Re: [FRIAM] Lessig & OccupyBoston
On 10/11/11 2:50 PM, glen wrote: The point being that it's very difficult to take a "principled stand". Occupy Damascus-- yeah, that's a good way to die. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Cell Service/Tower/Reception/Repeaters/etc.
Steve: Looks like you and I are in similar situations -- trying to have a GSM (Europe compatible) phone in NM. My TMo coverage is good enough .. especially if I can buy a cell repeater as you mentioned; new to me. By "good enough" I mean it will work at home (I often have to move to a window!) and SFX. Not St John's, generally. Verizon definitely rules here. Beyond coverage, there is the compatibility issue. Fabio bought a phone in Italy .. from WIND .. which works with the ATT broadband spectrum apparently. TMo and ATT differ in their broadband .. I *think* but am not certain that ATT is more compatible with europe's broadband. But while traveling, most folks don't use a broadband plan .. voice and SMS is just fine. That's certainly proved true for me in Italy .. especially if the phone has WiFi. I'm starting to think that WiFi plays a part in all this .. sorta a backup/office approach to cellular broadband. I'm thinking about just how much DO I use broadband. I've only had Edge so not sure I really understand how useful 3G/4G are in practice. Another potential game changer is the iPhone 4S (and other) "world phones" which Verizon sells. I don't know about its 3G/4G compatibility with Europe, and how Verizon plans to enable the GSM half of the phone. Some rumors are that they will only enable it for "international use" i.e. you can't put in a local SIM in europe for travel .. instead it just extends your phone into europe at expensive international rates. On top of all this is cost. Most folks I know using broadband cellular are spending $90/mo or more. I pay $58/mo for a good plan at TMo. Unfortunately, the carriers are requiring a data plan if you get one of their subsidized "smart" phones (iPhone, Android). All this is driving me to weird scenarios. Like get a dumb GSM phone for voice/SMS only, and buy an iPod for WiFi only data use. Yet another gadget to carry. Another is go for buying my own unlocked GSM phone. I'm told that the pro-rated cost with plan savings makes the expensive phone cost no less than the subsidized one and naturally gives you a lot more freedom. For example, don't get a data plan, use WiFi for that, and settle for US/Europe voice/SMS + WiFi for data. And the MVNO's are making monthly plans available .. as does TMo. This goes nicely with an unlocked phone. If you need broadband for a while get it by the month. The combinatorics are horrid! Lets keep in touch about sensible cellular use in NM/Europe. -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] iClarified - Apple News - Steve Jobs Reveals Why He Always Wore the Turtleneck
I knew a guy in San Francisco 20 years ago who was dedicated to reducing all his material possessions to no more than 100 "things" -- books, clothes, shoes, everything. He eventually came up with the idea of two or three all-white jumpsuits that literally were all the wore. Oh, he could add a layer of silk long underwear or two if going to New York or Boston in the winter, but otherwise it was just the white jumpsuits. Actually, it makes sense, but in a logically boring way. -tj On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 8:54 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > From the absolutely-ridiculous dept: > http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=17274 > >-- Owen > > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > -- == J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com t...@jtjohnson.com == FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Editorial survey: swarm intelligence for data mining
The Editorial survey in the latest Machine Learning is worth a read http://www.springer.com/?SGWID=0-0-1500-1493603-0&cm_mmc=AD-_-Journal-_-MCS14908_V1-_-0 Free access until 10/31/2011 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Where people don’t use Facebook
Speaking of Facebook in a few previous threads, this is interesting: http://flowingdata.com/2011/10/12/where-people-dont-use-facebook/ .. Showing the earth a and FB usage. Good to see some dark areas!! -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Robert Geist's OpenCL 3-day workshop starts tomorrow (Thurs) @1:30p
Sessions will run: Thursday, October 13th: 1:30 - 2:30 PM Wednesday, October 19th: 1:30 - 2:30 PM Friday, October 21st: 1:30 - 2:30 PM The very cool Open CL Workshop Series with Robert Geist starts tomorrow at the Santa Fe Complex. Please let us know you'll be attending (and find times and location info) at: http://opencl2011oct.eventbrite.com/ OpenCL is a language that is a library extension of C used for computing on heterogeneous platforms and is ubiquitous in HPC and tasks within computer graphics. Dr. Robert Geist will do an introduction to and provide examples of this newly emerging standard for GPU use for HPC. *About our speaker: * Robert Geist is a Professor in the School of Computing at Clemson University. He served as Interim Director of the School in 2007-2008, and he is co-founder of Clemson's Digital Production Arts Program. He received an M.A. in computer science from Duke University and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame. He was an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Duke University before joining the faculty at Clemson University. He is a member of IFIP WG 7.3, a recipient of the Günther Enderle Award (Best Paper, Eurographics), and a Distinguished Educator of the ACM. http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~geist/homepage.html FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Unmanned aerial warfare: Flight of the drones | The Economist
Beyond being informative: http://www.economist.com/node/21531433 .. this illustrates one of the reasons Machine Learning, and the Stanford class, has been so successful lately. >From the article: Another potential advantage for UAS is that future designs may be better able to survive in contested airspace than manned aircraft are. Without the need to accommodate crew, drones can be given strange radar-cheating stealthy shapes. They may also acquire “hyper-manoeuvrability”. Now look at a video from the Stanford ML course intro. It is a small helicopter that is too small and fast to use usual piloting. Hyper-manoeuvrability at work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCdxqn0fcnE To solve the problem, they used machine learning for weird capabilities such as flying upside down and other stunts. Initially deterministic methods were used to attempt these maneuvers. It was too difficult and error prone, for a craft of this size the decision speeds were just too great for current algorithms. So ML approaches were taken .. producing this extraordinary capability. And yes, they can make quieter, smaller and deadly versions. Ethicists in the military are deciding when these capabilities can target and kill with no human in the loop. Its not too late to look into the Stanford class. -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org