Slashdot Mirror

I read them looking for gaping holes to point out

I think I saw one: the fact that most of the US is built for cars, which is a problem itself. Population densities are too low. It'd be better if most of the stuff you'd need was closer by and you'd have parts of the road reserved for other traffic, so you'd be able to walk or use a bike, the latter being a vastly superior means of short-distance transport with incredible efficiency. There are all-weather bikes that look like raindrops on wheels - and possible of doing ~50mph when you're assisted by the battery. Add a little cart and you can do your grocery shopping for a week. I'd love to use this on the freeway - but its maximum speed is the freeway's minimum speed.

See http://www.twike.com/ and http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html

Another thing I'm in favor of (but this would be easier to implement in most larger cities or here in Europe) - replacing all truck traffic with "email for things".

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/02/a-world-without.html It'd do miracles for the traffic congestion here in the Netherlands, since a lot of stuff has to go to Rotterdam anyway. One of the main freeways is blocked every day thanks to this. Trucks are limited to 50 mph (80 km/h) here and when one goes 49 due to the load, the next one will try to pass it - which takes 5 minutes.

Fascinating TED Talk on a similar (the same?) project? As I recall, some of video was a bit unpleasant to watch, but (IMHO) very worthwhile.

The trouble is that software blurs the distinction between a device (patent) and a work (copyright). The distinction used to be easy. If you had a new type of engine, you got a patent. If you wrote a book, you got a copyright. But software is kinda like writing a book (so it should be copyright), yet it is used to build the internals of an infinitely modifiable machine (so it should be patented).

This is going to get worse as home 3d fabrication like RepRap becomes more common. Software is now being used to build a physical object, thus eliminating the patent/copyright distinction. At a TED conference, an MIT professor talked about a fab method they apparently have going in the lab, where computation is done by arranging molecules; in theory, you could compute yourself a new car. Just imagine what that will do to the patent/copyright distinction.

The end result is that a new form of IP will have to be developed that will combine copyright and patents. In the US, this is probably going to take a constitutional amendment, which almost dooms the effort from the start.

Seconded. Here is a link with more detail on Hawkins (even a video).

Power isn't a "technology" as such but it is possibly the fundamental property determining who does what in this world. All the TED attendees are people with substantial personal power, and they are in a unique position to appreciate the power relations at play in the world today.

The most interesting thing I heard from Obama's campaign was the "Google for Government" initiative, which allows the public to use search technology to track how tax dollars are spent. Offering this kind of transparency through technology is a great example of cutting-edge use of a not-so-cutting-edge technology, and if implemented well, substantially changes the power relations at play in the US.

I haven't got any ideas of other people doing similar work but if we are serious about steering the planet on it's optimal course we have to give exposure to people who want to use technology to break down long-held power structures. An example is the WITNESS initiative that places camcorders into the hands of people under oppression. TED gave this a platform back in 2006 here.

"Entrepreneurial mycologist Paul Stamets seeks to rescue the study of mushrooms from forest gourmets and psychedelic warlords. The focus of Stamets' research is the Northwest's native fungal genome, mycelium, but along the way he has filed 22 patents for mushroom-related technologies, including pesticidal fungi that trick insects into eating them, and mushrooms that can break down the neurotoxins used in nerve gas. There are cosmic implications as well. Stamets believes we could terraform other worlds in our galaxy by sowing a mix of fungal spores and other seeds to create an ecological footprint on a new planet." http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html

Well, Theo Jansen did a TED presentation on his improvement on te wheel.

All those questions are answered in his talk at ted.com

What beard ;)

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_brilliant_wants_to_stop_pandemics.html

The above talk is 26 minutes long and talks about using web activity monitoring to find possible outbreaks of pandemics before WHO.

It's a Mystery Box.

Dan Gilbert did this experiment - its described his book Stumbling on Happiness. Here is the NYtimes article. In this video, he describes the theory of Choice Paralysis

The theory in short means we all think that "Breasts of my wife GREAT! All others suck! " (except Tina Fey.. and Natalie Portman and.. Penelope Cruz)

Well... if you're one of those sophisticated Christians who understands that the biblical Jesus was simply an enlightened teacher, and the teachings are the essential thing, you might have your reason intact. After all, Jesus in his admonishments to the Pharisees essentially said "your old testament is not meant to be used the way you idiots use it, it's outdated, tribal, and violent, and you guys are deluding yourselves and everyone else with your literal interpretation and basing your arbitrary Sabbath laws on it."

A Christian who really groks and values the spirit of their teacher could conceivably have a clue and be a reasonable person. But, yeah, chances are they would not be any kind of traditional Christian, and most likely would be more inspired by Buddhism or Hinduism, which are certainly better elucidations of the psychological principles Jesus was promoting.

On the other hand, there may be some hope yet for the Christians.

He always struck me as a pot head intellectual type; smoking will make you look pretty old. Here he is on the Colbert report, he seems really cool...

http://blog.ted.com/2008/02/aubrey_de_grey_2.php

He did a realy interesting TEDtalk in 2005 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html

Rather than introspection, which we can't actually prove other animals don't have, a better metric would be the NUMBER of qualities which produce behavior consistent with what we call "intelligent."

