Polarman

Why can't a computer be more like a brain?

Jeff Hawkins, who founded Palm Computing, writes in IEEEE Spectrum, Why can't a computer be more like a brain?  In this article, he brings us up to date with his latest endeavor, Numenta.   He covers progress since his book On Intelligence and gives details on Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) which is a platform for simulating neocortexial activity.  Numenta has created a framework which allows anyone to build HTMs.

Test positioning of pictures

I'm interested to understand better the relationship between typepad and how it deals with pictures and so forth.

 

Here's the first test picture (above) of Liz and Carolyn.

All these were taken in 2004.

I think perhaps it would be good to remind people that you can click on the picture and see the picture in higher resolution.

Postal Service Removes clocks

The Houston Chronicle is reporting that the Postal Service fixes long waits by removing clocks:

The Watson Post Office is one of the nation's 37,000 post offices in which clocks have been removed from retail areas as part of a "retail standardization program" launched last year. The effort is designed to give the public-service areas a more uniform appearance, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in Thursday editions.

"We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock," said Stephen Seewoester, Dallas spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service.

People should consider this when thinking about how health care would work if run by the federal government.  For health care, they'd remove calendars.

Tildes

Just wanted to confirm that if you create a tilde (for example, Alt-0241) that it works through Typepad's editor.   ñ

San Luis Cultural Preservation

The oldest continuously operating business in Colorado is R&R Markets.  It's about to celebrate its 150th year anniversary of doing business.  The anniversary will be celebrated on June 30th, 2007.

The Skeptical Optimist recommends

It's always a pleasure reading the posts by The Skeptical Optimist.  In his latest, he recommends The Origin of Wealth, a book I look forward to reading.  In fact, I'm adding it to my Amazon wish list.

Great to see Live Writer 1.0 Beta released

Live Writer 1.0 Beta is released.  I've already been using the pre-Beta and really like it.

Update:  I haven't used it a lot since it got released, but my blogging has slowed down considerably.

Sender Policy Framework

Coyote, who writes a great blog, asks Is there anyway to keep a third party from using your email address in this way?  The short answer is no, but it can give you a moral sense of doing the right thing by using Sender Policy Framework.  This poorly named technology allows people that own a domain to say what servers they are allowed to send email from.  Currently only a tiny fraction of the domains implement this, but if you get an email that fails SPF, you can definitely throw it away.

Does this help with you receiving spam?  No, not really since so few people implement this.  However, if 1% of the domains implemented this and 1% of your spam was forged from these emails, you could reduce your spam by 1%.  Does it stop people from forging your email?   No, they just laugh about it since so few people are using the technology.  Now, if you're getting a lot of forgeries from Ebay, Hotmail, etc., it could be useful, because these big names DO implmenent SPF.

I'm still hopeful that SPF will some day achieve critical mass and become useful.

Tall People Smarter? Or is it the Disney Effect?

A great blog by Coyote lead me to Reason Magazine, which has an article about tall people being smarter:

Economists have long been irritated by the weird fact that tall people have better jobs and earn more money. Many explanations have been offered, various forms of social and individual discrimination first among them. But two Princeton economists disagree: "In this paper, we offer a simpler explanation: On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter."

 

The Abstract of the article says:

It has long been recognized that taller adults hold jobs of higher status and, on average, earn more than other workers. A large number of hypotheses have been put forward to explain the association between height and earnings. In developed countries, researchers have emphasized factors such as self esteem, social dominance, and discrimination. In this paper, we offer a simpler explanation: On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter. As early as age 3 — before schooling has had a chance to play a role — and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests.

It's interesting to think of this in a Freakonomics way.  Before reading the abstract, I was sure that this phenomena occurred because in a manner similar to the hockey players discussed in Freakonomics.  They call this the relative age theory.  So in short, taller kids would be perceived as older and more mature.  As a result, they are treated like they are more capable.  It follows they get experience quicker and so on, it snow balls.  But then the abstract says that it's even as early as age three!  Personally, it's hard to believe I treat my 18 month old daughter any different, but the differences are slight and add up over many parents and many children.

Personally, I blame Disney.  It's clear that taller kids get to ride ("You must be as tall as Mickey's hand...) on Disney rides earlier than shorter kids.   Clearly these rides are accelerating their development.  :)

Reddit List

I've started experimenting with www.Reddit.com which seems similar to digg.  These sites are a combination of user entered links and ranking so that the best links or sites bubble to the top. You can check out my page. on Reddit and my page on Digg.  Interestingly enough, Reddit has been added as a search provider to IE7 on the OpenSearch: Add searches to IE7 site.