] "We can easily distort memories for the details of an
] event that you did experience," says Loftus. "And we
] can also go so far as to plant entirely false memories
] - we call them rich false memories because they are so
] detailed and so big."

Memory is much more unreliable than you might recall.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | 'We can implant entirely false memories'

This story describes a technology for passing around small XML(?) files that contain a URL from which you can obtain a DRMed music track. Not very exciting from a technological standpoint, but its interesting from a business standpoint.

URLs for music

] Reuven Cohen of Bar-Ilan University in Israel and his
] colleagues propose a simple modification of random
] vaccination that is more effective, according to their
] computer simulations. The idea is to randomly choose,
] say, 20% of the individuals and ask them to name one
] acquaintance; then vaccinate those acquaintances.
] Potential super-spreaders have such a large number of
] acquaintances that they are very likely to be named at
] least once, the researchers found. On the other hand, the
] super-spreaders are so few in number that the random 20%
] of individuals is unlikely to include many of them.

Vaccinate Thy Neighbor

Here you can see the last statements of people executed in Texas. There seem to be five categories, some of which overlap.

1. People who deal with facing death by becoming religious.
2. People who apologize and seek forgiveness.
3. People who believe that they were in the wrong, but cannot accept their punishment.
4. People who proclaim their innocence and condemn their executioners.
5. People who say nothing (or maybe these are the ones who freaked out rather then making a formal "statement").

All tolled, I recommend reading a few of these. Its something that people ought to think about. Its like unedited war footage. It is raw data.

This is an occasion to discuss my perspective on the Death Penalty. I've been thinking about it a lot recently as I've been asked to serve on a jury, and whether or not you are willing to meter out such a punishment can determine whether or not you are allowed(/forced) to serve on a jury. I've been thinking about whether I support the death penalty, and if I don't, whether I should meter it out anyway if required as a juror is not a legislator nor a king.

The second question was easier to answer then the first. Conscientious objection now has a fine tradition in our country, and the history of the Second World War makes it clear that one must not allow ones role in society to overrule ones better personal morality.

What's more, the Supreme Court has decided that the ability of prosecutors to find a Jury willing to meter out death penalties outweighs the defendant's right to a jury that really represents their community. Being a systems professional, I'm quite comfortable with the idea that the system of checks and balances in our government can fail. More then three things fail all the time. This is one of the better examples I've seen. If you are moving outside of the local community in order to find people who will execute the law, you've raised the legislative authority of the republic of a wide geographic area above the more relevant perspective of the local community in question. The entire notion of trial by jury seems intended to prevent this precise activity. Why not simply do away with jury trials all together and have the judge (a trained legal professional) make the decisions precisely on the basis of the law?

I think community shopping for this reason ought to be illegal. I think that if I supported the death penalty there would be enough in this to make me tell them I didn't support it. If they are going to shop around for juries who will execute their bidding instead of REALLY turning to the community, then they aren't actually running jury trials. So, what is the point of participating if its just for show?

I've also decided, finally, that I oppose the Death Penalty. It really breaks down into two issues. One is whether I support the death penalty as administered by the U.S. Government, and the other is whether I support the... [ Read More (0.7k in body) ]

Executed Offenders - My thoughts on the death penalty.

] Here is an example of System-On-Chip (SOC) from
] Flextronics Semiconductor. It is a 32-bit general-purpose
] microcontroller implemented on UMC 0.18um targetting
] embedded applications with maximum clock frequency of
] 160MHz.

This is kind of neat... You can download VHDL for this CPU and drop it on an FPGA... Good educational tool at least.

Chips based on open cores hit the market

] Geoffrey Inc. is a subsidiary owned by Toys "R" Us.
] Geoffrey owns various trademarks and rights including the
] giraffe character, and Toys "R" Us stores pay royalties
] to Geoffrey. Because those royalties are business
] expenses, they are claimed as deductions that escape
] Louisiana taxation. Geoffrey pays no state taxes because
] it is incorporated in Delaware.

This would be hillarious if it wasn't an example of the ethics of the management of our publically traded companies...

Toy's R US pays itself for mascot to avoid taxation

] Intel's Grove derides such patent holders for showing
] little interest in producing goods with their inventions
] in favor of demanding licensing fees from others. "We
] call them trolls," he said.
]
] Acacia's patents lay dormant for 10 years, until the
] original company was bought out by some of its minority
] investors. Management is now making it one of many
] companies specializing in the business of generating
] money from patents, rather than using them to develop
] products directly.
]
] Robert A. Berman, general counsel for Acacia, said that
] many inventors and companies don't have the
] sophistication, expertise or money to commercialize their
] inventions.

The idea that software patents hurt innovation is becoming more mainstream (now that the FTC has made a statement about it).

washingtonpost.com: Patenting Air or Protecting Property?

] In the news, Kofi Annan thinks "a lot of web-based
] information is simply not relevant to the real needs of
] people;"

Someone blogging WSIS... I don't know if its relevant to watch these meetings. Apparently they are just going to do a study. Thats it. All the posturing, ranting, and booting of Paul Twomey is just a bunch of politicians doing what they do best, which is listen to themselves talk. I my limited experience I've found UN people to be the worst of anyone at this sort of thing. There'll be nothing to react to now, and maybe ever... If only I could say the same for Verisign.

The Daily Summit - Unlocking the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

] Asked about the SiteFinder address redirect trick Verisign
] rolled out. A group of "200 technical zealots" were
] against it and they got all the headlines. Did they
] misinterpret it? Of course. We're not going to let this
] go. It is going to be the point where we answer the
] debate.
]
] He then goes on to say that we need to move the
] complexity back into the center of the Net! He says the
] edge can't be so complex. Get David Isenberg in here!
] Ross Mayfield, sitting in front of me, laughs out loud. I
] am dumbfounded. According to Verisign, the Net should not
] be open to any type of application, only applications
] that rely on single providers of services, like Verisign.

There is going to be a hell of a market in alternative DNS systems and in technology that makes it easy for people to live with multiple DNS systems...

Stratton Sclavos at Red Herring Conference

] Paul Twomey, the president of the Internet Corporation
] for Assigned Names and Numbers, found out what it feels
] like to be voiceless.
]
] On Friday night, Twomey, who flew 20 hours to Geneva from
] a meeting in Vietnam to take part in a preparatory
] session for this week's United Nations summit meeting on
] Internet issues, was escorted to the exit of the meeting
] room by guards after participants suddenly decided to
] exclude observers.

Well, I must say, that was unreasonable.

Technology News: UN Takeover of Internet? Some Are 'Not Amused'