Cyberspace: The realm of pure information, filling like a lake, siphoning the jangle of messages transfiguring the physical world, decontaminating the natural and urban landscapes, redeeming them, saving them from the chain-dragging bulldozers of the paper industry, from the diesel smoke of courier and post office trucks, from jet fuel fumes and clogged airports, from billboards, trashy and pretentious architecture, hour-long freeway commutes, ticket lines, and choked subways…from all the inefficiencies, pollutions (chemical and informational), and corruptions attendant to the process of moving information attached to things – from paper to brains – across, over, and under the vast and bumpy surface of the earth rather than letting it fly in the soft hail of electrons that is cyberspace.

- “Cyberspace: First Steps” by Michael Benedikt, July 1, 1992.

• Fandomania has rounded-up a gallery of Dragon Age: Origins fanart.
• If it’s Hip has an image of Crayons carved into the 12 symbols of the Chinese zodiac.
• This may be the most awesome tattoo ever. Clearly, he’s a serious Die Hard fan.

Comics

• Is Harry Potter joining The Guardians? Because that’s what it looks like. [More]

Film

• News: All of Warner Brothers’ Tentpole Movies Will Be Shown in 3D
• Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible Sequel To Be A Feature Film
• Den of Geek names 15 movies that aren’t on DVD but should be.
• EgoTV lists 10 Fictional Guns I Wish I Could Fire In Real Life.
• Huffington Post dares you to tell the difference between Jason Statham Movies
• Is gore necessary to make a good zombie film?
• NextRound.net offers this Ghostbusters Alignment Chart.
• This Resident Evil Quilt will protect you through the long nights of a zombie siege.

Internet

• Cheezburger network presents Babies Making Faces, a forum for funny baby photos.
• Here’s more on Dollhouse Star Enver Gjokaj’s New Webseries Twin Peaks.
• Mental Floss reveals the faces behind 10 Famous Disembodied Voices.

Literature

• Interview: Author Jeffrey Ford interviews David Herter, author of October Dark.
• Interview: The Nebula Awards interviews John Scalzi.
• News: Amazon Buy Button Rumors Rock Internet
• io9 looks back at 20 Great Infodumps From Science Fiction Novels.
• NPR discusses The Mad Hatter’s Secret Ingredient: Math.

Science

• Limb generation may be just around the corner if geneticists have their way.
• Scientist Mark Roth Says Suspended Animation Could Soon Be a Reality.

Television

• News: Fox discusses deal with Conan O’Brien
• TV Tango offers a convincing list of the Top 10 St. Patrick’s Day TV Episodes.

1800
Alexander von Humoldt and Aimé Bonpland capture the first specimen of Electric eels (Electrophorus electricus) during a five-year expedition through the jungles of South America. Humboldt will later write about his discovery in an article entitled, “Observation on the Electric Eel of the New World” in 1808.

1831
The City Bank of New York becomes the site of the first bank robbery in United States history. Approximately US$245,000 is stolen and only a small portion of the money will ever be recovered.

1915
Percival Lowell captures the first photograph of the planet Pluto from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, but it isn’t initially recognized as a planet.

1921
The silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene, is released to US theaters. It will become the most influential film of the German Expressionist movement, and it will strongly influence many future directors, most notably Tim Burton. The film tells the story of the mysterious Dr. Caligari, a hypnotist, his faithful sleepwalking Cesare, and their connection to a string of murders in the German mountain village of Holstenwall. Read more about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. IMDB listing Running Time: 1 hr 12 min

1949
The first museum devoted exclusively to atomic energy in the U.S., the American Museum of Atomic Energy, opens to the public in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the town in which Uranium-235 for the bombs dropped in Japan during World War II was produced.

1958
Britain’s first planetarium, the London Planetarium, opens in the west wing of the Madame Tussauds wax museum. It is one of the world’s largest, built on the former site of a combination Cinema and Restaurant that had been destroyed by a German bomb in 1940.

1972
John Vincent Atanasoff emerges as the victor of the protracted legal battle over the title of inventor of the electronic digital computer. A judge determines that his work had preceded and contributed to development of the ENIAC machine, whose inventors had previously been credited.

1973
Konami Company, Ltd., a leading developer and publisher of many popular anime series, slot machines, tokusatsu, toys, trading cards, and video games, is established. The company will achieve fame in the early eighties with such classics as Frogger, Scramble, and Super Cobra. Visit the official Konami website.

1981
Two workers die of asphyxiation and three others are injured during a nitrogen purge amidst preparations for a ground test of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

1985
International Business Machines (IBM) announces that it will discontinue the PCjr, after the computer has repeatedly failed to meet sales expectations. In the sixteen months that the PCjr has been on the market, only 240,000 units have been sold, largely due to competition from Apple Computer’s Apple IIc. Read more about the battle between the AppleIIc and the PCjr.

