Topics

401

Living Room / Speculations on the Future of Science

« on: September 03, 2006, 09:35 AM »

Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprises us. At the core of science's self-modification is technology. New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery. The achievement of science is to know new things; the evolution of science is to know them in new ways. What evolves is less the body of what we know and more the nature of our knowing

http://edge.org/3rd_...6/kelly06_index.html

402

Living Room / Non-Duality Cartoons

« on: September 03, 2006, 09:30 AM »

These Non-Duality Cartoons can be used on your website if you place a link from each cartoon back to this website at http://advaitatoons.blogspot.com/

I chose this one because it has been one of my favorite sayings for many years.

403

Living Room / The Longest Line in America

« on: September 03, 2006, 09:08 AM »

Let me tell you a secret. For years I have wanted to travel the longest straight line that traverses America. My rules for such a line were simple. The line could not pass outside America and could not go through the oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. In other words, the line had to stay inside the continental boundaries.

http://sprott.physic...c/american-line.html

404

Living Room / What we believe but can not prove

« on: September 03, 2006, 08:24 AM »

Our day-to-day beliefs often come from established theories, but what about beliefs based on theories in progress? A new book asks literary and scientific thinkers about what they believe but cannot prove.

http://www.npr.org/t....php?storyId=5254203

405

Living Room / Asperger's Syndrome/Sci-fi connection?

« on: September 03, 2006, 07:40 AM »

However, in being someone with Asperger's Syndrome who is devoted to science fiction, I am hardly alone. Surfing the Internet brings to light numerous observations that science fiction fans frequently exhibit all the traits of Asperger's Syndrome; a recent autobiography by one man with the condition, Will Hadcroft's The Feeling's Unmutual: Growing Up with Asperger Syndrome (Undiagnosed) (2004), describes his youthful fascination with science fiction and fantasy; and a book designed to comfort children with Asperger's Syndrome, Kathy Hoopmann's Of Mice and Aliens: An Asperger Adventure (2001), describes a boy with the condition who meets a newly arrived space alien and compares the boy's problems in adjusting to his world with the alien's problems in adjusting to life on Earth. All explicit links between science fiction and Asperger's Syndrome will necessarily be recent, because the condition — although first identified by Austrian doctor Hans Asperger in the 1940s — was not named until 1981 and was not accepted by the medical community until the 1990s; but there seems little doubt that Asperger's Syndrome has been around for a long time, and some have theorized that a wide variety of historical figures, including as Isaac Newton, Ludwig van Beethoven, Jane Austen, Alexander Graham Bell, and Albert Einstein, had Asperger's Syndrome. Still, there are reasons to believe that the condition became more and more common during the twentieth century — perhaps uncoincidentally, also the century that saw the emergence of the genre of science fiction.

http://www.locusmag...._HomoAspergerus.html

406

Living Room / How to stop time

« on: September 03, 2006, 07:31 AM »

Einstein demonstrated that time is relative.

But the rabbit-hole goes much deeper. Quantum physics discovered that consciousness is entangled in matter in some inexplicable ways; but other than the very fast, or very small, or very large, we tend to assume our “ordinary” reality conforms more to the laws of Newton. Simple cause and effect unfolding with clockwork constancy —well, it’s time to shatter this assumption. Let’s stop time.

http://www.grasshopp...mes/how-to-stop-time

407

Living Room / Exploring Stephen Hawking's Flexiverse

« on: September 03, 2006, 05:58 AM »

Hawking and Hartle's original work on the quantum properties of the cosmos suggested that imaginary time, which seemed like a mathematical curiosity in the sum-over-histories approach, held the answer to understanding the origin of the universe.

Add up the histories of the universe in imaginary time, and time is transformed into space. The result is that, when the universe was small enough to be governed by quantum mechanics, it had four spatial dimensions and no dimension of time: where time would usually come to an end at a singularity, a new dimension of space appears, and, poof! The singularity vanishes.

read more:  http://www.brothersj.../oughtnt_we_dig.html

408

Living Room / Thought experiments

« on: September 03, 2006, 05:37 AM »

You are offered a deal in which you are asked to flip a coin ten times. If any one of the flips comes up tails, you are swiftly and painlessly killed. If it comes up heads ten times in a row, you are given a banana. Do you take the deal?

