This isn't a poll about which CGI creature looks the coolest - instead, we're aiming at which one felt the most like an actual character in the movie. In other words, which one made you forget you were watching CGI? Which stirred up your sympathy?

Since the earliest days of cinema, special effects have been crucial to movie storytelling. One of the earliest popular short movies, Jacques Méliès' 1902 La Voyage Dans La Lune, was a science fiction story with special effects.

All these effects were created by human hands. In the mid-twentieth century filmmakers like Jean Cocteau started to perfect the art of using film technology to create special effects. In Orphée, for example, he used double exposures and ran the film backwards to do his special effects. Here is a great moment where Orpheus goes through the looking glass into another world.

Meanwhile, back in the states, special effects masters like Ray Harryhausen were using good, old-fashioned elbow grease and stop-motion techniques to build amazing monsters whose movements had a lifelike feel even though they were fantastical. Here's a great compilation of claymation monsters from Harryhausen, from the 1930s through the 80s.

But these days, computers are making special effects for the humblest of straight-to-DVD movies and television series, to Hollywood blockbusters. We have films like District 9 and Lord of the Rings where major characters are a combination of human and computer-generated. And of course battle sequences in movies like 300 are fought almost entirely by CGI people, not actors. Has this changed the way we tell stories? Absolutely.

Computer-assisted filmmaking has allowed amateur filmmakers, or people with small budgets, to produce movies that have the kind of outer-space effects that once required a team of prop designers. Of course some of this CGI looks terrible, but a lot of it is terrific and funny. Exhibit A is this CGI test from the Z-grade flick Chihuanhas.

And of course, people who make fan videos have many more resources at their fingertips, thanks to CGI. Check out this great fan-made snippet of an idea for revamping a familiar Doctor Who story.

For filmmakers with a lot of money to burn, working with computers has meant that audiences could see imagery that's simply impossible to create in real life, using the kinds of camera effects that Jean Cocteau relied on. James Cameron has talked about how his CGI-enabled camera in Avatar allowed him to literally fly alongside his characters as they zoom around on the backs of birds. And "bullet time," a technique popularized in Blade and the Matrix films is another great example of how computers allow us to see images completely impossible to film using conventional cameras.

Here's how that scene was mocked up by computers that knit together the views provided by cameras mounted 360 degrees around the action.

Like electronic music that provides us with delicious beats that no human-controlled instrument could create, CGI gives us what is essentially a non-human view of the world. We can see angles, images, and colors that our eyes and bodies could never capture - even with the aid of a conventional camera.

With the help of our computers, we see the world the way machines do. And we love it.

This week on io9, we celebrate the ways our computers are helping us reimagine the very act of seeing. They're changing the way tell stories, and transforming entertainment into something that cannot be created by humans alone. We'll bring you the very best CGI art, talk to concept designers who help build your favorite CGI creatures, explore the history of CGI and bring you deep inside the technology that enables it.

Top and bottom images via Rene Garcia.

This latest simulation, following on from 2007's simulation of a rat brain, isn't an exact copy of an actual cat cortex: It runs 100 times slower than the real thing, for one thing. Scientists created the virtual cortex as part of an ongoing study into how to make virtual intelligence more able to handle ambiguity and fuzzy data, and IBM Research's manager of cognitive computing, Dharmendra Modha, believes that his team are a decade away from being able to create a virtual human brain... at which point, we're all going to be living in Tron.

HAL's bells: IBM makes 'thinking computer' breakthrough [Independent.co.uk]

Actually, reading Locus Magazine's write-up, it sounds like MacNeill predicted handheld devices connected to a mainframe, which was more in line with what we actually had in 1980. MacNeill told Locus:

I came up with the one about 'home computer terminals with interactive access to other home, business and academic terminals, and including hand-held terminals' mostly because I had been using the PLATO terminals in Uris Hall at Cornell and wished very, very much that I could have one of my own (and especially one that I could carry around with me).

