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February 06 2010
The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results
Shared by Kaleb HornsbySilverTooth writes "Often, when watching a science documentary or reading an article, it seems that the scientists were executing a well-laid out plan that led to their discovery. Anyone familiar with the process of scientific discovery realizes that is a far cry from reality. Scientific discovery is fraught with false starts and blind alleys. As a result, labs accumulate vast amounts of valuable knowledge on what not to do, and what does not work. Trouble is, this knowledge is not shared using the usual method of scientific communication: the peer-reviewed article. It remains within the lab, or at the most shared informally among close colleagues. As it stands, the scientific culture discourages sharing negative results. Byte Size Biology reports on a forthcoming journal whose aim is to change this: the Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results. Hopefully, scientists will be able to better share and learn more from each other's experience and mistakes."
It's not when scientists say "Eureka!" that science is advanced, but when they say, "I didn't expect that."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
February 05 2010
Google Voice Quick Reference Cheatsheet v2.0 Speeds Through Phone Menus [Cheatsheets]
A while back we highlighted a Google Voice Quick Reference cheatsheet you can keep near your phone that lays out Google Voice's voicemail menu tree so you can quickly skip to whatever action you want. The cheatsheet (above) just updated with a few more details here and there, so if you're a Voice user, it's worth grabbing. [Cool Geex]
Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot
Shared by Kaleb Hornsbycremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."
Slashdot, where the hell is the verb in the second sentence? What the heck?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
February 02 2010
February 01 2010
DRM Content Drives Availability On P2P Networks
Shared by Kaleb Hornsbyjgreco writes "The music industry once feared that going DRM-free would drive a massive explosion of copyright-infringing music availability on P2P networks. Now, a new study seems to suggest otherwise. The answer is obvious: if you can easily get inexpensive DRM-free content that works on your devices through legitimate channels, most people won't bother with the headache of P2P networks. It appears that users largely turn to P2P to acquire DRM-free versions of content that is distributed with DRM. The MPAA, of course, will not come away from this with the obvious conclusion."
That's what I've been doi... saying.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar
Shared by Kaleb Hornsbyinnocent_white_lamb writes "30% of freshman university students fail a 'simple English test' at Waterloo University (up from 25% a few years ago. Academic papers are riddled with 'cuz' (in place of 'because') and even include little emoticon faces. One professor says that students 'think commas are sort of like parmesan cheese that you sprinkle on your words.' At Simon Fraser University, 10% of students are not qualified to take the mandatory writing courses."
Biggest pet peaves: than, then; they're, their, there; your, you're
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
January 31 2010
Evolving Robots Learn To Prey On Each Other
Shared by Kaleb Hornsbyquaith writes "Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller report in PLoS ONE how their robots were able to rapidly evolve complex behaviors such as collision-free movement, homing, predator versus prey strategies, cooperation, and even altruism. A hundred generations of selection controlled by a simple neural network were sufficient to allow robots to evolve these behaviors. Their robots initially exhibited completely uncoordinated behavior, but as they evolved, the robots were able to orientate, escape predators, and even cooperate. The authors point out that this confirms a proposal by Alan Turing who suggested in the 1950s that building machines capable of adaptation and learning would be too difficult for a human designer and could instead be done using an evolutionary process. The robots aren't yet ready to compete in Robot Wars, but they're still pretty impressive."
The word is orient, not orientate.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax | Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax |
January 30 2010
Unofficial Qt Environment (and Sudoku) For the Kindle
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
January 29 2010
Google To Pay $500 For Bugs Found In Chromium
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
View facebook friend list [hidden or not hidden]
$ lynx -useragent=Opera -dump 'http://www.facebook.com/ajax/typeahead_friends.php?u=4&__a=1' |gawk -F'\"t\":\"' -v RS='\",' 'RT{print $NF}' |grep -v '\"n\":\"' |cut -d, -f2
There's no need to be logged in facebook. I could do more JSON filtering but you get the idea...
Replace u=4 (Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook creator) with desired uid.
Hidden or not hidden... Scary, don't you?
by David Winterbottom (codeinthehole.com)
Reported Obama Plan Would Privatize Manned Launches
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
January 26 2010
Thank you, Savannah.
January 24 2010
Math Unicode Entities
January 23 2010
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...


