Archive for February, 2007

Try to help a hopeless 40 million euro online project in Italy, and get menacing emails

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

As reported by Bru, and originally posted on his blog by Maurizio, the Ritalia initiative that we started yesterday to try and re-invent with modern tools, and effective open collaborative methods the abortive www.Italia.it portal, is causing an uproar in the blogosphere. The aim is ambitious, immodest, and innocent, happy, ...

Interactive Enigma machine simulator

Monday, February 26th, 2007

On www.enigmaco.de there is an interactive simulator of the German Enigma machine that was used during World War II to encode messages sent to the u-boot fleet. The story of how the British found an inegenious way of decoding these messages at Bletchley park, and through a paintstaking process based ...

Participatory Democracy

Saturday, February 24th, 2007

I am attending, from within Second Life, the conference "Beyond Broadcast 2007 - from Participatory Culture to Participatory Democracy" at MIT, organized by the Comparative Media Studies of MIT, the Yale Information Society Project, and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society of the Harvard Law School."For 50 years broadcast ...

I attended the luanch of D-wave Systems’ quantum computer!

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

 I decided that the unveiling of the first commercial quantum computer by D-wave systems was a historical moment that I didn't want to miss, and having received on Monday to confirmation of my invitation, I literally hopped on a plane to come to San Francisco, and attend  the launch event ...

John Edwards announces presidential campaign in Second Life

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

Today on the Second Life News Network there is the news that at least one of the presidential candidates at the 2008 elections in the United States, John Edwards, is going to conduct a campaign within Second Life as well. I have mentioned this possibility just two weeks ago at ...

Transcript of my lecture in Second Life on the Democracy in Virtual Worlds

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

Here is the transcript of my inaugural lecture of the Craedo Auditorium in Colonia Nova in Second Life:Welcome to this seminar about "The theory and practice of democracy in virtual worlds".I want to thank CARE, CRAEDO, and the Confederation of Democratic Simulators for inviting me to give this talk at ...

Working commercial quantum computer to be unveiled in a week!

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

I think this is a pretty big deal. A 16 qubit quantum computer ready for commercial applications is about to be unveiled in Mountain View on Feb 13 by D-Wave Systems. Why is it a big deal? The current progress of computing power is based on the architecture designed by ...

Tommaso’s thoughts, as tracked by the ‘New Scientist’

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

My friend Tommaso has been thinking aloud on his blog, about quarks, the Higgs boson, and the origin of gravity, experimental results, and their interpretations. And as he kept thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and, well... thinking, other people noticed, and among them the UK magazine 'New Scientist' which I ...

Come to listen to the Inaugural Lecture of the CRAEDO Auditorium in Colonia Nova

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

On Feb 10 at 12 PM SLT (SLT = Second Life Time = PST = Pacific Standard Time = GMT-8) at the inauguration of the CRAEDO Auditorium I will hold a talk entitled "The Theory And Practive Of Democracy In Virtual Worlds". You can read the invitation that Michel Manen*, ...