You buy a Spime with a credit card. Your account info is embedded in the transaction, including a special email address set up for your Spimes. After the purchase, a link is sent to you with customer support, relevant product data, history of ownership, geographies, manufacturing origins, ingredients, recipes for customization, and bluebook value. The spime is able to update its data in your database (via radio-frequency ID), to inform you of required service calls, with appropriate links to service centers. This removes guesswork and streamlines recycling.

Now, that sounds ridiculous, but the Wikipedia article is a little more concise about it, even with an actual example of a Spime.

Sterling sees spimes as coming through the convergence of six emerging technologies, related to both the manufacturing process for consumer goods, and through identification and location technologies. These six facets of spimes are:

Small, inexpensive means of remotely and uniquely identifying objects over short ranges; in other words, radio-frequency identification.

1. A mechanism to precisely locate something on Earth, such as a global-positioning system.
2. A way to mine large amounts of data for things that match some given criteria, like internet search engines.
3. Tools to virtually construct nearly any kind of object; computer-aided design.
4. Ways to rapidly prototype virtual objects into real ones. Sophisticated, automated fabrication of a specification for an object, through "three-dimensional printers."
5. "Cradle-to-cradle" life-spans for objects. Cheap, effective recycling.

With all six of these, in theory one could track the entire existence of an object, from before it was made (its virtual representation), through its manufacture, its ownership history, its physical location, until its eventual obsolescence and breaking-down back into raw material to be used for new instantiations of objects. If recorded, the lifetime of the object can be archived, and searched for.

Put another way, a Spime is an object that blogs about its existance. Handy? Sure. Possible? Perhaps. Scary? A little.

(Although, I may be moving towards this. In three organizations now, I've felt the need to write the same piece of software for physical asset management. I'd like to physical tag everything that needs to be tracked -- computers, printers, etc. -- with an ID number. That number would correspond to a blog about that thing.

For instance, a computer would have a blog where people could log what maintenance they complete, or any problems they were having with it. It wouldn't be too far-fetched to design it so that the computer could blog itself -- export items from its Event Log or something.)

Please be aware. And pass it on if you think this will help someone. This was passed on to me by a friend.

This is an URGENT warning for all internet users -- there is a dangerous e-mail virus propagating across the internet.

If anyone receives an e-mail hoax, chain letter or urban myth e-mail, please delete it WITHOUT FORWARDING IT!!

He goes on for a while like that in a tone perfect for freaking out my Mom. Seriously tempted to spam my address book with that.

Via Slashdot.

They're probably best known for their tires, but lately Finnish industrial conglomerate Nokia's been making a big push into the wireless biz with its Mobira subsidiary (best of luck with that, Nokia!). Mobira just introduced its latest ultraportable cellphone, the Talkman (positively no relation to the Walkman, so don't sue, ok, Sony?); clocking in at a mere 11 pounds, this bad boy will have you walking and talking in no time.

If you remember dialing up a BBS on your 1200 baud modem, this'll take you back.

The march of the machines will be celebrated in Las Vegas next month with the world's first money tournament for robots — and the $100,000 prize is drawing a handful of coders out of anonymity.

The emerging technology does more than raise the stakes for real people and online casinos. It also raises fundamental questions about how far computers have come in mimicking and improving on human behavior, and about how far they can go in the future.

The article goes on to quote some AI folks stating that getting a computer to master poker will probably drive AI forward far more than a computer winning chess or backgammon, since it's such a psychological game, and involves understanding human patterns.

Sadly, this poker tournament will not include my favorite parts of a local Texas Hold'em tournament. Namely, eating too many chips and laughing so hard that I nearly fall out of my chair.

Via Waxy.

Although most homes have only single roll holders, most commercial establishments have long ago switched to devices that hold multiple rolls. We decided to install one, so we purchased holder of two rolls, side by side.

We discovered that although we now had two rolls instead of one, the problem was not solved. Both rolls ran out at the same time. Sure, it took twice as long before the rolls emptied, but we were still stuck with the same problem: no more paper. We had discovered that the switch to two rolls meant we had to use more sophisticated behavior: the algorithm for tearing of paper mattered.

A fun article with a good look into how computer nerds look at the world, but it also hints at actual issues with scalability: More does not automatically equal better.

