Arthur C. Clarke, the visionary science fiction writer who won worldwide acclaim with more than 100 books on space, science and the future, has died today in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, an aide has said. He was 90.

Clarke, who had battled debilitating post-polio syndrome since the 1960s, died after suffering breathing problems, his aide Rohan De Silva said.

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A great writer dies. His ideas were bigger and expansive than his literary technique. He will be missed. My favourite memory is of laughing out loud when reading his diary of the making of the 2001 movie. Where Stanley Kubrick shows him a part of the set and Authru mentions that it reminds him of a chinese restaurant whioch apprently completely blew it for Stanley. Arthur notes not to stop by the design department for a while.

Complaints by Jewish settlers angry at Facebook for listing them as residents of "Palestine" prompted the popular social networking Web site to allow users to switch themselves back to Israel.

Facebook users living in Maale Adumim, Ariel and other large Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank protested when the site automatically listed their hometowns as being in "Palestine". A group of settlers accused the California-based company of having a political agenda.

"I was surprised and disappointed to find that my hometown of Ariel is listed in Facebook as being part of a country called 'Palestine,"' wrote Ari Zimmerman in a posting on Facebook. "I am a citizen of Israel, as are all of the other residents of Ariel. We do not live in 'Palestine', nor does anyone else."

Brandee Barker, Facebook's director of communications, said users living in major settlement blocs can now choose between being listed as residents of Israel or Palestine.

"Facebook users in the Israeli West Bank settlements of Maale Adumim, Beitar Illit, and Ariel can now choose between Israel and Palestine," Barker said last week in an email to Reuters.

Israel wants to hold onto Maale Adumim and other major settlement blocs under any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

"We also offer Hebron in both Israel and Palestine," Barker said, referring to the major West Bank city which is home to about 150,000 Palestinians and some 400 Jewish settlers.

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Interesting intersection where a pressurepoint exists across networks physical and virtual. Where some crave anonymity, and delight in the possibilities of virtual selves, others choose to show where they stand real and virtual.

First the percussive sounds of sniper fire and the thrill of the kill. Then the gospel of peace.

Across the country, hundreds of ministers and pastors desperate to reach young congregants have drawn concern and criticism through their use of an unusual recruiting tool: the immersive and violent video game Halo.

The latest iteration of the immensely popular space epic, Halo 3, was released nearly two weeks ago by Microsoft and has already passed $300 million in sales.

Those buying it must be 17 years old, given it is rated M for mature audiences. But that has not prevented leaders at churches and youth centers across Protestant denominations, including evangelical churches that have cautioned against violent entertainment, from holding heavily attended Halo nights and stocking their centers with multiple game consoles so dozens of teenagers can flock around big-screen televisions and shoot it out.

The alliance of popular culture and evangelism is challenging churches much as bingo games did in the 1960s. And the question fits into a rich debate about how far churches should go to reach young people.

Far from being defensive, church leaders who support Halo — despite its “thou shalt kill” credo — celebrate it as a modern and sometimes singularly effective tool. It is crucial, they say, to reach the elusive audience of boys and young men.

Witness the basement on a recent Sunday at the Colorado Community Church in the Englewood area of Denver, where Tim Foster, 12, and Chris Graham, 14, sat in front of three TVs, locked in violent virtual combat as they navigated on-screen characters through lethal gun bursts. Tim explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”

Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church.

But the question arises: What price to appear relevant? Some parents, religious ethicists and pastors say that Halo may succeed at attracting youths, but that it could have a corroding influence. In providing Halo, churches are permitting access to adult-themed material that young people cannot buy on their own.

“If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a nonprofit group that assesses denominational policies. “My own take is you can do better than that.”

Daniel R. Heimbach, a professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, believes that churches should reject Halo, in part because it associates thrill and arousal with killing.

“To justify whatever killing is involved by saying that it’s just pixels involved is an illusion,” he said.

Focus on the Family, a large evangelical organization, said it was trying to balance the game’s violent nature with its popularity and the fact that churches are using it anyway. “Internally, we’re still trying to figure out what is our official view on it,” said Lisa Anderson, a spokeswoman for the group.

There is little doubting Halo’s cultural relevance. Even as video games have grown in popularity, the Halo series stands out. The first Halo and Halo 2 sold nearly 15 million copies combined. Microsoft says that Halo 3 “is on track to become the No. 1 gaming title of all time.”

Hundreds of churches use Halo games to connect with young people, said Lane Palmer, the youth ministry specialist at the Dare 2 Share Ministry, a nonprofit organization in Arvada, Colo., that helps churches on youth issues.

“It’s very pervasive,” Mr. Palmer said, more widespread on the coasts, less so in the South, where the Southern Baptist denomination takes a more cautious approach. The organization recently sent e-mail messages to 50,000 young people about how to share their faith using Halo 3. Among the tips: use the game’s themes as the basis for a discussion about good and evil.

At Sweetwater Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Ga., Austin Brown, 16, said, “We play Halo, take a break and have something to eat, and have a lesson,” explaining that the pastor tried to draw parallels “between God and the devil.”

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Is game addiction a mental disorder?

Experts say video games not an addiction

British police plan to post pictures of Madeleine McCann, the British girl who vanished in Portugal nearly six weeks ago, in the Second Life virtual world.

Investigators are in talks with Second Life to prominently display pictures of the missing four-year-old, said Jim Gamble of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

Missing posters of Madeleine have already been see around the virtual world since mid-May but these are not officially sanctioned.

