Thursday, March 24, 2011

OMG, FYI, and LOL enter Oxford English Dictionary, foreshadow the apocalypse

By Vlad Savov posted Mar 24th 2011 3:41PM

In an acknowledgement of the internet's overwhelming influence on the triviality we sometimes refer to as "real life," the Oxford English Dictionary doyens have decided to add a few of the web's favorite pronouncements to their lexicon. Among them are the standouts OMG, LOL and FYI, joining their compatriots IMHO and BFF among the proud number of officially sanctioned initialisms (abbreviations contracted to the initials of their words) used in the English language. Shockingly enough, the expression OMG has had its history tracked all the way back to 1917, while LOL used to mean "little old lady" back in the '60s, and FYI first showed up in corporate lingo in 1941. Not only that, but the heart symbol -- not the <3 emoticon, the actual ♥ graphic -- has also made it in. Just so long as Beliebers and fanpires are kept out, there's still hope for the future. A tiny, twinkling ember of a hope.

P2P Music Downloads At All-Time Low

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday March 24, @10:56AM

from the imagine-if-music-were-just-cheaper dept.

RedEaredSlider writes"According to research group NPD Group, the shuttering of Limewire's music file sharing service has led to a similar decline in the usage of such services throughout the U.S. The number has gone from a high of 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to just nine percent in the fourth quarter of 2010, right after Limewire shut down its file-sharing services due to a court order, when a federal judge sided with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)."

Journey To the Mantle of the Earth By 2020

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday March 24, @09:31AM

from the going-down-down-down dept.

An anonymous reader writes"A half-century after the first attempt to drill through the ocean crust into the Earth's mantle, a new campaign armed with improved technology is underway that could reach the mantle by the end of the decade, researchers say."

Fruit Flies Hold the Key To Faster Computing

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 24, @05:54AM

from the fast-as-flies dept.

hapworth writes"Dr. Ziv Bar-Joseph, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon, may have found the key to faster computing in the form of fruit flies. While computer scientists have long struggled with determining optimal communications paths in digital environments, Bar-Joseph believes the answer can be found by studying the biological make-up of fruit flies: 'Determining how to select a [Maximal Independent Set] is difficult and has been under scrutiny for many years. It turns out that fruit flies solve a similar problem. During brain development, a process called Sensory Organ Precursor [SOP] selection occurs,' he says. 'As in computer networks, some cells (SOP) in the brain will become local leaders (MIS) and convey information from the environment to neighboring cells.'"

Surveillance Robot That is Programmed To Hide

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 24, @12:45AM

from the our-new-clandestine-overlords dept.

An anonymous reader writes"The folks over at Lockheed Martin have just released information about their new covert robot that can sneak up on buildings, detect and evade sentries, and send reconnaissance information back to the good guys. From the article: 'What makes the robot special is its ability to build a computer model of its surroundings, incorporating information on lines of sight. The robot is fitted with a laser scanner to allow it to covertly map its environment in 3D. It also has a set of acoustic sensors which it uses to distinguish nearby footsteps and their direction.'"

Europe-Wide Survey Reveals Priorities for End-of-Life Care

ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2011) — A survey of over 9,000 people in seven different countries across Europe has shown that the majority would want to improve the quality of life in the time they had left, rather than extend it. The survey reveals attitudes across Europe for dealing with serious illnesses such as cancer, and issues raised when caring for a close friend of relative in the last few months of life. The research was carried out as part of an EU-funded project led by researchers from King's College London.

Good (and free) math tutor tool

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9caca722-5235-401c-8d3f-9e242b794c3a

Thailand Tried to Barter Chickens for Fighter Jets

By Robin Wheeler, Tue., Mar. 8 2011
Reuters released a special report last week about how post-Cold War diplomats were put to work advocating for U.S. business interests abroad, at times straddling the line between being diplomats and hucksters.

Case in point: American company Lockheed Martin wanted to unload some F-16 fighter jets to Thailand's government...

In 2005, the Thai government started shopping for new military fighter jets among Lockheed Martin, Russia's Sukhoi and Sweden's Saab. It made clear up front that any deal it signed had to include "countertrade" worth at least 50 percent of the deal's value -- we buy X and you help us sell Y.

For the embassy in Bangkok, winning achieved two goals: helping Lockheed and keeping the Russians from selling planes. There was, however, a small complication with the terms -- The Thai government didn't want to pay cash. Instead, it proposed trading 80,000 stockpiled tons of frozen chicken.

Despite talks, Lockheed Martin declined the chicken offer.
How big is 80,000 tons of poultry?