Microsoft is aiming to have its first cluster version of Windows ready in time for a supercomputing conference this fall.

Software Architect Marvin Theimer said on Thursday that the company hopes to have a beta, or test version, by this summer, with the final version of Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition ready by the SC2005 supercomputing conference in November.

Let's feed this one into my patented 'FutureHeadline 2.0' software:

Sasser Worm Sets New Spam Record On Government Windows Supercomputing Cluster

And, overheard in the IT department of the future? "Well, the hotfix screwed up processing on about 5% of the nodes in our 200-node cluster, so Randy's got to go around today, figure out which ones failed, and re-apply the patches on those from the terminals."

Product tagline from the future?

Microsoft Pharmaceuticals Supercluster: What do you want to cure today?

OK, I'll stop now.

Via OSNews.

May you rest in peace, Jef, and may your family and friends be comforted in this time of grief.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) is pursuing research and development of an innovative Human Area Networking technology called RedTacton that safely turns the surface of the human body into a data transmission path at speeds up to 10 Mbps between any two points on the body.

Let's see the RIAA monitor file swapping once this hits the mainstream!

For example, two people equipped with RedTacton devices could exchange data just by shaking hands. A wide range of natural human actions -- grasping, sitting down, walking, or standing in a particular place -- can be used to trigger RedTacton to start a networked process.

Via PhysOrg.

A consortium of software and security companies has come up with the first unified language for rating the vulnerabilities that plague computer operating systems, opening them to attack from viruses and hackers. The system will provide system administrators with the first quick way to prioritise the dozens of software patches they receive each week, say its creators.

The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) was designed by engineers from more than seven companies, including Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Symantec and Qualys, as part of their role on the US National Infrastructure Advisory Council, a branch of the US Department of Homeland Security.

Via New Scientist.

During the development of Windows 95, as with the development of any project, the people working on the project write side programs to test the features they are adding or to prototype a feature. After Windows 95 shipped, some of those programs were collected into the first edition of the Windows 95 Power Toys.

It's an interesting look into how 'Power Toys' went from left-over code to part of the culture with MS products.

Some people claim that Tweak UI was written because Microsoft got tired of responding to customer complaints. I don't know where they got that from. Tweak UI was written because I felt like writing it.

You almost expect Power Toys with a major MS release now. They're like the software equivalent of DVD bonus features.

The SBS Crew Check system tracks all the details of where each crew member is scheduled and keeps a log of every scheduling change.

Tom Carter, a computer consultant with Clover Link Systems of Los Angeles, said the application has a hard limit of 32,000 changes in a single month.

"This probably seemed like plenty to the designers, but when the storms hit last week, they caused many, many crew reassignments, and the value of 32,000 was exceeded," he said.

Important lesson to programmers: using larger variables costs more memory. Memory is cheap. Downed airlines cost millions.

Via SlashDot.

This paper describes a Perl module -- Lingua::Romana::Perligata -- that makes it possible to write Perl programs in Latin. A plausible rationale for wanting to do such a thing is provided, along with a comprehensive overview of the syntax and semantics of Latinized Perl. The paper also explains the special source filtering and parsing techniques required to efficiently interpret a programming language in which the syntax is (largely) non-positional.

I know you want a code snippet:

    meo varo haec da.         # my $var = @_;
    meis varo haec da.        # my ($var) = @_
    meis varis haec da.       # my @var = @_;

(Thanks for the link, Noel.)

Now you don't even need to pick up a phone to order pizza.

So I started poking around and found djbdns. So far, I've been very impressed with it. It's built from a number of small, lightweight programs (vs BIND's monolithic 'named'), the config file format is less verbose and (slightly) less arcane, it's reportedly more scalable, and there's apparently never been a known exploit. It can even automatically version new DNS records and maintain reverse lookups.

Am I missing something here? If djbdns is as great as it appears to be, why is most of the Internet's DNS traffic still handled by BIND? UNIX admins have a pretty good history of snagging better tools when they come along (sendmail is an increasingly rarer bird, and telnet's on the way out), so what's the catch with DNS alternatives?

If you swear by djbdns or another BIND alternative, or have run screaming from one, I'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment.

(Incidentally, the Wikipedia article on DNS that I linked to is by far the clearest explanation of DNS that I've ever read. If you've always wondered how your PC finds its way around the Internet, have a read).