The complexity of systems models is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it enables such models to recognize the multiple complex levels of intelligence. It is a curse because the models become more difficult to test.
a fleeting exposure to a smiling face makes people more likely to make risky investment decisions.
Volunteers who were shown a happy face were much more likely to choose the risky stocks. It made no difference whether the face was displayed long enough for the volunteers to register it consciously, or flashed up fleetingly so it was only perceived subliminally.
A new drug-free therapy wipes away fearful memories in rats and humans. The simple treatment might eventually help patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, say researchers.
Despite proof of principle experiments in rats and humans, Monfils says researchers should proceed with caution in applying the new findings to treating PTSD or other anxiety disorders. Some people's reconsolidation windows may be longer than others, and people respond differently to stressful situations.
"I'm a simple rat researcher. I'm in no way going to suggest that I'm going to step in and tell clinicians how they should treat their patients," she says.
Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1167975)
As Pettigrew (1988) noted, given the limited number of cases which can usually be studied, it makes sense to choose cases such as extreme situations and polar types in which the process of interest is "transparently observable." Thus, the goal of theoretical sampling is to choose cases which are likely to replicate or extend the emergent theory. In contrast, traditional, within-experiment hypothesis-testing studies rely on statistical sampling, in which researchers randomly select the sample from the population. In this type of study, the goal of the sampling process is to obtain accurate statistical evidence on the distributions of variables within the population.We can draw a similar contrast between the processes of invention and implementation. First, to make a problem "transparently observable" inventor has to "go wide", i.e. stretch out the parameters of the situation(s) in which the problem occurs. Second, s/he has to create a theory of operation or a model (this is especially important for complex problems). E.g., s/he can identify a key dilemma, draw up a 5-element or a 10X diagram, etc. Then, when the problem is clearly identified, explored, and relatively abstract solutions are found, the inventor needs to develop "hypothesis-testing" implementation strategy and eliminate the noise.
To me, the most interesting factor is the way instant communications lead to unconscious conformity. You’d think that with thousandsof ideas flowing at light speed around the world, you’d get a diversity of viewpoints and expectations that would balance one another out. Instead, global communications seem to have led people in the financial subculture to adopt homogenous viewpoints. They made the same one-way bets at the same time.From a system perspective, communications work to synchronize various elements of the system. Under general information overload, people tend to synchronize on what attracts immediate attention, which nowadays is infotainment rather than information. Therefore, the latest financial bubble can be considered as one of the consequences of rapid media/internet growth. I would argue that in a similar pattern another major economic downturn, the Great Depression, followed a major communications breakthrough, radio, and the emergence of mass media.
Although touch screens are growing in popularity with designers, tapping at images of buttons on a small, slippery surface does not provide a good user experience. Figuring out better ways to input text on touch screens is important for more than just phones too, as they become common in other places like desktop computers, gaming devices and coffee tables.The solutions offered are very disappointing, because they don't address the core of the problem.
If your mission is to make coal less polluting, China is a good place to start.
GreatPoint Energy, a start-up with technology to convert coal to cleaner-burning natural gas, expects to open a demonstration plant in China in three years.
The plant would cost between $100 million and $200 million and be located at a coal-fired power plant operated by Datang Huanyin Electric Power. Most of the financing for the plant will come from Datang, one of the biggest single polluters on the planet, according to GreatPoint Energy CEO Andrew Perlman.
Each of us is as "big" as the problems we handle and struggle with. "Small" people deal with small problems: the kind of car they own and the quality of their neighbor's kitchen wallpaper. "Big" people struggle with such problems as the quality of their children's education, the environment they will leave behind, and the quality of life in their communities... Addressing and being able to solve bigger and bigger problems means that our strengths and capacities are improving. We need to emancipate ourselves from small problems to free the energy to deal with bigger problems. (p.6).It's tempting to compare the size of each other's problems :) Size does matter, especially, from somebody else's, i.e. external, point of view. Nevertheless, for pesonal growth marginal size of the problem matters the most. In other words, a positive difference between a new challenge you are willing to take on now and the most difficult problem you solved to-date is be a sign of growth. Living with this difference tends to create Flow, a mental state of full involvement and maximum personal effort.
...a simple patent system, where a copying fi…rm has to make a prespeci…fied payment to the innovator, can implement the optimal allocation. When the optimal allocation involves simultaneous experimentation, the patent system makes free-riding prohibitively costly and implements the optimal allocation as the unique equilibrium. When the optimal allocation involves staggered experimentation, the patent system plays a more subtle role. It permits ex post transmission of knowledge but still increases experimentation incentives to avoid delays.Is Open Source approach consistent with the proposed model? For example, when free-riding is not a problem, do we need to impose a "transfer" fee?
