Slashdot Mirror

Well sure, this is clever and all... but I still prefer the shock-and-awe approach to mosquito control:

http://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_zap_malaria.html

You can just f-fwd to the 12m mark for the craziness.

For the lazy.

You just made this link on-topic. Why not eat insects?

I've seen something along these lines at least a year and a half ago. http://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html/

In this short talk from TED U, Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification -- and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow.

global real estate crisis

What global real estate crisis? We're doing pretty well over here in Brazil, this crisis is US-only. I think you're having a cultural conflict with China, what you see as totalitarian is their way of living. Example: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.html

Apparently the latest model of attracting viewers is to keep throwing mysteries and questions on them, without any plan to ever answer them.

Pretty much, its not even a secret, he talks about it in great length in his TED talk.

At fault for what though?

If the 'you have no right to govern yourself' (liberals I assume...?) crowd is at fault for something, what is the event that they are at fault for?

Better education?
More health care?
Food stamps?

The possible effects of the two messages (crosshairs vs big government) are very, very different, with one side rarely leading to violence.

Talk show news has been in a bad habit of always trying to find two sides to every issue. Regardless of the validity of both sides. At some point we need to wake up to the fact that there is indeed objective reality, and one side (and the entirety of Europe) matches reality much more closely.

I do agree that we need to all learn to be more tolerant and patient with each other, but when one side cannot be persuaded by facts, it can get tiring.

There was a Ted Talk about this very issue:
Take the other to lunch

As many have said, longer hours do not necessarily translate into less bugs, more features or a better product in a reduced period of time. Changing processes if they are broken and motivating employees to work more effectively are going to be better bets in the long run (and probably even in the short term). Brute-forcing software development is not sustainable.

On the subject of motivation, you can point your boss to a couple Dan Pink videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc (short version)
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html (long version)

I am not sure what "space" you are developing in or what processes you use in your software development, but it may be worth considering Agile processes if you are not currently using them. They are not panacea, but if implemented properly they can bring some gains in efficiency and the effectiveness of the programmers you have now at the hours they are working.

If display can be detached from computers, then forget about tablets, notebooks, or even smartphones. You have "the box" somewhere in your house and from any place you can have alternate input and output devices to work with it, you want a tablet? something to work in a desk? Using your tv set? All can have the same computer behind, and you could use the best interface for what you need to do.

If that becomes portable or wearable, same could go for mobile computing, and you could interact with the IO device you have with you, be smartglasses, something of the size of a phone or a tablet, or even some kind of sixth sense technology

Maybe not

I don't think so, there are plenty of open source projects that get your PC to work with the WiiMote, I think Nintendo played it right by not risking on that venture and letting the hobbyists tackle it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html

Great presentation on the subject. There are more advantages than what is described in TFA.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.html

According to this guy on TED, you eat lots of insects with processed foods already.

Watch this TED Talk and ask the your question again, but of yourself.

This is happening now, TODAY, not one or two hundred years ago...

Are the Americans ready to honor the treaties their government signed or are they continue to ask: "What? It was only the effective way to win by conquest."

I think this comes as no surprise to anyone. It's an interesting move, and it brings us one step closer to the end of the "PC era." Is this really what people want? I guess it must be.

Yes it is. Everyone at slashdot points to their "Mothers" or "GrandMothers" when it comes to non-technical users. But "People" are doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, mechanics, etc that want an "internet appliance". They want facebook, photos, e-mail. These are the people that are buying the iPad. They don't want to search google for an app. They just want to be able to get it.

My girlfriend wouldn't have Ubuntu if I wasn't there to support it. Between grub failing to install and me having to walk her through a grub recovery on Live to her printer/scanner combo not working. Sure the Software Repository is nice, but that's exactly what this is.

Not everyone wants to come home and tinker with OS, Firmware or Applications. People will pay 10% more if it "Just works". Think of all the branding people did back in the day with "PC Compatible". Slap an iOS approved logo on a printer, scanner, camera and it'll sell. Everytime I read of these doom and gloom stories/comments I can only think of the XKC: Rock Band. "Guys Apple isn't Open! They have a walled garden. Listen to me. Stop getting stuff done that you wanted to".

Slashdot claims that everyone wants a "Choice". Here's a great TED Talk on Paradox of Choice. What has "Choice" gotten us with the Android Market? Fragmentation, articles on how "What will happen with all these different GPUs" etc. Most people don't want a choice. They want to be told how it is. When you decide where to go for dinner with a group of friends more often than not its "I don't care. No seafood." "I don't care. What ever.". It's 20 minutes of no-decision making until someone steps up and says "We're going to This Italian restaurant, and 99% of the time everyone has no problem with it.