1990
Apple Computer releases the Macintosh IIfx, featuring a 40MHz Motorola 68030, 4MB (expandable to 128MB) RAM, and the System 6.0.5 operating system. Price: US$9,000 – US$12,000

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Sins of the Father” first airs. (No. 317) In it, Worf faces a trial in an attempt to clear his father of charges of treason. Memory Alpha entry

1992
Falcom releases the roleplaying game (RPG) Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes II for the NEC PC-8801.

1993
Midway Amusement Games releases Mortal Kombat Version 5.0 to arcades in the US. Visit the official Mortal Kombat website.

Decoding and interpreting signals, packets, gestures etc. is what we call communication. Since the birth of the computer, that viral mechanism has established a symbiotic relationship with their creators, to the point where humans cannot longer function as a society without them. As we merge and augment our senses, our machinic self takes over a majority of functions that we once considered essential for survival, including memory, the control of vital organs and appendices. Carbon and silicon, en route to the next evolutionary stage, collaborate to bring about the inevitable transformation. Telecommunications and the internet have become mobile. We are the nodes, the packets and the modems. We are still the storytellers, and we wish to share the magic around the digital fire. As we pull the curtain we discover that the Wizard is Us.

- “The Wizard is Us: Symbiogenesis by Networking Part 1” by Arturo Sinclair.

DocStoc is launching a customized document viewer today, allowing anyone to create easily embeddable, branded document viewers. The new feature is open to all DocStoc users and offers the ability to customize the logo, buttons, links, and color of the viewer.

Duck Duck Go – Bills itself as the most private search engine on the internet, which might be a nice thing to have bookmarked. Here’s why.

Google Reader Play – Google’s done it again. They’ve quietly rolled out yet another great feature.

K7.net – K7 provides users with a free access to voicemail and fax messages through their e-mail.

Discussion

10 Ways Google Can Defend Its Android Turf Against Apple iPhone
Privacy is Not Dead, Just Evolving
Programming Is the New Literacy
Tell the copyright czar how US enforcement should work: 9 days left!
Venezuela’s Chavez calls for internet controls
When You Try To Figure Out Who Owns Imaginary ‘Property,’ Things Get Confusing
Why Wikipedia Should Be Trusted As A Breaking News Source

Entertainment

5 Browsers and the Modes of Transportation They Resemble
Chatroulette Is 89 Percent Male, 47 Percent American, And 13 Percent Perverts
Performance Comparison of Web Browsers. (Guess who looses.)
SuperPower: Visualising the internet
Top 10 Google Apps Marketplace Apps
Top 10 Things That Annoy Programmers

Tech News

The 11th Circuit rules that once emails have been received by a third party, no Fourth Amendment protection applies to any copy. [PDF]
The FCC has announced its National Broadband Plan.
Facebook Beats Google For Web’s Most-Visited Site
Fandango Launches Barcoded Mobile Movie Tickets Concept
Google Alleges That Viacom ‘Secretly Uploaded Its Content to YouTube, Even While Publicly Complaining About Its Presence There’
Headstones can now send photos and notes right to your phone.
The internet earns a nomination for 2010 Nobel Prize
Telepathic computer can read your mind
To Battle Computer Hackers, the Pentagon Trains Its Own
uTorrent Accused of Unfairness, Banned by Trackers

• Irrational Games features a gallery of the monsters from BioShock that might have been.
• National Post has an inexplicable gallery of Babies dressed as Evil Historical Figures.
• Threadless is selling these Tron Police t-shirts for just a few more days.
• Tor has just released the cover art for the re-release of Robert Jordan’s Lord of Chaos.

Comics

• News: Judd Winick Taking Over ‘Power Girl’

Film

• News: Tim Burton to work on Addams Family 3-D animated movie (Finally!)

Internet

• Open Library has a new collaborative open source website that aims to catalog every book ever published. Read more about the project. The goal is to create one Wiki page for every edition of every work, with a complete description.
• Say it isn’t so! Topless Robot has attempted to explain How Nerds and Sports Fans are Alike, but I will have none of it.
• To promote mission awareness, NASA has authorized the creation of promotional posters. Some may look familiar. [PDF]

Literature

• Interview: Futurismic’s Fiction Editor, Chris East, speaks to ScienceOfFiction.
• Interview: Fantasy Literature interviews Marjorie Liu, author of the excellent Hunter Kiss urban fantasy series.
• News: Book returned to South Yorkshire library 45 years on
• Night Shade Books complains that Genre Fiction is Going to the Dogs.