The patent system can achieve this because it generates "conditional" transfers. An innovator receives a patent payment only when copied by other …firms. Consequently, patents encourage one fi…rm to experiment earlier than others, thus achieving rapid experimentation without sacri…ficing useful transfer of knowledge. Moreover, we show that patents can achieve this outcome in all equilibria. The fact that patents are particularly well designed to play this role is also highlighted by our result that while an appropriately-designed patent implements the optimal allocation in all equilibria, subsidies to experimentation, research, or innovation cannot achieve the same objective.
Concerning knowledge, on the one hand, one needs to know enough about a filed to move it forward. One cannot move beyond a field if one doesn't know where it is. On the other hand, knowledge about a field can result in a closed and entrenched pespective, confining a person to the way in which he or she has seen problems in the past. Thus, one needs to decide to use one's past knowledge, but also decide not to let the knowledge become a hindrance rather than help. ( page 108).
...the problem of undestanding how you cortex forms invariant representations remains one of the biggest mysteries in all of science. How difficult, you ask? So much so that no one, not even using the most powerful computers in the world, has been able to solve it.
"On October 31, 2009, MSN Encarta Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009."This is one of the few examples of a genuine business disruption, as defined by Clayton Christensen in The Innovator's Dilemma. Wikipedia, with 3 regular employees (including the secretary), killed the whole encyclopedia industry. Simply amazing.
Species evolve together, and in competition. Predators evolve ever deadlier weapons and skills to catch prey, which, as a result of Darwin’s canonical ‘struggle for existence’, become better at escaping them, and so the arms race continues. In 1973, evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen likened this to the Red Queen’s comment to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” The ‘Red Queen’ hypothesis of co-evolution was born.This observation led me to the thought that innovation is even more wonderful than life in the Wonderland. To make a difference, i.e. to get somewhere with your invention, you must run at least 10 times as fast as the rest of the field. :)
Thoughts and memories are associatively linked, and again, random thoughts never really occur. Inputs to the brain auto-associatively link to themselves, filling in the present, and auto-associatively link to what normally follows next. We call this chain of memories thought, and although its path is not detrministic, we are not fully in control of it either.Let's take this passage as a starting point and see how it might help us better understand human creativity.
| Virtue and Strength | Definition |
| Wisdom and knowledge | Cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge |
| Creativity -- | Thinking of novel and productive ways to do things |
| Curiosity -- | Taking an interest in all of ongoing experience |
| Open-mindedness -- | Thinking things through and examining them from all sides |
| Love of learning -- | Mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge |
| Perspective -- | Being able to provide wise counsel to others |
Empowering consumers with actionable intelligence about their power will not be the outcome of the deployment of smart meters. Rather, it will be exactly what the utilities intend for it to be: a cost-effective way to implement real-time pricing, demand side management and distribution system monitoring.In essence, his argument is that the data from smart meters is not granular enough for consumers to make informed decisions about electricity usage . We, consumers, can control our usage, and ultimately the electricity bill, by turning on and off specific electric appliances, e.g. TVs, washers, dryers, etc. A smart meter is only going to give us data about electricity consumption for the whole house, not a particular device. The data would still have to be processed further (how?) to help us figure out when and which device ought to be turned on or off to save money.
Q: Have you tried to formulate a recipe for scientific discovery?
A: I'll tell you my theory of discovery by means of an anecdote. Beethoven's landlady says to him, "Beethoven, get out of my house. Your cat drinks my milk, you throw your laundry in the stairwell, and you pound on the piano all night, I can't sleep." And she laughs in response, "Ha-ha-ha-haaa" [the first strokes of the Fifth Symphony.] That's discovery, namely, contingency, accident, pattern, preconception, elaboration, and constantly playing back and forth against tradition of some kind; in Beethoven's case, it was Viennese classical music. In tracing a discovery there is an extraordinary complexity and diversity in the history, circumstance, cultural development, and technical skill. So to try to lay down any simple rule is not possible. (p 209).
In terms of principle, selectional systems all have three constraints: (1) You must have a generator of diversity (G.O.D.). (2) You must have some mechanism for polling so that two domains which have no causal connection can sample each other with sufficient completeness. (3) You have to have some form of differentiated amplification, providing a selective advantage, for example, by producing enough antibodies of the right kind. (p 213).What he is describing here is a system capable of solving detection problems, and then feeding the results of its work to a control mechanism that acts on the differences detected. Of course, in early stages of system development, diversity is not significant. But, as the system matures and diversity increases, the detection/control sub-system grows in importance because it provides for the greater efficiency of the top level system.