Ed Ferman, who was editor of F&SF in 1980, says it's disappointing to see how optimistic many of the 30-year-old predictions for 2010 were, and how far short we've fallen. (Although there are still a couple months left — everybody innovate really really hard!) [Locus Magazine]

Roddenberry's computer isn't the first Mac-Plus off the production line, as some had mistakenly stated. Rather, it's one of the very first Macintosh 128 computers built, which Apple presented to Roddenberry. According to the auction house, Apple then upgraded the computer to a Mac-Plus and gave it the Mac-Plus model number of M-0001. (Apparently, according to our sister site Gizmodo, the computer really is still a Mac-128, and the "Mac-Plus" thing is meaningless.)

Either way, the computer shows how Roddenberry was an early adopter of technology, and gives some context for the famous "Scotty tries to talk to a Mac" scene in TVH:

So how can you own Gene Roddenberry's Mac? It might even cost that much. According to auction house Profiles In History:

This amazing artifact, which is accompanied by a signed letter of provenance from Gene Roddenberry's son, Rod, will be a special addition to Profiles in History's October 8-9, 2009 auction of Hollywood memorabilia. It has an estimated sale price of $800-$1200. Worldwide bidding begins at 12:00 PM (noon) both days and can be placed either in person, via mail, phone, fax or live on the Internet at: http://www.icollector.com/Hollywood-Auction-37_a5736.

And then all you need to do is launch the Mac-Plus into space, where it'll be found by alien intelligences and upgraded to become super-intelligent, so it can come back to Earth and kill us all.

The company hopes this new method will enable it to manufacture increasingly small computer chips.

While Moore's Law states that circuit density doubles each year, therefore enabling devices to increase their computing power even as they shrink in size, many industry watchers fear Moore's Law has reached its end, and that there are finite limits to hose small a circuit may be. In an attempt to keep our computers shrinking, companies like IBM have been trying to build a better nanowire, something that can effectively transmit data, but can only be viewed through an electron microscope.

Much of the research into nanowire manufacture involves advanced photolithographic techniques: making the incredibly small wires through photo etching. But Frances Ross, a researcher at IBM, takes a very different approach. Rather than cutting silicon into microscopic slices, she's developing a process for growing the wires in a lab, bit by bit. She sprinkles gold nanoparticles on the ends of the wires, then suffuses the particles with a superheated silicon gas. The particles become saturated with the silicon gas, and solid silicon begins to form at the end of the wire, producing the gradually growing wires you see above.

The effect is pretty, but the technology is still a ways off from usability. In order for her nanowires to be useful for chip makers, Ross will need to find a way to keep the surfaces of each wire perfectly regular and uniform.

After the Transistor, a Leap Into the Microcosm [NY Times]

At first glance, HAR appears to be something like an outdoor rave or music festival, with its brightly-colored flags, tents, and ice cream stands. Except the entire outdooor area, packed with hundreds of campsites, is threaded with ethernet wires that terminate in blue port-a-potties. These toilets have been repurposed as computer network hubs dubbed Datenklo, German for data toilets. Switches furred with wire sit in neat stacks on top of toilet seats, and a wireless access point in the roof broadcasts a local wifi network too. As one of the network administrators explained to me, toilets are the perfect spot for outdoor data hubs – they are weatherproof, mobile, and can easily be locked to keep out drunken party-goers. Cables from the Datenklo lead to a hut called the NOC or network operations center, and are threaded through a window into a series of servers cooled with a portable air conditioner.

It's one of the more nicely-designed computer networks I've ever used, and it was set up in less than a week in the remote vacation village, called Vierhouten, where HAR was held. The group even laid a kilometer of donated fiber optic cable to bring high speed internet to the HAR campers' network. If you wanted to set up a server, there was also a pretty swank colocation facility located in a tiny hut, labeled ETH0 in duct tape.