For the purposes of this thought experiment, we may assume it is a perfectly fair coin, and that you like bananas, although not any more so than would generally be considered healthy. We may also assume for simplicity that your life or death is of absolutely no consequence to anyone but yourself: you live in secret on a deserted island, isolated from contact with the outside world, where you have everything you need other than bananas. We may finally assume that we know for certainty that there is no afterlife; upon death, you simply cease to exist in any form. So, there is an approximately 99.9% chance that you will be dead, which by hypothesis implies that you will feel no regrets or feelings of disappointment. And if you survive, you get a banana. What do you think?

Now change the experiment a little. Instead of flipping a coin, you measure the x-component of the spin of an electron that has been prepared in an eigenstate of the y-component of the spin; according to the rules of quantum mechanics, there is an even chance that you will measure the x-component of the spin to be up or down. You do this ten times, with ten different electrons, and are offered the same wager as before, with spin-up playing the role of “heads” for the coin. The only difference is that, instead of a classical probability, we are dealing with branching/collapsing wavefunctions. I.e., if you believe in something like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there will always be a branch of the wavefunction of the universe in which you continue to exist and now have a banana. Do you take the deal?

http://cosmicvarianc...thought-experiments/

409

Living Room / Trippy Trick

« on: September 03, 2006, 05:28 AM »

View this video full size.
Stare closely at the center of the screen and keep your eyes still.
Look away from the screen when instructed.

http://video.google....=8582686166148377731

410

Living Room / The Museum of Unworkable Devices

« on: September 03, 2006, 05:23 AM »

This museum is a celebration of fascinating devices that don't work. It houses diverse examples of the perverse genius of inventors who refused to let their thinking be intimidated by the laws of nature, remaining optimistic in the face of repeated failures. Watch and be amazed as we bring to life eccentric and even intricate perpetual motion machines that have remained steadfastly unmoving since their inception. Marvel at the ingenuity of the human mind, as it reinvents the square wheel in all of its possible variations. Exercise your mind to puzzle out exactly why they don't work as the inventors intended.

http://www.lhup.edu/...ek/museum/unwork.htm

411

Living Room / Dr Michio Kaku talks parallel universes

« on: September 03, 2006, 05:19 AM »

Read Dr Michio Kaku's answers to these questions and many more:

• How do you see the experimental confirmation on superstring theory ? How long will it remain an unproven theory?
• Could I exist in a parallel universe and if so would my life take a different course?
• How important is time to the M-Theory?
• Your theory explains the start of our Universe, but where do the membranes come from that started it?
• Can dark matter and black holes be explained using the M-Theory?
• What is meant by "Bubbles of Nothing"?
• What are the possibilities for a second Big Bang collision? Is it theoretically possible?
• How can one travel in time when time does not exist? And if it did, would you know which way to point your ship?
• Do eleven dimensions mean there are other life forms of any kind?
• Is there the possibility that unconscious knowledge is transferred between universes?

http://www.bbc.co.uk...at/michio_kaku.shtml

412

Living Room / 13 Things that do not make sense

« on: September 03, 2006, 05:07 AM »

Older but interesting:

http://www.newscient...ns?id=mg18524911.600

1. The placebo effect
2. The horizon problem
3. Ultra-energetic cosmic rays
4. Belfast homeopathy results
5. Dark matter
6. Viking's methane
7. Tetraneutrons
8. The Pioneer anomaly
9. Dark energy
10. The Kuiper cliff
11. The Wow signal
12. Not-so-constant constants
13. Cold fusion

413

Living Room / 10,000 Reasons Civilization is Doomed

« on: September 03, 2006, 04:30 AM »

Welcome to the 10,000 Reasons Civilization is Doomed website. This site was started by six friends who, sitting around the dinner table one Saturday night, came to the conclusion that civilization was doomed. We felt this way not because of the inevitable dimming of our sun, or an errant asteroid, but rather because of the idiocy of our times. Frankly, we are tired of the fake optimism, superficiality, non-talented celebrities, doped-up athletes, dishonest and illiterate politicians, corporate thieves, wife-beaters and evangelical terrorists rampant in the world today and we decided that one way of making ourselves feel better would be to list them for all the world to see and to add upon. 

