mer - novembre 28, 2007, 02:36 m.

 

I came across the term "The Cupertino Effect" on the Language Log, and I was puzzled for a moment, because I had never heard of this phenomenon despite it seemingly being related to Apple.

But it's not. According to OUPblog:

Writers and translators for the European Union even have a name for this affliction of the electronic age: the Cupertino effect. Some older spellcheckers had wordlists containing co-operation but not cooperation without the hyphen. So when a user typed in unhyphenated cooperation, the spellchecker would flag it as an error. The first suggestion thrown up was not co-operation, however, but Cupertino, the name of a city in northern California.

This is hilarious. And the entry even links to a Google search that indeed comes up with several instances of The Cupertino Effect.

, 02:28 m.

 

Chris Baker over at Wired Magazine profiles David X. Cohen and Matt Groening, co-creators of Futurama. (In case you didn't know, Groening is also the creator of The Simpsons.)

Due to high sales of the Futurama DVDs, Fox has green-lighted a fifth season for Futurama, after a long hiatus. It's actually being released on DVD first, and then being syndicated on television. The content on each of the four DVDs is being split up into half-hour episodes for TV, which is kind of strange. And, apparently, the first DVD is available as of yesterday.

Probably the most hilarious part of the whole article:

Cohen says that they're giving hardcore fans no excuse to wait for the airing on Comedy Central next year. "We're producing it in HD with 5.1 surround sound, and we're filling up every bit of available space on the disc," he says. There'll be a few minutes of material that won't appear on the TV versions of each episode, an in-depth lecture on the role of mathematics in the show, and a full episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad, the most popular show in the 31st century. It consists of a shot of the titular amphibian, who fixes viewers with his trance-inducing gaze. (Diehards who watch the motionless toad for half an hour will discover hilarious fake commercial breaks and a few other surprises.)

Hahahaha, an actual episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad. Awesome.

(via Drew Thaler via Twitter)

, 02:10 m.

 

Seth Mnookin's 4-page profile of Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group, in Wired Magazine is an indicting piece which sums up why the record industry is so out-of-touch with the digital marketplace. It's being run by people like Morris, who go exclusively for short-term profits over the long-term health of the industry, even though there have been signs for years that something needs to be done.

It's funny, too, because it pretty much also confirms that Universal's strategy right now is simply to break Apple's stranglehold on the digital download market with — altogether now — subscription services! Only now Universal wants audio player manufacturers to cover the costs of the subscription services, not the consumers. Yeah, that'll work out well, especially when, as Mnookin points out, DRM is still likely to be involved.

Choice quote from the article:

Morris insists there wasn't a thing he or anyone else could have done differently. "There's no one in the record company that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me." Morris' almost willful cluelessness is telling. "He wasn't prepared for a business that was going to be so totally disrupted by technology," says a longtime industry insider who has worked with Morris. "He just doesn't have that kind of mind."

, 02:03 m.

 

While making his most recent film Sicko, Michael Moore visited Norway, which according to Moore is "first on the United Nations' 'Human Development' list, meaning they're ranked number one for things like literacy, education, health care, and per-capita income." In this clip, not included in the movie, he profiles Norway's society as well as their prison care system.

Admittedly, the background music goes a long way to making it seem an idyllic place, but it's still a pretty ridiculous contrast between Norway and the United States.

(via digg)

, 01:56 m.

 

Jeffrey Deskovic was wrongly convicted of rape and murder, and served nearly 16 years in jail until the Innocence Project took up his case and freed him on the basis of DNA evidence. This slideshow is narrated by Deskovic himself, and talks about his first year out of jail, the loneliness, the lack of friends, and the out-of-place feeling that he has because he's been cut off from the world for so long.

This is practically an indictment of the United States prison system all on its own.

(via digg)

, 01:49 m.

 

Rob Griffiths makes an astute observation in Leopard: many commands are starting to be hidden in contextual menus, with no other way to access those commands. This is a big no-no according to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, and one of the biggest arguments for keeping a one-button mouse as standard for all new Macs was to prevent this kind of insidious, creeping change.

Griffiths points out numerous examples in iTunes, Mail, Time Machine, Safari, and even System Preferences. It wasn't something I really consciously realized in the switch to Leopard, but I agree with Griffiths' conclusions, and his desire for these features to be replicated in regular menus as well.

