Salon is running a long excerpt from Steven Johnson's mindblowing new
book, Mind Wide Open, which I read last week and have been returning
to in my thoughts several times a day. Johnson takes apart the jargon
and theory of various kinds of brain and mind science and exposes us
to a bunch of aha! moments about the physiological, evolutionary and
non-material bases for our thought processes. Reading this book, you
get this curious form of vertigo in which you begin to see your brain
as a collection of chemicals and processes and physiological
serendipities, and then realize that that very same collection of goo
is the thing that is having this realization, and boy, that's a weird
goddamned feeling. As for me, after reading this I'm in the market
for a cheap travel-sized USB neurofeedback EEG.
Areas that do show noticeable changes appear on the images as a
cluster of bright yellow pixels, fading out to orange and red at their
peripheries. The images look strikingly like the Doppler radar images
you see on the Weather Channel. (If you blur your eyes a little, you
might think that yellow patch on the image was a thunderhead, not a
brainstorm.) The image is projected over a grid with numbers running
along each axis. The numbered grid and the slices create a
three-dimensional system of coordinates, the latitude and longitude of
neuromapping. The grid is made up of small cubes called "voxels," and
each voxel has a specific address.
Joy begins by laying down the twenty-five slices for stage one of our
experiment, the dreaded checkerboard. The pattern of activity is
immediately visible, even to my untutored eyes, mostly because there's
literally nothing going on in 95 percent of my brain. Only a thin band
wrapping around the back of my head, roughly at ear level, glows
yellow.
"We know that the flashing checkerboard is a very salient stimulus for
just the visual processing areas of the brain," she says. "And that's
exactly what's happening here."
Open source cracks publishing wide open06/17/2004 11:24 AM Once upon a time, publishing was the domain of large corporations.
Then came desktop publishing and the tools to produce a book shrank
from the cost of an aircraft carrier to the price tag of a PT boat.
Now, small publishers on the bleeding edge of technology are fomenting
a revolution that may change the publishing market forever. Open
source publishing tools, long derided as not being ready for battle,
are proving themselves in the trenches of small publishing.
Red Hat frees Wide Open
Red Hat frees Wide Open05/16/2004 12:24 PM For all of the FUD that some are eager to spread about Free Software
and Open Source, the real truth is that the purveyors of such tripe
are truly fearful that you might learn the simple object lesson: a
long and happy life is filled with learning. They want you to believe
that you are too ignorant to understand new ideas, and that your
capacity for learning has eluded you. They need you to believe that
you are too lazy to make an effort to think for yourself. Don't buy
that idea, for it is nothing more than an abdication of your
obligations. Try to learn something new every day, no matter how
small, for it will sharpen your mind and rejuvenate your spirit.
Does Open Source = Closed Mind?
Does Open Source = Closed Mind?04/15/2005 09:40 AM After a recent Yankee Group survey found that Linux is more likely to
be run in parallel with Windows rather than displace its installed
base, analyst Laura DiDio found herself on the receiving end of a
torrent of abuse. In a guest column for BetaNews, DiDio discusses the
events and asks, "Why would anyone hate an operating system?"
CAN-SPAM Leaves Lid Wide Open
CAN-SPAM Leaves Lid Wide Open05/20/2004 04:06 PM Almost five months after Congress passed a law to reduce the amount of
junk e-mail flooding the nation's in-boxes, industry experts widely
agree that the opposite has occurred: We're getting more spam than
ever before.
In the New Age of Parity, Shinnecock Is Wide Open
In the New Age of Parity, Shinnecock Is Wide Open06/16/2004 04:35 PM Domination is out and parity is in, giving players who have yet to win
a major even more hope as they prepare for the United States Open at
Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.
iTunes DRM cracked wide open
iTunes DRM cracked wide open01/06/2004 04:24 AM A lot of work going on behind the scenes to capture and encode
streaming Video & Music. Links to a...
So I snagged Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow this weekend via
BitTorrent and
then converted it to run on my PSP.
Actually, it wasn't that he snagged a major movie off BitTorrent
that had me thinking.
