Technology
gregladen | June 22, 2008It was actually yesterday, June 21st, but sixty years ago, when the first "modern computer" which in this case is defined as a computer that could store it's own memory, as born i Manchester, England. It's name was Baby.
The Small Scale Experimental Machine, or "Baby", was the first to contain memory which could store a program.
The room-sized computer's ability to carry out different tasks - without having to be rebuilt - has led some to describe it as the "first modern PC".
Using just 128 bytes of memory, it successfully ran its first set of instructions - to determine the highest…
clock | June 22, 2008This should be interesting to all of us, be it people who study capabilities of online education or people who study teen online behavior. It also appears to be a part of gradual shift from media scares about "online predators" to a more serious look at what the Web is bringing to the new generations and how it changed the world:
Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered:
In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income…
neurophilosophy | June 18, 2008
This cartoon, found at Paleo-Future, accompanied a short article from the August 28th, 1949 edition of the San Antonio Light:
CHICAGO, Aug. 27 - (AP) - Some day composers won't write music, and musicians won't play it - yet fans will enjoy it in never-before-heard perfection.
The composer or artist will simply project it by brain waves - "thought transference," says Raymond Scott.
BRAIN WAVES
This man, who thinks in terms of electronics and music, thinks that is all quite possible. Scott said in an interview:
"Brains put out electrical waves. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some day it…
omnibrain | June 18, 2008Check out Mother Brain from the Metroid series.
What other brains are featured in video games?
gregladen | June 17, 2008Check it out:
Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres-and one of Silicon Valley's highest-ranking female programmers-insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They'll intersperse their code-those strings of instructions that result in nifty applications and programs-with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it.
The code becomes a type of "roadmap" for others who might…
gregladen | June 17, 2008... at Firefox Central.
Firefox had been organizing "Download Day" on their web site ... getting as many people as possible to show up TODAY (June 17th) todownload the newly released Firefox 3 ... so many people as to set a record for number of downloads.
But it isn't there! Ha! You can download Version 2, but not Version 3. Maybe they mean some other time zone... Maybe they were only kidding... Maybe they messed up....
Well, the Firefox Browser is so good we'll forgive them. Maybe they will get he software on line in a few minutes or an hour or so and still break the record.
gregladen | June 16, 2008Brian Unger can be very funny. I just got an electronic device similar to (but not) an iPhone. More on that later. But in the mean time, I heard this today while I was on my way over to Har Mar and I thought it was so funny that I'd pass it on to you. (More on Har Mar later, too .. )
Go here, and click on "Listen Now. It's Brian Unger's letter to Steve Jobs. Written on his iPhone.
(Spell check that, Mr. Sparty-pants.)
The iPhone Blues
neurophilosophy | June 15, 2008
Designed and built by IBM, at a cost of some $130 million, Roadrunner is the world's fastest supercomputer. It contains 12,960 IBM PowerXCell 8i central processing units, 6,480 AMD dual-core processors, and occupies nearly 6,000 square feet at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Roadrunner will primarily be used to simulate the behaviour of nuclear weapons, but will also be used for astronomy, genomics and climate change research. Last weekend, to put it through its paces, researchers ran a program called PetaVision, which models more than 1 billion neurons and trillions…
neurophilosophy | June 12, 2008
Click to enlarge
From the August 1962 issue of Science and Mechanics:
Artificial MIND--Next from Science
COMPUTER experts keep reassuring us that Man and his mind will never be replaced by their electronic marvels. But a small, doughnut-shaped electronic neuron has been announced that artificially duplicates part of the human nervous system. And it carries out learning processes, according to Aeronutronic Division of Ford Motor Co.
The device is called MIND for Magnetic Integrator Neuron Duplicator.
Like a living cell, MIND can remember experiences and learn new…
gregladen | June 12, 2008 Joomla! is a Content Management System that is so widely used and cool that you can buy Joomla logo gear, like this shirt. Could that mean that it is a good CMS? And why would you want one?
