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In Sims 2, you can have your Sims play Sims 1. Pictures here. Now, the true question of what lies hidden in your soul can be answered not by how you treat your creation, but how your creation treats its creations. Have you been able to teach your creature to be a good god, just as you have been a good god, or have you left it secretly vengeful and full of malice. Only through this sort of recursive investigation will you find out how clean your god slate is.

This article talks about how the Chinese are working on melt-down proof nuclear reactors, and they intend to use some of them to generate hydrogen.

Ford
General Motors
Shelby Cobra
[google, of course, is your friend]

And if you think there is a 'real' difference between, say, Ford and Toyota, or Chrysler and Mercedes, or GM and SAAB....You're sadly mistaken. They share designs all over. The car companies are the epitome of 'multinational'. And it's wise to let the smaller companies pioneer a new concept. They can do it faster. And if it pans out....embrace and extend.

No thanks, but you could run your elections on Australian software

Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting

Australians designed a system two years ago that addressed and eased most of those concerns: They chose to make the software running their system completely open to public scrutiny.

You can read it here or here. You can also check these pictures. As you can see their ATMS are a complete joke, easily as bad as their voting machines.

All of these applications are pretty trvial to code from scratch to only do a very narrow range of tasks, thus making them easy to audit, and easy to secure. Diebold is a complete amateur at this stuff, and I hope to see them eventually sued into a greasy smear on the corporate highway.

While it could be argued that a person could be sexually attracted to a computer, it still it WAY out of place. Even for you Mac fiends.

Uhhh, wanna bet?

Free iPods is a SCAM!

Here's what you want, a camera that sees through clothes . Sheesh...

This reminds me of someone who once said something like.. 'who needs more than 640K of memory?'

By "remind" you, do you mean it makes you think of something that's a wives tale and never happened?

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,1484,00.htm l

McNealy is known to keep a "decapitated penguin" on his desk...

Is this a suprise?

It's been used before in what I can only describe as haptic sensory feedback in a discreet, pleasure inducing, package. . .

Wired News carried the story

You need to submit an application to ROMS, get approved and start getting the royalties.

If you don't want to deal with that, your lawyer can issue a cease-and-desist, and if the site doesn't comply, you can take it to a court under Russian law. The court generally rules in favor of the copyright holder if proper paperwork is present.

Frankly, this is what your label's lawyer should tell you. Part of running a music business is having sufficient legal team that specializes in Intellectual Property and International Law. Anyone who doesn't have that back-end and calls themselves a label just doesn't seem like a legit company.

My sister in South Africa was caught with a whopping bill due to this scam. I wrote a long letter to Telkom, who eventually reimbursed part of her bill (but admitted no guilt on their part)

Interestingly, during my research I came across these links that indicated the diallers are actually developed in Dublin itself.

Seems like things are going full-circle here - Ireland is cutting lines to countries dialled by software developed in Ireland...
Shouldn't they start investigating the root cause?

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,36055,00.ht ml:
"...the company that makes and sells the dialers, in this case Dublin-based Nocreditcard.com, gets a good chunk of the profits..."

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,35627,00.ht ml:
"...The company behind Adultbuffet's dialer appears to be the No Credit Card Network, owned by Celtline Holdings based in Dublin, Ireland..."

My sister in South Africa was caught with a whopping bill due to this scam. I wrote a long letter to Telkom, who eventually reimbursed part of her bill (but admitted no guilt on their part)

Interestingly, during my research I came across these links that indicated the diallers are actually developed in Dublin itself.

Seems like things are going full-circle here - Ireland is cutting lines to countries dialled by software developed in Ireland...
Shouldn't they start investigating the root cause?

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,36055,00.ht ml:
"...the company that makes and sells the dialers, in this case Dublin-based Nocreditcard.com, gets a good chunk of the profits..."

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,35627,00.ht ml:
"...The company behind Adultbuffet's dialer appears to be the No Credit Card Network, owned by Celtline Holdings based in Dublin, Ireland..."

There's no right to anonymous free speech -- one of the important issues regarding free speech is the responsibility for what you say.

According to the Supreme Court there is.

If you can find a law that protects your anonymity as a right, you're really on to something.

Here is Justice Steven's opinion:

"Justice Steven's opinion for the Court note that arguments favoring the ratification of the Constitution advanced in the Federalist Papers were published under fictitious names. Justice Stevens said "quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent." Stevens concluded "Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."