He wouldn't have been able to unless it wasn't a common albeit
illegal and shadowy activity.
What had me thinking was his response to the obvious questions:
I simply described an activity that many, many people are already
doing with or without
me. Do you really think that not talking about this sort of illegal
use of BitTorrent
is going to somehow protect it?
While my answer to his question is no, I do think talking in public
about illegal
activities does somehow cause changes, changes which the affected
or interested parties
(i.e. MPAA, FBI) may consider extremely harmful and thus proceed to
counter by setting
examples.
Based on my mutated theory of ying and yang, what belongs in
the shadow should
stay in the shadow. Failing to do so leads to chaos.
300 Holes Capped in IE - Still Wide Open09/13/2002 05:26 AM Despite fixing 300 holes in IE on Monday, security testers are saying
that "You can do anything...it's wide open".
Can open source software free your mind?
Can open source software free your mind?09/13/2004 08:45 AM How do you organize all those little notes and ideas that you have
spread out all over the place in a way that you can actually use them
and make have them make some sense? That's one of the goals of a class
of software known as mind mapping. �Once the realm only of high-priced
commercial applications, there is now at least one open source option.
It's called FreeMind and it's licensed under the GPL.
Open Wide: Decoding the Secrets of Venom04/05/2005 04:31 AM Scientists believe that understanding how snake venom works will help
lead to medical breakthroughs.
In 1999, the World
Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee looked back on the previous
decade and lamented: “I wanted the Web to be what I call an
interactive space where everybody can edit. And I started saying
‘interactive,’ and then I read in the media that the Web was great
because it was ‘interactive,’ meaning you could click. This was
not what I meant by interactivity.” That vision of a genuinely
interactive environment rather than “a glorified television
channel”—one in which people not only would browse pages but also
would edit them as part of the process—did not disappear with the
rise of the read-only Web browser.1 It’s churning away more actively
than ever, in a vivid and chaotic Web-within-the-Web, via an anarchic
breed of pages known as “wikis.”. This has been added to my Wikis
section in Bots, Blogs and News
Aggregators web page.
iTunes DRM cracked wide open for GNU/Linux. Seriously.
How Gluecode led Debisys into the wide open spaces
How Gluecode led Debisys into the wide open spaces05/26/2004 12:02 PM Debisys, a prepaid phone transaction service processor, thought it
would be a Windows shop forever. Debisys runs Windows 2000 servers, a
SQL Server database, and Windows desktops. "There was a perception
that we'd always buy Microsoft software," says MIS Manager Mike
Figeuroa. But that is all about to change. "We are doing a complete
migration to open source."
Eyes Wide Open Over Anime Piracy
Eyes Wide Open Over Anime Piracy07/27/2004 06:16 AM Amid proliferation of counterfeit Japanese animation products, an
American distributor fights back in court. Randy Dotinga reports from
San Diego.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Establish Formal Relationship
XML and PHP book excerpt09/03/2002 11:37 AM A clear, concise guide to the synergies between XML and PHP, many of
which are not immediately visible to intermediate developers.