, 01:44 m.

 

EyelessWriter.com posted a video on YouTube, wherein they called Verizon Wireless 56 separate times and asked two questions each time. The result is pretty astonishing: only one telephone rep (out of 56!) answered with the correct charges for both questions, and half of the responses were due to the cents/dollars mix-up that's been plastered all over the web.

These kinds of things are what keep me from buying a cell phone. And there's no way I'm ever signing a contract with a cell phone company, even if it would be for an iPhone.

, 01:33 m.

 

The Washington Post has a fascinating look at some of the more recent advances in knowledge in the field of genetics. Among the topics the article examines: how a single gene was thought to produce only one protein, but now it's evident that this is not the case; and "junk DNA", the stuff that was thought to be pretty much inactive — now, it seems that evolution actually tends to preserve this junk DNA over the "active" part of our DNA in which a single change in a nucleotide pair has a big effect.

, 01:18 m.

 

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, and Steve Horowitz, Engineering Director, introduce Android — Google's open cell phone platform — and demo some of the capabilities of the platform through two prototype handsets. Three things jump out at me from this video.

First, Brin is terrible at reciting scripted lines. Absolutely atrocious. It's kind of painful to watch him speak in this video. Horowitz is much better, even though it's kind of weird sometimes how he has just one sentence to say about a certain feature, and then moves on. I also thought it was bizarre how Horowitz immediately riffs off of the publicity of the "gPhone"; why create disappointment at the outset of the video?

Second, WebKit is billed as "the industry standard these days, the one that allows you to see webpages just as they would appear on your desktop." As much as I love WebKit, that's kind of false on both counts. Since when is it an industry standard? Sure, Nokia uses it on their phones as does Apple on their own iPhone, but I'm pretty sure that's not such a large portion of the smartphone market. Besides, it's got hardly any penetration on the desktop on non-Mac platforms. And it's the only one that "allows you to see webpages just as they would appear on your desktop"? Really?

Lastly, the demos look good, but all software technology demos do. I'm skeptical if anyone outside of Google can create software that looks as good as the prototypes.

, 01:00 m.

 

Marc Andreessen writes about the potential effects of the ongoing Writers Strike for the entertainment industry. His theory, as summarized in his own words:

The writers' strike, and the studios' response to the strike, may radically accelerate a structural shift in the media industry -- a shift of power from studios and conglomerates towards creators and talent.

It's an interesting opinion, and one that's certainly more desirable than the current situation. Andreeseen basically thinks that since it's not nearly as expensive to produce your own content or to market it thanks to advances in technologies and the internets, that the old, outdated model in which Hollywood was created — before the computer revolution — is going to be largely cast off if the Writers Strike continues for any long period of time.

dom - novembre 25, 2007, 11:27 p.

 

The rule of law aboard the International Space Station poses some interesting problems. If two astronauts get into a fight, whose laws apply? Who takes ownership of inventions created aboard the ISS? The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 has been ratified by 98 nations and says that the applicable laws are determined by whose module you are in: the laws that apply are the laws of the owner of that module.

Interestingly, this poses problems when the European Space Agency's Columbus space lab gets integrated into the ISS next month. The lab doesn't belong to any one country and "Europe" isn't a well-defined enough entity to apply.

The European Science Foundation covers some of the resolutions to questions in this legal murky ground.

(via Slashdot)

, 11:16 p.

 

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has released a "technology document" that outlines his stance towards technology and specific proposals that address issues that the U.S. is facing with regards to technology, including patent reform, open government, network neutrality, privacy, and H1B reform.

ArsTechnica analyzes the document and finds it overall quite good, despite being far too ambitious in the open government area and not far-reaching enough in the privacy area.

, 11:11 p.

 

Remember Apple's anti-caps lock conspiracy? Apple confirms that it dislikes the key.

Also of amusing interest: "[t]he right Shift key on an aluminum Apple Keyboard (2007) does not work when using the Kotoeri shortcut (Option+Shift+Fn+F5) to switch to 'Romaji' input mode." Apple says that this "functions as designed". WTF? That's an extremely specific design consideration!

, 11:08 p.

 

iTunes 7.5 brought us a bunch of little minor changes: I covered the cosmetic changes, ssp covered the improved editor for smart playlists, and iLounge covers everything that we missed.