Gerry and Kate McCann, Madeleine's parents, are also trying to convince search engine goliath Google to display their daughter's eyes in the double Os in its name on its site.

The couple said yesterday that Google had yet to respond to their request.

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Perhaps the police should set up a missing persons unit in Second Life, have a searchable image database. Would this help or just hinder?

"We spend our entire careers living in the future," says author Arlan Andrews, one of a handful of writers the government brought to Washington this month to attend a Homeland Security conference on science and technology.

Those responsible for keeping the nation safe from devastating attacks realize that in addition to border agents, police and airport screeners, they "need people to think of crazy ideas," Andrews says.

The writers make up a group called Sigma, which Andrews put together 15 years ago to advise government officials. The last time the group gathered was in the late 1990s, when members met with government scientists to discuss what a post-nuclear age might look like, says group member Greg Bear. He has written 30 sci-fi books, including the best seller Darwin's Radio.

Now, the Homeland Security Department is calling on the group to help with the government's latest top mission of combating terrorism.
from here

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Does this mean that the threat from terrorists is akin to fiction?

In the race for ever-thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all - a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-colour video.

Sony released video of the new 2.5-inch display on Friday. In it, a hand squeezes a display that is 0.3 millimeters, or 0.01 inch, thick.

The display shows colour images of a bicyclist stuntman and a picturesque lake.

Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that's so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough.

Sony said it has yet to decide on commercial products using the technology.

"In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person's wrist, even worn as clothing," said Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa. "Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper."

Tatsuo Mori, an engineering and computer science professor at Nagoya University, said some hurdles remained, including making the display bigger, ensuring durability and cutting costs.

But he said the display's pliancy is extremely difficult to imitate with liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels - the two main display technologies now on the market.

"To come up with a flexible screen at that image quality is groundbreaking," Mori said. "You can drop it, and it won't break because it's as thin as paper."

The new display combines two technologies: Sony's organic thin film transistor, which is required to make flexible displays, and organic electroluminescent display.

Other companies, including LG. Philips LCD and Seiko Epson, are also working on a different kind of "electronic paper" technology, but Sony said the organic electroluminescent display delivers better colour images and is more suited for video.

Sony President Ryoji Chubachi has said a film-like display is a major technology his company is working on to boost its status as a technological powerhouse.

In a meeting with reporters more than a year ago, Chubachi boasted Sony was working on a technology for displays so thin it could be rolled up like paper. He had predicted that the world would stand up and take notice.

Some analysts have said Sony, which makes Walkman portable players and PlayStation 3 video game machines, had fallen behind rivals in flat-panel technology, including Samsung Electronics of South Korea and Sharp Corp. of Japan.

But Sony has been marking a turnaround under Chubachi and Chief Executive Howard Stringer, the first foreigner to head Sony, by reducing jobs, closing unprofitable businesses and strengthening its flat TV offerings.

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We live in interesting times. I have been wading through alot of Sci-Fi recently. Some greats including: A Deepness in the Sky & Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge ( I cant rant about how good these are enough).
Anyway, this tech is used extensively In Deepness, as wallpaper technology. I'm sure it will be may years before this may happen but it will be truely revolutionary.
On a side note, other good books so far:
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
Accelerando by Charles Stross (just 2 chapters in and its mind blowingly idea intense)

Last night at 9.21pm our beautiful little girl
Darcy Jade graced us with her presence

Both mum and bub are doing fine

A convincing twin of Darth Vader stalks the beige cubicles of a Silicon Valley office, complete with ominous black mask, cape and light saber.

But this is no chintzy Halloween costume. It's a prototype, years in the making, of a toy that incorporates brain wave-reading technology.

Behind the mask is a sensor that touches the user's forehead and reads the brain's electrical signals, then sends them to a wireless receiver inside the saber, which lights up when the user is concentrating.

The player maintains focus by channeling thoughts on any fixed mental image, or thinking specifically about keeping the light sword on. When the mind wanders, the wand goes dark.

Engineers at NeuroSky have big plans for brain wave-reading toys and video games. They say the simple Darth Vader game - a relatively crude biofeedback device cloaked in gimmicky garb - portends the coming of more sophisticated devices that could revolutionize the way people play.

Technology from NeuroSky and other startups could make video games more mentally stimulating and realistic. It could even enable players to control video game characters or avatars in virtual worlds with nothing but their thoughts.

Adding biofeedback to "Tiger Woods PGA Tour," for instance, could mean that only those players who muster Zen-like concentration could nail a put. In the popular action game "Grand Theft Auto," players who become nervous or frightened would have worse aim than those who remain relaxed and focused.

NeuroSky's prototype measures a person's baseline brain-wave activity, including signals that relate to concentration, relaxation and anxiety. The technology ranks performance in each category on a scale of 1 to 100, and the numbers change as a person thinks about relaxing images, focuses intently, or gets kicked, interrupted or otherwise distracted.

The technology is similar to more sensitive, expensive equipment that athletes use to achieve peak performance. Koo Hyoung Lee, a NeuroSky co-founder from South Korea, used biofeedback to improve concentration and relaxation techniques for members of his country's Olympic archery team.

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This is interesting, will gamers want the extra mental challenge? The problems I see with the idea of "shakiness" in the controller brought on by biofeedback, is that you disconnect the trodes and then your aim will be spot on, you could trick the trodes into thinking yur cool as a ice. Anyway, it does point to some exciting developments in gaming, in that you could potentially get more input, such as mental commands to add to the usual joystick ones.