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This thread is ridiculous.

Check out http://paypaldoesntsuck.blogspot.com/

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

• The GeoSpatial Web - RightClick a Photo GoThere!!!
• Prevention of GeoSpatial SPAM - A Solution!!!
• The Poor Man's GPS
• Bringing Global Co-Ordinates Indoors

Yes, but you can't count on Conservatives either.

Witness how Scalia and Kennedy voted in Raich. Then consider why.

The court needs to be abolished and replaced with Supreme Juries. Each case/review/whatever sees nine of us selected at random and flying out to Washington to deal with whatever the problem is.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the supreme Court has been corrupted, absolutely.

I've posted other comments here about this, but here's the basic review:

The city government claims they seized the property for economic development, as part of a larger plan. Sure, the property is going to be turned over to a commercial developer, but it's "public use" of the land because of the larger economic development plan.

The state courts: Well, the city says their main reason for doing it is public use, not to benefit Pfizer, so it must be public use!

The supreme courts: We'll let the state courts worry about this. They said it's public use, so it probably is. Therefore, it's OK for the city to seize the land.

This is not the building of new roads, this is not the elimination of blight, this is a real estate development deal, and people are losing their houses over it. Does this frighten anybody but me?

They should be watching Customer Service: The Blog

I keep screaming, but no one is listening...

That is the same exact same reason Linux will do so great on that new Apple hardware!!!!

fsck you Dvorak, you are a hack

Actually I don't mix WiFi and broadband at all. I simply changed the subject. My issue is broadband and the fact that the US is falling behind. (We are also falling behind in math and science training for students). Most of the international stats came from a NYTimes article by Friedman . I also highly recommend his book "the world is flat"

Just a few miles to the south of Orlando a backwater town named St. Cloud also is experimenting. St. Cloud experimental WiFi area covers the whole downtown (not just a park for the homeless and a few joggers like in Orlando) & St. Cloud hospital's Home Health Division is using the subsidized WiFi to reach patients that are in this downtown area.

St. Cloud hospital is currently working on technology that would allow tel-medicine to reach folks at home thereby reducing the need to travel to a doctor's office for treatment. Not only is this more convenient for those that are ill, but eventually this technology may reduce the spread of infections as folks can recover at their own home rather than risk infecting others or themselves becoming infected with other pathogens. Wireless technology is vital to implementing this technology that help lower the costs of heath care. (The above info was from a letter to me from the hospital director). The phone and cable companies are getting legislation passed that will prevent towns from even experimenting and that I what I oppose.

as for Orlando trying (and failing) WiFi I think this is healthy. I am glad the government tried and I am glad they literally pulled the plug when they failed.

It is a shame that we will all click and post on a issue but very few of us will actually do something about it. The fight over Community Internet has reached Capitol Hill. A bill in the House would prevent cities and towns anywhere from providing high-speed Internet access OR WiFi. Send a letter now

I think the end of the drama is written upon the wall. The digitally connected masses will soon remove the mass from media. Here's why:

1. The balance of power has already shifted to the masses in a sort of first mover advantage. The backlash coming from the entertainment industry is reflexive. It happens *after* networked mobs creatively, unexpectedly, disruptively take technology into their own hands. The tension between the entertainment industry and the online world simply represents that shift of power and control away from mass media.

2. What will the entertainment industry be when consumers en masse, produce their own "as good or better than" diversions? Blogs spontaneously exploded news into millions of niches, leaching the mass from news media. Cheap high tech multimedia production tools will soon provide grass roots entertainment more riveting than Hollywood fare. The imagination and creativity of crowds is absolutely capable of producing open source, distributed entertainment exponentially increasing in novelty. The mass entertainment industry will soon compete with high quality virtually free grass roots alternatives from the digitally connected masses, and take its rightful place as another niche. What "mass" will be left to market to?