, 10:18 p.

 

Garrett Lisi, who has a doctorate in physics but otherwise is out of the academic sphere, has possibly found a theory of physics that accounts for all of the forces and particles in the universe, including the electromagnetic force, the strong force, the weak force, and gravity. The standard model doesn't account for gravity, and the only other theory that does is string theory.

Lisi's theory is based on E8, an eight-dimensional mathematical pattern, and uses far less-complicated mathematics than does string theory.

You can read Lisi's article directly at arXiv.org, a public repository for papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, and statistics.

(via the Telegraph)

, 10:04 p.

 

Remember how it turned out that ES&S sold 972 uncertified electronic voting machines to various counties in California? Debra Bowen, California's Secretary of State, filed a suit on behalf of California seeking the full $14.72 million in damages.

Woo! Go Bowen!

Classic quote from ES&S and Bowen's response:

ES&S:

The limited modifications made to the AutoMARK’s hardware were extremely minor [...]

Bowen:

California law doesn't ask the manufacturer to decide whether the changes are small or large or medium-size.

, 09:57 p.

 

I usually hate online quizzes, but this one seems to be pretty good: Could You Pass 8th Grade Science? There's only 26 questions so it'll only take you a few minutes; I was surprised to see how many were based in geology. The only one I missed was the one about how mammals respire.

I took an actual elementary school pre-test for a science course from 5th grade, and I passed that one with no errors whatsoever. So, yes, I could pass 5th and 8th grade science. :)

dom - novembre 18, 2007, 02:19 m.

 

Kirk McElhearn posts details about Spotlight's "secret search syntax" in Leopard. McElhearn shows how to quickly use boolean searches, search by ranges of dates, and the awesome power lurking behind the kind syntax, which is practically infinite in Leopard. Some great stuff in there, to match a great upgrade to Spotlight in Leopard.

, 02:16 m.

 

Bush's disapproval ratings in a November Gallup poll were astonishing: 50% "strongly disapprove", and is the highest disapproval rating Gallup has ever measured for a President, slightly topping Nixon's 48% disapproval rating in February 1974. It's worth pointing out that these ratings are statistically equivalent, though, given the margin of error (via digg).

This guy seriously needs to be impeached for the crap he's pulled. And yet the fucking Democrats in Congress don't seem to be doing anything to open hearings even on the impeachment of Dick Cheney, seeing as Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi didn't support the Kucinich's resolution against Cheney (via digg).

, 02:07 m.

 

If you watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and need a fix for the lack of new shows because of the Writers Strike, look no further than these two hilarious videos: Jason Ross, one of the Daily Show's writers, reports on the Writers Strike, and the Colbert Report writers parody an entertainment executive.

, 01:59 m.

 

Today's gratuitous cat video is brought to you by Digg, the number 5 and the letter Q.

, 01:53 m.

 

Glenn Fleishman pens two excellent articles on Back to My Mac: one on how you actually use it and how you enable the options in your router so that Back to My Mac works, and one on the actual technologies that power Back to My Mac.

Anyone know how to access a Back to My Mac-ed Mac from pre-Leopard systems? There's got to be a hostname that .mac uses.

, 01:39 m.

 

John Chambers at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC postulates that a fifth rocky planet in our solar system was the cause of many of the bombardments by asteroids on the moon and the Earth. Chambers model predicts that the gravitational pulls of other planets eventually caused its orbit to destabilize and fall into the Sun.

Kind of a spectacular theory, actually.

(via digg)

, 12:44 m.

 

This seems like a pretty amazing advance: apparently, "researchers at Boston University believe they can correctly identify the sound Mr. Ramsay's brain is imagining some 80% of the time." They're going to start work on speech synthesis software that takes the data from the man's brain so that he can actually speak through a computer.

(via Slashdot)

, 12:31 m.

 

This is pretty ridiculous: Ryan Block of Engadget replaced the hard drive in his MacBook Pro with a solid-state 64 GiB flash drive. It includes video of Mac OS X startup — time from pressing the power button? A little over 20 seconds.

, 12:03 m.

 

So Michael Eisner, former CEO of Disney (the one that completely fucked up the deal between Disney and Pixar before he was ousted), says that Apple takes the largest portion of profits from online distribution, leaving nothing to the studios or the writers. We're talking about online video distribution through iTunes, not music distribution, where the situation is completely the reverse.