Science

• Buzz Feed shares 10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Impending Apocalypse.
• Japanese researchers are developing a super-fast book scanner that will be able to scan a book of about 200 pages in a minute without any need to break up or flatten the book. [Video]

Television

• News: Big cable pushes 7 “consumer principles” for cable, IP video

Video Games

• News: In virtual world, China consumers best the U.S.
• Futurismic has an awesome post explaining how we may be on the verge of an epic win and how gaming can make the world a better place.

Writing

• Charles Stross answers that timeless fan question, Why did you pick such an awful cover for your new book?

1953
MGM, which has been working on its own wide-screen system, becomes the first studio to adopt CinemaScope. So as to create an industry standard and justify exhibitors’ commitment of investment in equipment, other major studios agree to adopt the Fox system as standard. Warner Bros will join later in the year after the release of The Robe but Paramount prefers to back developments in 3D.

1954
Howard Hughes buys RKO Pictures for US$23,489,478.

1955
The initial trial installation of electronic telephone switching for Morris, Illinois is announced. Recorded announcements of disconnects and changed numbers will be used in some small dial offices.

1965
Voskhod 2 is launched into space carrying Cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Pavel Belyayev aboard. On the second orbit, Leonov leaves the spacecraft for twelve minutes, becoming the first person to walk in space. While outside the craft, he takes motion pictures and practices maneuvering. By the end of the spacewalk, Leonov’s spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space, and upon his return, he discovered that it was too wide to re-enter the capsule. With a bit of quick thinking, he opened a value to allow some of the suit’s air to bleed off without venting all of it, only barely getting back into the capsule in time. Voskhod 2 makes a total of seventeen orbits at an altitude of about 110 miles (177km) above Earth.

1974
Atari Introduces Gran Trak 10. It is the first arcade game to use read-only memory (ROM) to store sprites for each car, the game timer, the race track, and the score. As such, it’s the the first game to have defined characters rather than mathematically manipulated dots. The game’s controls, which include a four-position gear shifter, a steering wheel, and two foot pedals, are also all firsts for arcade games.

1982
Federal District Judge George N. Leighton in Chicago orders Magnavox Home Entertainment Center to take its K.C. Munchkin video game off the market because of its similarity to Atari’s popular Pac-Man game.

1986
The New York Times reports that a seventeen year-old New Jersey student named Phillip Naranjo discerned the launch of the new Soviet space station, Mir, before the Soviet government formally announced it. Naranjo and a group of friends tracked transmissions between space vessels and control centers on Earth, and just before the Russians announced Mir on February 20, the teens picked up the transmission of Cyrillic code.

1987
The discovery of “high-temperature” superconductivity is announced to thousands of scientists at a packed meeting of the American Physical Society in New York City. The phenomenon, discovered in 1911, was first known to occur at only four degrees above absolute zero, when all electrical resistance in a metal disappears. In 1986, researchers discovered a ceramic material that is a superconductor at a temperature of more than thirty degrees above absolute zero. When published in September of that year, that news stirred the wider scientific community into action. By the time the APS meeting convened, further discoveries had been made. The scene of excitement at the meeting will later be dubbed the “Woodstock of Physics.” Visit the official American Physical Society website.

1991
In San Francisco, California, the Software Publisher’s Association holds its Spring Symposium, including the Excellence in Software Awards ceremony. Winners include: Lifetime Achievement Award: Steve Wozniak. Best Consumer Program: GeoWorks Ensemble. Best Business Program: Microsoft Windows 3.0.

1995
The SATAN (Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks) security tool is released on the Internet by Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema. The release raises a debate about whether security auditing tools should be posted openly for the public to use. Visit the official SATAN website.

1996
Guillermo Gaede pleads guilty in Federal Court on charges of mail fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property. Formerly a software engineer at Intel’s Chandler, Arizona plant, Gaede stole proprietary 486 and Pentium specifications and transferred the data to video tape. He then offered the data to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) who turned the data and Gaede in to authorities.

Texas Instruments (TI) announces a new processor family, the TMS320 Digital Signal Processing (DSP), which doubles recording time in digital telephone answering devices and adds full-duplex speakerphone capabilities.

1998
Ehud Tenebaum, a nineteen year old Israeli, also known by the web handle “The Analyzer”, is arrested in Israel. During heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf, hackers touched off a string of break-ins to unclassified Pentagon computers in order to steal software. Officials suspect Tenebaum of working in concert with American teens to break into Pentagon computers. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre calls it “the most organized and systematic attack” on US military systems to date. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls Tenebaum “damn good … and very dangerous.” The attacks exploited a well-known vulnerability in the Solaris operating system for which a patch had been available for months.

Sony releases the black and white diamond patterned Dual Shock controller for the PlayStation in Japan.

Version 5.5.5 of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) freeware is illegally exported from the US anonymously.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.

- “Wonder and Skepticism” by Carl Sagan, Skeptical Enquirer, January/February 1995.