Cognitive training is growing in popularity as baby boomers age. From 2005 to 2007 the U.S. brain fitness business increased from $100 million to $225 million, according to a report by SharpBrains, a market research company specializing in cognitive health. The growth was driven to a large extent by the success of Nintendo’s Brain Age [see my review of it and two other brain-training games in “Circuit Training”; Scientific American Mind, June/July 2006]. Research does confirm that regular brain exercise is beneficial to elderly people. ACTIVE, a nationwide clinical trial of 2,802 seniors that began in 1998, found that training in specific areas such as “processing speed” resulted in improvements that persisted at leastMy [futile?] hope is that people will not confuse basic brain health exercise tools, like puzzles and brainteasers, with problem-solving and creativity development methods...
five years.
According to VMware, the VCenter Mobile Access tool will also allow system managers to migrate virtual machines from one virtual host to another, using their phones. The software was introduced on Friday on VMware's VMTN blog by Srinivas Krishnamurti, the director of product management for the company. In addition to its search-and-migration capabilities, VCMA could also be used to remotely execute recovery plans, access scheduled tasks, and respond to alarms and events.
JavaScript, which lets developers create everything from basic Web site menus to online spreadsheet applications, was born in the mid-1990s when Microsoft's Internet Explorer challenged the incumbent browser, Netscape's Navigator. IE won that war, but now it faces its own challenge from the heir to the Navigator throne, Mozilla's Firefox, along with upstarts including Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Opera.I wonder, though, whether this whole issue is at all relevant in the world of mobile devices and twitter feeds. Internet browser is just a tool that allows people interact with content, which has multiple components, including javascript. Today, mobile devices are much more limited in bandwidth, battery power, and media processing capabilities than in javascript performance. Most likely, mobile websites, aka the-cloud, will target a completely different set of users, than today's browsers are fighiting for.
Many researchers have noted that beyond tameness, dogs appear to retain certain traits associated with juvenile wolves, especially behavioral traits such as whining, barking, and submissiveness. Russian geneticist Dmitry Belyaev focused on tamability as a guiding characteristic. His idea was not only that early humans would have selected the tamest animals to live with them, but also that selecting for a single trait could give rise to an entire set of changes in form, physiology, and behavior. Belyaev thus launched an experiment that would last longer than his life, seeking to test whether selecting for tameness would indeed produce a set of domesticated traits similar to those seen in dogs (Trut, 1999).
Belyaev chose the silver fox for his experiment; this species is related to the dog, but it is not domesticated. The initial foxes in Belyaev's experiment were not trained in any way, but simply tested for tameness at an early age. Starting at age one month, a human researcher would try to feed and pet the foxes, either alone or in the company of other foxes. The animals' responses varied from aggressive behaviors (such as biting), to indifference, to seeking interaction with the person more than with the other foxes. The tamest foxes were then selected for breeding the next generation, although fresh genes were supplied through continual outbreeding.
Belyaev and his colleagues did indeed create a population of foxes that differed in temperament and behavior from their wild cousins. The foxes changed physically as well, with alterations in coat color appearing as early as the eighth generation—typically a loss of pigment resulting in white patches. The foxes also developed floppy ears and curved tails, mirroring traits seen in dogs as well as other domesticated species (Figure 1).
Unlike the 3-D movies of past decades, where two separate projectors displayed images (one for each eye) and had to remain synchronized for the duration of the film, the latest 3-D systems use a single digital projector. They quickly alternate between images seen by the right and left eyes, which the brain marries into a three-dimensional picture. The process still requires glasses to pick up separate left and right eye images, but not the clunky red and green kinds popularized in the 1970s and 1980s with 3-D films. Today's 3-D eyewear looks more like sunglasses.
Numerous psychological studies have found a general trade-off between the pursuit of so-called extrinsic aspirations - such as wealth, but also fame and image - and intrinsic aspirations, such as building and maintaining strong personal relationships. People who report a focus on the former score low on indicators of mental health, and those strongly motivated by money are also more likely to find their marriage ending in divorce.