The average dressed, raw chicken weighs four pounds.

The average Lockheed Martin F-16 weighs 42,300 pounds.

That means you'd need about 3,783 bad-ass fighter jets to equal the weight of 80,000 tons of chickens (which, at four pounds per, amounts to 40 million birds).

Seems like a fair trade.
Alright 80,000 chickens AND all the Pud Thai noodles you could eat
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/gutcheck/2011/03/us_almost_traded_f-16s_for_fro.php
http://www.geekosystem.com/f16s-for-chicken/
http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-55331520110304?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews

A child couldn’t paint that – can people tell abstract art from a child’s or chimp’s work?

If you wander through New York’s Museum of Modern Art, you’ll eventually come across Painting Number 2 by Franz Kline, a set of thick, unruly black lines on a white canvas. Elsewhere, you will find one of Mark Rothko’s many untitled works, consisting of various coloured rectangles. And in front of both paintings, you will inevitably find visitors saying, “A child could paint that.”

To which Angelina Hawley-Dolan and Ellen Winner replied: “Could they?”

The duo wanted to test the assertion that abstract expressionist art is devoid of talent – that it could be done by a mere child, or even an animal. With keyboards and enough time, monkeys could surely duplicate Shakespeare, but with a paintbrush and a few hours, could a monkey produce a Rothko?

To find out, Hawley-Dolan and Winner asked 32 art students and 40 psychology students to compare pairs of paintings. One piece of each pair was the work of a recognised artist, such as Kline, Rothko, Cy Twombly, Gillian Ayre, and more. The other came from the oeuvre of lesser-known painters, including preschool children, elephants, chimps, gorillas and monkeys. The paintings were matched according to colour, line quality, brushstroke and medium; the students had to say which they preferred and which was better.

Both groups of students preferred the professional pieces to the amateur ones, and judged them to be superior. Even the psychology students, who had no background in art education, felt the same way, although as you might expect, their preference for the professional works was slightly weaker.

Throughout the experiments, the students typically picked the professional pieces between 60% and 70% of the time. These aren’t overwhelming majorities, but they were statistically significant. On average, a child could not “paint that”, even if first glances might suggest otherwise. Nor are the qualities of the abstract art only visible to people steeped in the art world – even untrained people responded to the paintings in some way.

Hawley-Dolan and Winner also found that it didn’t matter if the students were duped into thinking that the paintings came from the wrong “artist”. The duo labelled the pairs of paintings on some of the tests (“artist”, “child”, “monkey” or “elephant”) and mislabelled them on others. Even with these tags, the students still preferred the actual professional painting. The labels only swayed the decisions of the psychology students – they were more likely to judge the professional paintings more positively if they were correctly labelled (but not more harshly if the labels were swapped).

This goes against an earlier experiment by Ulrich Kirk, who found that people find paintings to be more aesthetically pleasing when they’re labelled as having come from a gallery, rather than having been generated by computers. Other anecdotes have also painted an unflattering picture of abstract art. The mother of two-year-old toddler Freddie Linsky managed to dupe the art world by selling her son’s work – including a splash of ketchup on a high chair – on Saatchi Online (admittedly, for a paltry £20). A chimp called Congo fared much better, selling off three paintings for £12,000 at Bonhams auction house.

But none of these stories involved paired comparisons. Hawley-Dolan and Winner think that such side-by-side judgments are better ways of telling if people can discriminate between pieces produced by different painters.

When asked why they made their choices, both groups of students speculated about what the artist was trying to achieve, or what was going through their mind at the time. They saw more of such intentions in the professional pieces than in the more random shapes of the children and animals. As Hawley-Dolan and Winner write:

“People untrained in visual art see more than they realize when looking at abstract expressionist paintings. People may say that a child could have made a work by a recognized abstract expressionist, but when forced to choose between a work by a child and one by a master such as Rothko, they are drawn to the Rothko even when the work is falsely attributed to a child or nonhuman. People see the mind behind the art.”

Reference: Hawley-Dolan & Winner. 2011. Seeing the Mind Behind the Art: People Can Distinguish Abstract Expressionist Paintings From Highly Similar Paintings by Children, Chimps, Monkeys, and Elephants. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611400915 If the citation link isn’t working,

Did Newt Gingrich's Love for America Lead to Adultery?

Did the Newt Gingrich PR bus just hit a pothole?

Former House speaker Gingrich, widely believed to be prepping a 2012 GOP presidential run, comes with what has been politely termed "baggage" - not the least of which includes multiple marriages and admitted adultery. In a recent interview, perhaps realizing he'll need to address his colorful past if he's going to make a serious run for the country's top job, he took a pass at a positively Newtonian defense: he was driven to cheat on his wives because of his love for America!

