Facial recognition is not only pretty good, but is available in consumer applications.
Google's Picasa does it quite well for your personal photos, and Face.com can go through your Facebook photos and quite accurately suggest tags.
I've seen very helpful Flash visualizations on news websites that helped understand the story better.
For example, this interactive map of drug war related deaths in Mexico is very well done. It doesn't just clarify the conflict, but encourages the reader to analyze and research the topic independently in addition to linearly reading the text of an article.
Just reading an article, listening to the radio or watching a news program often gives the illusion of learning and understanding new information, whereas in reality very little is retained.
Innovative and interactive ways of presenting information solve this problem.
If the LCD panel is connected to a Mac, you may want to try using Quartz Composer.
It's a flow-based programming language included in the developer tools package. You can use it to make just about any kind of animation (music visualizations, image filters, screensavers, etc.), and hook it up to live data.
I've set it up for my office, but didn't have time to write a very complex program yet, just a flashy 3D RSS feed of Twitter posts mentioning our product.
In my opinion, health and exercise are just as important to teach to children as History and Math. The problem is that physical education classes in the US are designed to focus on competition rather than health.
There's a great fear sometimes, that if I use open source, will I lose my intellectual property?" acknowledged Novell's Levy. Other panelists Randy Hergett, director of engineering for the Open Source and Linux Organizations at HP, and Marcus Rex, CTO at the Linux Foundation, sought to assuage those fears.
"The current license for Linux requires you give back any changes you make to the open source community, but there's no way anyone can require those assurances and there's no way we'd know," Rex said.
Excuse me? He could tell them that only changes to the actual code need to be contributed back to the community, and furthermore, that code used within the company and never released does not have to be contributed.
But what does this spokesman for Linux say? That it's illegal but that there's no way to get caught? Does he work for Microsoft?
What we dislike about Microsoft is not that it is big and powerful but that it releases poor quality products and destroys its competition using monopolistic tactics.
Google, on the other hand, supports Free and open-source software, has excellent products that geeks love, is concerned about seamless co-operation and integration of all web services (even ones that they don't own) and wins by having the better product, and constantly improving it.
I am far more interested in digitally enhancing human bodies and brains than creating a new AI species.
Consider this: throughout the eons of natural and sexual selection, we've evolved from fish to lizards, to mammals, to apes, and eventually to modern humans. With each evolutionary step, we have added another layer to our brain, making it more and more powerful, sophisticated and most importantly, more self-aware, more conscious.
But once our brains reached the critical capacity that allows abstract thought and language, we've stepped out of nature's evolutionary game and started improving ourselves through technology: weapons to make us better killers, letters to improve our memory, mathematics and logic to improve our reasoning, science to go beyond our intuitions. Digital technology, of course, has further accelerated the process.
And now, without even realizing it, we are merging our consciousness with technology and are building the next layer in our brain. The more integrated and seamless communication between our brains and machines will become, the closer we get to the next stage in human evolution.
Unfortunately, there is a troubling philosophical nuance that may bother some of us: how do you think our primitive reptilian brain feels about having a frontal lobe stuck to it, controlling its actions for reasons too sophisticated for it to ever understand? Will it be satisfying for us to be to our digital brain as our primitive urges and hungers are to us?
On a somewhat related note, Google is experimenting with vi keyboard shortcuts for their search interface. You can test it at labs.google.com/experimental.
I'm surprised to see that no one has yet mentioned IceWM. It's just as fast (or faster) than this EDE, but is much more popular and customizable. You can make IceWM look like almost every operating system, including Ubuntu (with the IceBuntu theme), Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Plus, IceWM has the best keyboard shortcut support of any desktop environment I've ever used.
Slashdot Mirror
Facial recognition is not only pretty good, but is available in consumer applications. Google's Picasa does it quite well for your personal photos, and Face.com can go through your Facebook photos and quite accurately suggest tags.
I've seen very helpful Flash visualizations on news websites that helped understand the story better.
For example, this interactive map of drug war related deaths in Mexico is very well done. It doesn't just clarify the conflict, but encourages the reader to analyze and research the topic independently in addition to linearly reading the text of an article.
Just reading an article, listening to the radio or watching a news program often gives the illusion of learning and understanding new information, whereas in reality very little is retained.
Innovative and interactive ways of presenting information solve this problem.
I run an ad-supported website, but I don't see a problem with ad blocking software.
The reason? I get paid for ad clicks, and people who block ads are very unlikely to click them even if they they weren't blocked.
The site visitor is not obliged to click or view my ads.
.name has been active since 2001, for the very same purpose. It's not very popular.
If the LCD panel is connected to a Mac, you may want to try using Quartz Composer.
It's a flow-based programming language included in the developer tools package. You can use it to make just about any kind of animation (music visualizations, image filters, screensavers, etc.), and hook it up to live data.
I've set it up for my office, but didn't have time to write a very complex program yet, just a flashy 3D RSS feed of Twitter posts mentioning our product.
In my opinion, health and exercise are just as important to teach to children as History and Math. The problem is that physical education classes in the US are designed to focus on competition rather than health.
Interesting that the plan does not include promotion of Google Health.
Excuse me? He could tell them that only changes to the actual code need to be contributed back to the community, and furthermore, that code used within the company and never released does not have to be contributed.
But what does this spokesman for Linux say? That it's illegal but that there's no way to get caught? Does he work for Microsoft?
Yes, it would be much, much better.
What we dislike about Microsoft is not that it is big and powerful but that it releases poor quality products and destroys its competition using monopolistic tactics.
Google, on the other hand, supports Free and open-source software, has excellent products that geeks love, is concerned about seamless co-operation and integration of all web services (even ones that they don't own) and wins by having the better product, and constantly improving it.
I am far more interested in digitally enhancing human bodies and brains than creating a new AI species.
Consider this: throughout the eons of natural and sexual selection, we've evolved from fish to lizards, to mammals, to apes, and eventually to modern humans. With each evolutionary step, we have added another layer to our brain, making it more and more powerful, sophisticated and most importantly, more self-aware, more conscious.
But once our brains reached the critical capacity that allows abstract thought and language, we've stepped out of nature's evolutionary game and started improving ourselves through technology: weapons to make us better killers, letters to improve our memory, mathematics and logic to improve our reasoning, science to go beyond our intuitions. Digital technology, of course, has further accelerated the process.
And now, without even realizing it, we are merging our consciousness with technology and are building the next layer in our brain. The more integrated and seamless communication between our brains and machines will become, the closer we get to the next stage in human evolution.
Unfortunately, there is a troubling philosophical nuance that may bother some of us: how do you think our primitive reptilian brain feels about having a frontal lobe stuck to it, controlling its actions for reasons too sophisticated for it to ever understand? Will it be satisfying for us to be to our digital brain as our primitive urges and hungers are to us?
6. Number of people willing to deny reality.
That's what the iPhone is for!
On a somewhat related note, Google is experimenting with vi keyboard shortcuts for their search interface. You can test it at labs.google.com/experimental.
I'm surprised to see that no one has yet mentioned IceWM. It's just as fast (or faster) than this EDE, but is much more popular and customizable. You can make IceWM look like almost every operating system, including Ubuntu (with the IceBuntu theme), Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Plus, IceWM has the best keyboard shortcut support of any desktop environment I've ever used.