Not a scam! Read this:
Wired Article
All you have to do is complete an offer on my free ipod referral link
I will give you a GMAIL invite!
Just complete an offer on freeipods.com
If you've completed the referral, I'll send you a GMail invite, simple as that.

"If they don't play into the hands of the Chinese government, they risk having all of google.com blocked."

Actually, what you say already happened two years ago, so I guess you're right.

Hunh, that's odd, I always assumed all German games were required to have some sort of pain element.

Yes, because they were already doing so in 2002.

• I can see how one would think this, based on available evidence... but consider what the RIAA means by the term "catastrophic failure". This does not imply a slow and gradual decay... Such an occurence would be a much more graceful than catastrophic failure. So if the RIAA is right, it should still be no suprise that since it hasn't failed outright yet, most people haven't noticed any problems. Indeed, there is absolutely nothing that says that "catastrophic failure" could not be precipitated by "overwhelming success".

I'm afraid I'm missing your point here.

• However... let's look a little further than our normal short-sighted goals for a minute.

  First of all, publicly sharing a file that contains copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder is copyright infringement, plain and simple. There is absolutely no way around this without the abolishment of copyright law. Is a future without copyrights one that we really want, however?

End users of file sharing networks are violating current copyright law by sharing files, but changing that does not equate to the repeal of copyright. Stating otherwise is hyperbola.

• First of all, it is worthwhile to recall that prior to the invention of copyright, copying without permission was not a big deal because the process of copying in the first place was so tedious and error prone that there was no economic incentive to do so. But in this age, copying is easy... anyone can do it. What would happen without them today, especially given the tendency for human greed and the capatilistic society which feeds it?

So you're telling me there were never cover bands (or cover bards or whatever you want to call them) prior to our current 'Intellectual Property' laws? I believe you are simply wrong here. Your statements are completely oblivious to the GPL phenomenon as well. Sharing ideas has happened since the stone age. Being allowed to monopolize an idea is a more recent invention that typically has done more to slow progress than to hasten it. Why do you think Hollywood is on the west coast?

• Without copyrights, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the only books that would ever get published in print are those that are sponsored by some organization that would not be relying on sales of the book to recover their losses (since there would be no protection like what authors currently have with copyright). Most likely, such sponsors would be either the government or some government sponsored organizations, and the money spent on printing the books could be recovered through taxation.

Books will sell, whether they are posted for free online or not. Bruce Eckel posts his books online ("Thinking in Java" and other programming titles), and not only does he sell plenty of copies, but he has the additional benefit of having many eyes acting as editors informing him of ambiguities, errors, and other mistakes in his works, for free.

• Of course there's always the Internet, where anyone and their dog can publish anything they want for free. But that's just the problem... since anyone can publish, practically everyone will. This makes it exceptionally difficult to locate quality material on the Internet unless it was created by someone who was already at least moderately high profile. The would-be author who might have a book that appeals to some sector of the public has no real economic incentive to publish the work.

Just because you've never seen it done, doesn't mean it can't be done. Ebay overcomes problems with reputation using feedback. iRate uses collaborative filtering. Slashdot has karma. A little creativity is all that is necessary.

• Bottom line, distributing any copyrighted content without permission from the copyright holder is copyright violation. Since a world without copyrights would not be as useful for the art

Actually, most people do *NOT* have a problem ripping off someone who is honest and decent, as long as they don't actually have to actually see the person or in some other way be connected to them in a manner that could reasonably and forseeably (adversely) affect their life. Large and effectively invisible organizations like the RIAA fit into this category quite nicely so people have no problem with piracy.

And you say:

I did not once say that the RIAA was honest or decent. I said that the RIAA fit nicely into the category of someone that most people would never directly see or be connected to in some way that could potentially adversely affect them in some foreseeable way.

So am I to understand you actually meant:

Actually, most people do *NOT* have a problem ripping off someone ... as long as they don't actually have to actually see the person or in some other way be connected to them in a manner that could reasonably and forseeably (adversely) affect their life. Large and effectively invisible organizations like the RIAA fit into this category quite nicely so people have no problem with piracy.

Because the way I read it, adding the qualifier 'who is honest and decent' where you did implies that the RIAA is such an organization. If the above more accurately reflects what you meant then my response would be that 60 Million Americans can't be wrong.

Something is inherently wrong with the law when the majority of America is made a criminal by it. Look at prohibition of alcohol for instance(repealed), or national highway speed limits(gradually raised but kept within safe limits). The pendulum has swung too far in favor of copyright holders, and the results are the 'rampant piracy' you see today. It is only a problem because the law says so.