In a roundabout way, at least.

What he said was that he was so busy working to serve his passion for America that "things happened." Things that weren't "appropriate":

"There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.

This Is What The Happiest Person On Earth Looks Like

Alyson Shontell | Mar. 8, 2011, 1:06 PM | 42,506 | 14

Image: Christian Haugen via Flickr

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index surveyed 1,000 people about their quality of life.

Like any good researchers, Gallup asked subjects for their demographics. From these demographics, The New York Times Economix section put together a profile of the happiest person on earth.

It called this fictional person Moishe Chang. But it turns out the criteria did match up with a real person, someone named Alvin Wong (who NYT says is, indeed, very happy).

Here's what "Moishe Chang," the happiest fictional person on the planet, and Alvin Wong, look like.

See how you measure up.

Check out 10 traits the happiest person on the planet possesses >>

Can Non-Medical Factors Trigger Sick Leave?

ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2011) — According to UK government statistics over 8 million working days per year are lost due to illness and about a third of these are due to minor ailments such as coughs, colds, sickness and diarrhea. Yet two individuals who are equally ill do not necessarily both report sick.

from the offense-against-intellectual-property dept

Slashdot points us to a fascinating story of a programmer named Marvin Wimberly, who is facing charges for sabotaging the famous Whac-A-Mole games with a logic bomb that would "break" the machines after a pre-determined number of times that it was turned on and off. The idea was that each time these broke, Wimberly would be called in for a repair. Of course, with each "repair," he'd install another logic bomb. Since he was the only one who knew the real "problem," he figured it was a form of job security. His company couldn't let him go, because no one else could fix the problem.

Of course, now that it's been discovered he's apparently facing 15 years in prison. What's a bit odd, though, is the statute under which he's being charged. It's a Florida state law for "offenses against intellectual property." Reading through the statute, it seems like a rather odd use of the phrase "intellectual property."

Whoever willfully, knowingly, and without authorization modifies data, programs, or supporting documentation residing or existing internal or external to a computer, computer system, or computer network commits an offense against intellectual property.

The statute definitely seems pretty broad. What's wrong with just charging the guy with garden variety fraud statutes?

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Best-Selling Author Refuses $500k; Self-Publishes Instead

Last week we discussed an IT book author's adventures in trying to self-publish. Now, an anonymous reader points out an article examining another perspective: "Barry Eisler, a NY Times best-selling author of various thriller novels, has just turned down a $500,000 book contract in order to self-publish his latest work. In a conversation with self-publishing aficionado Joe Konrath, Isaac talks about why this makes sense and how the publishing industry is responding in all the wrong ways to the rise of ebooks. He also explains the math by which it makes a lot more sense to retain 70% of your earnings on ebooks priced cheaply, rather than 14.9% on expensive books put out by publishers."

The Hobbit Finally Starts Shooting

Tiger4 writes "Warner Bros. has announced that production has officially begun on Peter Jackson's movie adaptation of The Hobbit. Jackson even posted a couple of pictures of himself on one of the sets. This despite the strikes, bankruptcies, contract disputes, and legal actions that have swarmed Jackson and the project since his Lord of the Rings days. Admit it, secretly you've been dying to see this happen."

Large Hadron Collider could be world's first time machine

"Our theory is a long shot," admitted Weiler, who is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University, "but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints."

One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.

According to Weiler and Ho's theory, these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.

"One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes," Weiler said. "Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future."

Unsticking the "brane"

The test of the researchers' theory will be whether the physicists monitoring the collider begin seeing Higgs singlet particles and their decay products spontaneously appearing. If they do, Weiler and Ho believe that they will have been produced by particles that travel back in time to appear before the collisions that produced them.

Weiler and Ho's theory is based on M-theory, a "theory of everything." A small cadre of theoretical physicists have developed M-theory to the point that it can accommodate the properties of all the known subatomic particles and forces, including gravity, but it requires 10 or 11 dimensions instead of our familiar four. This has led to the suggestion that our universe may be like a four-dimensional membrane or "brane" floating in a multi-dimensional space-time called the "bulk."

According to this view, the basic building blocks of our universe are permanently stuck to the brane and so cannot travel in other dimensions. There are some exceptions, however. Some argue that gravity, for example, is weaker than other fundamental forces because it diffuses into other dimensions. Another possible exception is the proposed Higgs singlet, which responds to gravity but not to any of the other basic forces.

Neat Stuff