Posts for April 2007
Mouse brain simulated at 1:10 time
Holeee frack.
Any Singularitarian out there knows that brain simulations are a big indicator of major steps towards the Big Discontinuity; once human beings are running on silicon, at 100X bio-speed, something weird and wonderful should result post-haste.
So brain simulations are always interesting, and some IBM researchers have taken a functional model of half a mouse brain (8,000,000 neurons, 6,300 synapses per neuron), and run it on a BlueGene/L supercomputer. 1 second of in-model time took 10 seconds of computer time to crunch...performance, of course, will only improve.
Jamais Cascio has some interesting thoughts on the matter...for example, what happens when a mouse brain can be simulated at FASTER than real-time? 1000X faster? Does something emerge? Fascinating to consider.
April 25, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
FORA.tv: worth checking out
FORA.tv is pretty interesting...they are focusing on recording and distributing the audio and video of discussion in forums like C-SPAN, the EFF, the Hoover Instituion, and the Cato Institute (just to name a few). Included are tools to build RSS feeds based on your interests, discussion boards, etc. If I can get a good podcasting feed set up, I might become an avid user; I'm kind of a wonk when it comes to these things.
UPDATE: URLs are a bit of a pain to share; they should make it easier. A couple of example videos: Neil Gaiman at Cody's Books, Oct 2 2006, and Kevin Phillips discusses American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century at the Commonwealth Club of California on April 18, 2007.
April 24, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
RepRap: DIY 3D printer
I had NO idea DIY rapid prototypers had gotten this far: RepRap -- RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is a practical self-copying 3D printer...The RepRap build cost will be less than $400 US for the bought-in materials, all of which have been selected to be as widely available everywhere in the world as possible. We hope to announce self-replication in 2008.
Yowza. We are close. This I have to try.
April 23, 2007 permalink | Comments (4)
Skepticality #49: outstanding
I've long been a fan of the Skepticality podcast, and I cheered when they became the official podcast of Skeptic magazine. They just keep getting better; episode 49 is a must listen.
Dr. Shermer talks to author and Stanford emeritus Professor Philip Zimbardo on the release of his new book, The Lucifer Effect which ponders the question, what causes some people to commit acts of evil while others become unexpected heroes.
Anyone with an interest in humanism, the nature of evil, and how good people are convinced to do bad things should definitely grab this episode. Dr. Zimbardo (conductor of the infamous Stanford prison experiment) provides scientific theories that affirm and reinforce intuitions I have about human nature; I've put The Lucifer Effect on my booklist!
April 21, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
KAZ: Episode 18
Here is the blip.tv page, and direct MP3 download link for the March 30th episode.
I talk about the first chapter of Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks. Summarizing the arguments out loud should help me to better integrate the points into my worldview, and might give you a decent overview of Benkler's work. (Though I don't do it justice...do yourself a wonderful service and read it yourself!)
I haven't re-tracked down the vlog survey link yet...I'll add it when I find it!
April 21, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
New feed for my reading list
Due to popular demand (ok, Lee asked), I've created an RSS feed for my reading list. The webpage (which has existed forever, but in case you haven't noticed) is here, and the RSS feed is here (ie, that's the link to subscribe to in RSS reader). Note: it's possible I'll be playing with the format of the items in the feed over the next few days, but the data should stay fundamentally the same. Have at it!
That was easy. I so dig Django! New urlspace should be popping up in my /library/ area over the next few days as well; more info on books and movies, reviews, etc. Fun stuff.
April 17, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
Mark Cuban's future is one freakin' big HDTV
Surprise, surprise...the owner of HD.net sees big things for TVs in the future...In 3 years the mainstream TV will be 70" and cost less than $1500. In 5 years, it could be 100" for $2500 dollars . Yes, you will make room for it. You will redesign the family room or your bedroom to make room.
. Hmm...
Don't get me wrong...I very much enjoy reading Mark Cuban's blog. He's got a great vision. But I dunno about that What's Next...Watch TV
deal. A good point is made in the comments section; Mark talks about the PC and the Internet being old news now...but TV is even older, and more boring! Definitely worth reading, though.
April 12, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
Halo 3 beta coming...and check out the video
Note: I don't have an XBox 360 (or and XBox Live acct). But I do enjoy a nice game of multiplayer Halo/Halo 2, with my buddies, on the XBox. So this is pretty sweet: Halo 3 Multiplayer to Be Released May 16. Nice highlights/interview video included. (And I'll never have Vista on this machine, so no Games for Windows Live; but Team Fortress Classic rocks!
