Kaleb's Grey Matter

The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:40:49 GMT

Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
It's not when scientists say "Eureka!" that science is advanced, but when they say, "I didn't expect that."

SilverTooth 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."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Voice Quick Reference Cheatsheet v2.0 Speeds Through Phone Menus [Cheatsheets]

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:00:00 GMT

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

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:08:51 GMT

Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
Slashdot, where the hell is the verb in the second sentence? What the heck?

cremeglace 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."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yo Dawg, I heard You Like Perl: Writing a Perl interpreter with Perl http://g...

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:06:45 GMT

Yo Dawg, I heard You Like Perl: Writing a Perl interpreter with Perl http://go.hornsby.ws/nvvgf

Yo Dawg, I heard You Like Perl: Writing a Perl interpreter with Perl

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:48:00 GMT

Finally, we were given our first assignment in my CSCI 3300 Programming Languages class. We have to write a basic Perl interpreter using Perl. I am not too thrilled about the assignment. I would probably appreciate it better if I could use Perl to write an interpreter of almost any other language.

I try my best not to be a bigot, but why are three kids with Java books in th...

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:09:51 GMT

I try my best not to be a bigot, but why are three kids with Java books in the Computer Science Lab?

Search term "Kaleb Hornsby" on Google Squared: http://www.google.com/squared/...

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:29:46 GMT

Search term "Kaleb Hornsby" on Google Squared: http://www.google.com/squared/table/agtZbxHGRsVCZF8wfApaXSlA Cornmeal?

DRM Content Drives Availability On P2P Networks

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:25:24 GMT

Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
That's what I've been doi... saying.

jgreco 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."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:18:22 GMT

Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
Biggest pet peaves: than, then; they're, their, there; your, you're

innocent_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."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:13:00 GMT

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How unique and trackable is your web browser?

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:21:19 GMT

http://panopticlick.eff.org/

Evolving Robots Learn To Prey On Each Other

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:39:29 GMT

Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
The word is orient, not orientate.

quaith 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."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax | Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax |

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 03:07:08 GMT

Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax | Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax |

Source: www.rallycongress.com

Action Petition: Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax

H.R. 4439, the Tobacco Tax Parity Act of 2010 was introduced on January 13, 2010 and would raise the tax on pipe tobacco 775% from $2.8311 to $24.78 per pound. Click here to sign the petition to stop this bill - it is ridiculous!

Unofficial Qt Environment (and Sudoku) For the Kindle

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:20:00 GMT

An anonymous reader writes "I've just posted packages for installing a Qt-based platform on the Kindle 2 and DX devices, and a Sudoku game to go along with it. The Qt-based platform includes plugins I wrote for the e-ink display, the keyboard, and the five-way joystick thing — so it's a fully interactive and usable environment now. Soon I'll be adding a sample app with source code to go along with it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google To Pay $500 For Bugs Found In Chromium

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:41:00 GMT

Trailrunner7 writes to mention that a new program from Google could pay security researchers $500 for every security bug found in Chromium. Of course if you find a particularly clever bug you could be eligible for a $1337 reward. "Today, we are introducing an experimental new incentive for external researchers to participate. We will be rewarding select interesting and original vulnerabilities reported to us by the security research community. For existing contributors to Chromium security — who would likely continue to contribute regardless — this may be seen as a token of our appreciation. In addition, we are hoping that the introduction of this program will encourage new individuals to participate in Chromium security. The more people involved in scrutinizing Chromium's code and behavior, the more secure our millions of users will be. Such a concept is not new; we'd like to give serious kudos to the folks at Mozilla for their long-running and successful vulnerability reward program."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View facebook friend list [hidden or not hidden]

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:10:35 GMT

$ lynx -useragent=Opera -dump 'http://www.facebook.com/ajax/typeahead_friends.php?u=4&amp;__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

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:57:00 GMT

couchslug writes with this excerpt from the not-yet-paywalled New York Times: "President Obama will end NASA's return mission to the moon and turn to private companies to launch astronauts into space when he unveils his budget request to Congress next week, an administration official said Thursday. The shift would 'put NASA on a more sustainable and ambitious path to the future' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But the changes have angered some members of Congress, particularly from Texas, the location of the Johnson Space Center, and Florida, the location of the Kennedy Space Center. 'My biggest fear is that this amounts to a slow death of our nation's human space flight program,' Representative Bill Posey, Republican of Florida, said in a statement." If true, this won't please the federal panel that recommended against just such privatization.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thank you, Savannah.

