When you go to Comic Con or E3 you really rather expect to see a few “booth babes”, scantily clad women trying to lure people in.  It’s a common enough occurrence for a semi-professional environment.  But when Microsoft hired the Meter Maids booth babes for the 2010 TechEd in Australia, it was perhaps the wrong venue for scantily clad T&A.

Meter Maids, the booth babes for Microsoft at TechEd Australia 2010

There were, of course, objections from the attendants that the gold-clad hussies were objectifying women, blah blah politically correct rambling blah.  I mean yeah, they’re right.  But are women such a protected species that they’re no longer allowed the right to objectify themselves if they want to?  A more reasonable argument would simply have been that the blatant use of T&A does not belong in a fully professional environment.  Even if it is Australia, where people actually have a sense of humor.  And even if the Meter Maids are in fact local talent and even arguably a part of Australian history.

What really got Microsoft into trouble though was not this one questionably poor choice in attracting customers at the event.  No, it was Microsoft’s big mouth when they reportedly claimed to have had no knowledge that the Meter Maids ladies would be scantily clad in gold lame bikinis.  They claimed, and I quote, that they were, “unaware of their exact costuming until the day of the event, at which time it was too late to be addressed.“  Umm … what? One quick look at the Meter Maids website not only reveals all, as it were, but also the history of the Meter Maids is right there, explaining their historic costuming from Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast.  So right off the bat, Microsoft’s words were somewhat less than believable.

To top that off however, chief Meter Maid Roberta Aitchison rebutted Microsoft’s denial with her own side of the story, which was that, “The garments were chosen specifically by them over a period of 2-3 weeks of them looking at photographs of the girls,” and that, “They came back to me by email stating which garments they would like the girls to be wearing.“  Right then!

Microsoft still refused to admit that they simply made a mistake, standing by their word that they somehow had no idea that the Meter Maids would show up in something so provocative.

Un huh.

Yeah.

Who are you going to believe?  A Meter Maid, or Microsoft?

But wait, that’s not all! In a strikingly similar story of sexy women and male egos, we have the (in)famous rapper 50 Cent being booted from Twitpic for failure to adhere to their pictoral guidelines when he uploaded the following picture of a Kim K burger:

50 Cent and his (censored) Kim K Burger pic that got him booted from Twitpic

It’s actually a kind of funny picture, if, you know, you’re adult enough to look at it, somewhere not at work.  Searching for the uncensored version should be easy and entertaining.

The sad part is, I’m not even entirely sure what part of the picture is violating the terms and conditions.  You’d certainly have seen just as much had she been wearing a thong bottom.  And at the beach, that happens.  Kids are seeing that much every day.  She even has her bikini top on, not that it matters from that angle.  It might be “in bad taste”, but I’m rather failing to see where it could actually harm minors.  Still, this is a (supposedly) professional blog, so I’ve censored the image for you, just in case little Timmy is looking over your shoulder.

Now, again, just as with the Microsoft story, the looky looky was perhaps a poor choice for the venue.  It’s a simple enough mistake to own up to, and certainly wouldn’t have been any big deal if that had been that.  But this is 50 Cent we’re talking about, so of course that wasn’t that.  Open mouth.  Words come out.  It’s what he does after all.

The saga is, of course, on Twitter, where 50 Cent tweeted his suspension angst, amongst other pearls of wisdom.  The following quotes are, of course, censored.  They began with, “Twitpic just suspended my account damn They got 30mns to get it back or ima go haywire,” and went on with such wonderfully colorful tweets as, “Man they took my twitt pic down I told them motherFriends put it backI run twitter nWord don’t touchin my sh..Stuff.“  If you want the uncensored … stuff … just follow the previous link to his Twitter page, but be warned, it is most definitely not safe for work.

So there you have it.  Yes, parading women around like objects can indeed catch you some flack, especially if you’re doing it in a place where that’s really not the proper dress code.  However, opening up your big mouth to say anything other than, “Mea culpa,” is just going to make your little faux pas ten times worse.

We all make mistakes.  Own up to them.  People will respect you more for it.