3. Litigation takes a lot of time. Since technological advances also accelerate events, inflexible, knee jerk systems will eventually be overwhelmed with the speed of disruption. There will soon not be enough time to react before the next volley. Future shock paralyses the most inflexible systems first. So, ultimately, in a digitally networked world, control is distributed to the masses. But the question keeps returning: Is Big Brother a Possible Future?Will some central organization, representing narrow interests be able to control what citizens share electronically? I don't think so. The imminent emergence of open source personal self-replicating fabricators will spit out an ever growing complexity of items, all of which will be embedded with personalized computational intelligence. So, no consistent control over hardware standards will be possible. Chips will not answer to a centralized institution.

As self-replicating fabricators rapidly spread to thousands and then millions of people, they will mutate and evolve; enlisted to upgrade and propagate their own next generation. Mobjects from the collective creative energy of Smart Mobs. This spells the end of the consumer/ producer divide. What will mass marketing be without a mass market?

P. S. The rise of personal replicating desktop fabricators is one of the trends I've followed closely since October 2004. I was pleased to see CNN cover the emergence of desktop fabricators only a few days ago. The blogosphere scooped CNN by many months :)

Ted

I think the end of the drama is written upon the wall. The digitally connected masses will soon remove the mass from media. Here's why:

1. The balance of power has already shifted to the masses in a sort of first mover advantage. The backlash coming from the entertainment industry is reflexive. It happens *after* networked mobs creatively, unexpectedly, disruptively take technology into their own hands. The tension between the entertainment industry and the online world simply represents that shift of power and control away from mass media.

2. What will the entertainment industry be when consumers en masse, produce their own "as good or better than" diversions? Blogs spontaneously exploded news into millions of niches, leaching the mass from news media. Cheap high tech multimedia production tools will soon provide grass roots entertainment more riveting than Hollywood fare. The imagination and creativity of crowds is absolutely capable of producing open source, distributed entertainment exponentially increasing in novelty. The mass entertainment industry will soon compete with high quality virtually free grass roots alternatives from the digitally connected masses, and take its rightful place as another niche. What "mass" will be left to market to?

3. Litigation takes a lot of time. Since technological advances also accelerate events, inflexible, knee jerk systems will eventually be overwhelmed with the speed of disruption. There will soon not be enough time to react before the next volley. Future shock paralyses the most inflexible systems first. So, ultimately, in a digitally networked world, control is distributed to the masses. But the question keeps returning: Is Big Brother a Possible Future?Will some central organization, representing narrow interests be able to control what citizens share electronically? I don't think so. The imminent emergence of open source personal self-replicating fabricators will spit out an ever growing complexity of items, all of which will be embedded with personalized computational intelligence. So, no consistent control over hardware standards will be possible. Chips will not answer to a centralized institution.

As self-replicating fabricators rapidly spread to thousands and then millions of people, they will mutate and evolve; enlisted to upgrade and propagate their own next generation. Mobjects from the collective creative energy of Smart Mobs. This spells the end of the consumer/ producer divide. What will mass marketing be without a mass market?

P. S. The rise of personal replicating desktop fabricators is one of the trends I've followed closely since October 2004. I was pleased to see CNN cover the emergence of desktop fabricators only a few days ago. The blogosphere scooped CNN by many months :)

Ted

Yes, but the presumed relationship between the assumptions of a theorem and actual physical observations may sometimes change. There are lots of mathematically correct things that can be derived from any physical theory that mispredict what actually happens. Mapping the math to the situation requires non-mathematical strategies and practical considerations. There are also plenty of alternative formulations that could equally accurately describe any given set of data.

What is true, though, is that the bayesian mathematical structure underlying falsificationism cannot be disproven without using itself. In fact the foundations of QM can be summarised by Bayes' theorem - the "uncertainties" come from fundamental limitations on information that can be contained or exchanged by any propagation or interaction between fundamental entities. For instance, entanglement arises because the total # of bits of information that are verifiable (falsifiable) regarding some particular interaction with a system consisting of two or more entities is less than the number of entities in the system.