It's what helped Facebook become popular over Myspace. There was no editing HTML. There were a few boxes. This is how it is. Enter your info. Everyones page looks the exact same. Myspace made Geocities look like the css zen garden.

His name was Jesse Schell. Here is the talk.

I guess people like the chance of getting lucky occasionally, even at the cost of utility (average wait time) and fairness?

Yes, people, and monkeys too!

There is some additional background material at Lottolab Studio on related research conducted by Dr. Beau Lotto.

Kudos to all involved.

Lycopene in tomatoes is a far more potent anti-oxidant (once the tomatoes are processed to improve bioavailability). In one study of 11,000 men aged 50-60 3-4 servings of tomatoes a week it reduced the incidence of prostate cancer by 50% and of those who did get it the disease was less agressive. In another german study 55g of tomato paste per day reduced aging in the skin and provided on average a 30% sunburn protection factor.

Anti-oxidants at work my friend. Directly protecting cells from damage.

So naturally I eat lots of tomatoes now - bare in mind alot of drugs get FDA approval with much less established effect, and much smaller trials.

But it may be that anti-oxidant foods have other things such as antiangiogenic compounds: http://www.ted.com/talks/william_li.html

As a school teacher, I try to get everyone to watch Ken Robinson's talk about schools killing creativity. This is something we desperately need to change. School boards make these decisions, and we elect them.

I'm sure a bunch of us saw it 4 years ago. Though infant mortality rate was used instead of life expectancy and a normal projection of the images onto a screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI

Or at least in 2009 with the life expectancy vs PPP variant: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_at_state.html

In fact all his talks are among the best at TED: http://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling.html

I'm sure a bunch of us saw it 4 years ago. Though infant mortality rate was used instead of life expectancy and a normal projection of the images onto a screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI

Or at least in 2009 with the life expectancy vs PPP variant: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_at_state.html

In fact all his talks are among the best at TED: http://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling.html

Rosling's Ted Talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html Here, I'm guessing. It's a worthwhile watch.

That's the newer TED tallk. There is also an older one from 2006: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html Here, I'm guessing. It's a worthwhile watch.

That's the newer TED tallk. There is also an older one from 2006: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html Here, I'm guessing. It's a worthwhile watch.

You might be interested in this list of answers to many of those questions you have.
http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/

Here's what I don't get about reasonable skeptics though. Like you said, we can basically agree that the Earth is getting warmer and humans are contributing to it.

The magnitude of change, at what rate it is occurring, and what the effects will be for temperature X rise are not that well understood. There are lots of predictions, but they all have fairly large margins of error. I agree with you on that.

But what I don't get, is the attitude that we shouldn't do anything about oil until those margins of error are tiny or the predictions are near 100% accurate, given a couple things:

1. There are many reasons for cutting back and eventually not using oil (dependency on foreign oil, limited resource, pollution, etc..).
2. Many smart folks have thought out how we can stop using oil fairly quickly (30-40 years) with virtually no economic impact. See Amory Lovins at Ted Talks

So regardless of the state of climate science, why not start now? I think some of the "believers" are getting frustrated at the lack of action, and are cranking up the rhetoric hoping for some movement, any movement (federal level), and in return, all they seem to get are old weak arguments, or the more reasonable argument you put forth (lots of margin of error).

But even you argument, about the degree of severity, has to conclude that not changing our ways will eventually cause us problems. If you know you are running towards a cliff, even if you don't have any idea when you'll arrive, why not start working on changing your course?

> It's almost taken as a given that the world would have less creativity without copyright but I do wonder.

Uhm, you want to tell that to the Fasion Industry ?

http://blog.ted.com/2010/05/25/lessons_from_fa/

This video? http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

I have it in my bookmarks for people that keep saying that without copyright or patents an industry would stop innovate.