Bottom line: The RIAA members are making more money than they were 3 years ago, not less. The RIAA says unchecked file sharing will cause catastrophic failure for the record industry, yet the exact opposite has occurred. The law needs to be changed, and right now our lawmakers are making changes in the wrong direction.

Actually, now that you mention it...

Did you know that the ipod is louder then most other mp3 players because Steve Jobs is partly deaf?

Link to source

Some random links on the subject:

1. Cracking Wall Street - Wired, July 1994
2. Predict - one of the companies mentioned in the above article

3. and a random company link (haven't read this one):

4. Introduction to Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and their Applicability to the Prediction of Stock Market Trends

Why settle for the poker table, when the markets are much bigger? Playing the markets is probably more difficult, but you're the best coder around, aren't you? ;-)

I played with an AI program called Eliza on a teletype machine [...] AI programs have only gotten more convincing.

Thing is, it doesn't *need* to be more convincing:

Eliza is still pretty good at fooling people who weren't expecting it.

I guess one might say that Artificial Intelligence (AI) beats real stupidity (AOLusers.) :o)

That's a little over twice around the planet, people. Anyone who considers disaster scenarios should think about that. If something goes wrong, there's a possibility that the elevator cable would wrap itself around Earth, hard. Countries under the cable's path probably wouldn't like that. Their governments would make a great deal of noise, just considering the possibility.

Given that the governments are involved to that extent anyway, it's natural to assume that they will also want to oversee construction and whatnot, just to make sure Things Are Done Right. Now, do you want a government with no stake in the elevator watchdogging the process, or one that does have a serious financial stake?

He's been messing with that too.

Relevant quote: "...but the good news is that these add-ons don't suck."

Personally I'd be happy if he'd concentrate on 'improving' his old films and hire a good script writer to work on his new ones.

Quote from Wired 11.01: Google vs. Evil:

On the same day that China blocked access to Google, it also flipped the switch on AltaVista. AltaVista issued a defiant statement to the media and went on to list several ways to access the site. Months later, AltaVista is still blocked. Brin figures that by meeting China halfway, Google remained available - and useful - to visitors and also preserved its advertising revenue there. "You have to look at the total value picture," he says.

'The total value picture' is a bs euphemism for compromising your morals for money. They have crossed the line.

Don't worry... they only hired the four IE programmers that weren't evil.

So it was the same piece of equipment used for both the brilliant 2000 and the not-so-brilliant 2010. Was it also used for the 1999 Apple television advertisement, or was that done with stock footage or a HAL lookalike?

Bacteriophage appears to be an alternative to antibiotics for fighting bacteria. An article (you have to pay to access it) in Discover Magazine by Peter Radetsky about bacteriophage was published in November, 1996. It was mentioned by a man named Caisey Harlingten in a Horizon documentary on the BBC, and seems to have been an important publication that set things into motion. What isn't mentioned in the transcript is that right at the end of the documentary, text appears that says the deal between the American company called Georgia Research, Inc. set up by Harlingten and the Eliava Institute fell apart.

Wired wrote a follow up article on the story. One of the disputes involved another man, Alexander Sulakvelidze, opposing the seemingly pointless aim to genetically engineering phages, which Harlingten wanted to do. This possibly has something to do with the fact that genetically engineered products are protected by patents and can be regulated by intellectual property laws, whereas natural phages are not. This is what Harlingten is up to now. He is trying to apply phage therapy to multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis . And this is what Sulakvelidze is up to now, applying phage therapy to livestock.

Evergreen State College and the Rowland Institute at Harvard have pages about bacteriophage. Phage therapy may have some side effects, however. Some types of phage carry genes that can actually make bacteria pathogenic (briefly mentioned at end of page). This has been observed in E. Coli as a response to antibiotics.

Bacteriophage appears to be an alternative to antibiotics for fighting bacteria. An article (you have to pay to access it) in Discover Magazine by Peter Radetsky about bacteriophage was published in November, 1996. It was mentioned by a man named Caisey Harlingten in a Horizon documentary on the BBC, and seems to have been an important publication that set things into motion. What isn't mentioned in the transcript is that right at the end of the documentary, text appears that says the deal between the American company called Georgia Research, Inc. set up by Harlingten and the Eliava Institute fell apart.