Many people are familiar with the antics of Professor Kevin Warwick (aka Captain Cyborg), a proponent of cybernetic research who’s biggest claim to fame so far is just to have implanted himself with a simple RFID chip that he uses to open doors and stuff.

As if thousands (millions?) of animals haven’t been tagged with various RFID chippery and such for wildlife research, for farm branding, for pet tagging, etc.  Are they all cyborgs too then?  Do we have an animal cyborg army?

And which is my no means nearly so cyborgish as the number of animals and people who have undergone surgery to implant devices into their brains in the attempts to find technology that can really change the lives of the disabled.  For robotic limb control.  For neural-to-device communication interfacing.  For artificial eyes for the blind.  And so forth.

Hell, I think someone with a pacemaker installed constitutes far more of a “cyborg” than Captain Cyborg.  But because Captain Cyborg stands upon his lofty soapbox so often, he’s the famous “cyborg”.  Yeah.  Whatever.

Well, the twit convention just got a new member, by the name of Dr. Mark Gasson, a senior researcher at Reading University’s Cybernetic Intelligence Research Group.  Much like Captain Cydork, he also had an RFID chip implanted.  Unlike his cybernetic cohort however, he intentionally infected that RFID chip with a computer virus.

Mind you, the virus is pretty darn harmless.  His malware can’t even infect anything but an RFID chip reader, and that’s only if it scans his chip, and even then only if the RFID reader has a vulnerability which would allow arbitrary code to execute, which is ridiculously unlikely.

No, it’s clear that this is, in fact, just yet another stupid publicity stunt.  We have no cyborg.  We have no human infection by a computer virus.  What we have is a twit who downloaded some code for some malware into the memory of a simple RFID chip implant.  Something that anyone could do, if they were feeling obtuse enough.  It poses no threat to humanity, or even technology, whatsoever.

Or as Craham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos puts it, “The way they are presenting their research is scaremongering nonsense that doesn’t present the true nature of this, frankly, non-threat.”

So there you have it.  First human ever infected with a computer virus?  In that the “infection” was introduced by design, is completely benign, and is just code sitting uselessly in an RFID chip that in no way interacts with the human being it was implanted in, I’d call this one hogwash.

Direct Neural Interfacing may not be a reality yet, but the development of controlling computers purely with our brains is certainly making headway.  And Dr. José Contreras-Vidal, along with his team of researchers from the bioengineering and kinesiology departments of the University of Maryland, College Park, have been making some pretty big strides in this direction.

In an article in the March issue of The Journal of Neuroscience Dr. Contreras-Vidal and colleagues showed that with just an electrode-covered cap and some clear gel they can use an array of 34 electrodes to capture our  brain thinking that it has been typing on a keyboard using good old electroencephalography, or EEG.  Yes, that’s right, once dialed in, no actual key pressing was necessary.  Some of the patients in this study have already managed to communicate to one another through a word processor.  And all of this without any hardware wired directly into anyone’s brain; just a cap worn on the head.

More fascinating is that while the testing right now is being done with a 34 electrode cap, most of the useful data is actually just coming from two points, the primary sensorimotor cortex, and the inferior parietal lobule.  Meaning that theoretically it may be possible in the future to actually reduce the cap to only contain two electrodes.

What’s more, Dr. Contreras-Vidal has no intention of just creating a simple brain-keyboard.  “We hope to show that a person with a stroke or an amputee would be able to control an assistive device, ” says Dr. Contreras-Vidal.  To this end he already has healthy subjects controlling a computer’s cursor on the screen, and controlling an artificial hand.  One day his research could be fundamental in the control of artificial limbs in a safe and affordable way.

Dr. Contreras-Vidal also hopes to one day incorporate some form of sensory feedback into the technology.  His belief is that visual feedback is a slow and imperfect means of confirming that what you think you’re doing is what you’re actually doing.  “We think it’s important to use other types of feedback, too, because vision is a slow signal.”

It’s a fascinating realm of possibilities.  What was once a toy may soon be the future of prosthetics and computer interfacing!