Good points. (Relatedly, see this TED talk about how the fashion industry thrives despite lack of copyright protection.) Let's think about various things that can and cannot be copyrighted (many examples taken from that TED talk):

Creative things that cannot be copyrighted:
-Recipes, cooking styles and techniques, etc.
-"Look and feel" of food
-Fashion/jewelery/etc.
-Furniture
-Sculptural design of vehicles
-Magic tricks, jokes, etc.
-Sports techniques/moves/plays/strategies
-Fireworks displays
-Hairstyles
-Smells/perfumes
-Rules of games

Creative things that can be copyrighted:
-Pictures/photos/etc. -Movies/video/etc.
-Books/essays/etc.
-Software
-Music/musical scores/sound recordings/etc.
-Choreography
-Sculptures
-Architecture

From these lists we can infer a few things. Firstly, it should be clear that the usual heuristic rules people carry around about copyright are not reflected in the laws. Those who defend copyright often talk in terms of an artist's "right" to control their work, yet clearly there are many artistic endeavors in the first list that go without protection. Similarly discussion about artistic incentives seem strange, given that some creative acts are afforded the incentive of copyright and others are not.

Which brings us to the second thing worth noting. Do the protected acts (second list) generate far more valuable creativity/art than the first? It can be very difficult to measure the impact and importance of creative work. (For what it's worth, the economic activity associated with the unprotected items dwarfs the protected ones.) So let's consider an easier question: Is there a lack of creative output for non-protected art (first list)? The answer is pretty clear: despite a lack of legal protection against copying, the activities in the unprotected list are vibrant, interesting, innovative, and rapidly advancing. Despite the lack of protection/incentive (arguably, because of it) these industries create interesting new products, artists devote themselves to inspiring works, and large sectors of the economy grow as a result.

So the question becomes: considering that we have ample evidence that many creative activities can thrive without protection, what is the justification for copyright protection? I do agree that there are some differences between the lists (e.g. it's trivially easy nowadays to copy music, whereas copying a hairstyle requires more effort and a skilled craftsperson to do the work each time). But even in cases of very close analogy (photographers claim they need protection for prints of their work; meanwhile the fashion industry has found a way to stay relevant without protection, even though they are just selling a style/look/etc. that others can and to copy).

I think there are many examples where creativity thrives without copyright. That doesn't mean that copyright isn't a good idea (maybe creativity thrives even more when protected?), but it does mean we should be very suspicious of simplistic arguments that claim creativity/art wouldn't exist in a world without restrictions on copying.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html

Your post reminded me of a talk I'd seen on TED.com recently. It's a little goofy, but I think he has the right idea. http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work.html

And such relationships can work both ways.

You've made an excellent argument for learning from knowledgeable other people with hands on experience about some area of interest, but, sadly, such people can only rarely be found in conventional schools...
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-schools
    http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html

And you ignore the other baggage professional teachers come with:
    http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
    http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
    http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/

Why not just watch a video series instead, and ask questions online?
    http://www.learner.org/
    http://www.khanacademy.org/
    http://www.explorelearning.com/

Of find some other alternative arrangement, including knowledgeable mentors among family, friends, or in the community?
    http://www.educationrevolution.org/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling

Is that really going to be that much worse than trying to learn from most "teachers" (who if you've ever been aroudn teacher training programs, you would see generally know little about math, science, and technology), as well meaning as most of them may be? The first thing most schools do is destroy a child's natural ability to learn and natural creativity:
    http://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Crib-Early-Learning-Tells/dp/0688177883
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=related

Here is an alternative funding model for hiring private tutors or having neighborhoods again where people have time to share their knowledge freely, based on just giving public school funds directly to the parents:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
   

> Because robots can't have a soul. You need a spirit to have that kind of consciousness.
Sorry, but that is an invalid conclusion based on incorrect assumptions.

Not to sound like a dick, but your understanding of consciousness is woefully incomplete / archaic. There are 7 layers of conciousness: Mineral, Plants, Animal occupy the bottom 3, with humans occupying the interesting position in the middle. (There seems little point to disucss the upper 3 when you are still struggling to understand the bottom 3.)

True Artificial Intelligence will eventually be created with bio-computing -- when computure are made from existing organic matter. In the mean-time the joke called Artificial Ignorance is nothing close to intelligent -- it doesn't create new information or make new choices from existing information.

> Immortality through perpetuated consciousness.
Consciousness is _already_ immortal, since it exists outside the physical space-time reality. The AI and atheists guys are clueless are about the difference between brain and mind. An crude *analogy* is that the brain is the hardware, the mind is the software.

> I experience consciousness due to a series of electrochemical reactions in my brain. End of story.
LOL. uhm, no. Go study people who have been _dead_ for 30 mins to over an hour. There was NO EEG waveform.
http://www.neurotransmitter.net/braindeath.html
http://www.skeptiko.com/eeg-expert-on-near-death-experience/

Your physical body is ONLY a container for your consciousness.

