Rebang spotted a comic-strip style advert, featuring an avatar, for virtual boots, and remarks “I suspect there is going to be a lot of mashup activity rippling through our lives.” Hes right, but rippling is not the word I would have chosen. The word mashup is an interesting one. I usually take it to mean…
MSIAC kindly send me their online Journal. The current issue has an interesting article on the simulation of terrain, which shows the extent to which modelling is taken and the (self-defeating?) complexity that is developing. The article, TERRAIN SURFACE CODES FOR AN ALL-SEASON, OFF-RIDE MOTION SIMULATOR, by Paul W. Richmond, Alexander A. Reid, Sally A.…
Government Executive magazine has a feature listing the top 200 US government contractors. Total contracts awarded in Fiscal 2005 came to $388,017,686,748. Top (by some way $5bn ahead of second place Boeing and $10bn ahead of Northrop) was Lockheed. I cant get the figures to add up on my spreadsheet, but no doubt they do.
Cryptome reprints a US government contract document for the Tangram intelligence analysis programme. This is an interesting approach to analysing large amounts of data. Acronyms abound, but the core of the programme is “to advance the state of the art in intelligence and analytic support systems…The four key challenges that define the essence of the…
OReilly Radar has a piece about passively multiplayer games: an idea for using the data trails we create to make video games. (I thought thats what the Police already do…) Why not combine it with GPS devices as well? The idea is ascribed to Justin Hall (see this interview) “Mobile devices, are always on, always…
Just some quotations from recent reading, and some thoughts. Busy week! Firstly, from Digital Art by Christiane Paul: “one of the crucial issues raised …. is the relationship between representation and simulation. The issue of representation plays an important role in the arguments of theorists such as Friedrich Kittler, William Mitchell and Edmund Couchot, who…
A local US news item reminds me just how much money there is in simulation. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Lockheed Martin Corp. has just won a US Air Force contract potentially worth $2 billion over 10 years for an advanced communications system linking and upgrading air-operations centers worldwide. Unsuccessful contenders were Northrop Grumman Corp.…