Eliezer Yudkowsky gave a good account of the relationship between falsificationism and Bayes' theorem:

You can even formalize Popper's philosophy mathematically. The likelihood ratio for X, p(X|A)/p(X|~A), determines how much observing X slides the probability for A; the likelihood ratio is what says how strong X is as evidence. Well, in your theory A, you can predict X with probability 1, if you like; but you can't control the denominator of the likelihood ratio, p(X|~A) - there will always be some alternative theories that also predict X, and while we go with the simplest theory that fits the current evidence, you may someday encounter some evidence that an alternative theory predicts but your theory does not. That's the hidden gotcha that toppled Newton's theory of gravity. So there's a limit on how much mileage you can get from successful predictions; there's a limit on how high the likelihood ratio goes for confirmatory evidence.

On the other hand, if you encounter some piece of evidence Y that is definitely not predicted by your theory, this is enormously strong evidence against your theory. If p(Y|A) is infinitesimal, then the likelihood ratio will also be infinitesimal. For example, if p(Y|A) is 0.0001%, and p(Y|~A) is 1%, then the likelihood ratio p(Y|A)/p(Y|~A) will be 1:10000. -40 decibels of evidence! Or flipping the likelihood ratio, if p(Y|A) is very small, then p(Y|~A)/p(Y|A) will be very large, meaning that observing Y greatly favors ~A over A. Falsification is much stronger than confirmation. This is a consequence of the earlier point that very strong evidence is not the product of a very high probability that A leads to X, but the product of a very low probability that not-A could have led to X. This is the precise Bayesian rule that underlies the heuristic value of Popper's falsificationism.

Similarly, Popper's dictum that an idea must be falsifiable can be interpreted as a manifestation of the Bayesian conservation-of-probability rule; if a result X is positive evidence for the theory, then the result ~X would have disconfirmed the theory to some extent. If you try to interpret both X and ~X as "confirming" the theory, the Bayesian rules say this is impossible! To increase the probability of a theory you must expose it to tests that can potentially decrease its probability; this is not just a rule for detecting would-be cheaters in the social process of science, but a consequence of Bayesian probability theory. On the other hand, Popper's idea that there is only falsification and no such thing as confirmation turns out to be incorrect. Bayes' Theorem shows that falsification is very strong evidence compared to confirmation, but falsification is still probabilistic in nature; it is not governed by fundamentally different rules from confirmation, as Popper argued.

http://bioprotein.blogspot.com/2005/01/intuitive-e xplanation-of-bayesian.html

http://coolpri.blogspot.com/

A while back I had a journal entry (since deleted) called Crimefighting: SuperZOOX style

In it I describe how I fight crime (or injustice) on a regular basis.

There are a number of modern day super heros in my opinion and they all use Media as their weapon.

I started my website specifically to root out the evils in the Mac world.

I've been reasonably sucessful with the main target : Jack Campbell - he's the guy that tried to start a "write a virus contest" a few months back

Many BLOGS popped up during the election that from a perspective were crimefighting/justice seeking.

I think modern super heros are everywhere!

On a more serious note, this sounds suspiciously like a project I worked on years ago, only this one is not as deep. Or nearly as accurate.

KoA

Alaska men should hit the trail for breasts

BAH, Hulk wonder why this is "Stuff that matters" ... definately "News for Nerds"
Hulk suggest maybe Puny Human submitter utherdoul trying being UnderDog
Hulk say lotta work/money to be Puny Human Batman
Hulk a lot stronger than Batman anyway

Hulk go back to SMASHING and Blogging

Sure, you could use riches to become a crime-fighting super hero. Alternatively, you could use your fabulous wealth to spend your entire adult life living as a 2-year-old girl.

I wish I were making this up.

