I wonder if this follows from the Holographic Principle, which states that the information from the entire universe scales with area, rather than volume. That is, the information inside our universe is embedded in 2-space, not 3- or 4-space.
The title wrongly assumes that anyone who prefers the lower quality recording can't tell the difference between the recordings. That's clearly not correct. Perhaps these one third can tell the difference but just prefer lossy recordings or AAC+ compression over OGG compression.
You can't ask people what their opinion is and then tell them they are either wrong or have no opinion because you don't share it.
Three weeks ago the northeast was hit by a 5.5 earthquake, but that wasn't newsworthy for slashdot. The northeast gets a big earthquake about once every hundred years, California gets them all the time!
Get it straight: Sewage is to be turned into H2, not H. Elemental hydrogen is unstable and is not used as a fuel. Hydrogen gas (the molecule H2), on the other hand, can be burned to form energy.
While Microsoft is not the answer, the open-source community should seriously think of another solution to a national e-ID problem. It's easy to bitch about Microsoft if you don't have a better idea.
The community would be well served to either design and endorse an open-source passport system, or alternatively design another means of identification in our hyper-paranoid electronic universe. Once we have done that, then we can seriously fight to keep our internet passport free!
A hundred years ago, an unexplained force seemed to be affecting the orbit of Mercury, causing a wobble in its orbit that should not have existed in a Newtonian framework. Then in 1915, Albert Einstein developed the theory of General Relativity, describing the complex curvatures of our universe that could explain Mercury's path around the Sun.
While this news report is very likely just a measurement error, we must be reminded that the last time we discovered an error in a celestial body's trajectory we reinvented the notion of the universe.
One of the big open questions of the day is: What is the shape of the universe? Euclidean, hyperbolic, a torus--we aren't sure. It is thought that each of these geometries would profoundly affect an object moving across the universe in a different way. These NASA probes could in a sense be the moving laboratory that we need to understand what exactly our universe looks like.
If you go to the Alcatel site http://www.alcatel.com/consumer/dsl/security.htm you see that the original Alcatel.doc file was posted April 12th (12/4/01), yet the Alcatel file downloaded from their site was modified April 16th (you can check this in the File -> Properties).
If Alcatel had not modified their.doc file as moron.com suggests, then why is the file modification date four days after the post date?
I had the pleasure of working recently at Duke University's Dept. of Neuroscience and can give all of you an idea of exactly what went on in the Nicolelis lab. For any action that we make, whether it be an arm curl or a leg extension, our brain neurons fire in a specific pattern--specific neurons in our motor cortex fire for specific actions. Using an electrode touching a neural cell, a research is able to check for whether neuron has fired. In the recent field of multielectrode physiology, large numbers of electrodes are surgically implanted into points throughout the motor cortex. From this, a mathematical model can be created to map the pattern of neuron firings when a movement is carried out. Thus, one can train a computer to essentially read brain activity.
In the lab's first significant multielectrode experiment, they put a rat in a specially designed cage. The rat was only presented with water when it hit a lever on the side of the cage. To do this, the rat must first extend its arm. Researchers at Duke modelled the arm movement the rat made using implanted electrodes. After a time of "learning," the researcheres were eventually able to disconnect the lever from the water supply entirely, and instead connect the "thought pattern" to the water supply. The rat would get water only when its neurons fired to tell it to extend its arm to press the lever (which at first was essentially the same thing as extending its arm since the rat can't move its arm without thinking about it). Unexpectedly, though after some time the rat began to learn that it was not the lever press that was controlling the water at all. The rat began to learn to control water release by thinking instead of moving. The rat, in effect, learned the thought pattern it needed to produce to get water.
From here, Miguel Nicolelis et al. achieved the much more complicated task of modelling movement in both space and time. Instead of just checking for a certain neural firing pattern, a model was needed for three dimensional arm movement. By restraining the monkey to movement in one direction, the researchers were able to model the deconsructed arm movement (i.e. what patterns are created to move the arm up, which patterns to move the arm left). Finally, the neuronal firing models could be reconstructed, and the entire movement modelled. To make the experiment *extra* interesting, the Duke researchers collaborated with MIT researchers to create a robotic arm in Boston, connected to Duke via the internet, which followed the directions that the computer model described. Thus the monkey moved his arm left in real time, and the robotic arm moved its arm left in real time.
The implications of these experiments are unreal. Imagine driving a car without using your hands or feet, or giving an amputee a new arm. Heck, one can even imagine that a super-brain could conceivably control an entire zombie body. Some argue that it is likely that humans do not have the brain capacity to control an independent appendage--we may need to give up a part of our brain used for something else. But, who knows! One of us could be the next octopus man, or a candidate for the next cyborg.
