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Last week I spend it snowboarding in the French Alps with some friends. This year, for the first time, we had like 2 small video cameras, so people were always trying to film that "Roast beef grab", the "Backside 180" or the "Indy grab".

Whenever the camera was on, my friends were taking huge risks, doing big jumps and strange techniques, in order to stay "good in the picture".

The result? Three man down: one shoulder, one ankle and a visit to a french hospital to do some x-rays due to a heavy chest pain. Fortunately, I don't give a damn for great snow movies, so all I've got was tired muscles and a rested brain.

The conclusion? Technology can hurt you, beware.

Via cbc.ca, scientists were able to cause a light pulse to travel hundreds of times faster than normal:

It raced so fast the pulse exited a specially-prepared chamber before it even finished entering it.

So, it looks like João Magueijo and is Variable Speed of Light theory was right all along.

What if your games could read your mind, so you could play them by thinking about it? Futuristic? Not so.

An Australian company, Emotiv Systems, developed a headset that uses a set of sensors to detect player's thoughts, emotions and feelings, thus making it possible for games to be controlled and influenced by the mind of the player.

The headset connects wirelessly to consoles and PCs, and is not available to consumers yet, but a private demonstration can be scheduled for developers at the 2007 Game Developers Conference.

Image taken from Emotiv Systems website.

Update: The New Scientist Blog has an article about testing the headset, entitled What geek wouldn't want to be a Jedi? Worth reading.

I got an invitation for Joost 10 minutes ago. It took me 60 seconds for a 16 MB download, another 30 seconds for extraction and installation, 30 seconds to get the first Joost channel (‘Joost Suggests’) up and running in full-screen mode, no flicks, good quality, and watch some crazy surfers riding big waves in Hawaii.An additional 3 minutes to see the channel list (pretty impressive, NatGeo, MTV and others) and try and watch other channels. Everything is working smoothly.Now the bad news: my MacBook remote controller didn’t work (yes, I know, it isn’t supported, but I needed something bad to say).The rest 5 minutes were to write this post.

Nopes, it's not about Hollywood oscars (elected by some guys nobody cares) but about the free initiative named Oscar torrents. I really don't know who is behind this, but I really don't care: 133378 voters is a pretty good number for the first edition.

The film which won more oscartorrent was Pan's labyrinth, and the oscartorrent for the best picture was to The departed.

See the list movies and access the torrent files here.

The site disclaimer is also a pearl:

OSCARTORRENTS®, and the OSCAR THE PIRATE® statuette design mark are the unregistered marks of no one in particular. No ©2007. Nothing to do with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences & ABC, Inc. All Rights Reversed. The Official Oscars is a sham produced by villiains in partnership with the cult of celebrity. By accessing this site you're probably comitting a felony somewhere -- but let your own idea of what is right and wrong be your guide.

Enjoy your movies.