This is a list that is started by the people, aggregated by the people and an offering to all people everywhere that want to take solace in a list that proves that we are not being fooled. Rather, we are on to all the bullshit out there and want to make it clear to anyone that adds to this list that you, too, can take comfort in like-minded individuals that have come together to express the 10,000 Reasons Civilization is Doomed. Perhaps if we are heard, some of the doom can be deterred.

Thank you for contributing to this list.

414

Living Room / Lots of info about lots of browsers

« on: August 31, 2006, 04:20 AM »

I found this interesting page while searching for browser detection info for mobile browsers.

This gives an overview of the browsers and their futures.

This page covers:  AOL,  AOL-Compuserve,  AOL Explorer,  AOL-Netscape,  AOL-TV,  Apple Safari,  DoCoMo iMode,  Escape,  HotJava,  IBM Home Page Reader,  IBM Web Browser,  iCab,  Konqueror,  Lynx,  Microsoft Internet Explorer,  Microsoft MSN Explorer,  Microsoft MSN-TV Viewer,  Mosaic,  Mozilla (and Camino, Firefox, and SeaMonkey),  Nokia,  OmniWeb,  Openwave,  Opera,  W3C Amaya.

Note: because this site focuses on browsers needed to test websites, it rarely covers browsers that are little used or that use standard engines from more common browsers.

-http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/overview.htm

http://www.upsdell.c...serNews/overview.htm

415

Living Room / Radio ad promoting online safety for kids banned from airwaves

« on: August 26, 2006, 02:46 AM »

The website advertised, thinkuknow.co.uk, advises children on how to stay safe online.

But a listener who misspelt the address found a series of links led her to adult porn websites.

The advert said: "Giving out personal info could let a paedophile track you down. Be smart online, be safe online."

But instead of typing 'u' in the web address, the woman wrote 'you', taking her to a different website.

http://news.bbc.co.u.../uk_news/5277012.stm


Remember to register common misspellings for your domain name when you register the one you really want. 

416

Developer's Corner / Free Programming Training CD's

« on: August 23, 2006, 07:48 AM »

Just got this in an email today:

http://www.appdev.co...reecd.asp?pc=WEBFREE

Your choice of 22 CD's!

Get one or get them all.

They are 1 individual CD taken from full courses they offer on the following:

Visual Studio 2005

• NEW! Visual C# 2005: Developing Applications
• NEW! Visual Basic 2005: Developing Applications
• NEW! ASP.NET Using Visual C# 2005
• NEW! ASP.NET Using Visual Basic 2005
• NEW! Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Microsoft Office
• NEW! Exploring ASP.NET "Atlas" and Web 2.0
• Exploring Visual C# 2005
• Exploring Visual Basic 2005
• Exploring ASP.NET Using Visual C# 2005
• Exploring ASP.NET Using Visual Basic 2005

Visual Studio .NET

• Developing Applications Using Visual C# .NET
• Visual Basic .NET
• ASP.NET Using Visual C# .NET
• ASP.NET Using Visual Basic .NET

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

• NEW! Exploring BizTalk Server 2006

Microsoft SQL Server 2005

• NEW! Exploring Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• NEW! Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Microsoft SQL Server 2000

• Microsoft SQL Server 2000

Microsoft Certification

• NEW! Managing and Maintaining Windows Server 2003 (for MCSE or MCSA)
• Developing Applications Using Visual C# .NET (for MCSD or MCAD)
• Visual Basic .NET (for MCSD or MCAD)
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (for MCDBA)

Each CD is a value of up to $125 US.

If you live in the US, you can select 1 CD and they will mail it to you, free of charge. No shipping & handling to pay. If you want more than 1, you pay the shipping on additionals.

If you do not live in the US, you can still get the CD's for free, but you will have to pay the shipping on all of them, including the first one.

If you would like to get away with not paying at all, no matter where you live, you can download it instead of getting the CD's. Just sign up for a free account and have fun downloading. They support download managers, so you can even get them all if you are on dialup, if you have that kind of patience.

They are hoping you will like the CD's enough to pay for a full course set.

I selected the Visual C# 2005: Developing Applications. It is a CD from this course. I thought it would go well with my free copy of VS2005 Standard, that I am still waiting to recieve from Microsoft, after viewing the videos. The offer was extended through September 30, 2006; although they have changed the offer to a VS2005 Professional 90 trial. I hope the delay in recieving my copy doesn't mean they have changed what I am going to recieve. 