It's funny to see Eisner complaining about this, because guess what? Apple has nothing to do with DVD distribution, and yet the studios still give pennies to the writers for each DVD. And yet now you turn around and complain about Apple? Bahahaha, don't make me laugh.

And another funny: Warner Music Group's CEO Edgar Bronfman waxed poetic about Apple's offerings, billing the iPhone as "brilliantly written software presented on a beautifully designed device with a spectacular user interface" that "throw[s] all the accepted notions about pricing, billing platforms and brand loyalty right out the window." Hahahahaha. HAHAHAHA. That's great. This coming from the studio that refused to license their content DRM-free to Apple, and instead had a hissy-fit and went to Amazon. This irony is not lost on Don Reisinger.

Finally, the judge overseeing one of the cases the RIAA has filed against a university student, Arista v. Does 1-19, took it upon herself to tell the RIAA to "show cause" after reading John Doe #3's "motion to quash" (via Slashdot). Basically, the filed motion to quash asks the court to invalidate the order by the RIAA to discover more information about the defendant, to invalidate the subpoena, and to dismiss the RIAA's complaint entirely. The judge's order to "show cause" means that the RIAA has to show why the judge shouldn't grant Doe #3's motion, and why it shouldn't apply to the other Does in the case. It's also unusual because the judge took it upon herself to order the RIAA to show cause.

This is a pretty big setback for the RIAA.

sab - novembre 17, 2007, 11:39 p.

 

I really like stacks in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and the live preview is cool although not too useful. These stack overlays look beautiful, however, and would solve the problem with confusing live previews.

Perhaps Apple could use the stack's representation folder icon as the badge on the stack overlay, so that you don't have to resort to the ugly kludge of having an extra file inside your stack.

, 11:35 p.

 

Mike Lee posts some thoughts about how to make Cocoa, probably the most popular API for Mac OS X, better. Some of these things are over my head, and some of them I can understand but have not had personal experience with the issues, but it's still interesting to hear people talk about Cocoa.

Don't miss his follow-up post, as well as Scott Stevenson's response to the original article.

mar - novembre 6, 2007, 02:39 m.

 

If you're a grammar nazi, you're sure to like this 13-page question and answer session on grammar style in the New York Times, fielding questions on specific nitpickings (healthful vs. healthy) to when to refer to people using their title or simply their full name.

Very interesting stuff.

(via the DFLL)

, 02:33 m.

 

Bruce Schneier on security:

We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats.

, 02:27 m.

 

ArsTechnica reviews a bunch of 802.11n-capable routers: one each from Apple, Netgear, D-Link, and Linksys. ArsTechnica recommends Apple's AirPort Extreme base station the most, because it has a "fantastic user interface and allows you to easily share a printer or hard drive on your network," but also because it's the only router that supports the 5.0 GHz spectrum. This spectrum offers better throughput since it's much less crowded with other devices. (IIRC, 802.11a also ran on the 5.0 GHz spectrum.)

, 02:19 m.

 

Jeff Harrell writes about Time Machine, and how he used to have a pretty good backup solution using third-party software, but Time Machine now makes it completely painless. This is the most important thing about Time Machine: being the biggest and most visible new feature of Leopard, it makes people want to do backups.

He also again makes the suggestion that Apple should ship two hard drives in every Mac, so that support for backups will be provided automatically and without the user even needing to buy an external hard drive. This suggestion was first made by John Siracusa. I still think it's an excellent suggestion, even with the advent of Time Machine.

And of-fucking-course, the very first comment comes from an uninformed user who automatically thinks ZFS = good, open source = good, closed source = bad. Ergh. I thought we settled that.

, 02:16 m.

 

Scott Stevenson on user interface design:

The basic idea I took away form this is if you test, make sure you're testing the right thing. UI success may come from efficiency, but it may also come from a longer-running or more awkward task (by scientific definition) which is subjectively more pleasant to perform.

He includes an interesting quote from Bruce Tognazzini, who wrote the Apple Human Interface Guidelines: apparently, in one instance, users consistently reported that using the keyboard was faster, whereas timing actually showed that using the mouse was faster.

(via the DFLL)

, 02:11 m.