Now, I love a good positive PR for gaming as much as the next gamer.  And I hate a stupidly blown-out-of-proportion PR story where video games are blamed for all sorts of random acts of violence that frankly are just the results of bad people being bad people.  However, this story has a moral, even though it does put a slightly negative connotation on gaming.  The moral?  That all life needs balance, and anything in excess, taken to an extreme, is not healthy.

Over in Britain they’re seeing a rather shocking rise in the number of cases of Rickets.  Rickets being the disease generally caused by a deficiency in Vitamin D, that results in bone malformation like bowed legs.  It was common in old times because of poor diet, especially amongst the impoverished, of which there were many in the Victorian Era and earlier.

Now days however, it is rather surprising to see such a simply avoided malady on the rise.

It is suggested, and as a result young gamers are being focused upon, that the cause is not necessarily bad diet, but in the gaming youth not leaving their homes, causing a lack of sunlight which is necessary for the body’s absorption of Vitamin D.  So if you are a gamer with pasty skin that recoils like a vampire from the dreaded light of our sun, it may be suggested then that you perhaps put down the Xbox controller for a moment and get out a little more.  Or at least get a lamp which more accurately mimics sunlight.  And try taking some extra Vitamin D.  If you don’t, your bones may suffer and you may never walk right again.

Now, another interesting factor in this particular case however is not just a lack of sunlight, but in one factor different in Britain than, well, a lot of other countries like the United States of America.  Britain doesn’t add Vitamin D to their milk.  Over in the US where all manner of vitamins are added to foodstuffs like they were pellets for Pac Man, Vitamin D is plentiful so even with poor absorption rates due from a lack of sunlight, you’re still more likely than not to be absorbing enough to avoid having Rickets.  But in Blighty, where vitamin additives are strongly frowned upon, it’s becoming a problem.

But, as noted, it is a problem very easily remedied.  Get some damn sun.  Or if you refuse to do that much for yourself, take some freaking vitamins.  Problem solved.

All that said, I’d like to address one misconception.  It is suggested that it is video gaming itself causing the lack of ultra violet exposure.  However, I propose that this is in fact not specifically the case.  The rise in domicile extremis is more likely the result of the rise of social networking.  With more and more activities of friendship partaken in virtual and/or remote environments instead of literal physical ones, there’s less “going out” and more “staying in” to do things together.  And “together” is even itself becoming more a virtual reality than actuality.  While it is true that a lot of gaming is used as a social networking environment, it is by no means the only such source.

So, regardless of your antisolar proclivities, the point remains strikingly the same.  If you don’t get enough sun, and you don’t take your Vitamin D, for whatever reason, Rickets may be in your future.  It’s incredibly easy to avoid.  Forewarned is forearmed.

Go forth and be healthy.

So you’re a Buddhist monk, devoted to a life of spiritual enlightenment and peace.  So you’re Trinley Dorje, the only senior Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader recognized by Beijing, the Tibetans, and India alike and holder of the title Karampa Lama being head of one of four schools of Tibetan Buddhism.  You’ve escaped the Chinese government’s strangle-hold on Tibet, being controlled by Beijing, leaving behind your beloved teacher, the Dalai Lama as you find your new home in India.  So as a Dharma practitioner, how do you deal with your emotional turmoil and release your anger in a healthy way?  Meditation?  Forgiveness?  Prayer?

Trinley Dorje, the Karampa Lama, a spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

Well yes, of course!

But as Trinley Dorje revealed to The Times of India, he also has another healthy form of emotional therapy: he plays war games on his Playstation to decompress.

“Well, I view video games as something of an emotional therapy, a mundane level of emotional therapy for me. We all have emotions whether we’re Buddhist practitioners or not, all of us have emotions, happy emotions, sad emotions, displeased emotions and we need to figure out a way to deal with them when they arise.

So, for me sometimes it can be a relief, a kind of decompression to just play some video games. If I’m having some negative thoughts or negative feelings, video games are one way in which I can release that energy in the context of the illusion of the game. I feel better afterwards.

The aggression that comes out in the video game satiates whatever desire I might have to express that feeling. For me, that’s very skilful because when I do that I don’t have to go and hit anyone over the head.”

Truly words to live by.