April 11, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
A virtuoso plays, and no one noticed
I'm still working through a fascinating Washington Post article from this past Sunday. Back in January, the Post tried a test...they took a world-renowned violinist, had him enter the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station posing as a street performer, toss some coins into his (Stradivarius) case, and play some of the world's finest music for about 45 minutes. And secretly videotaped the passers-by. Who mostly ignored him. A really well-thought out piece of journalism, discussing beauty and it's context, perception, and expectation.
thanks to Susan Crawford for the link!
April 11, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
O'Reillys Code of Conduct? Pass.
Found two great posts on this already, so I don't even really have to talk about Tim O'Reilly's Draft Bloggers Code of Conduct. Matt from 37 Signals nails it with Living In The City, and Dave Slusher agrees and expounds in Code of Conduct. So...I'll stick with these guys, and take a pass. Thanks anyway, Tim. Good books, though!
UPDATE: props to Tim on the lessons learned so far. He's trying to get to a good place, I think. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but I hear what he's saying.
April 11, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
DB backend for library info working
Finally! After much anguish over whether or not I had a proper design, I finally just sat down, stopped worrying, and put some code in place. It's a first pass, but it's finished. I guess part of the downside of doing database administration for a living is that I have difficulty letting loose a schema that I know isn't quite right; for example, the present db relationships allow for scenarios that aren't handled well. But I've been on the failure is cheap
mantra at work lately, so I should practice what I preach. This iteration is good enough to use, and implementing it has already started more creative juices flowing. Always good!
So now, my reading list is classic db-backended, rather than being a through-the-web edited page of dynamic HTML. (which actually had to be kept in sync on two pages...the readinglist and the home page. Ick.) That's just the start, as I'll be storing and managing many other types of media in the same tables; podcasts, movies, and Myth-recorded shows, etc. It should help me stay more up to date with my ratings, encourage me to write reviews (and allow others to comment on them), and eventually allow a collaborative recommendation/filtering sorta thingie. Very Web 2.0...w00t.
I had to whack the formatting on the readinglist page a bit, unfortunately, but that's temporary. A nice one-page monthly hierarchy will take a bit more data wrangling that I was up for today. But that's all in the view...the db has the right data now. Joy!
UPDATE: as always, if you're interested, the source is in my repository. Code is here, templates here. (Present revision is 176, in case I've moved forward.) Comments are welcome!
April 10, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
NYT op-ed on music industry's bass-ackwards strategies
Wow...last Thursday's (2007-04-05) New York Time's op-ed, Spinning Into Oblivion
is a great high-level examination of the changes in the music industry over the past 15 or so years, and label's persistently wrong-headed responses. The authors, who started an independent music store in NYC back in 1993, describe how technology changed the way their customers acted, and how music industry response to those changes burnt down the village in order to save it.
The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it’s not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.
Great read. Thanks to Kevin Meyerson for posting the link to pho!
April 8, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
Defense better than prohibition
I'm working on a longer post on this, but I haven't blogged in a few days. The more I read, the more I listen to, the more I think about it, the more I want good, kick-ass defense. Prohibition doesn't work: doesn't work for keeping bombs off of airplanes, doesn't work for DRMing media, doesn't work for keeping people safe from getting killed here, or in far away places. There isn't even a good body of work on these things EVER working...false positives cause problems, the protocols aren't robust in the face of failure, and the unintended consequences can be dire.
Play defense. I don't want Total Information Awareness, I want nanotech. Not Active Denial Systems, friggin' force fields. Working cyronics. Limb regeneration. Virtual reality. Let's protect people, not enslave them. Let's make things safer by making our society harder to hurt, not by taking away anything that can possibly do damage. Enhance safety; don't restrict rights. Increase transparency, don't reduce it.
April 6, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
Cory's PWNDcast is great
About a month ago, Cory Doctorow started releasing as a podcast the audio from the class he's teaching at USC this semester: Pwned: Is Everyone on Campus a Copyright Criminal? (direct feed link here. If you're a Cory-fanboy like me, this is like mainlining his brain...Cory lecturing and discussing copyright with a smart and interesting group of undergrads. It's awesome. There were some minor format issues with the RSS feed early on, but things are golden now, and I'm loving it. I've listened to #s 9 and 10, and I'm heading back to start at the beginning now.
Another thing...I /really/ dig the format. Which might be a surprise, since it's (from what I can tell) a single microphone near Cory; his volume is perfect, but the remainder of the class varies from soft to barely audible. But believe it or not, I kinda like it...I've been listening to more audio recently that has a sort of ambient feel (recordings I grab at cons, for example), and I really find it pleasant to listen to. It's very natural. Sure...I miss some of the student comments if I'm not listening carefully, but I grok the context, and you can always rewind if you need to. I don't know if the format is intentional or not (to give the students some pseudonymity, perhaps), but thumbs up from me either way.
April 2, 2007 permalink | Comments (0)
Earlier posts -- Later posts