Elsewhere, a group set up a DECT wireless phone network and sold phones with phone numbers usable only in camp. Another group built a free GSM mobile phone network, and handed out free phone numbers to anybody who promised to test the network, which ran on experimental software and hardware. For anybody who thinks of their cell phone as a device entirely controlled by Sprint or T-Mobile, connecting to the HAR GSM network is like visiting the future. A utopian future where mobile phones are run by community networks that offer free services – and whose operators live in a tent up the road labeled "GSM" just in case you need to ask a question. Imagine being able to control every aspect of your phone, including the very network where you make telephone calls. It seems bizarrely revolutionary.

During all four days of camp, from August 13 through 16, a full roster of speakers gave talks on everything from how to build your own home synchrotron particle accelerator (pictured in the gallery below), to the ways a wily criminal could forge SSL identity verification certificates to make her website appear to belong to a bank or other site online. There were also classes on lock picking, mobile phone hacking, soldering, and beer making. Groups like the anti-censorship organization Wikileaks presented information on how to foster free speech online, while several anonymous people discussed the pros and cons of pirating.

When you wanted to take a break, you could get a free tosti kaas (a toasted bread and cheese sandwich) from the people running the new .tk top level domain. You'd get a free .tk domain name too, to match your tosti kaas.

The nightlife at HAR is just as creative and technologically-mediated as the daytime experiments. The German hackers from Chaos Computer Club (CCC) brought a searchlight and a disco ball, which filled the enormous campground with flecks of spinning light. Glowing tents were full of music and computer equipment. And on Saturday night there was a silent nightclub, where everybody got headphones and could tune into one of three different DJ sets, dancing to the beats of their choice. Passing by the silent club, you could see hundreds of dancers bathed in colored light, their feet beating a rhythm to something inaudible. Once in a while, a group of them would burst into a snatch of song, responding to a directive from their earbuds.

Hung over the next day, people could wander through a lounge decorated with a giant unicorn, and into the HARcade, full of free pinball machines and videogames. One of the coolest was a racecar game where the cars would go only if you made "rrrrummmm" noises into a microphone. The louder the noise, the faster the car.

I had been hearing about these hacker camps for about eight years ago, back when the event had been called HAL, for "Hacking at Large." They grew out of a loose coalition of technical hobbyist groups and activist organizations, including the decades-old German hacker group CCC. Over the past few years, the "hacker space" movement has been growing, and dozens of hacker groups have started clubhouses of their own in the United States and across Europe.

What is the point of a hacker camp like HAR, or a hacker space like CCC in Berlin, or Noisebridge in San Francisco? It is, in the words of an early hacker space pioneer named Jens Ohlig, to create an alternative educational institution, a place where people can learn about technology and science outside the confines of work or school. It's where people build things because they want to, not because they need to make money. And it's a place, Ohlig said, where geeks can "come out" among like-minded people and "live as if you are in the future."

Want to find out more about hacker spaces in your area? There is a list on the hackerspaces wiki.

Free tostis and .tk domains!


Datenklo

Welcome to the network operations center.


Inside the NOC.
A remote-controlled game - log into this page, and control the fans to blow the duck around the maze.
Camp like a pirate!
The colocation facility where you can park your server.

Inside the ETH0 colo.

Open phone hardware.


Soldering class!


Software hacking.
CCC party tent.

Hacked-together UFO.



Game where cars are controlled by you making a loud RRRRRMMMM noise into a mic.

Yale University's Hong Tang, whose team previously showed an ability to manipulate circuits on a silicon board with attractive light, has developed a method to do the same with repulsive light. The light causes miniature components on silicone chips to move perpendicularly from the direction the light is traveling, rather than being a triggered by a beam of light shining upon it directly.

In order to create the force, scientists split a beam of infrared light and forced it down two different nanowires. The more the two beams moved out of phase with one another, the greater the force they were able to exert upon the components around the nanowires on the chips. The ability to create repulsive light will allow scientists to manipulate nanocomponents on silicon boards without the use of electricity, eliminating the need to vast wiring systems and reducing interference. Tang's discovery is just one more step towards creating functional nanodevices and exponentially expanding the scale of electronic miniaturization.