Some corvids have developed tool use and live in strongly hierarchical societies. They also build things, and are roughly as parasitic as humans are. Further, they thrive wherever humans do and are adept at problem solving. Some corvids can actually mimic human speech, and have been shown to use that mimicry to communicate. Crows have been known to mourn their dead.

From a human viewpoint, that's pretty intelligent.

The prime components of intelligence, as I view them, are:

• The ability to recognize "problems" and address them systematically until solved.
• The ability to adapt the organism's environment to suit the organism.
• The ability to recognize similar situations and apply previously learned solutions to those situations.
• The ability to learn solutions to problems by observing another organism solving a similar problem.
• The ability to communicate complex information (by any means) to another organism of its own species.
• The ability of the organism to communicate complex information to another organism of another species.
• The ability to cooperate in groups, given the right circumstances.
• The ability of an organism to distinguish itself from all others of its species

You show me an animal who can do all that, I'll show you an animal who's intelligent.

A machine which can do all of that, I'm willing to call it AI.

I have quite a few.

Apple Trailers - New movie trailers.
BlizzCast - Blizzard podcast, not that great.
GameTrailers - Latest game trailers.
The Perry Bible Fellowship - Amusing comics though seem dead lately.
Penny Arcade - Enough said.
TED Talks - Insightful talks about many subjects.
Three Panel Soul - Mac Hall is dead, long live Three Panel Soul.
Video Copilot - Nice video compositing tutorials.
xkcs - Master of all geek webcomics.
Zero Punctuation - Game reviews amusing enough you don't need to care about the game.

EZTV - Scene TV torrent releases.
Releaselog - General scene torrent releases.

And there's of course Slashdot which currently has 126 unread stories, I'm sure I'll get to them sometime.

metacafe link here and TED link here.

Have you seen pictures of a 19th century classroom? Do you have a personal recollection of a droning teacher reading to your class from a book? These are both examples of a particular theory of learning - one that places high value on memorisation and repetition. It works for some.

A more modern view of learning posits that we learn better by doing, and by discovering things for ourselves - this is called constructivist learning.

OLPC and the software on it is intended to support the constructivist learning model. Have a look at Alan Key's TED Talk to get a better idea of what this means in practice.

These are real educators, and people who have a passion for teaching. If you're interested in what's driving them, Ken Robinson's "Do schools kill creativity" TED Talk is also a must-see.

Incidentally, if you have kids in school you owe it to yourself to see the Robinson TED Talk. And then show it to your kid's teachers.

J

Have you seen pictures of a 19th century classroom? Do you have a personal recollection of a droning teacher reading to your class from a book? These are both examples of a particular theory of learning - one that places high value on memorisation and repetition. It works for some.

A more modern view of learning posits that we learn better by doing, and by discovering things for ourselves - this is called constructivist learning.

OLPC and the software on it is intended to support the constructivist learning model. Have a look at Alan Key's TED Talk to get a better idea of what this means in practice.

These are real educators, and people who have a passion for teaching. If you're interested in what's driving them, Ken Robinson's "Do schools kill creativity" TED Talk is also a must-see.

Incidentally, if you have kids in school you owe it to yourself to see the Robinson TED Talk. And then show it to your kid's teachers.

J

Yes, while some of the land used will be plowed over crop land, some of it will also probably be converted from livestock feed and that would be a good thing. After energy production, livestock production accounts for 18% of green house gas emissions. And as far as switch grass goes, this was an initiative that started out with the goal to use recycled lawn clippings, in which case the harvesting cost would have already been paid, as people are still going to mow and water their yard, no mater how much the price of gas goes up.

Amory Lovins, in his excellent TED Talk on Winning the Oil Endgame, makes an argument that weight savings need not lead to descreased safety. An example that he cites is a hand-built McLaren that has a couple of woven carbon-composite cones in the front that absorb the energy of a crash. Well worth a listen.

You can watch a Seadragon presentation from TED at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129
focus-plus context screens are similar http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/projects/focuspluscontextscreens/index.html

No one will care about proper memes when we're being attacked by 'temes'.

No one will care about proper memes when we're being attacked by 'temes'.

Just a thought. Could be used as a model system for evolution research. I just saw Susan Blackmore's TED talk - she summarizes Darwin's Origin of the Species as: If you have - variation - selection - heredity Then you *must* have - evolution It would be interesting to speculate how those three factors could be introduced.

Ok, putting his credentials aside. Where is your research to prove he's wrong? Have you written a book? published any papers? Have you done any research whatsoever (besides looking up an entry on Wikipedia)?

Until you can show some evidence about your claim that he's wrong...I'm going to stick with my opinion that he's right. (based on reading several of his books and watching his predictions on computing power come to pass) You obviously don't agree (based on what--I don't know), and that's fine.

Just to let you know, humanity has a track-record of success in terms of technology people have said was "not possible". Lots of people said heavier-than-air flight would never happen--or flying fater than the speed of sound. Many said humanity would never enter space, or land on the moon. You said wishful thinking?! There are technological miricles happening every day.