-Skor

Hopefully you're still checking the responses to your comment. After I read your comment yesterday, I started to think about how cool it would be to have a console like that. I couldn't find one, so I scrounged one together. If you want to follow the instructions, I posted them here:

http://toveness.blogspot.com/2005/06/windows-conso le-la-quake.html

Hopefully you can find this useful!

And shreds this crap. Read and learn.

• http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/saloncom-flu shes-its-credibility-down.html
  
• http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/2005/06/endangered- species.html

• http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/06/saloncom-flu shes-its-credibility-down.html
  
• http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/2005/06/endangered- species.html

See: The Wonderful World of Commerce

If you read this blog (http://mradulovich.blogspot.com/2005/03/command-l ine-strikes-back.html), you'll see that the web command line already exists. Why do we need anything else?

The idea was (if you read his "What Is This Thing" entry (http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2005/06/yubnub-my-e ntry-for-rails-day-24-hour.html) that it would indeed be similar to FF's keyword feature, but be available from anywhere.

(It's right there under "2. Why did you make YubNub?")

So yes, it's slightly harder to use than a browser keyword, but it is more widely available.

There's also a Greasemonkey script to kill them off entirely.

I was hoping it would be something like this - something I cooked up long ago for Xanga.com.

IAAP (I am a physicist), and here's the deal:

There are suggestions out there that one way to test for the existence of extra "compactified" spatial dimensions (the kind of stuff needed in string theories) is to look for deviations from Newton's 1/r^2 gravity at small distance scales. See, for example, here.

The problem is, it's very hard to measure just the gravitational interaction between two objects separated at micron scales. Gravity is incredibly weak compared to common forces like electrostatics and magnetic interactions, and even more exotic things like Casimir forces (related to the van der Waals interaction).

The Purdue team has shown that the measured Casimir force in their experiment acts just as expected, setting a new limit on how screwy gravity can be at these distance scales.

For what it's worth, there are two other big efforts in this area. The one at Stanford is led by Aharon Kapitulnik, and is so sensitive that their apparatus can detect the different forces on Au and Si in the earth's magnetic field due to diamagnetism (!). The one at Washington is reportedly even more sensitive, and there are rumors circulating that they may have seen something exciting.

The really cool thing here is how table-top solid state experiments may have something profound to say about high energy physics, without any big accelerators.

3. What's up with the name "YubNub", anyway?

I remember hearing this word as a kid, watching one of the Star Wars movies. Evidently it means "Hooray" in the Ewok language.

You can see some more of Jon's gadgets here.

You can see some more of Jon's gadgets here.

You can never have too much Ruby on Rails, ya know?

As our applications inevitably migrate from our computers to the network, the network literally becomes the computer.

This new supercomputer gets faster as bandwidth increases. A completely optical network means bandwidth would approach the speed of light. My computer could use your hardware as seamlessly as mine.

Meanwhile Ray Kurzweils predictions of $1000 of hardware with the processing power of a human brain arising within our lifetimes is also quite conceivable.

These factors, combined with Metcalfe's Law (The power of the network increases exponentially by the number of computers connected to it) all point to an emergent, distributed, networked, increasingly "intelligent" global nervous system.

And we've got front row seats :)

As our applications inevitably migrate from our computers to the network, the network literally becomes the computer.

This new supercomputer gets faster as bandwidth increases. A completely optical network means bandwidth would approach the speed of light. My computer could use your hardware as seamlessly as mine.

Meanwhile Ray Kurzweils predictions of $1000 of hardware with the processing power of a human brain arising within our lifetimes is also quite conceivable.

These factors, combined with Metcalfe's Law (The power of the network increases exponentially by the number of computers connected to it) all point to an emergent, distributed, networked, increasingly "intelligent" global nervous system.

And we've got front row seats :)

As our applications inevitably migrate from our computers to the network, the network literally becomes the computer.