Wired wrote a follow up article on the story. One of the disputes involved another man, Alexander Sulakvelidze, opposing the seemingly pointless aim to genetically engineering phages, which Harlingten wanted to do. This possibly has something to do with the fact that genetically engineered products are protected by patents and can be regulated by intellectual property laws, whereas natural phages are not. This is what Harlingten is up to now. He is trying to apply phage therapy to multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis . And this is what Sulakvelidze is up to now, applying phage therapy to livestock.

Evergreen State College and the Rowland Institute at Harvard have pages about bacteriophage. Phage therapy may have some side effects, however. Some types of phage carry genes that can actually make bacteria pathogenic (briefly mentioned at end of page). This has been observed in E. Coli as a response to antibiotics.

This guy uses an antique radio to listen to his iPod .

We could go on all day about how easy (for a few bucks extra initial) it would be to make our living structures more environmentally friendly. We are demanding the corporations who make our products to clean up so it is only fair that we do the same. Actually its imperative. For those who think an 800 sq ft home isnt large enough for a family of five or whatever, perhaps you need to realize that jus because you have the ability to build 10,000 sq ft homes and drive 5 metric ton cars (yes we all saw the Hummer replacement marketed on TV & the internet this week) doesnt mean we SHOULD!

There are endless techniques that we can integrate into new homes, many of which should be REQUIRED, including solar panels which are yes very expensive now and not very efficient in energy producing terms, but what about new designs for homes including bigger windows and skylights using low emissivity glass. There have been advancements in new heating technologies like using heat tapped from the Earth's Core, and using renewed and recylced building materials. We have the tech, lets put it to use!

I don't think this will be "I, Robot" animated. The fact that the robot in GITS2 is a "gynoid", seems to point to a slightly darker, and more mature plot.

Of note is the fact that GITS2 is nominated for the Palme D'Or at the Cannes film festival. It is the first animated film to achieve that.

I also think that this movie will be more in tune with westerners vision of what a sci-fi film should be. Apparently it is quite an intelligent film, but the ideas may be more palatable to mainstream America than many other popular anime films.

I probably won't be able to see it in theaters, but I will definitely pick up the DVD.

There is a very nice write up on the film on Wired
http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,64966,00.htm l

,

It's actually not a scam; it's a new type of marketing. Rather than spending money on ads to try and get people to sign up for offers, the sponsors spend the money on iPods (or whatever) as gifts to people who bring a certain amount of eyes to their product. You can read what Wired said about it here: http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64614,00.html Oh, and feel free to sign up using my link :-)

It makes me wonder what experiments are in progress and not reported yet?

Well, I think this has been talked about a little here in the past, but I still think it's pretty neat:

Algae directly producing hydrogen. While it's not electricity-related, it may answer the fuel cell problem in "How do we generate hydrogen without wasting a step on electrolysis?" There are also some inorganic solid-state solutions in the works as well.

BTM

Imagine you live far away from the U.S. Most of your news comes from the clearly biased BBC (remember the big battle they lost with Tony Blair, when it turned out there reporter misquoted the expert who wound up committing suicide) or Al Jazeera. Then you stumble on to this site.

You read the descriptions of George Bush and John Kerry. Kerry is described in glowing terms, as the Vietnam war hero who led the fight against the war, while Bush consistently supports tax cuts "despite the increasing budget deficit".

Kerry is described as being for free trade and "led the effort" for permanent normal trade relations with China, and sponsored a bill to commit $100 million to fight AIDS in Africa. While giving Kerry glowing credit for these modest proposals, the article refuses to mention the $15 billion in African AIDS assistance proposed by President Bush in his last State of the Union address. And, of course, it does not point out that Kerry is more for "fair trade" than "free trade".

How would you wind up voting then? The electorate works just like computers it follows the old GIGO rule. If you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Fortunately in the U.S. there are plenty of news media outlets to get information to counteract blatant untruths, but the rest of the world is not always so fortunate.

Read the descriptions of George Bush and John Kerry. Kerry is described in glowing terms, as the Vietnam war hero who led the fight against the war, while Bush consistently supports tax cuts "despite the increasing budget deficit".

Kerry is described as being for free trade and "led the effort" for permanent normal trade relations with China, and sponsored a bill to commit $100 million to fight AIDS in Africa.

While giving Kerry glowing credit for these modest proposals, the article refuses to mention the $15 billion in African AIDS assistance proposed by President Bush in his last State of the Union address. And, of course, it does not point out that Kerry is more for "fair trade" than "free trade".

If Will was as far advanced as John Carmack is in 3D, the inner and interpersonal depth and authenticity would rival a real experience.

