Links

Determinism, Chaos and Quantum Mechanics [PDF]. Interesting 30-pager by Jean Bricmont. He begins by differentiating predictability from determinism, and proceeds to explain how chaos theory supports determinism by enhancing predictability. As an interesting aside, Bricmont’s article points out that there are 2 kinds of probabilities. Objective probability is where I know that if I toss a fair coin enough times, it’ll turn up heads 50% of the time. Subjective probability is where I think there’s a 10% chance it’ll rain tomorrow, and I don’t care to repeat the event. The former is an informed statement about a system. The latter is our best guess about an event. The former number is a constant, if we’ve done the calculations right. The latter number can change as our knowledge of the event increases. ...

A Nike ID story. An e-mail correspondence between Jonah and Nike about creating a personalised ID called “sweatshop”.

While I thought that every cell in the human body had identical genetic make-up, it turns out that brain cells could have gained or lost some chromosomes. Now, that’s a pretty big discovery. via missing matter

Very interesting article on Google on Wired. One interesting point the article raises towards the end is this: “As a private company, Google has one master: users. As a public company, there are shareholders to worry about.” And the interests of these may not be aligned. Shareholders may want more ad revenues. Users do not want ads. Shareholders may want paid placements. Users do not. Once Google IPOs, I suspect its quality will fall.

Cool picture of a virtual keyboard. The article talks about a purely optical keyboard. You move your fingers, and the “keyboard” detects what you’re typing. Now, if optics are that advanced, they should be able to figure out what I’m writing and put that on the computer. So I won’t need a digital pad – I’ll just write on paper. Or even better, project the screen! Then I’ll just carry a little 1" x 1" x 1" box that’ll project a virtual screen that I can draw / write on.

Darwin’s 10 rules for taming e-mail. I badly need this. I am not often in office, and don’t have a fast way of checking office mail through the Web either. Tips 5 and 10 on the list (“avoid e-mail multipliers” and “use the telephone”) are next on my agenda for drastic e-mail slashing.

An interesting legal conundrum. When Nike was accused of running sweatshops in Asia, it responded with press releases and ads claiming that it did not. Marc Kasky filed a case saying that Nike was advertising unfairly, and won. Now corporates are raising the question of whether corporate statements are free speech, and can be similarly protected.

Interesting site on uniforms of airline stewardesses. via boing boing

On the virtual economy. No, this is not about the dot-com boom. This is about the trading of goods in online games, which has created an economy with a GNP per capita somewhere between Bulgaria and Russia. (More at New Scientist). via missing matter

Froogle. A product search from Google. The way Google is going, I don’t think there’s any point in most sites bothering about design. Google will just offer it to customers the way they want to see it. via Kiruba

The NY Times on ‘captchas’. At the time of Turing, we were wondering if computers would pass the Turing Test. Today, these captchas stop computer programs from fooling us into thinking they’re humans. We’ve come a long way! via missing matter

Google webquotes lets you see what other sites say about each of Google’s search results. This is such a useful feature to me (at no incremental pain) that I see no reason to ever Google without webquotes! (Google also has Google viewer, which to me is far less useful. And while you’re at it, may as well check Google’s extensive resource for webmasters) via Kiruba

Who invented cubicles? Herman Miller, 1950s. Now we know whom to blame! (However, I must admit to a secret liking for cubicles.) via MetaFilter Comments L K Tucker 21 Feb 2007 5:23 pm: Robert Propst is credited with the invention according to a bio on the Herman Miller Inc. site. He denied it. His open plan system was modified when workers using the first prototypes began having mental breaks. The human vision startle reflex had worked in the “special circumstances” those first close-spaced workstations created.

A little article on anti-neutrino behaviour. All very fine, except for a line towards the end: The oscillations are a result of the neutrinos having slightly different masses, … Since when did neutrinos start having mass!? (OK, it was in July 98. And no one even told me!)

Free PDF creator. Wonder how they manage to make money. More importantly, how did they get permission from Adobe? via andersja

Insight from a NY Times article on how the Internet can be accessed from flights: the reason you shouldn’t use a laptop on a flight during take-off and landing is not because of electrical interference; it is that the laptop could be a dangerous loose flying object in case of turbulence. Now, that makes more sense.

Several cool Linux programs available on Windows via The Open CD project Celestia looked particularly interesting.

“The Memory Hole exists to preserve and spread material that is in danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is not widely known.” via RobotWisdom

Reuters on war reporting through blogs.

This one is funny. It’s legal to write software that pirates DVDs.