If you want to _begin_ to understand how consciousness works, study OBEs and Lucid Dreaming. Specifically Robert Monroe's pioneering work.

> Do you suddenly develop a psychic link with your other self, experiencing both existences at once, living in two different places? ... ridiculous.
It is only ridiculous to you, because again, you are viewing and interpretting how "you think" consciousness works through the narrow filter of the human (physical) kind only, not through the soul or spirit level. At the highest level, we are all connected, there is only One. At the bottom level where we are all seperate, it is hard to imagine how one could even conceive of this connection.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

> Why are you conscious?
Actually, this is the first truely thought-provoking question you've mentioned.

That is almost as "difficult" as asking "Why does the Universe even exist at all?" It only "appears" difficult when one has a limited perspective.

The short answer is "Because God wanted to explore & experience itself." Now that begs the questions "Who/What" is God ? To which Buddha answered this question:

"What could you know about God? What do you know about yourself? Do you know anything about yourself? No? So how could you know anything about God? Leave God aside, for the time being, and find out who you are."

--
Inner Space, not Outer Space is the FINAL frontier.

Either you are trolling or you are utterly clueless.

Not trolling at all. Indeed, you are unable to answer the question I pose, and instead turn try to turn it around into an attack on me.

Not unable, but simply unwilling. I mean, c'mon. Are you serious that you could not have answered that question yourself by doing a simple google or looking at the MS research publication? Also (and furthermore), why answering the question when it is indeed a loaded one?

Indeed it is a loaded one because it is disingenuous to require industrial research to be significantly revolutionary since 1) revolutionary significance can only be answered and attested in decades, and 2) being a research project and product/software development project are not mutually exclusive states of being.

Where one to apply such fallacious and fictitious criteria equitably, then the overwhelming majority of academic and research projects would be thrown out of the window since they are 1) intertwined with a software development effort and/or 2) do not and most likely will not significantly advance the state of the art and knowledge in computer science.

Revolutionary breakthrough in all science do not come out of the vacuum, but built themselves on top of prior research (much of which would be considered insignificant when taken in isolation). That is why is strange to ask such strange questions. They serve no purpose, and at worse, they are simply loaded statements that do not help advancing one's knowledge on the subject (and might in fact impairs it.) It is not a serious question regardless of whether you believe it is. If you expect or want serious answers, then put good questions that deserve one.

(for the record, I am not utterly clueless, partially maybe. But not utterly.)

Simple due diligence with an internet search engine would help you reduce the gap in awareness. Somebody already posted (see below) a list of current active research being performed by MS R&D. You can form your own opinion on the revolutionary significance of any of it (which is a loaded - and naive - one given the reasons I outlined above.)

How much money has Microsoft said in its SEC filings that it has spent on Research and Development. What is the result of that money spent?

Now here you are trolling in a grandiose non-sequitur way.

I remember the big PR splash that Microsoft Surface made, and how it was boasted to be a product of Microsoft Research. Then I saw this video of Johnny lee who surpasses Microsoft Surface for $50 in parts and some real creative research and development.

So that's your evidence (an unsurprising marketing gimmick from a for-profit company's marketing department) for questioning MS's research? You take a marketing gimmick to wonder the quality of research being done by a research arm that has the likes of Leslie Lamport on payroll?

One person offered Clippy as a shining star of Microsoft Research.

(I'll pause while the laughter subsides....)

That is funny I grant you that, but I highly doubt how one could take such a dumb suggestion with any seriousness as a counter-example in a serious discussion.

There is no way that a person can be genuinely interested in learning about an organization's research while at the same time indulging in such parochial argumentative gimmicks.

Some good projects of Microsoft Research have been mentioned, but I will ask my question again --- what project in Microsoft Research has dramatically changed the computer industry?

Again, as I mentioned before, yours is a loaded, debatable question. It has no purpose other than making noise. People have already posted links to current MS research

(I had the wrong URL on the clipboard when I wrote the previous post. See... I am partially clueless. :) )

Either you are trolling or you are utterly clueless.

Not trolling at all. Indeed, you are unable to answer the question I pose, and instead turn try to turn it around into an attack on me.

(for the record, I am not utterly clueless, partially maybe. But not utterly.)