Before I started Gregladen.com, I went through all of the content management sites that I had available to me in order to consider possibilities for running my blog. I ended up using Wordpress, which is a kind of CMS that specialized in blogs, for a number of reasons. But I did use a couple of different content management systems for private or small scale projects. At the moment, I'm looking again…
neurophilosophy | June 11, 2008
Several years ago, the mad scientists at DARPA (the research and development wing of the Pentagon) conceived of a pair of binoculars that would enhance soldiers' ability to detect enemies.
Danger Room informs us that DARPA has just awarded the giant defence contractor Northrop Grumman a $7.6 million contract to develop the device. Here's a snippet from the press release:
In Phase One of the program, the Northrop Grumman team plans to demonstrate the concept by building a breadboard system and complete a preliminary design for the company's Human-aided Optical Recognition/Notification of…
gregladen | June 10, 2008Participate in Sourceforge.net's 2008 Community Choice Awards.
Sourceforge, along with Freshmeat, is a central repository for OpenSource community driven software projects. When installing software on your Linux box, you are better off using the built in software for installation and not downloading stuff from Sourceforge or Freshmeat, until you know what you are doing. But these are great sites to browse and/or search for software you need. Or want.
Here's a few other software related tidbits:
Need a twitter client for your Linux box? Try gTwitter or Twitux.
Open Office templates.…
gregladen | June 10, 2008Has Bill Gates discovered drugs? What is the perfect desktop? Law against cyberbullying.
Bill Gates at a recent press conference:
"Mundie and Ballmer are idiots. Their talk about how open source software damages intellectual property or how Linux is a cancer, is moronic. When I heard these attacks I felt sick to my stomach. How could a company that I poured my blood, sweat and tears into spread these untruths? My conscience guides me, that's why I'm before you today."
Don't believe it? Check it out!
Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva Performance Compared on Phoronix Test Suite 1.0. "Ubuntu 8…
grrlscientist | June 9, 2008tags: science, physics, time-saving techniques, peeling hard-boiled eggs, streaming video
We all know that each day is filled with a variety of time-wasting activities that are necessary for us to be able to enjoy those brief, fleeting moments of freedom from such drudgery. So I thought I'd suggest something that you can do to reclaim four days of your life that would otherwise be devoted to the time-wasting activity of peeling hard-boiled eggs -- and this is all due to the wonders of SCIENCE [0:36].
Of course, this looks like so much fun that you'll probably invest those four reclaimed days…
neurophilosophy | June 3, 2008
This month's issue of IEEE Spectrum Online magazine contains an excellent special report on the singularity, the hypothetical point in time at which technology will be sufficiently advanced so as to enable the human race to transcend their biology and take their evolution into their own hands.
Some transhumanists envision a future characterized by cyborg-like beings and thinking machines with superhuman artificial intelligence, and await the singularity as eagerly as end-timers wait for the Second Coming. Some go as far as to say that we will one day be able to cheat death by uploading our…
clock | June 2, 2008Another SCONC event:
RENCI to Show the Power of Visual Communications at Lunchtime Bistro:
The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) invites the public to a Renaissance Bistro lunchtime demonstration and lecture from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, June 26 in the Showcase Dome room at the RENCI engagement center at UNC Chapel Hill.
The Bistro is free and includes lunch on a first-come, first-served basis.
RENCI experts, Eric Knisley, 3D visualization researcher, and Josh Coyle, new media specialist, will demonstrate three-dimensional visualizations and interactive touch screen displays. Attendees…
purepedantry | June 2, 2008Check out this video about the next generation of prosthetics (below the fold):
More at Wired Science.
This is interesting to me because of the microprocessors that they put in the arm as controllers. Most people don't think about this but movement in the human body is coordinated by a variety of subsystem, many of them in the spine. It is sort of like your brain triggers a motion, but then delegates the coordination of that motion to other systems -- often beneath your conscious perception. The microprocessors in the arm are in some sense taking over for these subsystems.
A very…
neurophilosophy | June 2, 2008
This email from the owner of the website explains:
Gliocast is a set of software tools for visualizing fiber tracts. The emphasis is on the 3D display technologies. Gliocast includes a rudimentary model for tumor growth, but more physically realistic models can be substituted for it.
Fiber tract imagery provided by the Banks Laboratory at the University of Tennessee.
Brain dataset courtesy of Gordon Kindlmann at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, University of Utah, and Andrew Alexander, W. M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior, University of…