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:32:59 GMT

Oooh Yeah! -The Kool-Aid Man

Math Unicode Entities

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:20:56 GMT

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/mathchart.html

Creepy. http://phodroid.com/10/01/ym378r

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:10:46 GMT

Creepy. http://phodroid.com/10/01/ym378r

01/20/10 PHD comic: '63% of internet readers will like this comic'

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:00:32 GMT

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com

title: "63% of internet readers will like this comic" - originally published 1/20/2010 To read the full-sized comic, CLICK HERE!

Subscribed to elsellars

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:40:05 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/user/elsellars?feature=autoshareSubscribed to elsellars
I subscribed to elsellars’s channel on YouTube.

Subscribed to pullingj

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:39:13 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/user/pullingj?feature=autoshareSubscribed to pullingj
I subscribed to pullingj’s channel on YouTube.

Subscribed to elijahsholt

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:29:34 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/user/elijahsholt?feature=autoshareSubscribed to elijahsholt
I subscribed to elijahsholt’s channel on YouTube.

Zombie Charlie Francis

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:29:20 GMT

The resurrection of Agent Charlie Francis brought forth other zombies from all over the web.

http://digg.com/security/Zombie_Charlie_Francis

Zombie Charlie Francis

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:29:19 GMT

The resurrection of Agent Charlie Francis brought forth other zombies from all over the web.

http://digg.com/security/Zombie_Charlie_Francis

Zombie Charlie Francis

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:29:16 GMT

Zombie Charlie Francis

I uploaded a YouTube video: I am a big fan of Fringe, but was surprised to see Agent Charlie Francis back from the dead when I was catching up on the last episode. So I did a Google search for "charlie francis back from the dead" to see what was up. Not only was he back from the dead, but he has since spawned several zombies! The first 12 pages of that Google search were for infected with his zomblings in the form of Windows mal-ware. You know those sites that prompt you for a virus-scan and then say, "Wowzers you have a lot of viri and worms and Trojans, oh my; download our anti-virus software for freeeeeeee!" bogus kind of sites. That's a lot of search spam. It doesn't look like Bing or Yahoo were infected by this. I wouldn't have thought so, but I thought I would check anyway. I just thought I would let the internet be aware. Thankfully Firefox is quick to protect the public at large from these kind of attacks.

I am a big fan of Fringe, but was surprised to see Agent Charlie Francis back...

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:25:43 GMT

I am a big fan of Fringe, but was surprised to see Agent Charlie Francis back...: kaleb.libr8.us/...

I am a big fan of Fringe, but was surprised to see Agent Charlie Francis back...

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:23:02 GMT

I am a big fan of Fringe, but was surprised to see Agent Charlie Francis back from the dead when I was catching up on the last episode. So I did a Google search for "charlie francis back from the dead" to see what was up.

Not only was he back from the dead, but he has since spawned several zombies! The first 12 pages of that Google search were for infected with his zomblings in the form of Windows mal-ware. You know those sites that prompt you for a virus-scan and then say, "Wowzers you have a lot of viri and worms and Trojans, oh my; download our anti-virus software for freeeeeeee!" bogus kind of sites.

That's a lot of search spam. It doesn't look like Bing or Yahoo were infected by this. I wouldn't have thought so, but I thought I would check anyway.

I just thought I would let the internet be aware. Thankfully Firefox is quick to protect the public at large from these kind of attacks.

test-0000.mpeg

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:20:34 GMT

test-0000.mpeg

Bleh.

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:15:46 GMT

HTTP errors - a set on Flickr

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:04:43 GMT

A funny collection of images representing HTTP errors.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/sets/72157594388426362/

Xfce Gigolo

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:38:27 GMT

Gigolo is a samba client for Xfce. From their site:

About the name Gigolo

You may ask why it is called Gigolo, a strange name for an application. But actually it fits pretty well for what it does:
It mounts what it is told to.
That's all.

