Won't somebody please think of the children!

The first bill, H.R. 3630, is sponsored by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), and focuses on providing money for Internet awareness and education programs for parents. The Bill would dole out $125 million in grants to teach parents how to better discuss Internet safety with their children.

The other bill, H.R. 1966, is sponsored by Representative Linda Sanchez (D-CA), and more or less leaves reason at the door. Named in honor of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old who killed herself after a classmate's mom harassed her over MySpace, H.R. 1966 attempts to criminalize cyber-bullying with vague language that butts up against free speech rights in a wide range of ways.

Neither bill has come before the Committee for a vote, let alone made it to the floor, but I think it's obvious which one is going to win out. In a fight between well-reasoned, responsible engagement and knee-jerk criminalization, I believe we can trust Congress to make the craziest, least practical choice.

[via Ars Technica]

Three points! Is this shot really within the realm of physical possibility?

If we time the flight, we can then apply some ballpark approximations to determine whether the trajectory we see in the video conforms to that flight time. Using our stopwatch we observe that the ball is in the air for 3.8 seconds before passing through the basket. The horizontal distance to the basket from the launch point is approximately 50 meters, and the launch angle θ is about 20 degrees.

Let's use what we know about projectile motion. We know for a projectile that the horizontal motion is independent of the vertical motion, and that in the absence of significant air friction the horizontal velocity is constant. We also know that along the vertical axis, a projectile has a constant downward acceleration due to gravity 9.8 m/s2.

Looking at the horizontal part of the motion and accounting for the launch angle we can then determine the initial speed (v0) of the basketball necessary to cover the horizontal distance in 3.8 seconds. We get

Δx = vhorizontal t = v0cosθt

and therefore v0 = Δx/cosθt = 50 m /[cos 20 (3.8 s)] = 14 m/s

Now if we look at the vertical part of the motion we can determine how far the ball would drop in 3.8 seconds. We'll then compare our theoretical result to the actual vertical distance from the third deck down to the basket that we observe in the video. (We estimate that drop to be similar to the horizontal distance of about 50 meters.) Therefore, based on the time of flight and the initial velocity that we determined above we calculate a vertical drop of

Δy = v0vertical t + ½ at2 = v0 sin t -- ½ gt2 = 14m/s(sin 20)(3.8 s) -- ½ (-9.8m/s2 )(3.8)2 = -53 m

Well, this corresponds pretty well to what we see in the video. Even accounting for the effects of air resistance (which we did not address above to keep things simple) the result isn't altered drastically. The motion recorded in the video (in what appears to be a continuous frame) certainly appears possible according to the laws of physics.

Now whether or not this was done in a single take is another matter!

Adam Weiner is the author of Don't Try This at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies.

Writing in the journal New Media and Society, the researchers note that 89.5 percent of the characters in the top 150 selling video games (console and computer) are male, and 85 percent of them are white. Overall, males, Whites and Asians are overrepresented, while Hispanics, Blacks, women, Native Americans and the elderly all appear less as video game characters frequently than they appear in the actual US population. Hispanics are the most disproportionately underrepresented , appearing as characters in only 2.7 percent of games, despite making up 12.5 percent of the population.

Naturally, because many of these games are programmed in Japan, the characters cannot be expected to conform to the same demographics seen in society at large. However, those over and under representations conform very closely to the same disparities found with television characters, suggested a larger phenomena is at work.

Aside from making it difficult to market the games to a wide audience, the authors of the paper also believe the homogeneity of video game characters may cause identity issues in children who don't see people like them in the video games they play.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the highest selling non-Mario video games of all time don't have protagonists of any set ethnicity or sex. The Wii Sports, Play and Fit games, and the computer games the Sims, don't have a set protagonist at all, and let users design characters that look like themselves. The Pokemon games revolve around monsters, Nintendogs is about dogs, and Tetris is just a bunch of falling blocks.

Sadly, the study did not say whether orcs, hedgehogs, night elves, or mutant turtles were over or under represented.

[via New Scientist]

BotPrize, a twist on the famous Turing test of artificial intelligence, offers $6,000 to the first team to create a bot that 80 percent of the judges can't distinguish from a player. This year's competition, featuring competitors from Japan, Spain, England, the US, Canada, Italy, and Brazil, wrapped up today, and no one managed to win the grand prize. The most successful bot programmer did walk off with $1,700.

The game used for the competition was Unreal Tournament 2004, but the judges created new weapons for the competition to throw in a little extra challenge for the entrants.

The challenge of the competition stems from the imperfections inherent in all people. It would be easy to program a bot to play perfectly, always hitting its target and quickly finding the best power-ups. Instead, the eventual BotPrize winner will need to show a curve for adaptation, occasionally make mistakes, and talk trash like a real player.

"You want to build an emotional model for the agent you're competing with," said Will Wright, creator of The Sims. "It's not just about having an accurate aim. It's about creating a bot that simulates a victory dance above your dead corpse."