The researchers found that the volunteers who had been primed with the money-related words worked on the task for longer before asking for help. In a related experiment, people in the money-word group were also significantly less likely to help a fellow student who asked for assistance than were people in the group primed with non-money words (Science, vol 314, p 1154).These findings have interesting implications for the structure of invention workshops. To encourage cooperation, the first phase - problem space exploration - has to be done without mentioning any monetary consequences of the work. Then, the second phase - problem solving - has to be preceded by an evaluation session, which not only separates high quality problems from background noise, but also primes participants to apply their best effort.
And so now we have a bounty of applications and accessories that let us use the technology we already have to control the technology we already have. This is not only frugal, but upgradeable and flexible. Whether you want to control your music, your television or your PowerPoint presentation, there’s probably a solution using your phone.
Fujitsu gets set to release its Flepia color e-book reader in Japan with a $1,000 price tag.
In the works for several years, the Flepia has a bigger display than does Amazon's Kindle 2--it has an 8-inch 1,024x768-pixel XGA touch screen that can display 260,000 colors (Fujitsu refers to its e-ink technology as "color e-paper").
The unit also has built-in wireless Bluetooth and Wi-Fi options, an SD card slot capable of holding up to 4GB of storage, and a battery that, according to Fujitsu, is rated at 40 hours of continuous use (we assume that using Wi-Fi would drain it quicker, however). The Flepia runs on Windows CE 5.0.
Discovery Communications, parent company of the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, has filed a complaint against Amazon.com alleging that some security and copy protection features in the Kindle and Kindle 2 violate the company's patents.
According to a copy of the suit, Discovery charges that Amazon violated its patent for Electronic Book Security and Copyright Protection System. The patent, U.S. 7,298,851, was issued to Discovery Communications by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Nov. 20, 2007, per the lawsuit filing (PDF). It was initially filed in 1999.
The robot, named HRP-4C, has 30 motors in its body that allow it to walk and move its arms as well as eight motors on its face to create expressions like anger and surprise.California vineyard robot
Key to the Intellgent Robotic Vineyard Pruner are stereoscopic scanning cameras that take 15 frames per second, scanning the entire vine and working a full vine length ahead of the pruning shears. As Morikawa explained, "This 'vision' is the key sense the machine needs; otherwise it can't understand the vine and prune intelligently."Canadian rescue robot
ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland, March 16 (UPI) -- A remote-controlled robot retrieved nine bodies Monday from a crashed Canadian helicopter in the Atlantic Ocean east of Newfoundland, police said.Mayo Clinic robotic surgeon
The medical team placed the plastic-covered, computerized robot. Head Surgeon Rakesh Suri snaps on the slender arm extensions that will slip through Gilmet's ribs.
With another cardiac surgeon closely watching over the patient, Dr. Suri is ready to operate without a gown, in stocking feet from a console ten feet away.
"It's like a video game in many ways," Dr. Suri says.
Darwin assumed that descent was exclusively "vertical", with organisms passing traits down to their offspring. But what if species also routinely swapped genetic material with other species, or hybridised with them? Then that neat branching pattern would quickly degenerate into an impenetrable thicket of interrelatedness, with species being closely related in some respects but not others. ...
As more and more genes were sequenced, it became clear that the patterns of relatedness could only be explained if bacteria and archaea were routinely swapping genetic material with other species - often across huge taxonomic distances - in a process called horizontal gene transfer (HGT).Technology, being closer in complexity to microbes rather than humans, seems to develop by transfer of ideas between different domains. The broker innovation model described in detail in "How Breakthroughs Happen" shows multiple example of solutions transfer from high-tech to low-tech industries. Furthermore, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (Russian acronym TRIZ) is built around the concept of repeating invention patterns that can be extracted from patented solutions. Also in this mold is template-based creativity approach proposed in Creativity In Product Innovation.
...depending on the technology that's being patented, it can take anywhere from two to five years for a patent to issue. As far as costs, expect to spend anywhere from $10,000 to as high as $30,000 for highly complex technologies. Patentability searches account for up to a thousand of that, application fees can add up to another couple thousand, and the rest is attorney fees for patentability opinions, initial patent drafting, and [Patent and Trademark Office] action responses and appeals.Given that about 1/3 of patent applications is granted and only 5% of patents are worth something, the "retail" price of a decent portfolio (20+ patents) runs from $600K to $1.8M. This means that for most startups, unless a comprehensive invention and patent strategy is in place, filing patent applications is a crapshoot at best.
Back in 1989, Berners-Lee was a software consultant working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside of Geneva, Switzerland. On March 13 of that year, he submitted a plan to management on how to better monitor the flow of research at the labs. People were coming and going at such a clip that an increasingly frustrated Berners-Lee complained that CERN was losing track of valuable project information because of the rapid turnover of personnel. It did not help matters that the place was chockablock with incompatible computers people brought with them to the office.