This new supercomputer gets faster as bandwidth increases. A completely optical network means bandwidth would approach the speed of light. My computer could use your hardware as seamlessly as mine.

Meanwhile Ray Kurzweils predictions of $1000 of hardware with the processing power of a human brain arising within our lifetimes is also quite conceivable.

These factors, combined with Metcalfe's Law (The power of the network increases exponentially by the number of computers connected to it) all point to an emergent, distributed, networked, increasingly "intelligent" global nervous system.

And we've got front row seats :)

As our applications inevitably migrate from our computers to the network, the network literally becomes the computer.

This new supercomputer gets faster as bandwidth increases. A completely optical network means bandwidth would approach the speed of light. My computer could use your hardware as seamlessly as mine.

Meanwhile Ray Kurzweils predictions of $1000 of hardware with the processing power of a human brain arising within our lifetimes is also quite conceivable.

These factors, combined with Metcalfe's Law (The power of the network increases exponentially by the number of computers connected to it) all point to an emergent, distributed, networked, increasingly "intelligent" global nervous system.

And we've got front row seats :)

"Green Tennis Shoes are the best! Come see my kewl site about Green Tennis Shoes!"

There's a much easier method (which I haven't seen anyone discuss, and which I describe on http://poromenos.blogspot.com/2005/06/authenticati on.html. It involves PGP/GPG to authenticate a user without having them send their password over the wire. It more or less involves the user just signing a random number the site gives him and sending it back to the server. The server then knows beyond a doubt that the person is the one whose public key they have, and the phisher can't steal their password (the person would know they're not supposed to give the password to any sites or anyone except PGP/GPG). Even if they stole one hash, it's still useless.

http://tfl09.blogspot.com/2005/06/getting-msh-beta -1.html

the Japanese regime were 100 times worse, and continue to deny or obfuscate their actions during WWII to this day.

I actually talked about this in a section of one of my latest blog entries. It's not a great scholarly piece, but for anyone a bit curious about the recent protests in China about the Japanese government, there's at least a modicum of insight in my writings, I hope. I had a professor lecture about US-China-Japan relations, and he covered this in part. I was shocked to know that many of my fellow Japanese classmates at university were not aware of the cause of the tensions. In any case, if you are curious or want to criticize it, it's maybe 1/2 way down the entry I've linked.

That being said, I'm going to go out and try to find a copy of this bomb story here in Japan.

Then there's the censorship to move or alter public opinion. Is that what is happening in Iraq today? There are way too many conflicting reports about what's really happening there.

For example, one can read Iraqi blogs like Baghdad Burning to get an insider view, but there's been claims she exaggerates stuff as well, and I've never seen her write an opinion or thought on Saddam himself.

On the other hand, we have thousands of citizens who are currently without electric power, running water, or sewer, and suffer from greedy dentists who wish to deny basic health care. We supply 25% of the U.S. oil consumption, billions of dollars in natural resources, fish, and tourist dollars to the state and federal government. Expect us to 'go nuclear' again soon.

What country is this? Alaska.

KoA

Thousands of Alaskans Face Hardship

The only real difference is that now Windows will be able to run on Mac hardware

And this is why I think Linux will only win.

Once that nice Apple hardware rolls out the Linux crowd won't buy another x86 machine. Why should they? There already are enough Apple fans in the Linux camp - not a lot of Windows fans in the Apple camp.

Basically, development will be easier on standard (Apple) hardware and the ease of installation will grow. Dual boot OSX and Linux? Thank you Apple!

http://nippon-7.blogspot.com/2005/06/todays-insigh tful-slashdot-post.html

Yes, I do admit that some security software is necessary, however, a lot of folks just need to use some good old common sense. Email, for example, people just blindly click on links in email, not knowing what will happen. And, giving out private info, this happens all to often and then results in identity theft, credit card abuse, etc.

I have a blog entry about email and it has some helpful hints that I wish people would take into consideration regarding security of information.