Scientists Discover Light Force with 'Push' Power [PhysOrg]

[Image via Hong Tang]

Augmented reality provides you with an information overlay for your daily life, supplying data for things you are seeing via a smart phone camera - or through special goggles that are connected to the internet.

According to Pachube's developers:

Pachube is a little like YouTube, except that, rather than sharing videos, Pachube enables people to monitor and share real time environmental data from sensors that are connected to the internet. Pachube acts between environments, able both to capture input data (from remote sensors) and serve output data (to remote actuators).

In other words, any kind of sensor you want (from CCTV to air quality monitors) can feed data to your smartphone and pop up one of those graphs. Want to avoid areas with lots of particulate matter in the air? Now you can see those invisible particles by waving your phone around. Or do you want to rent in an office in a building with a small carbon footprint? If the proper sensors are in place, Pachube lets you see the carbon footprint of buildings you enter.

But what if you want your AR without having to worry about a corporation controlling what you see? Then you need Wikitude, a completely free and open version of the kinds of AR software we showed you last week. It runs on Android, an operating system developed at Google for mobile devices. Just look at the landscape around you using the phone's camera, and Wikitude overlays map data and other useful information on top of it. As long as you are looking through the eye of your mobile, you'll never get lost again.

The chip's qubits (or quantum bits, a unit for quantum information) are built from billions of aluminum atoms, but they function like single atoms. They work just like regular computing bits, being in either a "1" or "0" state. The difference is that qubits can hold superpositions of multiple states, so they can hold much more data and process much more information.

And the fact that this new quantum device looks like a conventional processor means we may not be too many steps away from central processors comprising qubits, making their power and capacity above and beyond what we can imagine for current processors.

That means this electronic quantum processor can do exponentially more than conventional processors in much less space. As reported in an upcoming article in Nature, The team already has their processor doing basic algorithms.

Armed with processors like this new device, the next generation of quantum computers might be the natural extension of Moore's Law, allowing for smaller and smaller computers. And we thought the iPhone was impressive.

First Electronic Quantum Processor Created [via Science Daily]
Demonstration of two-qubit algorithms with a superconducting quantum processor [Nature]

(Image: Blake Johnson/Yale University)

At Bristol University, scientists were able to precisely control the movement of 4 photons on a silicon chip using a metal electrode lithographed on the surface. It was the first time that scientists have reported being able to precisely manipulate the photons and cause them to interact with one another. According to a university press release:

A commentary on the work that appeared in the same issue described it as "an important step in the quest for quantum computation" and concluded: "The most exciting thing about this work is its potential for scalability. The small size of the [device] means that far greater complexity is possible than with large-scale optics."

The engravings through which the photons moved were similar in function to optical fibers, meaning that there is a potential path forward for utilizing or improving existing optical technologies.

Meanwhile, scientists at the University of Texas at Austin created the thinnest superconducting metal. The metal was applied to — yes — a silicon chip in a two-atom thick layer. What's the big deal about something so small?

Superconductors are unique because they can maintain an electrical current indefinitely with no power source. They are used in MRI machines, particle accelerators, quantum interference devices and other applications.

The development of the thin superconducting sheets of lead lays the groundwork for future advancements in superconductor technologies.

"To be able to control this material-to shape it into new geometries-and explore what happens is very exciting," says Shih, the Jane and Roland Blumberg Professor in Physics. "My hope is that this superconductive surface will enable one to build devices and study new properties of superconductivity."

The scientists are hoping that by successfully miniaturizing the technology, they can build new applications that need not require an external power source, among other things.

Finally, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have successfully replaced copper interconnects on integrated circuits with nanoribbons of graphene, which are thin layers of graphite. The decreasing resistance of copper interconnects on circuits has long bedeviled scientists involved in miniaturizing electronics.