Google Voice, the new version of the GrandCentral technology Google acquired in July 2007, has the potential to make the search giant a middleman in an important part of people's lives, telephone communications. With the service, people can pick a new phone number from Google Voice; when others call it, Google can ring all the actual phones a person uses and handle voice mail.If this promise materilizes - and I believe it will - home phones as we know them are dead. Today, they are already half-dead because the younger generation clearly prefers mobiles. But now, the good old land line will have no excuse for existence whatsoever. Over time, conferences, virtual audio/video conferences, and other means of media-based communications will be come a part of everyday business and leisure activities. GoogleVoice in combination with Android is going to be a very strong contender for #1 position in telecom applications space.
The suits were adapted from US Navy pressure suits for high-altitude flights and not designed to be worn on spacewalks.We can see how a design, borrowed from a different application domain, over time is adapted to new tasks specific to space exploration. Now, compare this development to the evolution of the smart phone. The device is still being sold as a phone, i.e. voice communication appliance, while in the future it will evolve into a vehicle for application and data space exploration in the world of networks of networks.
Now you can go to the iTunes Store to buy the Kindle app from Amazon that lets you read ebooks made for the Kindle device on the iPhone. Yes, it's that confusing! Maybe they shouldn't have called the app the same name as the device...I thought "Kindle" was the device?
No wonder people are confused. The book technology, as invented by Guttenberg, is going to be transformed from a physical thing into a digital media format with a variety of readers.The physical paper book will go the way clocks, maps, and calculators went: virtual ("ideal") application on a device of convenience.
via marginal revolution
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Utility company American Electric Power (AEP) plans this year to place equipment in residential areas capable of storing a few hours of electricity, one of the first tests of distributed storage on the power grid.
The storage units would be the size of a relatively small "backyard transformer," each wired to provide enough electricity for four to six houses, he said. Together, those storage units could provide back-up power to neighborhoods during outages and potentially for other applications, Nourai said.
"Aggregated, hundreds of these units controlled (by AEP)...effectively do the same as one big storage unit," he said. "It's closer to the load, and it has the potential to (create) competition on price."
"How to Protect New Products and Discoveries"A good overview (podcast) of patent and IP licensing basics (MP3, 29.3 MB).
It can create an interesting opportunity for Artificial Intelligence if used in combination with this research by Stephenie A. Harrison & Frank Tong from Vanderbilt University recently published in Nature ( Decoding reveals the contents of visual working memory in early visual areas. Published online 18 February 2009. doi:10.1038/nature07832).A man who lost his sight 30 years ago says he can now see flashes of light after being fitted with a bionic eye.Ron, 73, had the experimental surgery seven months ago at London's Moorfield's eye hospital.
He says he can now follow white lines on the road, and even sort socks, using the bionic eye, known as Argus II.
It uses a camera and video processor mounted on sunglasses to send captured images wirelessly to a tiny receiver on the outside of the eye. In turn, the receiver passes on the data via a tiny cable to an array of electrodes which sit on the retina - the layer of specialised cells that normally respond to light found at the back of the eye. When these electrodes are stimulated they send messages along the optic nerve to the brain, which is able to perceive patterns of light and dark spots corresponding to which electrodes have been stimulated.
A new study released on Tuesday indicates that about 23 percent of all handset sales in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2008 were smartphones. This was up from 12 percent of all handset sales in the fourth quarter of 2007.This is great news for web services and cloud computing. Smartphones create the environment for the next wave of innovation in data network content and access technologies. In the long run, smarphones will play the role of a disruptor for laptop devices.
... prices for these advanced phones dropped. In fact, the average price of a smartphone during the quarter dropped by 23 percent from $216 in the fourth quarter of 2007 to $167 during the fourth quarter of 2008, NPD said. Apple's new iPhone 3G, priced at $199 with a two-year service contract with AT&T, helped lead the growth in smartphone volumes, but also led the industry in terms of declining prices.
The LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year.
The science is based on a lab technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD. This involves testing a cell taken from a very early embryo before it is put into the mother's womb.
Doctors then select an embryo free from rogue genes - or in this case an embryo with the desired physical traits such as blonde hair and blue eyes - to continue the pregnancy, and discard any others.
Dr Steinberg said couples might seek to use the clinic's services for both medical and cosmetic reasons.
For example, a couple might want to have a baby with a darker complexion to help guard against a skin cancer if they already had a child who had developed a melanoma. But others might just want a boy with blonde hair.