So far, no one has ever won the main prize; even the most advanced bots are either technically perfect or worse than a bumbling n00b. Of course, if players human players are still as petty, annoying, and cheap as they were during my freshman days playing Quake III, maybe it's for the best that the bots don't perfectly imitate people.

See if you can spot which is the human player and which the bot:

[via Technology Review]

Imocap image courtesy Animation Weekly News

Much like puberty and Ramadan, the movie awards season begins earlier and earlier each year. But this year, the nerds get to fire the opening salvo. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (emphasis on the "Sciences") has released its short list of nominees for the Science and Technical Oscars. The list includes some of the best known names in computer animation and special effects, like Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic, as well as some less famous companies that have been quietly changing the process of filmmaking.

Since the Sci-Tech Oscars reward entire bodies of work, not single movies, the nominations tend to have subtle themes that symbolize a technology's coming of age. Last year's awards seemd to focus on organizing the animation production chain, while the previous year's awards celebrated advances in fluid animation. This year, the Academy seems to be honoring developments in shading and lighting in computer animation. Speaking of which, here's the list:

Enabling Technologies for Digital Intermediate (credit TBD)
The Development of Fujicolor ETERNA-RDI Digital Intermediate Film (Fujifilm USA)
Relighting for Virtual Characters (USC ICT)
Imocap (Lucasfilm Entertainment)
Ambient Occlusion (Double Negative VFX)
Point-Based Color Bleeding (Pixar Animation Studios)
OBAQ/DOALL (Industrial Light & Magic)
Film Master (Digital Vision Ltd.)
System 5 (Euphonix, Inc.)
Rigtight™ (1stCall Studio Equipment)
Heden Lens Motors with Two-Stage Friction Drive Planetary Torque Amplifier (Heden Engineering AB)

As far as the shading and lighting goes, the Pixar consideration, Point-Based Color Bleeding, drastically increased the speed at which computers can generate realistic light reflection from textured objects in computer animation (the lower right-hand square in the picture below is the image generated with this technique).

Similarly, Double Negative VFX is nominated for its work on Ambient Occlusion. Ambient Occlusion refers to the way natural light bounces off of non-reflective surfaces. Mastering that effect is key to generating more realistic looking computer generated images (the image below shows a non-reflective body interacting with ambient light).

Finally, the Academy did glaringly omit one revelation from its recent release: the identity of the host. The Sci-Tech Oscars are more than just a chance to honor Hollywood's unsung heroes, it's also a rite of passage for up and coming starlets who provide voluptuous eye candy for the nerdy award recipients. Former hosts include Scarlet Johansson, Jessica Biel, and Rachel McAdams. This year, I've got even money that says we see Megan Fox shaking hands with some animators.

The ceremony will take place on February 20, but the winners are announced a couple of weeks before that. Make sure to check back at Popsci.com for continuing coverage of the Sci-Tech Oscars.

[via FXPHD]

WHY LED?
Video experts know that a secret to achieving great picture quality is reproducing deep black. Few HDTVs can do that. Plasma panels, for example, glow in the absence of a TV signal; just watch the screen in a darkened room as it transitions between commercials. This “idle brightness” is required to insure that the screen responds quickly when the picture comes back on.

Meanwhile, LCD TVs create an image with liquid crystal pixels that control the output from a backlight behind the screen. When the video signal calls for black, the liquid crystals close down like a shutter to block the light. But the fluorescent backlight used in conventional LCDs must remain at least partially on all the time, even behind the dark areas of the image. Given the nature of LCD displays, some bleed-through of light is inevitable.

Engineers have now solved this problem by replacing the fluorescent bulb with an array of tiny LEDs. By monitoring the incoming video signal, the TV can dim or even turn off the backlight on the fly in those areas that demand it. The result: deep, dark blacks that give the image added depth and help colors and bright highlights pop off the screen like never before.

LET THERE BE (BETTER) LIGHT
Seems simple enough, right? But buyer beware: there are different types of LED backlights. One common approach puts rows of LEDs only around the outer edge of the screen and bounces their light off a reflector to acheive full screen coverage. While edge-lighting can be an effective solution where cost is of concern, it can’t deliver light across the full screen surface with the near-perfect uniformity of a full matrix of LEDs behind the entire screen. And the “zone lighting” of an edge array always results in some dimming of nearby white areas whenever the backlight is shut down to improve the blacks. That affects the reproduction of highlights.

These are pitfalls that Toshiba made sure to avoid in its new high end SV670. First, the set’s FocaLight LED backlight acheives superb brightness uniformity with a full-matrix LED array. Then, “local dimming” technology allows precise control over the LEDs to deliver deep black only where it’s needed, maintaining peak white brightness in the lighter portions of the image. Consequently, FocaLight helps the SV670 acheive a previously unattainable 2 million:1 dynamic contrast ratio! If LED backlighting is the better mousetrap, then Toshiba’s FocaLight must be the better, better mousetrap.