"As you make copper interconnects narrower and narrower, the resistivity increases as the true nanoscale properties of the material become apparent," said Raghunath Murali, a research engineer in Georgia Tech's Microelectronics Research Center and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Our experimental demonstration of graphene nanowire interconnects on the scale of 20 nanometers shows that their performance is comparable to even the most optimistic projections for copper interconnects at that scale. Under real-world conditions, our graphene interconnects probably already out-perform copper at this size scale."

Beyond resistivity improvement, graphene interconnects would offer higher electron mobility, better thermal conductivity, higher mechanical strength and reduced capacitance coupling between adjacent wires.

In other words, the same stuff that's now in your pencil will eventually be powering the computer that will replace your pencil... and maybe the chip that will replace your free will.

Manipulating light on a chip for quantum technologies [Bristol University]
Thinnest superconducting metal created [EurekAlert]
Graphene May Have Advantages Over Copper For IC Interconnects At The Nanoscale [Science Daily]

Apart from the obvious question — what is cyberbreath, and don't they make a cyber-mouthwash for that? — I have to admit I'm a bit skeptical of Rothblatt's gung ho predictions. For one thing, she quotes Ray "Unlimited Rice Pudding" Kurzweil. For another, I'm not sure her understanding of Moore's law is quite rock solid. Here's how Intel describes Moore's Law:

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore is a visionary. In 1965, his prediction, popularly known as Moore's Law, states that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years. And Intel has kept that pace for nearly 40 years.

And here's how Moore himself expressed it, in a 1965 article in Electronics Magazine:

The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year (see graph on next page). Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer.

Here's how Martine Rothblatt interprets it:

For example, my one year-old computer has about 1/100,000th of the capability of a human mind (its processing speed is about that fraction of the number of human brain neural connections, although its software is in some areas pretty advanced). In other words, it has only .001% of the capability of a human mind. It's a rodent. I could go buy a new computer today that has 2/100,000th or .002% of the capability of a human mind. At this rate, with the way my linear mind works, I would expect to be able to buy a mindclone in 99,998 more years. What, me worry! Our linear minds take our most recent experience – such as going from a 1/100,000th of a human mind computer to a 2/100,000th of a human mind computer in one year – and extrapolate it forward such that we think it will take 998 more years to get 1% of a human mind, another 1000 years to get to 2% of a human mind, another 1000 years to get to 3% of a human mind, and so on.

In fact, though, information technology does not grow linearly, but exponentially. This means, according to "Moore's Law", information technology doubles each 1-2 years – something very different from growing linearly. Because computer capability doubles it means next year I will get not 3/100,000th of a human brain computer, but 4/100,000th of one. Exponential growth means the year after that I will get not 5/100,000th of a human brain computer, but 8/100,000th of one. With information technology, I can expect to reach mindclone computing as rapidly as this:

Years From Now Fraction of a Mindclone
Next Year 4/100,000th
Year After 8,100,000th
Third Year 16/100,000th
Fourth Year 32/100,000th
Fifth Year 64/100,000th
Sixth Year 128/100,000th
Seventh Year 256/100,000th
Eighth Year 512/100,000th
Ninth Year 1000/100,000th
Tenth Year 2000/100,000th
Eleventh Year 4000/100,000th
Twelfth Year 8000/100,000th
Thirteenth Year 16,000/100,000th
Fourteenth Year 32,000/100,000th
Fifteenth Year 64,000/100,000th
Sixteenth Year 128,000/100,000th = MINDCLONE

Three clarifying comments are in order. First, the rounding down from 1,024 to 1,000 in the ninth year is just to make the arithmetic easier to follow. Second, while Moore's Law says that the doubling occurs every 1-2 years, in the example given above I showed the doubling every year. The effect of making it every two years would simply be to postpone mindclones to 32 years from now instead of 16, or to 24 years from now if we use a doubling period of every 18 months. The important point is that mindclones are around the corner – not in some other millennium, or even in some other generation. This is about our lives.