1. There's no such thing as a finished product.The first point indicates the need for a roadmap, both for invention and innovation. Any invention is a work in progress. The technology keeps going forward. Whatever epiphany you are having at the moment will be surpassed later, either by your own idea or by somebody else's. Therefore, it is very important to develop the skills and have the discipline necessary for pushing the initial concept as far as possible. Thus, the roadmap of invention, i.e. a sequence of ideas, a story of the evolution of your thought.
2. [when we were ready with the product] the market just wasn't there.
...insurance, like any other risk management device, is an invention. Every risk management device relies on a design and the design is usually complex and has--it all has to work together. In order for a design to work well we have to have every component there. If one component is missing we may have a failure. All these components have to be compatible with each other and it has to work according to a plan, which ultimately is informed by this theory.What's important here is the completeness principle. In order to perform its function, a system has to be complete. This may sound very trivial, but even experienced inventors forget about the principle. Some are not even aware of its existence. Furthermore, large successful corporations make this mistake. For example, when first MP3 players came out they relied on poorly designed third party software to manage and transfer content from a PC to the player. Apple's iPod, besides being a well designed device, was made even better in combination with iTunes. The complete user experience propelled iPhone to the top of the pack, and created a base not only for other iPods, but also for iPhone. The completeness principle played a huge role in the success of the latter, because it came with iTunes, the software service with almost infinite choice of programs to try and buy. When a system is complete, it is very difficult for the competition to catch up. That's why Microsoft had incredibly hard time with Zune, and now struggles to maintain its initial advantage in software for smart phones.
[Amazon's] Kindle 2 can read books aloud....
I.B.M. has patented a computerized voice that is said to be almost indistinguishable from human ones. This voice is programmed to include “ums,” “ers” and sighs, to cough for attention, even to “shhh” when interrupted. According to Andy Aaron, of I.B.M.’s Thomas J. Watson research group speech team: “These sounds can be incredibly subtle, even unnoticeable, but have a profound psychological effect. It can be extremely reassuring to have a more attentive-sounding voice.”
Microsoft said on Wednesday that it is filing two separate patent infringement actions against the GPS navigation company [TomTom]. In complaints before the U.S. District Court in Washington and the International Trade Commission, Microsoft is alleging infringement of eight patents.
Microsoft already has deals with several other GPS system makers including Pioneer, Alpine, and Kenwood as part of its efforts to license its technology, a push that began back in 2003.
"All of these patents have been licensed before by many other companies," Gutierrez said. "We are asking TomTom to do what other companies have done and take a license."
For five years, Li's formula, known as a Gaussian copula function, looked like an unambiguously positive breakthrough, a piece of financial technology that allowed hugely complex risks to be modeled with more ease and accuracy than ever before. With his brilliant spark of mathematical legerdemain, Li made it possible for traders to sell vast quantities of new securities, expanding financial markets to unimaginable levels.
Then the model fell apart. Cracks started appearing early on, when financial markets began behaving in ways that users of Li's formula hadn't expected. The cracks became full-fledged canyons in 2008—when ruptures in the financial system's foundation swallowed up trillions of dollars and put the survival of the global banking system in serious peril.via marginalrevolution.com
Phone has become a function on a portable device.
It has been more than 35 years since Martin Cooper placed the first call on a mobile phone to his rival at Bell Labs while working at Motorola. Heck, it's been nearly 20 years since Saved by the Bell’s Zack Morris placed a phone call to Kelly Kapowski from his locker. In that time, phones have come a long way.
We now live in a golden age of mobile phones. Or, perhaps more accurately, the end of the age of mobile phones. The iPhone, the G2, the N95, the Bold: These are exceptionally small mobile computers with built-in telephony features.
A study comparing the weight and growth of pupils fed on a 1940s diet with those on a contemporary menu rich in junk food underlines the growing concern over obesity levels in Britain's youngsters. The current generation of eight-year-olds consumes on average 1,200 calories a day more than their counterparts 60 years ago.
In addition, those fed on wartime rations grew significantly taller while shedding substantially more weight compared to those on a modern diet of school meals and packed lunches.
Professor Philip James, head of global think-tank the International Obesity Task Force, said children were far healthier during the war than now, when the choice of food has never been greater.