417

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / New version of ToDoList released

« on: August 20, 2006, 06:55 PM »

In honor of the great GTD experiment, I have done a little more work on my ToDoList program. I have added the ability to print lists and resize the window. I also made the list text larger so it will be easier to read.

I use this, myself, for tons of things from my grocery list, tasks that need to be done on projects, party planning, links that need to be checked for my ebook site, etc.

It's pretty basic, but it gets the job of making a list done, very quickly. It also makes recycling lists very easy.

• To create a new list, click the New List button. (If you have an unsaved list loaded, you will be prompted to save it.)
• To add an item click the Add button and type in your text. Then click OK or hit your Enter key again. Click the Add button or hit your Enter key to add additional entries.
• To edit an item, just click the Edit button and change the text. Then click OK or hit your Enter key.
• To delete an item from the ToDo side, select it and click the Delete button. (Note: You can not delete entries from the Done side. The must be moved back to ToDo side in order to be deleted.)
• To undo a delete, click the Undo Delete button.
• To open an existing list, click the Open List button and navigate to the location of list file (filename.tdo).
• To save a list, click Save.
• To save an existing list with a new name or save a new list, click Save List as... (Note: Lists are saved in a pair of files; one having a .tdo extension (your todo list) and one having a .don extension (your done list). If you move one of these files to a new location, you must move them both. They must be kept together as a pair.)
• To print your ToDo list, click the Print button. (Note: You can only print the ToDo side. You can not print your Done side. If you want to print the Done side, you will have to open the .don file in notepad and print it from there.)
• To move an item from the ToDo side to the Done side, click the > button located in the center, between the 2 lists.
• To move all items from ToDo to Done, click the >> button located in the center, between the 2 lists.
• To move an item from Done back to ToDo, click the < button located in the center, between the 2 lists.
• To move all items from Done back to ToDo, click the << button located in the center, between the 2 lists.

Enjoy!

http://appsapps.info/todolist.php

418

Living Room / WhatPulse

« on: August 18, 2006, 11:52 PM »

Do you feel that you could have moved your hands, keystroke by keystroke, across the globe twice every day? Interested in finding out just how much you type a day?

-http://whatpulse.org

I have been using WhatPulse for awhile now as part of a small team. I have decided to jump ship and start a DonationCoder WhatPulse team.

Anybody interested in joining?

All you have to do is open an account here:  http://whatpulse.org
Download & install the client: http://whatpulse.org/downloads/
Join the team: http://whatpulse.org/stats/teams/10466/

You can get a forum signature tag here: http://pulse.offbeat-zero.net

If you have any questions that this doesn't answer, post them and I will be happy to answer them. 

What is WhatPulse?
Privacy Policy
FAQ

419

Living Room / Top Ten Signs You Are Addicted to Google

« on: August 17, 2006, 08:46 AM »

10. Your kids still believe the Googlebot is bringing the Christmas presents.

9. Your reply to "How are you" is "I'm feeling lucky", combined with a clicking gesture.

8. You shout at the librarian when she takes more than 0.1 seconds to find your book.

7. You just lost a case in court to name your newborn son "Google".

6. You have at least one room in your house decorated in a 'relative ad' theme.

5. Your Google shirt is losing color.

4. When people talk to you, you try to optimize their keywords.

3. Your last three Sunday family trips have been to the Googleplex.

2. You are convinced "What's your PageRank?" is a good pick-up line.




And the number one sign you are addicted to Google:

1. You are completely clueless without a computer. 

420

Living Room / Fantastic Blog Find: Huge Entity

« on: August 16, 2006, 07:30 AM »

I am not sure how to describe this blog other than to say it's very interesting, thought provoking, and down-right incredible.

This is better on it's worst day than digg is on its best day.

http://www.huge-entity.com

It has become my first stop in my feed reader:

http://feeds.feedbur...er.com/TheHugeEntity

421

Living Room / Computers just can't seem to get past Go

« on: August 16, 2006, 06:55 AM »

Yes, computers can play to win in chess, checkers, backgammon, scrabble, etc...but have never been very good at playing Go.