How much money has Microsoft said in its SEC filings that it has spent on Research and Development. What is the result of that money spent? I remember the big PR splash that Microsoft Surface made, and how it was boasted to be a product of Microsoft Research. Then I saw this video of Johnny lee who surpasses Microsoft Surface for $50 in parts and some real creative research and development.

One person offered Clippy as a shining star of Microsoft Research.

(I'll pause while the laughter subsides....)

Some good projects of Microsoft Research have been mentioned, but I will ask my question again --- what project in Microsoft Research has dramatically changed the computer industry?

No one so far has been able to show how Microsoft Research has elevated the computer industry.

Yet America is still one of the few countries willing to honestly face its past and try to redress things it's done wrong.

So are they ready to abide by the Fort Laramie treaties or do you mean something else?

Actually he and his wife have given a couple talks at TED (TED.com) about the foundation he and his wife have setup.
http://www.ted.com/speakers/bill_gates.html and http://www.ted.com/speakers/melinda_french_gates.html for reference.

Actually he and his wife have given a couple talks at TED (TED.com) about the foundation he and his wife have setup.
http://www.ted.com/speakers/bill_gates.html and http://www.ted.com/speakers/melinda_french_gates.html for reference.

> They keep people from stealing ideas.

How do you "steal" an intangible??

To quote a famous insight...
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

The concept of Imaginary Property is absurd to begin with ... I have a sequence of numbers, yet somehow magically it is "owned" by someone else because it just so happens these numbers represent the frequencies of Happy Birthday. EMI can go fuck themselves.

Copyright is eventually going away in a few hundred years, whether they like it or not, and maybe we can get onto more important things instead of arguing over who "owns" what particular sequence of numbers.

The Fashion Industry has no copyright at all yet it still "magically" makes money ...
http://blog.ted.com/2010/05/25/lessons_from_fa/

--
"Resistance of the Future is Childish"

> Unsure if you are Christian or not,
Why would I waste my time with Spiritual Kindergarten??

>> Here is an analogy
> he can devise a device (spectrometers already exist)
What part of the word 'a-n-a-l-o-g-y' do you not understand??

> Sure he would lack the senses to tell how the human eyes/brain perceive these colors.
And this is _precisely_ what theists and atheists are -- ignorant of experience -- they lack the senses to perceive non-physical reality. Without senses, they lack experience. Without experience, they lack knowledge.

> I simply said there is no evidence nor can there be to assert/deny that there is a god. And without supporting evidence there is no reason to believe there is a god.

If _you_ haven't found the evidence then "Maybe you aren't looking hard enough!"

The mystical experience provides plenty of evidence. If you haven't had these experiences, then you are the "proverbial" blind man, which is the original point.

A very wise man (Buddha) once stated this wisdom:

"What could you know about God? What do you know about yourself? Do you know anything about yourself? No? So how could you know anything about God? Leave God aside, for the time being, and find out who you are."

You don't know what you are looking for because you don't understand who you are really are, your Higher Self, let alone "God." Or in other words: "Know Thyself" is the _ultimate_ form of knowing God.

How do I know these mystical experiences are real? Because of deep meditation for the past 6 years.

Even a brain researcher is starting to understand:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

> it is the responsibility of the people making the assertion (that god exists) to define what god is so it is a testable hypothesis
LOL. The existence of God is NOT some theorem to be proved. (For one thing She would get a real kick out some human using their limited human intelligence and perspective trying to solve an unsolvable problem -- "prove that something 'outside' yourself exists!) Existence claims can never be proven _only_ experienced. You can't prove that I "exist" because I could be a figment of your imagination. There is no "proof" -- only knowing. I will address in further down.

As much as I hate the New Age definition of god being "All-That-Is", it is the most concise and accurate definition there is. Every religion has some cockamania "definition" of "God" that isn't even close to being accurate.

> The problem is Christianity etc rely on the supernatural which requires faith,
The three Western religions, Judaism, Christian, and Islam have _many_ problems. Requiring faith is NOT one of them. I highly recommend you try reading Gurdjieff 'The Fourth Way' to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches since you don't know what you are talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Way

To present another _analogy_:
- Some people learn best by reading.
- Some people learn best by watching.
- Some people learn best by doing.

If you have ever studied Dancing or Martial Arts you would know that a multi-pronged solution caters to and maximizes the widest learning types, but there is nothing wrong with "specializing" in one type. Religions follow this same pattern of specialization.

