it was only a matter of time: 
Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Price: $359.00 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
This item will be released on February 24, 2009.
Pre-order now!
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Order Kindle now to RESERVE YOUR PLACE IN LINE. We prioritize orders on a first come, first served basis.
If you have previously placed an order for Kindle 1, and have not yet received it, your order will automatically be upgraded to Kindle 2. You need to do nothing. [emphasis mine]
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
UPDATE! resistance is futile
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, December 22, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
I-diet
Mr Jobs said: "We're really, really excited about all these products. We think people are going to have a lot of fun."
Even with the recent scandals of i-exhaustion (overheating laptops, paper fires in tokyo offices caused by nano combustion...) Jobs is still on the treadmill with his finger-flicker-music-boxes. I think it should come with a pair of flesh-colored earphones, in every skin-tone, and then they can make those animorphic commercials like Dove to go along with their rainbow fetish. Maybe a camouflage i-device line will help ease the Williamsburg stabbings, plus hipsters could really mask their commodity fetishism while pulling off the, I've just always got that song running through my head walk.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
the net
The Bard network features a Gigabit backbone with 100MB desktop speeds that link College facilities and give students, faculty, and staff access to Internet services, e-mail, and the World Wide Web from classrooms, residence hall rooms, offices, and public areas. Bard provides high-speed ethernet access to the Internet and campus computing resources via fiber-optic cabling to all student residence halls and 802.11b(g) wireless networking in several areas around the campus...Students wishing to use wireless networking will need to purchase compatible wireless network interface.
Identity Theft circa 1995
internet as spermoid penetration fantasy, a journey through the cybernetic womb
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Long Shots from the Powerhouse
The Hub at 32 Avenue of the Americas, "The Ultimate Meet-Point for Global Communications"
The Roof
| "These two 150’ towers provide line of sight to thousands of buildings in Midtown, Downtown, Jersey City, Staten Island, Queens, and Brooklyn. The ringed support structure is designed to accommodate a wide variety of antennas. Wireless connectivity from these towers extends down to The Hub and the meet me point on the 24th floor, thus allowing for the convergence of the wireless to the wireline." | ||
 Northern View |  Southern View |  Eastern View |
 Western View |  South-Eastern View |  North-Western View |
2. The Internet in the Cage//The Meet-Me Room//Fiberoptic Real Estate//Interconnectivity in the Free Market:
I wish these segments could upload as one, uncompressed, and sporting its original quality. But Freedom ain't free, providers like Blogger and Youtube are not as interested in High-Definition feeds and signal authenticity as the Telco Hotel. Free information-networking comes with its imbedded cost of quality, time, and space. The Internet's not infinite?
SOON TO COME: Parts 3-6, the rest of the documentation from last week's meeting with Patrick Shelley, the General Manager of the Hub.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Caffeine and the Information Age
Most people know that caffeine can help you overcome fatigue and keep you alert. However, did you know that some scientists believe that caffeine's mental boost can also actually help you to think better and perform certain tasks more accurately?
Leaders in the computer industry tell us that caffeine helped fuel the computer revolutions and continues to drive the software industry today. This is due in part to caffeine's ability to help give us the energy we need to complete our work. Computer professionals often rely on caffeine to stay alert during the long hours required to develop a new software system and to answer the calls to rescue the system when it crashes (which usually happens in the middle of the night!). However, caffeine's popularity in the computer industry may also be due to the special mental boost caffeine confers, which helps improve accuracy and speed in completing certain tasks, including writing computer programs and operating computer systems.
Experiments have confirmed the common experience that, especially when prolonged efforts are required, caffeine improves performance in work relying on the use of short-term memory, simple mathematical calculations, or carrying out repetitive tasks. Many scientists think that the mental boost caffeine provides can also help us process certain types of information better and thereby perform these tasks more accurately and rapidly, whether we are tired or not.
Whether you write computer programs, or just use them on the job or in your studies, you will be happy to know that a single VIVARIN tablet, containing the caffeine found in two cups of coffee of four cups of tea, can give you the boost you need to complete work, anytime and anyplace.
(provided by www.vivarin.com)
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Email Correspondence
[email from Sales Rep. at tel-x/60 Hudson. Five minutes later he called me back after hearing from his manager and temporarily de-invited me. Security protocol, of course. Every student needs an onslaught of collegiate stationary to get through these info-detectors. ]
RE: site tour of 60 Hudson
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| show details Apr 28 (3 days ago) |
|
Hi Saralee,
It was nice speaking with you a few minutes ago.
I will be give a tour next Wednesday, 5/7/2008 at 1:30PM for customer. You may join us if you like. We can meet on W. Broadway entrance between Worth St and Thomas Street. Please see the link below:
<http://maps.google.com/maps?f
Here is my blackberry number: 646.300.2034 in case you need to reach me. By the way, you will need a photo ID for access.
If you have questions during the tour, please ask me after the tour -- I will be happy to answer any questions for you then. Also, would it be possible to get a copy of your research paper once you are done? We would be interested learning your findings.