Here's one regarding the prosthetic limb someone mentioned was not ready for prime-time:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/82

It's only about 3 minutes long. Check it out.

So, again, I say: It's bullshit? Prove it's bullshit. Or shut the fuck up. Watch it happen--just like all of the other technological marvels humanity has successfully created, and continues to create.

Centuries? This assumes a linear progression. We are talking about the singularity--which i case you haven't been noticing--is happening in an exponential manner.

I suggest you take a look at his actual research before you say such things. Here's a link to a presentation her recently did at Ted:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38

...with the exciting servo motor sounds to give a real feel for the technology:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/82

The last two minutes have the arm demo video. The rest is classic Kamen.

The owner of the TinkerSchool site - http://www.tinkeringschool.com/blog/ spoke at the last Maker Faire http://www.makerfaire.com/ this year in San Mateo(something you should look into attending with your kids, theres also another one in October in Texas)

Anyway, he did a talk on "Make Your Own School" which was about his tinkering school he runs for kids, as well as "the Five Dangerous Things You Should Have Your Kids Do" Both were very informative and common sense. Write him and see if he has any publications you can read.

On his site he had a link to his five dangerous things talk at ted: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/202

Gever Tulley: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do

For those who missed it, Johnny Lee and his cheap Wii hacks can do it for a handful of bucks on really big screens too.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/245

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

Why do monopolies stifle innovation?

YouTube Link (1.9+m views) (2003)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-y3ZNaCqs

TED Talk
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65

while Jeff didnt invent multitouch, he certainly brought it to the attention of a lot of people with a good demo and a few teaser apps (maps) to show what could be done
MS, Apple and chums have a lot to thank him for as far as raising public awareness of different UI and OS possibilities, using a mouse/qwerty keyboard should not be a fundamental of interacting with computers

I think there are groups/organizations already in place that could do the "kid finding" (for example Dave Egger's tutoring centers). They just need another group to pair with them that will handle the receiving and processing of the donated laptops and clean and linux them up. After which they can go directly to a child that really needs it. I imagine this could be done in a distributed fashion with volunteers all over.

Maybe this a candidate for another TED prize.

If this is the same person I'm thinking of, he gave a TED talk on Africa and his university not long ago.

here is the link to Neil Turok's TED talk where he wishes for the next Einstein to be African. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/232

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/224

Another brilliant site for science-based lectures is ted.com. The lecture on the Large Hadron Collider doesn't go into as much detail as I would have liked as someone studying physics at university but it does serve as a great outline of the theories behind it. There is also another lecture on ted.com on superstring theory, which is also very interesting. Well worth checking out.

The TED lectures (the hype: "Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers") are very current, often fun, and generally fairly accessible. I wouldn't 'dumb it down' too much for your kid -- kids will rise to the occasion if the content is well presented. http://www.ted.com/

This reminds me very much of the talk by Malcolm Gladwell on "The pursuit of happiness", where he reaches the conclusion (via spaghetti sauce) that there is no perfect solution, or perfect recipe that works for everyone.

Uh. No. It won't.

I submit as my two pieces of evidence: a TED talk by Levitt and his book.

Steven Levitt: Why do crack dealers still live with their moms?.

You may also want to check out his book (Freakonomics).

Venter won the last round of betting against him(human genome project), we'll see what happens this time:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/227

He interviews scientists and editors who have lost their jobs for printing/writing papers that claim our DNA has a 'code' with information that could not have happened in nature.

I fear that the ostracized members of the scientific community will make the evolutionists look just as much like religious zealots trying to purge their ranks of people with open minds.

As for zealotry, scientist peers shouldn't spend any time entertaining "god made DNA" ideas any more than Flying Spaghetti Monster ideas.

I'm sure there's sound criticism against these papers ...

If you have friends who believe in Creationism, respect them and provide for them sound arguments against it.

And here is another TED... Sherwin Nuland: My history of electroshock therapy. Here is what an extreme case of depression looks and feels like. I hope it gives you some perspective.

To me this is old news. I grew up in western North Dakota. My family still farms there, and every time I go back there's a whole lot more oil derricks drilling for oil over the last 3 years or so. They're all quite excited about it, because now there's an influx of people into an area where people have been leaving for quite some time. Businesses have a chance, and schools are getting more money. Most rural schools are having troubles keeping the lights on.

Now for the other matter of the environment. Hopefully we can make use of our local oil to reduce dependency on foreign oil while we're working on a way to shift our energy source to a more environmentally friendly one. Amory Lovins has some great ideas.

View his call to arms: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/113

Have we ever done a poll on religious beliefs on Slashdot?

More to the point, the demographic is not for the perfect Pepsi, but for the perfect Pespsis. Malcom Gladwell had a talk at a TED conference, where he explains demographic research that has been done to show that there is usually not a perfect solution, but rather several near optimal solutions. Probably not applicable to all data-mining applications, but certainly appropriate for anything relating to subjective tastes.