Faith-based religion work extremely well for some people -- heart-centered. For others it does _absolutely_ nothing -- mind-centered. True Atheists, thank god (pardon the pun), are logic driven. They tend to do well with Buddhism -- since it ignores the whole concept of "What is God" from the get go, and instead focuses on (IMHO the more important) question "Who/What am I?"

> Logic and evidence comes from observing the universe around us, these things are not subjective an

Couldn't it just be that we do not really have direct access to the raw computational capacity of the brain? There are savants and people who have trained themselves tremendously who can do arithmetric like this, using memory tricks and such. Wouldn't that be more like a hack to "reach down" to utilize the low-level capacity of the brain?

Quite right, and described here by the Abstraction Inversion antipattern.

Which is to say, it's nothing specific to a brain, but a common occurrence in systems of any kind, including computers (quick, multiply 357 * 289 on your Wii... no, going to the browser and asking Google doesn't count).

People can learn methods to do fast math, and this guy (who specifically points out he's not mentally 'different') has books that teach you his methods.

The fact the article's author appears surpised at the notion we can't outright address a set of neurons in order to perform algebra is probably a clear sign that the article is targeted at the less-than-informed-and-easily-impressed general public. The generic references to "some scientists", "psychologists think" and "we have brain traffic jams" with no particular reference or support doesn't help either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectome
which is a map of the neural connections in the brain.

I highly recommend watching this vid, demonstrating the "New Imaging" methods, its also quite humorous.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sebastian_seung.html

Sylvia Earle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Earle should be a hero to all 3rd graders
Watch her TED Talk http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/467 , it's fascinating.

I though it would be useful to have a post or two here that mostly ignores exhibit Apple and talks about the book.

A guy by the name of Adam Thierer has put quite a bit of work into Thoughts on Tim Wu's Master Switch. What makes it interesting is the Tim Wu dropped into the discussion thread to rebut several points, and then Adam writes a response to that rebuttal.

Unfortunately, Adam makes a mistake that Russ Roberts sometimes makes on EconTalk (which I generally enjoy). The story goes like this: something big is happening, some enlightened souls speak out "we should worry about this", someone loosely affiliated with the furrowed forehead sect spouts a rabid depiction of this which the MSM circulates aggressively, the bad outcome does not materialize, and in the aftermath, some careless bloghards conclude we were wrong to worry so much in the first place.

This has been said about Y2K. It's still being said about the CDC and the imminent (or not-so-imminent) global influenza pandemic. Big flu blew over. Should the CDC stand down?

Larry Brilliant [still] wants to stop pandemics.

One possible version of the true story is that we might need to maintain a permanent vigilance on the rise of corporate gorillas. Sure AOL/Warner face-planted. Some gorillas are clumsy. And there was a time when Google was vulnerable and might not have become a counter-balancing force. These are contingent outcomes.

I have to say I think it's a bit of a dim bulb argument to argue from a catastrophe averted that there wasn't much risk in the first place, unless the belief is that the warning system was operating in complete isolation on an entirely separate plain of reality.

I loved Google from the outset, but my loyalty hung by a thread if Google had taken certain corporate directions. I've been around long enough to recall IBM as the 800 pound gorilla. I didn't much enjoy living through the Microsoft replacement.

Seth Godin said in a lecture at Google (four years ago) that Google has promoted their brand to such a degree that to backtrack on their declared values would cause them immeasurable brand injury. I tend to agree. They aren't going to poop the bed for small potatoes.

Microsoft did succeed in stifling innovation for a few years. It might have been a lot worse if they hadn't misjudged the internet, and been forced to take a tripping penalty on Netscape, and then spend two minutes in the FTC penalty box around the time of Google's nascence.

There are 17,000 federal lobbyists in Washington, DC. They exist to promote regulatory capture for vested interests. What will Apple do a year after losing Steve when their share price has contracted 40 percent? Will they reinvent, or run for cover?

I'm inclined to ascribe more of our good fortune (so far) to a small group of determined people tirelessly trying to do the right thing as described in RFC 2468.

Should we worry, or not?

Epic win is closer in GH than real life, you know. :)
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Get rid of teachers ...

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

Children are natural learners, and we adults tend to get in the way.

Get rid of teachers, and save money which would be better used elsewhere. Except the "labor unions" would protest such a concept because labor laws aren't so much about protecting workers as they are about protecting political clout.

There was a humorous TED talk on this over 2 years ago following quite a bit of media coverage on the same topic. I believe its also been explored whether internal diaper temperatures may do long term harm the development of the testes.