I love the way her little explanation goes: "Year sixteen: MINDCLONE." So there you have it. We have exactly sixteen years before Skynet nukes us all into the stone age. [IEET]

Wolfram|Alpha is making geeks across the world swoon, but maybe we should be just a little wary of any software that promises to become the repository of all knowledge, and then the analyzer of that knowledge on top of that. Go to the Wolfram|Alpha site and check it out. Just plug in a question or term, and it will provide you with what it believes is a factual answer. Places and companies get good results. But you'll get nothing but a confused output if you ask, "What is the air flight velocity of an African swallow?"

Here's what Wolfram|Alpha's creators have to say about their nascent mega-brain:

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything . . . Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

OK, knowledge to the masses - sounds good. Turning everything into something computable . . . sounds Matrixy. Serve as a knowledge engine . . . sounds like the computer in THX 1138. Not good, people, not good.

I want a computer that can help me understand the world, but one that analyzes complex information FOR me? Especially information about culture and language, two areas that are notoriously ambiguous? I'm not so sure.

And here's where things get truly hair-raising. Wolfram|Alpha has a plan. In a section called "the future," the developers write:

Wolfram|Alpha was made possible in part by the achievements of [computing software] Mathematica and A New Kind of Science (NKS). In their different ways, both of these point to far-reaching future opportunities for Wolfram|Alpha-whether a radically new kind of programming or the systematic automation of invention and discovery.

Wolfram|Alpha is being introduced first in the form of the wolframalpha.com website. But Wolfram|Alpha is really a technology and a platform that can be used and presented in many different ways. Among short-term plans are developer APIs, professional and corporate versions, custom versions for internal data, connections with other forms of content, and deployment on emerging mobile and other platforms.

"Automation of invention and discovery"? Hey, invention is what HUMANS do! Plus, I don't want this scary interpreter of all knowledge and inventor of all things on my freakin' Android phone, either. That's basically asking to be nuked.

via Wolfram|Alpha (not to be confused with Wolfram & Hart)

In Wake, a "webmind" starts to gain awareness and recognize the existence of the outside world. But let's not assume a superior cyber-intelligence would be hostile to us, Sawyer told the Ottawa Citizen:

For 50 years now we have been inculcated by science fiction, so we have to take the blame for it as writers, I guess, that computers are inherently evil. Starting with HAL in 1968 (2001: A Space Odyssey), every computer that Captain Kirk every dealt with, The Matrix, the Terminator films ... all of this stuff preaches that AI, artificial intelligence, is going to be humanity's downfall.

I've done my fair share of that myself in some of my earlier books. But I got to thinking about whether that was inevitably true. What I set out to do with this trilogy is to find a new synthesis, a way in which we can retain our essential individuality, humanity and freedom without any longer being the most intelligent beings on the planet.

It's inevitable that we're going to face things this century that are brighter than us so we've got to start thinking about ways that we can make that work for us, instead of sort of throwing up our hands.

Or we could just start building little bombs into every computer, so we can detonate them if they start to get any ideas.

1. We can erase people's memories.
Back in October a study was published in Neuron that proved an enzyme called CaMKII can erase bad memories while you recall them. In Dollhouse, the "actives" have their own memories erased first, and then new memories implanted. The brain-erasure technology is actually the cornerstone of the operation, as it's what turns the actives into blank slates ready to be reprogrammed. Right now, with the cooperation of desperate people, scientists could be using CaMKII to erase their old lives. Then they'll just need to implant new personalities and emotions.

2. We can regulate people's moods with microchips.
Right now, there are a series of implantable microchips on the market that send out electrical impulses over your nerves that can soothe a depressed person or reduce seizures. Some call them neurological pacemakers, and we are discovering new things about them every day - such as the fact that some can cause instant orgasm. Wipe somebody's brain, then install these brain pacemakers, and you might start shaping a whole new person by controlling what gives them pleasure and what makes them depressed.

