Bayes' Theorem - a decent discussion!

Bayes' Theorem

I've taught on Bayes Theorem to graduate students on several occasions. I've never felt I really communicated the underlying subtlety, complexity, and power of that mathematical beastie.

This essay would have helped me.

Inspiration for Palm OS

Inspiration for Palm OS - Business applications

Inspiration is a venerable software package put out by a small company. It started life as a business/productivity application for mind mapping and graphical thinking then found a niche in K12 education.

One of its peculiarities is that the Mac version can import MORE 3.1 files.

Now they have a version for the Palm. I'm not sure what to make of this. This is one application that seems well suited to a 30" LCD, not a 2" LCD.

Inspiration/Palm syncs with Inspiration Windows. Not sure about Inspiraton Mac. There are very few apps that have versions for Mac, Windows AND Palm.

There is a free trial. I'll give a try. You can download the Palm app for EITHER Mac or Windows.

Quantum Teleportation across the Danube -- Hacking God's Computer

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Quantum Teleportation across the Danube Demonstrated

Scientists report today in the journal Nature that they have successfully teleported photons more than 600 meters across the famous waterway.

Rupert Ursin and his colleagues at the Institute for Experimental Physics in Vienna fired a laser through a barium borate crystal to generate two pairs of photons. One pair is entangled, which means that if something disturbs the state of one, the other feels the effects as well--even when they are not physically connected. By separating the entangled pair, the scientists successfully transported information about the state of one photon to the other. Using fiber-optic cable laid under the water in sewer pipes, together with microwaves sent across the air above the water, three distinct states were teleported across the Danube. Over the course of a 28-hour experimental run, the system was correct 97 percent of the time.

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I think this is incredibly freaky. We're hacking God's own computer.

I feel about quantum teleportation and entanglement the way my great aunt felt about electric lights. Utter magic.

New Lost iPod Service - LostiPods.com

New Lost iPod Service | iPoding | What's that in your pocket?

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The service allows one to register an iPod by serial number.

I liked the suggestion of using one's email address as the iPod name!

I do follow the other suggestion, I have a "note" with my personal information on the iPod.

Center for Cooperative Research: Generating history as it happens

Center for Cooperative Research

The Center for Cooperative Research seeks to encourage grassroots participation and collaboration in the documentation of the public historical record using an open-content model. New technology developed during the last decade has changed the nature of information production and distribution in two very important ways which are both fundamental to the Center's objectives.

Firstly, new technology has decentralized the processes of information production and distribution, allowing the public to exert greater influence over the content and direction of the published historical record. Control of the production and distribution of information has slipped from the exclusive grip of large media conglomerates and is being appropriated at an increasingly fast pace by people at the grassroots level, whose previous lack of access to the means of information production and distribution prevented their ideas and knowledge from reaching the masses. This historically significant restructuring of the relationship between the producers and consumers of information is due to the fact that the dissemination of information to a large audience no longer requires large amounts of capital investment. Consequently, this process can no longer be easily monopolized, controlled, or filtered by a small elite group.

Secondly, Internet technology has created an environment where public collaboration in the production of information can take place at a level of efficiency comparable—if not superior—to that of the capital-intensive efforts of hierarchically-structured, private enterprises. This collaborative “open-content” model is politically and economically significant because it enables grassroot efforts to compete on a near equal footing with private industry while contributing to and enriching the intellectual commons.

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I came across this site while pursuing an Agonist thread on the Feith/Franklin/Iran/Israel/Pentagon/Rumsfeld scandal. This site made an interesting contribution.

So there's something here.

Fascinating. Another emergent phenomena.

Rhythmic Gymnastics

RG - Information

Dave Barry mentioned something about an olympic sport that involves waving a ribbon on a stick.

I thought he was joking.

He's not.

And I though skijoring was exotic.

Beach volleyball and inline skating are utterly traditional by comparison.

A bug in Microsoft word: history and consequences

Anatomy of a Software Bug

The story of this problem begins with a basic design decision made when Richard Brodie was Word’s primary software architect. Brodie came to Microsoft along with Charles Simonyi after working at the Xerox PARC where he’d worked on Bravo—their version of the GUI word processor. A number of the ideas used in Word came from that early effort. Brodie joined Microsoft in 1981, began work on Word in the summer of 1982, and finished version 1.0 in October of 1983. You can read about much of the story in Microsoft First Generation by Cheryl Tsang.

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A fantastic essay. I'm subscribing to this guy's blog.

Word is about 22 years old. It has followed the usual path of software, reaching its apex of power and elegance by age 10 (1993) and then descending into senescence and beastliness. Even unto old age, however, it inherits the consequences of decisions made in its earliest days.