 

Remember the DARPA 2005 Grand Challenge where cars had to drive themselves through a course in the desert? Well, this year, DARPA held the Urban Challenge where automated cars had to drive in an urban setting, obeying traffic laws and other cars. Carnegie Mellon University won the first prize of $2 million, for their car which passed the finish line in the time allotted; their total time was about 20 minutes under Stanford's second place time.

, 02:02 m.

 

What every client needs to foil that dastardly designer: Make My Logo Bigger Cream! P.S. Act now and you'll get extra products, absolutely free!

(via the DFLL)

, 01:54 m.

 

About a week ago, the A380, the super-jumbo double-decker jet from Airbus which can hold up to 850 passengers, took its first flight from Singapore to Sydney. As noted by the BBC article, the Boeing 747 was previously the largest jet for four whole decades.

mer - ottobre 31, 2007, 02:21 m.

 

Eric Boehlert expertly analyzes Stephen Colbert's 2008 run for the presidency. Remember, Colbert is only running in South Carolina, a dominantly conservative state, and that Colbert could have an effect nationally or even in South Carolina (since he's a liberal) is completely missing the point. Colbert mocks the mainstream media all the time, and them lapping it up and reporting on it and citing opinion polls is the real joke. Or perhaps it's just pathetic.

, 02:17 m.

 

Just a reminder: if you're interested in how fast the Mac community installs Leopard, the newest version of Mac OS X, look no further than OmniGroup's software update statistics which tracks this information. Granted, it's not necessarily completely representative (because OmniGroup caters to a specific section of the market of Mac users), but it's still a good indication.

In only a few days, Leopard has already gained 3.7% market share.

, 02:15 m.

 

I continue to laugh at the ludicrousness of NBC. You know how there was a spat between NBC and Apple over the pricing of TV shows? Well, it turns out that NBC wanted a cut of Apple's iPod revenue. This is like the RIAA wanting levies on hard drives because they could potentially be used to pirate songs. Not everyone buys NBC content, so it's ridiculous to expect a cut on all iPods. Besides, does NBC request a cut of revenue from manufacturers of DVD players? I don't think so.

As my friend wrote, "They destroyed my pricing! It was a really good pricing."

, 02:05 m.

 

This is great: The Pirate Bay, the premier website that provides links to all sorts of copyright-infringing material, has snapped up the domain ifpi.com . Why's that relevant? ifpi.org is registered to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, an organization that is pretty much the RIAA but on an international level.

The Pirate Bay has pointed ifpi.com to a website ostensibly for the "International Federation of Pirates Interests". Nice.

(via digg)

, 02:01 m.

 

Holy crap. "Some residents of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey" will soon have access to Verizon's new FiOS 20/20 service. FiOS is a fiber optic connection to the internet, and the 20/20 service provides 20 Mbps of bandwidth for both downloading and uploading, and this is at $64.99 a month. In contrast, my old cable internet through Comcast was around 6 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up for $60.00/month, and my current internet is 1.5 Mbps down and 384 kbps up for $20.00 a month.

Man, I'd so want FiOS if it were available here in the Bay Area.

, 01:59 m.

 

Comcast, my previous ISP, has been caught red-handed in violating network neutrality: they're engaging in traffic shaping, blocking traffic that involves BitTorrent. While it's not illegal, it is a shady tactic, especially because BitTorrent is used for a variety of legitimate uses (I believe World of Warcraft uses BitTorrent to deliver updates), but also because Lotus Notes seems to be a victim of this traffic shaping as well. What's funny, though, is that their explanations are equally as ludicrous as the notion that there don't need to be protections on net neutrality.

What's great about this, though, is that it provides first-hand evidence that there needs to be legislation to ensure network neutrality. No website or service should be given "priority" access on the internet; that's probably one of the fundamental reasons why the internet has become an indispensable tool in our lives: you can access whatever content you want whenever you want. As ArsTechnica notes, two senators have called for the Senate Commerce Committee to look into network neutrality.

, 01:54 m.

 

I've been running my own series of weblog entries detailing some of the more minor changes in Leopard, and Matt Gemmell has a long list of good ones as well, as does Chris Biagini.

, 01:15 m.

 

This is pretty cool for those iPod touch and iPhone owners out there: visit a website on your iPod/iPhone, click a link, and your iPod touch or iPhone will be jailbroken, so you can install third-party apps on it.

