Study Shows Many Disappointed by How Far Technology has Come

So it’s not just me! I’ve been complaining to the rest of “The Crew” as we’ve been approaching the new year how we haven’t come nearly as far technology wise as I thought we would. Growing up, I remember thinking about the year 2000 and looking forward to flying cars and lasers guns. Didn’t happen. Turns out I’m not alone in my disappointment.

A new poll by Zogby International shows 32% of Americans say they believed there would be greater technological advances by 2010.We’re talking about the serious lack of flying cars, transporters, holodecks and laser guns. Can’t forget the laser guns!

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The Complete National Geographic Archive On A Hard Drive

My dad has been a lifelong subscriber to National Geographic. Every month a new issue would show up on the coffee table in the living room. We had a bookcase, a tall Ikea one, that was half full of the yellow magazines. I can still remember the smell of the ink drifting up from the pages, printed with photos of fabulous images. Then my mom got some new couches and the bookcase full of the magazines disappeared.

But now he, and every other National Geographic enthusiast, can have all of those issues. Like the New Yorker and Rolling Stone, National Geographic is offering every single issue on a 160 GB hard drive.

So what do you get?

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Groovle Wins–Google Loses

Google is licking wounds today, no matter how minor they may be. The web Goliath just received a stone to the head by David-sized Groovle–a Canadian company that allows users to browse and create personalized search homepages using, of course, the Google search engine.

The dispute between the two companies is based upon domain similarity (Google.com vs Groovle.com). Essentially, Groovle is free to continue using its domain name according to the National Arbitration Forum, an arm of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the international body “dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable”. The arbitration panel was made of two retired American judges and one law professor.

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Brilliant and Bizarre! WiiWaa for Wii!

Don’t judge me by what I’m about to admit. I may not be 5 years-old anymore, yet there’s something about WiiWaa that makes me want to play it! Stuff your Wiimote down a stuffed animal’s throat and then use the animal to control your character on screen…count me in!

Watch the video below and tell me this doesn’t look like fun! I dare you!

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Modern Warfare 2 the Most Pirated Game of 2009

Yar! The pirates have spoken, and it seems Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was the most popular game of 2009. TorrentFreak, which lists its most popular downloads of the year, claims Modern Warfare 2 was downloaded more than 4.1 million times. That’s just the PC version! Add the Xbox 360 into the mix and that numbers surpasses 5 million!

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Escaped Prisoner Taunts Police Through Facebook

An escaped British prisoner is taunting police over the Internet, using his Facebook page.

Craig “Lazie” Lynch, a convicted burglar, has been on the lam for the past three months, but every so often he posts a new picture and status openly mocking authorities for failing to find him. Some of his pictures show him making obscene gestures at the camera, others show him holding a wanted sign.

Lynch was serving a seven year sentence for committing burglary with a weapon when he escaped. Police are now appealing nearly 4,000 Facebook friends to help track him down.

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Learning From Twitter's Banned Passwords

What makes a good password? Letters, digits, symbols and no discernible word, right? It’s great in theory (and, yes, I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who do that), but, really, wouldn’t you prefer something a bit more easy to remember? Fortunately, a lot of sites, including Twitter stop you from making it way too easy for bad guys to guess your access codes. Thanks to a few industrious folks, we now know all the no-go passwords that Twitter has hardcoded into their site. And, surprise, “password” is one of them.

And what do we learn from Twitter’s banned list? We like to keep it simple. Basic numbers (111111, 123456), common names, and favourite activities (hockey, golfer, baseball, hunter) are liberally scattered throughout. If it’s on our mind, it’s also on the list. That’s how blondes, erotic, nipples, naughty, naked, and sexsex (no, putting the word in twice does not make it twice as hard to guess) made it.

Oh, and here’s a hint, if you’re into scifi and on the web, you’re not alone, so your password can’t be starwars, startrek, ncc1701, thx1138, or matrix. You are not a unique snowflake with those ones.

Take a look at the full list after the break. If your favourite password is there, it might be a good time to think long and hard about a new one… that’s not xxxxxx.

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What's In The Box? The Science of Loot

Why, as gamers, are we obsessed with in-game loot? You may be ready to shut down the game and go to sleep but you’re still on the lookout for that rare weapon. Maybe it’s in this crate. Or maybe in this box. And before you know it–BAM!–it’s 6 in the morning.

Psychology PhD and gamer Jamie Madigan explains on his blog why loot gets us addicted to the games. It has something to do with the neurotransmitter dopamine. We get a rush of these when we encounter something pleasurable, a cupcake in real life or a rare gun in a game. The dopamine can also occur when we run into something that predicts something pleasurable. So if I heard a car horn every time I ate a cupcake, some dopamine would hit my brain when I heard the car horn in the future, regardless if I get a cupcake after.

Madigan believes “this is an evolutionary advantage that causes us to obsess over unexpected pleasures and try to predict them so that we can get more of them.” How does this work with games?

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Times Square New Year's Eve Ball Sporting New Technology

The New Year’s Eve Ball in Times Square is getting another makeover this year. Not only is the ball bigger than ever, it will also be  full of new technology.

The 12 foot wide 11,900 pound ball will feature 2,688 Waterford Crystals triangles (288 more crystals than last year). The triangles, each about 3/8″ thick and 6.8 ounces in weight are custom made and built to exacting standards to withstand the stresses of high winds, precipitation and temperature fluctuation that exist over 400 feet above Times Square.

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GSM Encryption Code Cracked

Most of the world’s cell phone calls happen on GSM (global system for mobile communication) networks protected by an algorithm. That algorithm is a whopping 21 years-old. Now after two decades of use, a German computer engineer has cracked the code and posted it online for everyone to see.

“This shows that existing G.S.M. security is inadequate,” 28 year-old Karsten Nohl, told about 600 people attending the Chaos Communication Congress, a four-day conference of computer hackers that is happening in Berlin. “We are trying to push operators to adopt better security measures for mobile phone calls.”

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