Robert McGehee
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if this follows from the Holographic Principle, which states that the information from the entire universe scales with area, rather than volume. That is, the information inside our universe is embedded in 2-space, not 3- or 4-space.
The title wrongly assumes that anyone who prefers the lower quality recording can't tell the difference between the recordings. That's clearly not correct. Perhaps these one third can tell the difference but just prefer lossy recordings or AAC+ compression over OGG compression.
You can't ask people what their opinion is and then tell them they are either wrong or have no opinion because you don't share it.
Three weeks ago the northeast was hit by a 5.5 earthquake, but that wasn't newsworthy for slashdot. The northeast gets a big earthquake about once every hundred years, California gets them all the time!
Get it straight: Sewage is to be turned into H2, not H. Elemental hydrogen is unstable and is not used as a fuel. Hydrogen gas (the molecule H2), on the other hand, can be burned to form energy.
While Microsoft is not the answer, the open-source community should seriously think of another solution to a national e-ID problem. It's easy to bitch about Microsoft if you don't have a better idea.
The community would be well served to either design and endorse an open-source passport system, or alternatively design another means of identification in our hyper-paranoid electronic universe. Once we have done that, then we can seriously fight to keep our internet passport free!
RIAA has announced that remembering Top 40 music (neuro audio encoding) has been expressly forbidden under the DMCA.
Wistling or singing such songs will result in a fine or possible jail time.
While this news report is very likely just a measurement error, we must be reminded that the last time we discovered an error in a celestial body's trajectory we reinvented the notion of the universe.
One of the big open questions of the day is: What is the shape of the universe? Euclidean, hyperbolic, a torus--we aren't sure. It is thought that each of these geometries would profoundly affect an object moving across the universe in a different way. These NASA probes could in a sense be the moving laboratory that we need to understand what exactly our universe looks like.
Robert
http://wso.williams.edu/~rmcgehee
If you go to the Alcatel site http://www.alcatel.com/consumer/dsl/security.htm you see that the original Alcatel .doc file was posted April 12th (12/4/01), yet the Alcatel file downloaded from their site was modified April 16th (you can check this in the File -> Properties).
.doc file as moron.com suggests, then why is the file modification date four days after the post date?
If Alcatel had not modified their
Bobby
http://wso.williams.edu/~rmcgehee
I had the pleasure of working recently at Duke University's Dept. of Neuroscience and can give all of you an idea of exactly what went on in the Nicolelis lab. For any action that we make, whether it be an arm curl or a leg extension, our brain neurons fire in a specific pattern--specific neurons in our motor cortex fire for specific actions. Using an electrode touching a neural cell, a research is able to check for whether neuron has fired. In the recent field of multielectrode physiology, large numbers of electrodes are surgically implanted into points throughout the motor cortex. From this, a mathematical model can be created to map the pattern of neuron firings when a movement is carried out. Thus, one can train a computer to essentially read brain activity. In the lab's first significant multielectrode experiment, they put a rat in a specially designed cage. The rat was only presented with water when it hit a lever on the side of the cage. To do this, the rat must first extend its arm. Researchers at Duke modelled the arm movement the rat made using implanted electrodes. After a time of "learning," the researcheres were eventually able to disconnect the lever from the water supply entirely, and instead connect the "thought pattern" to the water supply. The rat would get water only when its neurons fired to tell it to extend its arm to press the lever (which at first was essentially the same thing as extending its arm since the rat can't move its arm without thinking about it). Unexpectedly, though after some time the rat began to learn that it was not the lever press that was controlling the water at all. The rat began to learn to control water release by thinking instead of moving. The rat, in effect, learned the thought pattern it needed to produce to get water. From here, Miguel Nicolelis et al. achieved the much more complicated task of modelling movement in both space and time. Instead of just checking for a certain neural firing pattern, a model was needed for three dimensional arm movement. By restraining the monkey to movement in one direction, the researchers were able to model the deconsructed arm movement (i.e. what patterns are created to move the arm up, which patterns to move the arm left). Finally, the neuronal firing models could be reconstructed, and the entire movement modelled. To make the experiment *extra* interesting, the Duke researchers collaborated with MIT researchers to create a robotic arm in Boston, connected to Duke via the internet, which followed the directions that the computer model described. Thus the monkey moved his arm left in real time, and the robotic arm moved its arm left in real time. The implications of these experiments are unreal. Imagine driving a car without using your hands or feet, or giving an amputee a new arm. Heck, one can even imagine that a super-brain could conceivably control an entire zombie body. Some argue that it is likely that humans do not have the brain capacity to control an independent appendage--we may need to give up a part of our brain used for something else. But, who knows! One of us could be the next octopus man, or a candidate for the next cyborg. Robert McGehee