3. We can use brain implants to steer animals left and right.
Several years ago, neuroscientists invented a little rat-sized brain implant that sent directional signals to the rodent's brain. Using a handheld remote, scientists sent electrical signals to the parts of the rats' brains connected to right and left whisker sensations - and could induce the rats to turn right or left at the press of a button. Dubbed the "robo-rat," the creatures could be used for complicated search and rescue efforts that require crawling into small places. Or they could be the beta version for a more nefarious technology implanted into humans' brains that would allow a corporation like the Dollhouse to remote-control an active's every move, right down to which street they turn on.

4. Infrared brain scans can predict what people want.
As we reported last week, researchers have discovered that a simple infrared brain scan can reveal patterns in brain activity that show simple preferences. Ask a person whether they'd rather have a dog or a cat, and this scan will give you the answer. This is the first step towards knowing how to shape people's preferences. If scientists could trigger a reaction in your brain that reversed the pattern, they might be able to turn a cat person into a dog person and vice versa.

5. Human-computer interfaces link human brains directly to computers.
You may have heard of BrainGate, a technology that uses electrodes sunk into your gray matter to convert electrical impulses from your brain into computer commands. It is currently used by people who are profoundly paralyzed to communicate by moving a cursor around. If we can open up communication between brain and computer like that, it stands to reason that the communication might be two-way. Who is to say there is no secret organization using a BrainGate-esque technology to reprogram people's thoughts?

According to Wired's Kim Zetter, who reported on the device from entertainment technology conference TED:

The prototype was built from an ordinary webcam and a battery-powered 3M projector, with an attached mirror — all connected to an internet-enabled mobile phone. The setup, which costs less than $350, allows the user to project information from the phone onto any surface — walls, the body of another person or even your hand . . . The gestures can be as simple as using his fingers and thumbs to create a picture frame that tells the camera to snap a photo, which is saved to his mobile phone. When he gets back to an office, he projects the images onto a wall and begins to size them. When he encounters someone at a party, the system projects a cloud of words on the person's body to provide more information about him — his blog URL, the name of his company, his likes and interests.

Mistry and his colleagues have patented the device, which they believe will integrate nicely into next-generation mobiles that come equipped with projectors. I love the idea of dialing a phone from my hand, or taking pictures with finger gestures.

Read more about the project at Wired.

The road signs, which normally warn drivers about traffic conditions, displayed these warnings: "Zombies ahead . . . the end is near . . . run for cold climates!" Some signs also warned of Nazi zombies. While city officials claimed to FOX News that the tampering could lead to jail time, nobody is going to get in trouble for warning the world about zombies. The company that owns the signs, Sterling Construction, would have to file a complaint with police for any legal action to be taken. Sterling owner Wayne Haggard told local KVUE-TV, "It's Austin. We have a sense of humor. Let it go."

Though Austin officials claim that an act of direst hacking was required to tamper with the signs, sign-hackers say that isn't true. Most of these signs, including the ones owned by Sterling, have a default password. Anyone can walk up to the sign, type the default into the control panel, and reprogram it.

There is a reason why some say default passwords are a hacker's best friend. However, I would argue that our pranksters haven't really done an impressive hack until they've either brute forced a non-default password, or figured out a way to route internet traffic through the signs. Come back to me with your "sign hacking" when you've turned one of these road signs into a zombie computer, OK? That way, instead of flashing "Zombies ahead!" the sign would flash its normal message but send the "Zombies ahead" warning to your iPhone.

Not that I am advocating anything unlawful. I am just trying to suggest a better zombie warning system.

SOURCES:

Dallas News (with clip from KVUE-TV of the signs)

FOX News

The company made its announcement on a special website designed just for the occasion, called 2008 Breach. Though personal data seems unaffected, the people who created the malware and put it on Heartland's network may have been snarfing up millions of legit credit card numbers.

Another day, another datapocalypse.

Security expert Adam O'Donnell has the full story at Zero Day.