Thank you,
Gazi Sher
Inside Sales Executive
1 State Street, 21st floor
New York, NY 10004
Tel: 212.480.3300, x2014
Direct Dial: 347.562.0234
Cell: 646.300.2034
telx
The Interconnection Company
The Host of NANOG43 in New York and the CBX! June 1-5, 2008
"Gotta Catch 'em All"
re:re:constant access, i got in to the hub on the 24th floor and roof of the former AT&T building at 32 Ave. of the Americas with digital audio recorder and a Hi-Def camera, sucker.
video/audio tour coming soon!Re: [contact] Telecom Hotels
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| show details Apr 29 (1 day ago) |
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How great to hear from you!
I'm afraid that I don't have any information on how to gain access to these places. Frankly speaking, my own status doesn't really get me into them either, all the time. I haven't tried any of the centers in New York. Probably your best bet would be to find someone with connections to someone in a small telecoms company who can get you in there.
At present the NetLab isn't available for viewing although maybe later in the year. I would warn you however, that we don't have any exciting hardware or anything. We just do analysis so it's laptops, monitors, and us. Plus a really nice view of the Empire State Building.
All my best,
Kazys Varnelis
Kazys Varnelis [kazys.varnelis.net]
Director, Network Architecture Lab [netlab.audc.org]
Columbia University
Graduate School of Architecture
Preservation, and Planning
Co-Founder, AUDC [audc.org]
Studio-X
Suite 1610
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
A Final Project Proposal
Some Hotels are Bigger than Others
Perhaps to preface this proposal it is worth mentioning that it is commonly shared between us in coming to this project that we are not pursuing a grand apotheosis or declarative conclusion to the dispersed work we have all undertaken this semester. Moreover, we recognize that to truly commit to this project as a "complete work" would be impossible in the time remaining; if our research and materials provide us with enough inspiration, we may find it worth an ongoing investigation.
Kazys Varnelis (Director of Columbia's Network Architecture Lab) and the Center for Land Use Interpretation's ("CLUI") exhibition of One Wilshire telecommunications hub in Los Angeles introduced the phenomena of the "Telco/Telecom" or "Carrier" Hotel to the greater discourse of information systems from a scholarly, or perhaps more accurately, un-skilled information laborer's realm of knowledge. Their extended project on One Wilshire, the U.S.'s most expensive real estate ($250/sq.foot is a steal!) and infamous info-portal to Japan, may be found on CLUI's archive here. Kazys Varnelis' article (linked to the right) provides a brief but incisive genealogy of telecommunications infrastructure, both its centralization and distribution in the U.S. Varnelis ends with an image of One Wilshire, and in a sense puts to rest the popular myth that information travels in some sort of cosmic vacuum across the world, connecting you and your computer or the stock market and its dividends without heat, wires, security, or architecture.
Recently Eliza discovered two domestic Telco portals in our own backyard both operated by Frontier Online, an ISP with regional headquarters in Hopewell Junction, providing services throughout Dutchess County in telephone, fiber optics, and DSL. For more information on the types of commodities produced and infrastructure implicated in the single unit or small business telecommunications industry, a glossary of terms (a technical lexicon we are still learning) provided by the Dutchess County Economic Development Corporation may be found here.
The local buildings' architectural presences are understated, plain and uninviting brick structures - seemingly erected to inconspicuously house the telecommunications hub within this rural landscape. Part of our desire to know where other "houses" like these may be hiding, who operates them, and what they "really" look like on the inside comes from the absence of a transparent materiality of the new technologies connecting us to our education, community, and the dispersed networks we are woven through as citizens in an infocratic global market. We also wish to investigate differences in security management of rural and urban sites; the threat of hacking is made insignificant when compared to the physical vulnerability of these buildings. We are currently working on contacting Frontier, among other telecommunication centers in the Hudson Valley, to see if we can get a peek inside these telco houses to document their elaborate interior design. A directory of Telecom/ISPers that we are currently working from may be found here.
With limited access in the corporate world, and potentially more open access to Bard Campuses mothership-hub, we may be able to document some of these houses. Alana is preparing a map of the known Telecommunications & Internet Service Providers in Dutchess County, with intent to explore the ways in which access is determined. The map series will illustrate the relationships between the "etherstructure" and preexisting infrastructure (including rivers, roads, telephone lines and railways) in order to elucidate the concrete vectors through which information flows. Another aspect of the mapping project will focus on population demographics, income levels, degrees of urbanization, and distances from university systems, so as to reveal which segments of the population have access to cyber resources. For an added dimension, Alana will attempt to incorporate satellite images into the maps. Additional images, audio, website links, and video footage will be presented alongside of the maps, or perhaps embedded within, according to our technical and/or temporal capacities. These collaborative efforts represent a humble attempt to demystify the sources of information, to determine who is responsible for maintaining, selling, and storing these networks, and to explore what kind of information asymmetries exist in the relations between the information's infrastructural distribution and its consumer demographics and desires.