Ageing is often blamed on the oxidising compounds we produce in our bodies, which gradually wear down DNA and proteins. These damaged molecules then go on to wreak havoc in cells. [Researchers] found twice as many undamaged proteins in naked mole rats as in mice. What's more, the rats' protein recycling machinery was exceptionally active (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0809620106). The team suspects that naked mole rats manufacture extra quantities of molecules that are responsible for labelling damaged proteins that need to be recycled quickly to minimise their effect on cells.
In nature, ant queens mate during just one period of time but mate with many males during that time (this causes the queen to build up a sizeable sperm bank.) Queens can store sperm and lay eggs during their entire lifetime [15-20 years].
Just 30 percent of people who buy an iPhone application actually use it the day after it was purchased, according to Pinch Media, which analyzed over 30 million downloads from Apple's App Store. And the numbers plunge from there: after 20 days, less than 5 percent of those who downloaded an application are actively using it. The drop-off is worse for free applications.
Also, in the nineteenth century, the typewriter was invented. Of course, that may be the core idea of a computer. Your computer looks like a typewriter, but a typewriter just speeds recording of information. Tests show in the nineteenth century that people could type four or five times as fast as they could handwrite and there's no ambiguity because it's very clear what key was struck; whereas, handwritten--fast handwriting becomes impossible to read--or difficult.Typewriter broke the tradeoff between the speed of writing and the speed/acuracy of subsequent reading. The next stage: tradeoff between speech and typing ( voice recognition). And the next: voice expression and drawing vs speed of thinking.
... the history of finance is the history of invention just as much as it is in other fields, notably engineering. The idea that I want to develop is that the history of finance is a history of discrete inventions. Non-obvious ideas were conceived of to solve these problems of long-term risks and to get around the psychological barriers imposed by framing biases and psychological biases, in order to allow people to actually manage the risk and to get around moral hazard. It's a difficult thing to do these things and that's why we need invention.From an invention/innovation perspective, the whole lecture is interesting throughout because it shows how it takes years, if not centuries, to solve problems that have "obvious" solutions.
Market researcher ComScore reported that LinkedIn's unique visitors rose to 7.7 million, a 22 percent increase over December. And not only are more people visiting LinkedIn, but they're hanging around longer as well. Total minutes spent on the site last month more than doubled from December to 96.8 million, according to TechCrunch.Relationship network capitalizes on change in the environment. In a very similar pattern, facebook built up its initial membership among students who moved from high school into university environment. Nowadays, many professionals find themselves involuntary moved from industry jobs to unemployment rolls.
...for a given task, the mindware is available to carry out override (whether the procedures and declarative knowledge are available to substitute an analytic response for a heuristic one). If the relevant mindware is not available, then the person must, of necessity, respond heuristically. It is immaterial whether the person detects the necessity for override or has the capacity to sustain override if the normatively appropriate response is simply not available. If the relevant mindware (probabilistic thinking skills, falsifiability tendencies, disposition to search for alternative explanations, sensitivity to contradiction, etc.) is not present, then participants will end up at what has been termed in the figure Path 1 to a heuristic response.In other words, if the problem-solver doesn't know rational methods to solve a problem (mindware), neither his/her general intelligence, nor the awareness of the bias, are going to help come up with a good solution.
A man about 43 years of age giving the name Joshua Coppersmith has been arrested for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires. He calls the instrument a 'telephone,' which is obviously intended to imitate the word 'telegraph' and win the confidence of those who know the success of the latter instrument. Well informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires, as may be done by dots and dashes and signals of the Morse Code. The authorities who apprehended this criminal are to be congratulated and it is hoped that punishment will be prompt and fitting, and that it may serve as an example to other conscienceless schemers who enrich themselves at the expense of their fellow creatures.– Boston newspaper, 1865, quoted by Edison's assistant Francis Jehl in Menlo Park Reminiscences, 1937
Paradox of disclosure (Arrow, 1962; Anton and Yao, 1994): when trading in ideas, the willingness-to-pay of potential buyers depends on their knowledge of the idea, yet knowledge of the idea implies that potential buyers need not pay in order to exploit it. Disclosure increases the buyer’s intrinsic valuation but reduces the inventor’s bargaining power In the absence of formal intellectual property, potential buyers can claim that an idea was known, expropriating innovators once they have disclosed their technology.
quoted from "The product market and the market for 'ideas': commercialization strategies for technology entrepreneur." Joshua S. Gans and Scott Stern. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071
... the main finding is that the observed fat-tailed activity distributions can be explained by a simple hypothesis: humans execute their tasks based on some perceived priority, setting up queues that generate very uneven waiting time distributions for different tasks.One important question to consider: what does it take for people to re-think their priorities? For example, we can see how high energy prices forced consumers to abandon gas-guzzling trucks. Other examples of massive priority shifts?