This is IMHO not quite an appropriate comparison. In no way I want to belittle the achievements by John Carmack, but to my mind improving a graphics engine is also supported by next generation graphic cards which allow for more complex eye candy.

Improving on the "inner and interpersonal depth", on the other hand, is not supported by advances in hardware (yet) but requires a better understanding and 'reproduction' (for lack of a better word) of mental processes. In short: real-life Sims need real-life artifical intelligence. And research in the AI department has been rather slow over the last decades. I guess it will happen, and then we will see smarter and more realistic sims.

But then again, maybe not:

Wright's learned even more from fans' interactions with The Sims -- lessons he's now applying to his robotic creations: like not making the machines too life-like.

"One of the reasons The Sims seem so realistic is because everything in the game is somewhat abstract. You see icons of what a Sims is talking about, not the exact words," Wright said. "It invites the player to come in and imagine the details. To pour personality into these empty vessels. If we gave The Sims too much detail, the illusion would break."

From Wired News

Yes, they are looking into it.

The use of Fluorescently labeled nanoparticles to determine the effect of particle size on translocation from the lung
NanoParticles Shown to Cause Brain Damage
etc. etc. etc.

Yes, they are looking into it.

The use of Fluorescently labeled nanoparticles to determine the effect of particle size on translocation from the lung
NanoParticles Shown to Cause Brain Damage
etc. etc. etc.

I'm surprised nobody asked about Rob's purchase of the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association) along with a few of his tech-sector friends. Over the past few years they have gained a lot of ground in increasing the popularity of bowling and legitimizing it as a professional sport. Wired had a great article on it this month at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/kingpin.h tml.

After watching the re-emergence of poker, I think that the PBA has a real shot of revitalizing bowling with the right marketing. Regardless of how I feel about Real, I'd like to see the PBA venture succeed.

--Josh

Not all nuclear reactors. I'm afraid China is going to be the one who shows the west how it's done. I guess we'll let China whip us for the next ten years or fifteen years, then adopt what pans out.

Well, assuming we aren't still whining about 'Intellectual Property' and draining our resources fighting 'Rouge Dictators' when they have beaten us in cloning, stem cell treatments, computer science, computer hardware, and space exploration. Energy production almost seems small by comparison.

Not all nuclear reactors. I'm afraid China is going to be the one who shows the west how it's done. I guess we'll let China whip us for the next ten years or fifteen years, then adopt what pans out.

Well, assuming we aren't still whining about 'Intellectual Property' and draining our resources fighting 'Rouge Dictators' when they have beaten us in cloning, stem cell treatments, computer science, computer hardware, and space exploration. Energy production almost seems small by comparison.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/start.htm l?pg=6

Meh. Don't you find it a bit odd that a week ago, you heard nothing about zero-gravity flights, but now all of a sudden, there's an MSNBC story about it and hey, here's a whole series on it written by Xeni Jardin, who's so big a shill she not only writes writes thinly-veiled puff pieces for sponsors, she promotes her own infotainment? Someone's P.R. company is most definitely on the ball.

And considering that in 10 years the hardware will be free this doesnt look like such a great investment.

Stateless Linux anyone?

I'm surprised I haven't seen someone comment on this (or I'm too lazy to search the entire thread for this comment) is that the original US PATRIOT act included provisions that made it possible for copyright holders to hack your computers and even possibly due damages if they felt you were infringing on their copyrights. The "Deterrence and Prevention of Cyberterrorism" portion of the act would criminalize any act of hacking that caused damages or losses of over $5000 would be considered an acto fo terroism. The RIAA lobbied for a bypass so they could hack/destroy without any worries of criminal charges.

With this ammendment, they can hack into peoples computers, search for infringing materials, and add them to their "TO SUE" list. Not only that, they were wanting to be able to be proactive, in a sense find people that are supposedly using P2P software and hack their systems so that they are unable to trade copyrighted material, or delete any offending materials.

This ammendment did get knocked down, but then the MPAA tried a similar amendment. i believe this didn't make it either, but both these organizations have kept bringing up new forms of these bills in one way or another.

Sound familiar?

Here's more details...

Like this iDol?

Something else you might notice in their provided screenshot http://www.wired.com/news/images/0,2334,64914-1449 5,00.html is that if you look very closely, their mac seems to be running KDE. While there probably is a theme for OSX to make it look like KDE, why would they do that while demoing that their software lets you run a linux binary on a Mac? Looks to me like they just installed some linux distro with ppc support on the powerbook and loaded up quake. It sounds great .. but I call BS.