Best Western Rebuts Claims of Massive Data Breach Best Western International and the Sunday Herald newspaper of Scotland are duking it out over a story which reports that a hacker stole the records of 8 million customers from the hotel chain's global network in the "the greatest cyber-heist in world history." Best Western says 10 people were affected at one hotel. Publ.Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:45:00 GMT Source: Wired.com
Q&A: Philippe Starck on Bioplastics, Virgin Galactic, and His Impossible Chair Philippe Starck's latest creation — a plastic chair — earned its name on the first sketch: Mr. Impossible. The French designer said it simply couldn't be made. The challenge? The weld. Polycarbonate chairs are typically formed using a single mold, but Starck's translucent design required two: one for the legs, one for the seat. Fusing the parts using existing methods would mean an unsightly seam, so the engineers at Italian furniture maker Kartell had to forge a new technique. The key was a very big laser. Trained at specially formulated polycarbonate, it left a seam smooth enough to create the illusion Starck had imagined: a chair that appears to levitate. We reached across the ether to elicit the designer's thoughts. Like Starck's design, our conversation seemed to float on air. Wired: What was the inspiration for Mr. Impossible? Starck: The speed of evolution of our civilization and the dematerialization that rules all our production. Take the computer: It was the size of a room, then a briefcase. Now it's a credit card. You cannot dematerialize a chair completely, because you must continue to sit on it. But you can make it invisible. That's why I made the Mr. Impossible with a double shell — it's basically made of air. Wired: Recently, you have begun to look at the environmental impact of your designs. How does a plastic chair fit in? Starck: The stupidity of the ecological movement is that people kill trees for wood. It's ridiculous. The best ecological strategy is to make products of a very high creative quality, so you can keep them for three generations. I prefer to make a very good chair in the best polycarbonate than make any shit in wood that will be in the trash one year later. Wired: Why not use recycled plastic? Starck: It's a little joke of a material. You can do almost nothing with it. And I also refuse bioplastic, which comes from something that people can eat. Scientists agree that we have a real food problem, a famine approaching. It's a crime against humanity to take something you can eat and make a chair — or use it as gas for your SUV. Wired: How do you reconcile those principles with your position as creative director for Virgin Galactic? Starck: Every project should fit the big image of evolution. You can consider Virgin Galactic as something only for rich people, but you can also analyze the incredible help that it will give us. The exploration of space is a vital part of our evolution. We don't have any future if we don't go into space. This world will explode in 4 billion years. We have time, but not so much. Publ.Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:00:08 GMT Source: Wired.com
Seven Ways to Teach Your Kids to Ride Wired.com's Geekdad blog rates seven ways of teaching children how to ride bicycles, from taking off a single training wheel to starting them on the top of a hill and pushing them down. Publ.Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT Source: Wired.com
Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Physics Research Bell Labs' fundamental physics research lab, a Nobel Prize magnet for its countless contributions to computer science and technology, is shut down as its parent company shifts from basic science research to more marketable areas such as networking and nanotechnology. Publ.Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:29:00 GMT Source: Wired.com
Can TiVo Stop Bleeding Subscribers? Lots of people are leaving TiVo, and the total subscriber base is now down to 3.6 million. Publ.Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT Source: Wired.com
'True Blood' Vampires Dig Sex, Gore and Wild Abandon The seedy bloodsucker lifestyle surfaces in HBO's upcoming show based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books. Publ.Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:21:00 GMT Source: Wired.com