Free Culture at Columbia has come out with some pretty cool stuff in its brief history: the Core on Flash drives, CULator, this gem of a protest video. Now, under the guidance of founder Brendan Ballou, they’ve transcended the Columbia plane and gone global. Allied with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), Ballou and co. are set […]

While Public Safety clamps down on Columbia’s physical security, some students were alerted today to a breach in the university’s virtual defenses. According to an email they received, Housing and Dining accidentally exposed information from students’ housing files online for a period on April 2nd. “Exposure was limited,” the email goes on to say, “because there […]

Julia Kite, an urban studies major (?), sent this one in to give SEAS students and science majors one last thrill before midterms. Bwog thinks SEAS guys and gals are probably too jaded to enjoy this, but if you’re not at least one iota thrilled (or made slightly nauseated) by this, there’s probably something wrong […]

Podcasting His Life Away: Electrical Engineering Prof. Daniel P.W. Ellis has a hobby even his wife finds creepy: digitally recording every waking moment of his day. Seeing it as an audiologged diary (or a “lifelog”), Ellis recounts such highlights as the fight with his wife in which he made “asshole” comments and his pleas to doctors […]

Vast uptown expansion? Check. Globe-trotting presidential trips? Check. Providing basic amenitites, like heat, to university buildings? That’s always seemed to prove a little more challenging for this institution. As temperatures in New York plunged over the last two weeks, the radiators at Columbia’s Computer Music Center (the vaunted 125th St. mainstay where the world’s first music synthesizer, […]

If you have been following the news in even the vaguest capacity over the past few years, or if you’ve ever tried to get a computer in Lerner around 1 PM, you’re aware of the major space crunch Columbia is experiencing. But who needs to move into Manhattanville when you have the garage below Uris, […]

Rest assured, the computer consoles will return to their nook at Butler. Giulia Pines sent a note to the Program Coordinator for Marketing and Assessment at Columbia University Libraries, who wrote her back: Giulia, The computers in the Butler lobby will be re-installed today. They were temporarily removed for construction. Thank you, Jennifer But the […]

While researching a linguistics paper on Artificial Intelligence, Bwog Correspondent Sara Maria Hasbun came across the websites for the winners of the Loebner Competition, a contest in which judges converse blindly with both humans and computer programs—the prize goes to the machine that bests simulates intelligent conversation. For her paper, Sara decided to try out […]