I was messing around with the Xfce Desktop Environment, trying to rid my netbook of some of GNOME's bloat.I found it had a very nice samba client. It's name is Gigolo.

http://www.uvena.de/gigolo/

Semicontrolled Demolition

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Semicontrolled Demolition
I believe the truth always lies halfway between the most extreme claims.

As a kid I remember buying canned soda for 25¢ from a machine & 15¢ for the s...

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:26:40 GMT

As a kid I remember buying canned soda for 25¢ from a machine & 15¢ for the store brand. Can somebody find me a graph of prices over time?

SVN vs. Mercurial vs. Git For Managing Your Home Directory

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:33:13 GMT

http://joshcarter.com/productivity/svn_hg_git_for_home_directory

A new approach to China

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:30:43 GMT

Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
Do no evil, Google. :)

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve's blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China's economic reform programs and its citizens' entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

Isaac Asimov

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'"

Microsoft Pulls Office From Its Own Online Store

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:39:32 GMT

Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
I am no fan of Microsoft, but that patent and that lawsuit was... what's the polite way of saying BS?

CWmike writes "Microsoft has pulled almost every version of Office from its own online store to comply with a court order requiring it to remove custom XML technology from its popular Word software that starts on Monday. As of mid-day, the only edition available from the Microsoft Store was Office Ultimate 2007, a $670 'full-version' suite. All other Windows editions, as well as Office 2008 for Mac, were accompanied by the message: 'This product is currently unavailable while we update versions on our site. We expect it to be available soon.' Microsoft confirmed that the disappearance of Office was related to the injunction that came out of a patent infringement case the company lost in 2009. 'We've taken steps to comply with the court's ruling and we're introducing the revised software into the US market," said Michael Croan, a senior marketing manager, in an e-mail. He also downplayed the move. 'This process will be imperceptible to the vast majority of customers, who will find both trial and purchase options readily available.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gail Godwin

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:37:12 GMT

Shared by Kaleb Hornsby
That must be why Dr. Dowell likes to tell jokes.

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater."

Kaleb's Grey Matter

The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results

Google Voice Quick Reference Cheatsheet v2.0 Speeds Through Phone Menus [Cheatsheets]

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot

Yo Dawg, I heard You Like Perl: Writing a Perl interpreter with Perl http://g...

Yo Dawg, I heard You Like Perl: Writing a Perl interpreter with Perl

I try my best not to be a bigot, but why are three kids with Java books in th...

Search term "Kaleb Hornsby" on Google Squared: http://www.google.com/squared/...

DRM Content Drives Availability On P2P Networks

Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar

Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar

How unique and trackable is your web browser?

Evolving Robots Learn To Prey On Each Other

Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax | Stop the Pipe Tobacco Tax |

Unofficial Qt Environment (and Sudoku) For the Kindle

Google To Pay $500 For Bugs Found In Chromium

View facebook friend list [hidden or not hidden]

Reported Obama Plan Would Privatize Manned Launches

Thank you, Savannah.

Math Unicode Entities

Creepy. http://phodroid.com/10/01/ym378r

01/20/10 PHD comic: '63% of internet readers will like this comic'

Subscribed to elsellars

Subscribed to pullingj

Subscribed to elijahsholt

Zombie Charlie Francis

Zombie Charlie Francis

Zombie Charlie Francis

I am a big fan of Fringe, but was surprised to see Agent Charlie Francis back...

I am a big fan of Fringe, but was surprised to see Agent Charlie Francis back...

test-0000.mpeg

Bleh.

HTTP errors - a set on Flickr

Xfce Gigolo

About the name Gigolo

Semicontrolled Demolition

As a kid I remember buying canned soda for 25¢ from a machine & 15¢ for the s...

SVN vs. Mercurial vs. Git For Managing Your Home Directory

A new approach to China

Isaac Asimov

Microsoft Pulls Office From Its Own Online Store

Gail Godwin

About the name `Gigolo`