Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel.  Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.

NYT publishes prophetic 1968 ad warning of WTC tower dangers

posted by Xeni Jardin at 6:57:10 AM | permalink

Ted Nugent Embraces The Would-Be Celebrity Space Tourist That Fell To Earth

Ted Nugent—right-wing rocker, NRA board member, and author of "God, Guns & Rock 'n' Roll" and "Kill it and Grill It: A Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish"—issued a consolation prize of sorts today to Lance Bass. The 23-year-old 'NSYNC star's space travel aspirations were shot down by Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos this week, after several multimillion-dollar payment deadlines were missed.

...for just $1 million, Nugent has offered to have the boy band member over to his Michigan ranch to teach him bow-hunting skills. The guitarist and outdoorsman said Bass could then join him on a weeklong hunt, "where he'll be taught a greater appreciation for nature and gravity as he hunts, kills, cleans and cooks for himself."

"Bass needs to quit worrying about going into outer space and embrace and celebrate life by learning how to kill his own food," Nugent said Tuesday. "A slab of flesh on the back of a deer is the finest source of protein on the planet." The 53-year-old rocker said he'd sweeten the deal by "throwing in a few guitar lessons."

Check out Nuge's web site while you're at it, for all the 411 on his live deer-hunting expeditions for kids, and for his inspirational poetry. Judging from the literary voice throughout, much of the content on tednugent.com appears to have ghostwritten by Jim Anchower.

Link to Story.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 3:17:57 PM | permalink

Now Open for Business: Open Source Streaming Alliance

Drazen Pantic, co-founder of the Open Source Streaming Alliance (OSSA), reports that the group of non-profit organizations launched their web site today at www.streamingalliance.org. Their goal: to provide nonprofits, independent media groups, and arts organizations throughout the world with affordable and reliable means to stream content online. Check out their manifesto (excerpt follows), and their white paper on the Open Source Streaming Platform.

What is the Open Source Streaming Alliance?
Open Source servers, exchanging streaming content and replicating content. The driving idea is global networking of servers and high-bandwidth centers in ways that avoid unnecessary multiplication of Net traffic while delivering content as locally as possible.

OSSA is an extension of the networking paradigm with one crucial addition: it transcends the current only-for-profit context, allowing experimental, independent media and arts centers to catch up with the need to stream content creation and distribution. It thereby gives voice to diversity and facilitates global accessibility for all.

How does OSSA function?
OSSA is a network of Open Source streaming servers located on three continents (Australia, Europe, North America) that relay and exchange their streaming content through multicast channels.

Multicasting and relaying are built-in features of Open Source servers. While the Alliance is agnostic regarding the format of audio and/or video content, the one prerequisite is that content and delivery tools are Open Source--available for everybody with no loss (and maybe a gain) in quality.(...)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:06:10 AM | permalink

ASCII porn--saucy images composed entirely of text characters--is like old school geek pop art. It's been around since punchcards and dot-matrix printers, and its enduring coolness has more to do with lo-fi retro chic than utilitarian value. The asciipr0n.com site is probably the best online repository, with some unbeatable non-explicit geek kitsch images like this '60s pinup and this surfer chick. There you'll also find converted versions of fine art nudes that would make John Ashcroft run for the curtains: Boticelli's Venus, Monet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe, and Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase.

The genre isn't limited to static images: if you're feeling adventurous, check out Deep ASCII, an ASCII-fied, soundless version of Deep Throat. Conversion to ASCII transforms the classic porn flick into streaming, mute abstraction. What was once graphic footage is rendered fluid and shapeless, like silent clouds of swarming punctuation marks.

For readable text on the subject, check out this interesting article from 2001 by Annalee Newitz in Salon about ASCII pr0n's past, and its potential future incarnation on cellphones and PDAs.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 8:29:53 AM | permalink

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