Apple announced ... 300 million applications have been downloaded from a catalog that now tops 10,000 different apps.Most of those applications are just an interface with the "infocloud". I wonder how difficult it would be move them to a different mobile platform. Despite all the hoopla, Microsoft and Google might not that far behind. The long-term dominance in the enterprise software space is at stake here. Any company that figures out a way to tap into mission-critical business applications will come out the strongest out of the current industry downturn.
Brokerage across the structural holes between groups provides a vision of options otherwise unseen, which is the mechanism by which brokerage becomes social capital.
The organization is rife with structural holes, and brokerage has its expected correlates. Compensation, positive performance evaluations, promotions, and good ideas are disproportionately in the hands of people whose networks span structural holes. The between-group brokers are more likely to express ideas, less likely to have ideas dismissed, and more likely to have ideas evaluated as valuable.
People connected to groups beyond their own can expect to find themselves delivering valuable ideas, seeming to be gifted with creativity. This is not creativity born of genius; it is creativity as an import-export business. An idea
mundane in one group can be a valuable insight in another.
a San Francisco-based start-up, calls itself a "defensive patent aggregator." The company plans to buy available patents to keep them out of the hands of "patent trolls," or firms that obtain patents for the purpose of suing other companies for royalties or licensing fees.
RPX will sell memberships to companies for a fixed annual fee that could range from $35,000 to $4.9 million, depending on the member company's operating income. For the price of the annual membership, companies will receive the patent licenses purchased by RPX. The Wall Street Journal reported that Cisco Systems and IBM have already signed up.
Have you noticed the little "brand" stickers on your bananas, apples, peaches, pears, mangos, kiwi, and other seasonal fruits?
The number on that little sticker, not only is the price look number, it also tells how the product is grown or created. This has made news recently with the release of the new rules for "organic" labeling. For conventionally grown fruit, the PLU code on the sticker consists of four numbers. Organically grown fruit have a five-numeral PLU beginning with the number 9. Genetically engineered fruit has a five-numeral PLU beginning with the number 8.
A growing number of produce packers and distributors are experimenting with natural-light labeling, a new process that uses a laser to etch identifying information (country of origin, variety, etc.) into the skins of fruits and vegetables without bruising or causing other damage.
Microsoft also now understands that its platform must span every kind of device--PC, notebook, smartphone, car, home, etc.--and offline scenarios. Microsoft missed the Web search revolution, but it's not going to miss out on the much bigger revolution--the move to the cloud over the next two decades.
Google is building a competing ecosystem from the ground up with similar characteristics and a desire to attract millions of developers. Amazon is pushing its elastic computer cloud, and Rackspace, EMC, IBM, and many other companies are trying to get a piece of the action. Most the cloud companies are focused on hosting services, but the biggest piece will be platforms-as-a-service with developers creating and running their applications for on a cloud operating system.
While the medical profession deplores the increase in obesity, the standard economic view is the opposite. Lower prices for any good – either monetary or time costs – expand the budget set and make people better off. But self-control issues complicate this interpretation. If people have difficulty controlling how much they eat, lowering the time costs of food consumption may exacerbate these problems. Certainly, the $30-$50 billion spent annually on diets testifies to the
self-control problems that many people face. In the last part of the paper, we consider the welfare implication of lower food production costs in a model where individuals have self-control problems. Such a model helps explain why the increases in weight have been biggest at the upper end of the weight distribution, where self-control problems are the most severe.
(e.g. good)
* Exchange-traded funds
* The growth of venture capital and angel investing
* The democratization of access to financial information (e.g. Yahoo! finance)
* The democratization of participation in financial markets (e.g. the growth of internet and discount brokerages that offer easy access to a wide variety of stocks, bonds, and exchange-traded derivatives, both domestic and international).
(and bad)
[*] CDOs, and etc.
* 401-K plans with limited investment menus
*
* The conventional wisdom that long-term savings ought by default be placed in passive stock funds
* The conflation of ordinary saving and financial return seeking
* The tolerance, advocacy, and subsidy of financial leverage throughout the economy
* The move towards large-scale, delegated, and professionalized of money management
* The growth of investment vehicles accessible primarily or solely to professional and institutional investors
on October 1, 1908, to be exact--that Ford Motor built the very first of the iconic gasoline-powered automobiles to be sold. By the time formal production halted in May 1927, more than 15 million had been built, and American lives and landscapes had been set on a very new road.
