cookie deletion, etc.).
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March 17, 2011
Kazumasa Nagai (b. 1929) is a Japanese graphic artist and poster designer. He co-founded the Nippon Design Center in Tokyo in 1960.
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March 16, 2011
Phase-change memory (PCM) is a type of computer memory which exploits the unique behavior of chalcogenide glass; with the application of heat produced by the passage of an electric current, this material can be ‘switched’ between two states, crystalline and amorphous.
Recent versions can achieve two additional distinct states, effectively doubling its storage capacity. PCM is one of a number of new memory technologies competing in the non-volatile role with the almost universal flash memory, but is faster and uses far less power than the latter. Samsung last year announced a 512Mbit PCM RAM chip for use in mobile handsets.
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March 16, 2011
A nuclear meltdown is an informal term for a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating. The term is not officially defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Meltdown conditions can be created when system failures lead to temperatures and heat generation that exceed cooling capacity to the extent that the nuclear fuel assemblies overheat and melt, either partially or completely.
A meltdown is considered very serious because of the potential that highly intense radioactive materials with long half-lives and lethal threat could be released into the environment. The effects of a nuclear meltdown depend on the safety features designed into a reactor. A modern reactor is designed both to make a meltdown unlikely, and to contain one should it occur.
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March 16, 2011
Joel Thomas Zimmerman (b. 1981), better known by his stage name deadmau5 (pronounced ‘dead mouse’), is a Canadian progressive, electro, and house producer based in Toronto, Ontario. His debut album, ‘Get Scraped,’ was released in 2006. He is known for often performing in a titular costume head which he originally created while learning to use a 3D program, which resembles a mouse head.
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March 16, 2011
The BMW Art Car Project was introduced by the French racecar driver and auctioneer Hervé Poulain, who wanted to invite an artist to create a canvas on an automobile. It was in 1975, when Poulain commissioned American artist and friend Alexander Calder to paint the first BMW Art Car.
This first example would be a BMW 3.0 CSL which Poulain himself would race in the 1975 Le Mans endurance race. Since Calder’s work of art, many other renowned artists throughout the world have created BMW Art Cars, including Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Jeff Koons.
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March 16, 2011
Tijuana bibles (also known as bluesies, eight-pagers, gray-backs, Jiggs-and-Maggie books, jo-jo books, Tillie-and-Mac books, and two-by-fours) were pornographic comic books produced in the United States from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Their popularity peaked during the Great Depression era. The typical ‘bible’ is 4 by 6 inches (approximately 10 by 15 cm) with black print on cheap white paper and running eight pages in length. In most cases the artists, writers, and publishers are unknown.
The subjects are explicit sexual escapades usually featuring well known cartoon characters, political figures, or movie stars, invariably used without permission. Tijuana bibles repeated ethnic stereotypes found in popular culture at the time. Wesley Morse (who later went on to draw ‘Bazooka Joe’) is believed to have drawn Tijuana bibles before WWII. Superman co-creator, Joe Shuster illustrated a Tijuana-bible-styled erotic work called ‘Nights of Horror’ in the early 1950s.
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March 16, 2011
Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo originally from San Francisco but now residing in Baltimore signed to the Matador Records label. M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel are the core members, but they frequently include other artists on their records and in their performances, including J Lesser.
Much of their work could be classified as a pop version of the musique concrète genre (a forbearer of modern electronic music). The name Matmos refers to the seething lake of evil slime beneath the city Sogo in the 1968 film Barbarella.
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March 16, 2011
Alexander Calder [kawl-der] (1898 – 1976) was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing the mobile.
In addition to mobile and stabile sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.
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March 15, 2011
Pininfarina is an Italian car design firm and coachbuilder in Cambiano, Italy. Founded in 1930 by automobile designer and builder Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina, the company has been employed by a wide variety of high-end automobile manufacturers, including Ferrari, Maserati, Rolls-Royce, Cadillac, Jaguar, Volvo, Alfa Romeo, and Lancia. It also has designed trams in France, high-speed trains in Holland, and trolleys in the USA.
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March 14, 2011
Computer poker players are computer programs designed to play the game of poker against human opponents or other computer opponents. They are commonly referred to as pokerbots or just simply bots.
These bots or computer programs are used often in online poker situations as either legitimate opponents for humans players or a form of cheating. Cardrooms forbid the use of bots although the level of enforcement from site operators varies considerably.
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March 14, 2011
Polaris is a 2007 Texas hold ’em poker playing program developed by the computer poker research group at the University of Alberta. The program requires little computational power at match time, so it is run on an Apple MacBook Pro during competitions. It currently plays only heads-up (two player) Limit Texas hold’em. The University of Alberta has been developing ‘pokerbots’ since 1997.
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