These things are getting easier by the day.

mar - ottobre 23, 2007, 09:14 p.

 

James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and co-winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, had this to say before his talk at London's Science Museum: "all our social policies are based on the fact that their [Africans'] intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really." He added that he hoped everyone was equal, but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

Watson's talk was cancelled after he made those comments. Shades of Summers, anyone?

I'm a bit conflicted on these kinds of debates. While I believe that all races and both genders are equally intelligent on the whole (I have met and discussed many things with intelligent people from many different countries), I don't really think that the question of innate intelligence itself is completely out of line.

First of all, we know that genetics controls many (if not all) of the aspects of our bodies, so is it ridiculous to think that it controls many (if not all) of the aspects of our minds? Is it unreasonable to think that genetics could make one individual more intelligent than another? (The question of measuring intelligence is another question entirely.) Why does the question become inherently racist or sexist when we're dealing with two members of different races or genders, even when the question can be equally applied to two members of the same race or gender?

Second, men are generally better-suited to manual labor than women are. That's not to say that no women are ever suited to manual labor, but men are generally stronger and I don't think that's a controversial statement. So genetics determines a physical trait that makes one gender better at one occupation than another; couldn't genetics do the same for a mental trait?

Of course, we don't know whether nature or nurture (i.e.: upbringing) is more responsible for mental differences, or even physical differences. And that's essentially the same question as asking whether one individual is innately more intelligent than another or not.

(via digg)

, 09:14 p.

 

Chat Noir is a flash game where you click in the various circles to designate them as blocked positions, and in doing so, try to trap the cat. It's very frustrating initially, until you figure out the general strategy. (Then it gets kind of boring. :P )

(via digg)

, 09:12 p.

 

The European Union has agreed to a new treaty, to be put up for ratification next year, which replaces the failed EU constitution that was rejected a few years ago by French and Dutch voters.

It's similar to the constitution, but it does not completely replace all previous treaties; it simply amends them. It replaces the current rotating president of the European Council with a chosen politician to server for two and a half years (as opposed to every half year), redistributes voting weights among the 27 member states and removes some national veto powers.

The BBC has a good overview of the new treaty and links to the draft treaty documents.

, 09:04 p.

 

Two funny quotation sites that I've recently was pointed to: Overheard at the Beach and Fundies Say the Darndest Things. Not for those who want to maintain a high opinion of the human race.

, 08:29 p.

 

Rob Brown has an interesting essay positing that perhaps the traditional cause-and-effect view of fundamentalist religion causing the rejection of evolution might actually be backwards. His hypothesis is that perhaps, to some extent, evolution is so hard to understand and counter-intuitive that it causes the position of rejecting evolution.

In that vein, instead of trying to explain something that seems to strike at the heart of fundamentalist religion, Brown contends that other counter-intuitive things similar to evolution should be explained first. He gives three examples: Wikipedia, prediction markets, and recommendation systems.

Directly from Brown:

While I am not suggesting that counter-intuitiveness is the only reason people reject evolution, I would instead suggest that the two factors -- fundamentalist religion on the one hand, and the conceptual difficulty of evolution on the other -- are propping each other up. If one were to fall, so might the other. But removing the influence of religion is nearly impossible. It is deep in the culture, so short of physically moving someone to a different environment, it can't simply be removed, and it can't easily be argued away.

Removing the conceptual difficulty of evolution-like concepts, though, might be a much lower hanging fruit that has been largely ignored.

(via digg)

, 08:14 p.

 

Ugh, things like this really piss me off. The current administration dragged its heels so much that lawyers couldn't even get the names of some of the prisoners in order to represent them in a court of law, per the writ of Habeus Corpus, one of the fundamental rights specifically granted by the Constitution: to challenge your incarceration.

So Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, an employee at Guantánamo, writes down the names and some alphanumeric codes from the records of the prisoners, and sends it off to the Center for Constitutional Rights in a valentine. One of the lawyers overseeing a lawsuit regarding Guantánamo told the presiding judge, and then was forced to turn over the records.

To recap: Diaz leaks info that should've been given to lawyers in the first place, and then gets prosecuted, sentenced to 6 months in prison, and stripped of his military law license. January 20, 2009 can't come fast enough.

(via digg)