Technology
revere | December 20, 2008I spent about a decade as a researcher at a highly regarded technical university in the northeast, known by its three initials. This was in the sixties and seventies. I loved working there because there were probably more interesting people per square meter than any other place I ever worked. Interesting and eccentric. The place had a high tolerance for eccentricity, at least of a certain kind. I mention the time period because the tech nerds of the day had to make do with more primitive technologies than now. They loved to screw with the phone system and I remember watching some kid call a…
gregladen | December 19, 2008Internet connectivity between Europe, the Middle East and Asia is reportedly seriously affected by a series of cable cut.
Jonathan Wright - director of wholesale products at Interoute which manages part of the optical fibre network - told the BBC that the effects of the break would be felt for many days.
"This will grind economies to a halt for a short space of time," he said "If you look at, say, local financial markets who trade with European and US markets, the speed at which they get live data will be compromised."
bbc
The cause of the breaks is not known, but seismic activity is…
clock | December 17, 2008Top sci-fi authors discuss the future of technology :
Science fiction isn't (as a rule) about predicting the future, and science fiction writers aren't trying to predict it.
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But many science fiction stories are set in the future, which means they need to include the future of technology (or present reasons why things haven't changed). That is, they have to extrapolate from "what/where things have been and are" to "what/where might be."
We invited noted science fiction authors Larry Niven, Robert Sawyer, Nancy Kress and Charles Stross to share their thoughts on technology-related…
evolvingthoughts | December 16, 2008The title is the title of a nice essay at Crikey. I especially like this:
Bernadette McMenamin of ChildWise, you've crossed the line, defaming everyone who’s protested the government’s plans. "Most of these people are not fully aware of the facts and secondly, those who are aware are, in effect, advocating child p-rnography," you said. How dare you!
Ms McMenamin, to really stop child abuse we need to spend our resources efficiently. Let's run through it one more time. And let's skip those hysterical, made-up "statistics" you still peddle. Child abuse is bad enough without heading into your…
gregladen | December 16, 2008If your iPod Touch does not work on your Windows XP, you can ...
A. Uninstall and reinstall everything (Hint: Don't actually try ANY of this, it doesn't work!):
Okay well I spent about an hour on the phone with Apple trying to fix this problem. The guy I talked to seemed to have delt with this problem before. He tould me that Apple was getting numerous calls about the iPod touch not connecting with iTunes. So here is the solution that worked for me.
The first thing you must do it uninstall iTunes and Quicktime using the controll pannel, add/remove hardware, on your windows computer. Once…
purepedantry | December 16, 2008Mark this on the list of "things to expect in 2009." Craig Venter and his team expect to create the world's first artificially synthesized organism:
One likely announcement, which may happen any day of the year, is of the world's first artificial living creature. The announcer will almost certainly be Craig Venter, an American biologist who has been working on making such a creature for over a decade. It will not be quite as billed. Mycoplasma laboratorium, as the bacterium is expected to be dubbed, will need the shell of a natural bacterium to get going. But the genes themselves will have…
evolvingthoughts | December 15, 2008Here's an excellent discussion by Lawrence Lessig on the creeping nature of regulation through copyright. Quite apart from anything else it's an amazing use of presentation software. Sure, it's 2002, but things have only got worse...
cevans | December 15, 2008
Let's try a thought experiment.
This one comes via Buckminster Fuller: imagine you have a length of nylon rope, which you splice into a length of cotton rope, then into another length of hemp rope. If you tie an overhand knot in the rope, and push it down, through all three kinds of ropes, the knot remains a knot. The material is irrelevant, because the knot is just a pattern that has a specific set of guidelines for itself. Fuller wrote that "a pattern has an integrity independent of the medium by virtue of which you have received the information that it exists." That is to say, if you…
clock | December 15, 2008Pawel tried, for a year, to be a freelance scientist. While the experiment did not work, in a sense that it had to end, he has learned a lot from the experience. And all of us following his experience also learned a lot about the current state of the world. And I do not think this has anything to do with Pawel living in Poland - I doubt this would have been any different if he was in the USA or elsewhere.
You all know that I am a big fan of telecommuting and coworking and one of the doomsayers about the future existence of the institution of 'The Office'. And you also know that I am a…
clock | December 15, 2008Jeff Cohen was one of the people interviewed for this article in Raleigh News & Observer today about the Future of the Internet:
In 2020, powerful mobile phones will rule, privacy will erode further and the line between work and home life will be faint, if not obliterated.
That's what 578 technology gurus see in their crystal balls, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The survey, "Future of the Internet III," conducted by Pew and Elon University, envisions amazing advances in mobile devices, virtual reality, voice and touch technology -- possibly…
clock | December 14, 2008This is a little tongue-in-cheek, on purpose, but it is also thought-provoking.
Perhaps we are not there yet, but in 5 years it will be completely correct. Power outages are keeping some of the older, analog technologies surviving on the back burner (FM radio, landline phone).
This will also happen in waves - technology pioneers first, middle-class folks in industrialized countries next, the youngsters, of course, and then the rest.
The developing world is a special case - in some cases they HAVE to use outdated tech due to unreliable source of electrical power, lack of infrastructure, etc…
evolvingthoughts | December 14, 2008Here's an article, by MSN no less, that explains the problems with broad filtering. A fellow named Herman Libshitz can't get an email account from Verizon because his name contains "shit". Residents of Scunthorpe in the UK apparently have similar problems. God only knows what the residents of Testiclebreastpenisvaginaville can do...
gregladen | December 13, 2008There are a number of arguments that turning your computer off during non-use periods (like overnight) is a bad idea. This wears out your computer, the power-up cycle uses so much energy that it is offset only by hours of down time, etc. etc. For the most part, these beliefs are incorrect. You should probably turn your computer off. But not until you've read "Five PC power myths debunked"
clock | December 12, 2008On arXiv, by M. E. J. Newman (Santa Fe Institute):
We investigate the structure of scientific collaboration networks. We consider two scientists to be connected if they have authored a paper together, and construct explicit networks of such connections using data drawn from a number of databases, including MEDLINE (biomedical research), the Los Alamos e-Print Archive (physics), and NCSTRL (computer science). We show that these collaboration networks form "small worlds" in which randomly chosen pairs of scientists are typically separated by only a short path of intermediate acquaintances. We…
clock | December 12, 2008"In the summer, I will begin an appointment at the Harvard Law School, while directing the Safra Center."
More details here.
clock | December 11, 2008For instance, to protest Creationist bills in state and local legislatures:
omnibrain | December 10, 2008In the never ending quest for death gadgets Mercedes has come up with a specialized screen that will show the driver one thing and the passenger another. Just think, now in addition to a driver watching a movie while they are going 70 mph they will be leaning all the way over into the passenger seat to see it. Unfortunately Mercedes hasn't created a system to keep stupid drivers from doing stupid things... like driving off a cliff while following the GPS directions on the screen they're allowed to see. Ok.. I jest - this seems like a pretty damn cool system and I totally want one. I'm…
clock | December 9, 2008Tina writes - Kinesthetic Learners: Why Old Media Should Never Die:
.....Many classrooms, however, don't offer this type of kinesthetic learning. The hands-on learner is left to fend for themselves and more often than not the only physical interaction they get is with the learning material itself.
You've seen them before. Sometimes, it's a student whose fingers trace the words as they read them. Or the highlighter: the student who makes a colored mosaic of their text as they try to physically interact with the material. Even note-taking is a kinesthetic activity. In a variety of subtle ways,…