How Bard exists as a locus of telecommunications access in the Hudson Valley in relationship to Citizen Communications Company's (owner of Frontier who operates in Dutchess County) mission statement may illuminate a cultural urban/rural tension that manifests in a material access to resources and a spectrum of desires for certain methods of connectivity:
Saralee has sent emails to tel-x, 32 Avenue of the Americas, and Kazys Varnelis to try and document some of the U.S. most lucrative "interconnection powerhouses" connecting the Financial District to their global assets and Midtown to their national cell phone surveyors-- and in a sense, materially embodying "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere…"
(Marx/Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party.)
Limited access into "the essential knowledge for the data center industry" may be found at this Carrier Hotel networking database.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
they are the true fairies of these arcades
G [Exhibitions, Advertising, Grandville]
Yes, when all the world from Paris to China
Pays heed to your doctrine, O divine Saint-Simon,
The glorious Golden Age will be reborn.
Rivers will flow with chocolate and tea,
Sheep roasted whole will frisk on the plain,
And sautéed pike will swim in the seine.
Fricasseed spinach will grow on the ground,
Garnished with crushed fired croutons;
The trees will bring forth apple compotes,
And farmers will harvest boots and coats.
It will snow wine, it will rain chickens,
And ducks cooked with turnips will fall from the sky.
—Ferdinand Langlé and Emile Vanderburch, Louis-Bronzeet le Saint-Simonien: Parodie de Louis XI (Theatre du Palais-Royal,February 27, 1832)
Despondent Divorcee/Genesee Hotel Suicide
Photograph by I. Russell Sorgi, Buffalo Courier Express, 8 May 1942.
B [Fashion]
"Here fashion opened the business of dialectical exchange between woman and ware--between carnal pleasure and the corpse...For fashion was never anything other than the parody of the motley cadaver, provocation of death through the woman, and bitter colloquy with decay whispered between shrill bursts of mechanical laughter. That is fashion"(Benjamin 62-63).
Z [The Doll, The Automaton]
"In a shop on the Rue Legendre, in Batingnolles, a whole series of female busts, without heads of legs, with curtain hooks in place of arms and a percaline skin of arbitrary hue--bean brown, glaring pink, hard black--are lined up like a row of onions, impaled on rods, or set out on tables' J.-K. Huysmanss, Croquis parisiens (Paris, 1886)" (Benjamin 694).
Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century {Exposé of 1935}
"Fashion prescribes the ritual according to which the commodity fetish demands to be worshiped...Fashion stands in opposition to the organic. It couples the living body to the inorganic world. To the living, it defends the rights of the corpse. The fetishism that succumbs to the sex appeal of the inorganic is its vital nerve. The cult of the commodity presses such fetishism into its service" (Benjamin 8).
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Security, Information, Code
cats/dogs: for eliza,
" (Tourist Traps): Online commercial sites, including eBay, MySpace, and Amazon, have employed acrobatic ciphers as police, a fully achieved “implementation of a writing that is only cipher, not meaning” . Cognitive recognition of a sign’s assimilation into pixilated mutation is now even used to programmatically refuse non-human inquiry; password discovery must correctly reaffirm the sign, suggesting that this ability is stable, natural and a definitive qualifier of human vision. Perhaps in a pluralistic attempt to account for the visually disabled, one may also choose to listen to a polyphonic, anonymous, and fragmented dictation of the code. Human to human security is enforced as computer language is inverted to police itself. The cyborg orators collide in sterile recitations, vocal mathematics, numero-sadean fantasies of forced and necessary intercourse."
From: Poetry in /BIG>
On Literary Code and Informative Text
Eliza Wicks-Frank, December 2007 [1].
A new cipher (above) demands that you only type the symbols that have a cat climbing on them. The other beasts resemble puppies, although sign-semblance is really not the crux of the code here. In typical US security fashion, measures are ritualized and performed to create the feeling (and this use of semblance may be appropriate) of security, particularly of one's private property on the internet: personal information. The practical effects of the cumbersome puzzles hardly "measure up" to the cracking abilities of global spam-ers and credit hackers, much in the same way that the flu vaccine must evolve every year to combat the increasing strength of the immune virus (in relation to the exponentially decreased strength of the infected's immune system). Requiring consumers to identify characters on a linear plane and then re-type them gives each individual on the net another minute to abstract the process of their financial, or "personal" disclosures; one extra click secures the consumer of their own identity online. Only in the time between the previous page and the loading page does one have to reflect on the actual dispersal of property-information. The next page insures an eventual return through 2-3 day shipping.
[1] The code in Eliza's title is not able to be shown because it does not constitute a legitimate html read-able code or recognizable letters.
Monday, April 21, 2008
women in the integrated circuit
"Can anyone even name an important female programmer?"
HEDY HEDY HEDY LAMARR!!!
female computer
Melba Roy heads the group of NASA mathematicians, known as "computers," who track the Echo satellites. Roy's computations help produce the orbital element timetables by which millions can view the satellite from Earth as it passes overhead.
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