“…it’s worth doing badly first.” It’s a good idea to keep in mind, especially if (like me) you have a tendency toward perfectionism.
“IBM: Mind-Reading Machines Will Change Our Lives”
I have no doubt that it will — but in five years? That seems more than a little overly optimistic. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
Oddly enough, this sort of thing rarely appears in science fiction, at least the SF I know of. When people in SF literature deal with computers, it’s almost always by way of speech or some sort of physical controls, except in cyberpunk novels and (notably) Peter F. Hamilton’s “Night’s Dawn” and “Mindstar” trilogies (maybe others of his, those are the only ones I’ve read so far). Even in Anne McCaffrey’s brainship novels, only “shellpeople” — physically malformed but intellectually normal humans, whose only chance for survival is being placed in a metal “shell” at birth and dealing with the physical world only through computer interfaces — have that sort of capability.
SF movies and TV shows are even less flexible, since the actors have to have something to do on the screen. The only two exceptions that I can recall there are 1995’s Johnny Mnemonic (which I may well be misremembering) and the TV series Andromeda (where one of the characters has a direct brain interface, though most are stuck with the usual physical and voice controls).
“Dot-dash-diss: The gentleman hacker’s 1903 lulz”
Wow… it seems that hacking, and hacker pranks, got their start well before the first computers were created.
I can’t imagine how Marconi could have thought any clear-text wireless signal was secure against eavesdroppers. Even if his patented tuning system worked to keep the signal on a very narrow band, all it would take to listen in to it would be someone else creating one and scanning the airwaves — something that could easily be done by any eight-year-old with a radio experimentation kit today, and which I doubt would have been that much harder to do even without pre-made components. And if it was patented, the schematics for it would have to be available, if the patent system was anything like today’s.
But then, I can’t see a security system without trying to figure out its flaws. Maybe Marconi really couldn’t imagine such a thing.
(Via Schneier on Security)
“Verizon retreats on ‘convenience fee’ for online bill payment”
I’ve often said on this blog that if the governments of the world had realized the power that the Internet would give to their people, they would have quietly strangled it in its cradle. Apparently the wish for retroactive infanticide extends to large corporations as well, which makes sense.
“The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist”
When I saw the TV ads for the movie 30 Minutes or Less, I thought the plot was interesting but pretty unworkable. A few days ago, I discovered that the basic plot was lifted from real life, nearly verbatim (though the people involved in the movie apparently deny knowing of it).
Another case where reality is stranger than fiction.
“Television show hosts eat each other’s flesh in front of studio audience”
I go to great lengths to satisfy my curiosity, but there are some lines I just don’t think I’d cross.
(Via BoingBoing)
“Religious Expressions Are Rooted in Fear-Based Politics”
A “National Day of Prayer”? “One Nation Under God”? “In God We Trust”? I’ve heard people claim that they’re proof that America was founded on Christian principles. If the speaker acknowledges freedom of religion at all, he invariably means that everyone must be free to practice his religion.
Thing is, all three of those were forcibly injected into politics in the 1950s, riding a wave of fear of The Commies and The Bomb. The Founding Fathers had nothing to do with them, and the majority would likely be appalled at today’s America.
The Founding Fathers were great men of their time. Not perfect — some were slave-owners, and none expressed any belief in the equality of women, or even of the people in general (landowners were the only ones qualified to vote, to them) — but they got a lot right too. One of the things they got right was insisting on the separation of Church and State, and we really ought to pay attention to the life-lessons they based that on… before we’re forced to re-live them.
“Autism boom: an epidemic of disease or of discovery?”
The LA Times recently published a four-part investigation of autism. It’s pretty good, it has more information on it than I’ve been able to find in my own research elsewhere.
I’m not a scientist, and I’m operating solely on my own experience and what I’ve read of others, but it seems to me that autism is a broad diagnosis of a malfunction in certain parts of the brain, parts that are different for each sufferer. Sometimes early intervention allows the child’s brain to rewire itself to bypass the malfunctioning parts; in other cases, areas critical for recovery are too damaged to compensate. For some, the same malfunction may also result in developing skills or abilities that people don’t normally have as well: perfect pitch, a dramatically better memory for places and physical layouts, superior mathematical skill, or something similar.
I’m not sure it would be possible, especially at this point in medical science, but classifying autistics by the affected areas might be useful. Then again, once science advances far enough to do that, we may well find that most people suffer from such problems, and autistics are only different by the kinds of areas affected (often social and language) or the number of them.
Just my two cents’ worth.
“Mysterious metal ball from space falls in Namibia”
A large metal ball that fell from space into the Namibian grasslands last month is not alien, officials say, but that’s about all they know for certain about the object. […]
Uh-oh.
Ape #1: Dear me. What are these things coming out of her nose?
Ape #2 (looks through binoculars): Spaceballs.
Ape #1: Oh, shit. There goes the planet.
😉
Joking aside, I’m very curious about these though.
[…] Ludik told The Namibian that the object poses no cause for alarm, and that such reports of metallic spheres falling from space are common in the Southern Hemisphere. […]
I’m only a casual armchair space enthusiast, but I can’t think of any spacecraft use for something of that shape and size. With the cost of lifting even a single pound into orbit, there’s no way any country would send up anything without a reason.
“A Very Portal Christmas Tree”
For those of you who don’t know, there’s a rather famous game called Portal. From the Wikipedia entry:
[…] The game primarily comprises a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player’s character and simple objects using “the handheld portal device”, a device that can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes. The player-character, Chell, is challenged by an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. […]
The portal device creates a red circle on one surface and a blue circle on the other, and you can walk into one and come out instantly on the other. This leads to some interesting curiosities, like walking through a portal and seeing yourself disappearing into the other one.
Now we come to the whole point of this entry, which is that a fan of the game has created a very neat Christmas tribute to it. Slightly late, I know, but I only found out about it last night.