BEYOND THE BACKLIGHT
Toshiba didn’t stop at an improved LED system. The SV670 enjoys several other advancements shared across Toshiba’s 2009 REGZA family. Top models, including the SV670 and the conventionally-backlit ZV650, use new ClearScan 240™ technology that combines traditional 120 Hz techniques with pulsing of the backlight to refresh the image 240 times a second, noticeably improving the clarity of fast action. A CrystalCoat™ Contrast Enhancer screen coating rejects ambient light that can wash out the image, producing up to a 30% improvement of contrast in bright rooms. All REGZA models now feature a 5th Generation processing engine that provides smooth transitions between light and dark areas of the image and improved upconversion to the screen’s native 1080p resolution. And three Toshiba models are the first ever with Dolby Volume, a sophisticated circuit that evens the volume of commercials and different source components while maintaining better sound quality than other solutions. Finally, top REGZA models boast Toshiba’s new Deep Lagoon design, a striking alternative to traditional gloss black that recalls an ocean meeting the seashore. The SV670 adds a seamless Infinity Flush Front for an even more stylish effect.

Scott Ramirez, Toshiba’s VP of marketing, summed it up best. “For 2009, we incorporated a wide range of advanced, robust technologies to create an all-new level of REGZA LCD TV,” he said. “We didn’t just make LED TV; we innovated by utilizing superior Local Dimming. We didn’t just use higher frame rates; we innovated with new Backlight Scanning technology. We didn’t just wrap everything in high-gloss black; we innovated by creating the stunning new Deep Lagoon Design. The new REGZA is more than our dealers and consumers expected, and the response has been nothing short of amazing.”

FOR MORE INFO VISIT WWW.TOSHIBATV.COM

Over the weekend, LG announced plans to release a 15-inch OLED TV overseas in 2010. But that's not the big news: an exec is also teasing that a 40-inch set may not be far off. OLED screens at this size present a unique challenge in that the glass they require is difficult to produce in large sizes, which means major factory overhauls for manufacturers.

A 40-inch set is the largest claim we've heard on the OLED front; last year, Sony dangled the idea 27- and 32-inchers in 2011, but that's it.

In general, OLED screens are an enticing idea. Historically, they've had the best contrast, color saturation, and some of the thinnest profiles around. Bear in mind, though, they don't come cheap; Sony's 11-incher rings up at a cool $2,500, so be prepared for some major sticker shock when LG makes things officially official.

[Reuters via Engadget]

Kind of Bloop gives Miles Davis's classic the chiptune treatment

Just released to the Web today, Kind of Bloop is the brainchild of Andy Baio, and its origin story is almost as interesting as the music. Baio used it as a proof-of-concept of sorts for the crowd-sourced funding site Kickstarter, where he is CTO. Kickstarter lets users post proposals for a wide variety of different artistic projects and creative ventures and solicit funding donations to get the project going. When Baio posted the concept for the all-chiptune Kind of Blue, his fund-raising goal of $2,000 (for licensing the covers, paying the artists and producing a limited run of CDs) was collected in just four hours.

Kind of Blue's five tracks are tackled by five different chiptune artists, and while all have that same dusty 8-bit vibe, each has its own style. I personally like the more literal takes, where the careening solos of Davis, Coltrane, Adderley et al are mapped out in 8-bit chunks as faithfully as possible. "So What" by Ast0r, the lead-off track, does this nicely.

Others take more liberties, with space-y bursts of Super Mario magic mushroom arpeggios subbing in for horn fills, and wild NES-drum breakdowns. Listen closely and a ton of familiar Mario tropes will pop in--like Mario's subterranean theme closing out an epic jam on "All Blues."

In short, it's well worth the $5 download, and a great way to celebrate a great album's 50th anniversary.

[Kind of Bloop--thanks, Michael!]

Last year Esquire rolled out an e-ink cover to celebrate the mag's 75 anniversary and introduced moving pictures (well, scrolling text and flashing images, at least) to the world of print. Next up: talkies. Yesterday, CBS and Time Inc. announced a video ad set to appear in the September 18 issue of Entertainment Weekly.

The embedded-video ads are manufactured by California-based Americhip and can run for up to 70 hours on a single battery charge (yes, it's rechargable via miniUSB). The 2-inch TFT LCD (thin film transistor LCD) itself is one tenth of an inch thick, with a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels.

Only Los Angeles and New York City subscribers will be greeted by the ad for the CBS Monday night lineup and Pepsi Max (a diet soda targeted at men).

[via Wired Epicenter]

Today at the Gamescom Expo in Germany, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai officially unveiled the Slim. Priced at $300, the 120GB system drops 36 percent of the prior model’s weight (about 4 pounds) and 33 percent of its behemoth footprint. Hirai also claims that the Slim will use 34 percent less power than its older sibling – which could hopefully help the system feel a bit less like a space heater or griddle.

The new PS3 will be available September 1.