While simple to explain and to learn, Go has subtle gradations of ability. There are hundreds of professionals, mainly in Japan, Korea and China, yet even the best computer version is only as good as an average European club player, who is as far from being professional as the average tennis club player is from playing at Wimbledon. Even the best Go-playing program is presently only ranked about 9kyu. Why are computers so bad at Go? First, playing Go plunges a computer into a sea of possibilities in which most drown. A chess board, with 64 squares, is comparatively tiny: each turn offers about 30 possible legal moves. In Go, with 361 points, few moves are illegal, offering more possibilities - on average, about 200 per turn. Thus the total number of possible moves in chess is between 1060 and 1070; in Go it is about 10250.

-http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/insideit/story/0,,1835570,00.html

http://technology.gu...y/0,,1835570,00.html

422

Living Room / What A Crowded Solar System We Live In

« on: August 15, 2006, 11:54 AM »

The image below is an up to date map of the solar system displaying the orbits of the terrestrial planets and the estimated position of thousands of known asteroids. This diagram is missing comets, space probes and, of course, the undiscovered asteroids. Even conservative estimates would suggest that for every asteroid on a dangerous Earth-Approaching orbit there are hundreds more which have yet to be discovered. There are over 300 known objects on Earth-crossing orbits, the majority of which are potentially capable of causing death and destruction on a scale unheard of in human history.

The terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) are shown on the diagram by Cyan or White squares, and their orbits are represented by the blue ellipses around the Sun (the yellow dot at the centre). The Earth is highlighted because of its special importance to us. Small green points mark the location of asteroids which do not approach close to the Earth right now. This does not exclude the possibility that they will do so in the future but generally we can consider the Earth to be safe from these for the near future. Yellow objects (with the exception of the one in the middle which we astronomers call the Sun ;-) are Earth approaching asteroids which are called Amors after the first one discovered. Amors have orbits which come close to the Earth but they don't cross the Earth's orbit. However, their orbits are close enough to the Earth that they could potentially be perturbed by the influence of the planets and begin to cross the Earth's orbit in a short time. There are over 300 known objects on such orbits.

-http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/

Small section of the full map:

http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/

423

Developer's Corner / Got 15 minutes? Give Ruby a shot right now!

« on: August 15, 2006, 03:48 AM »

You can try your hand at Ruby without having to download, install, or configure anything...in your browser!

http://tryruby.hobix.com/

424

Living Room / Best of the Web...for the Average Joe

« on: August 07, 2006, 05:29 AM »

I am working on a little project...and you can help.

What I need is a collection of links representing the best sites you know of, that fit the following categories:

• Forums (general interest...must be appealing to all types of people)
• News (nothing too local)
• Upload Services (things like yousendit.com and imageshack.us)
• Tools (things like Babelfish)
• Music (sites that have free streaming music or info on artists/albums)
• Links (things like digg)
• Games (things like pogo.com & neopets.com)
• References (things like dictionary.com & wikipedia)
• Blogs (general interest...not too techie)
• Humor (family friendly and updated often with new content)
• Security (good pc security sites for the average Joe)
• Technology (you can get a bit more techie here)
• Software (best download sites)
• Kids (somewhere safe for children under 13)
• Education (homework help sites covering a broad range of subjects)

Keep in mind that whatever links you submit have to appeal to the average person, be safe sites (no popups or spyware), family friendly, and not too technical.

Make sure you let me know what categories the sites fall into.

425

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Capture windows of various programs into one window with tabs

« on: August 03, 2006, 06:50 AM »

This sounded like a great idea when I was thinking it up...maybe it really isn't. (I don't know)

Imagine if you had an application where you could open other applications with it and they all be tabbed like browser windows are in some popular browsers, like firefox.

So that way I could have a tab for my IRC client, a tab for my browser, a tab for my rss reader, a tab for notepad, a tab for a game, a tab for some MS Office application, a tab for just about anything I would want to run...all in one window.

It would have a button that would open a dialog to browse for the .exe file.

It would keep a sorted list of used applications or maybe have a way to add favorite programs to a menu to make them easier to run next time.

And a feature where you could drag a tab to reposition it to change the order.

Not sure if this qualifies as a coding snack or if it would be too complicated.

Either way, it's something I would love to have.