Demonstrates how PHP and XML can be combined to build cutting-edge Web
applications. Read Chapter 5: PHP and Web Distributed Data eXchange
(WDDX) for free :-)
Web services are a distributed computing architecture - as are
Common Object Request Broker (CORBA), Advanced Program-to-Program
Communications (APPC), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and dozens
of other preceding architectures. The purpose of a distributed
computing architecture is to enable programs in one environment to
communicate and share data/content with programs in another
environment. In the past, programmers have had to tell one application
program where to go to find another cooperative program (known as
“tightly…
PHP4 XML Book Excerpt
PHP4 XML Book Excerpt08/13/2002 03:07 PM In this chapter we'll be putting what we've learned in the previous
chapters into practice to see different solutions to the same problem
using different technologies. By the end of this chapter we'll have
learned:
How to abstract different XML processing problems
How to transform XML documents using XSLT or SAX
A way to implement SAX filters, and examples of SAX filter chains
What can be done to speed up XSLT transformations
How to modify XML documents using DOM
How to modify XML documents using SAX filters
How to modify XML documents using XSLT
How to transform XML data into PHP objects
How to write XML data from non-XML data using DOM
How to write a SAX parser for non-XML data
"zeldman.clcol"
Book Excerpt: Professional PHP4 XML, Pt. 2
Book Excerpt: Professional PHP4 XML, Pt. 208/19/2002 09:49 AM Transformation is handy, but for true interactive Web applications the
ability to modify XML is crucial. Part 2 of our series from
"Professional PHP4 XML" describes how you can use DOM, SAX, and XSLT
based methods to alter your XML data. From Wrox Press. 0819
Book Excerpt: Professional PHP4 XML, Pt 4
Book Excerpt: Professional PHP4 XML, Pt 409/03/2002 11:37 AM You've transformed, queried, and modified; only one PHP XML task
remains. The final installment of our excerpt series focuses on the
writing of XML data from non-XML sources; and as usual, multiple
approaches are possible. From Wrox Press. 0903
Lockergnome: Daily Newsletter Excerpt
Lockergnome: Daily Newsletter Excerpt04/09/2004 03:57 PM -DOWNLOAD: Desktop News [1.17M] Win9x/2k/XP FREE
We're all familiar with those tickers that you see on news
channels such as CNN. With Desktop News, you can bring that
functionality to your desktop to create your own pseudo news network.
The toolbar is not obtrusive because you set the options on how it
appears. You can have it always sit on top of your screen if you want
the latest news 24/7, or you can have it hide itself when not
selected. The content is customized to your interests, and selecting
the information you want to view is simple. There's something for
everybody: politics, business, technology, music, stocks, etc. The
toolbar also has links to some Internet resources, and you can even
search Google straight from the ticker. If you're a news hound, this
might be something to take a look at. This software is Peter Jennings
approved.
-DOWNLOAD: Ewisoft Web Builder v2.1 [5828K] Win98/2k/XP FREE
Ewisoft Web Builder is a web publishing tool designed for
beginners and non-technical users. It allows you to create a Web site
based on various templates that only require you to enter your custom
text using a word processor style interface that allows you to apply
formatting and also insert images, download links, tables, embed
movies, and more. Additional features include integrated FTP upload
(requires free registration), browser preview, spell check, and more.
Book Excerpt: JDS Instant Messenger (IM)
Book Excerpt: JDS Instant Messenger (IM)02/05/2005 10:13 PM This excerpt from Exploring the JDS Linux Desktop teaches you how to
instant message friends and colleagues from your desktop system.
Book Excerpt: Professional PHP4 XML, Pt. 308/26/2002 08:32 AM Querying and creating are the topics in part 3 of our PHP/XML series.
While there are many ways to retrieve data from an XML file, only one
method allows for the efficient conversion of that information into
objects. From Wrox Press. 0826
Book Excerpt: Professional PHP4 XML
Book Excerpt: Professional PHP4 XML08/12/2002 09:47 AM Join us for a cappuccino on the corner of PHP and XML, the
intersection for two of the busiest streets in the Web developer
community. We begin with PHP4 transformation techniques using XSLT or
SAX--or, "How to make your XML look the way you want it to." From Wrox
Press. 0812
Book Excerpt: Linux Programming by Example, Part 1
Book Excerpt: Getting started with Cocoa programming for Mac OS X
Book Excerpt: Getting started with Cocoa programming for Mac OS X05/28/2004 06:17 PM This article is excerpted from the newly published book Cocoa
Programming for Mac OS X, Second Edition. Assuming you have installed
the developer tools, you will find Xcode in /Developer/Applications/.
Drag the application to the dock at the bottom of your screen; you
will be using it a lot. Launch Xcode. Xcode will keep track of all the
resources that go into your application. All these resources will be
kept in a directory called the project directory. The first step in
developing a new application is to create a new project directory with
the default skeleton of an application. Grok Description matches for Mind Wide Open excerpt GrokA matches for Mind Wide Open excerpt
Mind Wide Open excerpt
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
