This is the website of "MetaCortex", the company that Neo worked for in the Matrix. There's a lot of info here, and evidently multiple puzzles waiting to be solved. It's one of those "Alternate Reality Games", like Majestic. I'm way too busy with Kryptos & Cyrillic Projector stuff at the moment to dig into it, but it looks like fun, so I wanted to at least meme it.

More info is here:
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~mlpatter/matrix/

Enjoy,

Elonka :)

Matrix Puzzle - MetaCortex Headquarters

] Albert Titus, an assistant professor of electrical
] engineering at the University at Buffalo, New York, has
] created a silicon chip that mimics the structure and
] functionality of an octopus retina.
]
] His "o-retina" chip can process images just like an
] octopus eye does. The chip could give sight to rescue or
] research robots, allowing them to see more clearly than
] human eyes can in dark or murky conditions.

Titus notes, "the retina is an extension of the brain, so where does the distinction between seeing and perceiving begin and end?"

Wired News: The Octopus as Eyewitness

] The UK Computing Research Committee (UKCRC), a joint
] expert panel of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and
] the British Computer Society is working with the Council
] of Professors and Heads of Computing to start seven new
] projects.

1. IVIS: In Vivo <-> In Silico: simulate what happens in real life and reproduce it in silicon.
2. Science for Global Ubiquitous Computing
3. Memories for Life: establish ways in which personal data can be securely stored and searched.
4. Scalable Ubiquitous Computing Systems: establish design principles
5. Architecture of Brain and Mind: find out how the human brain works.
6. Dependable Systems Evolution: establish a scientific foundation to build systems whose dependability can be justified.
7. Journeys in Non-Classical Computing: drawing on nature for inspiration and building complex computer systems.

UKCRC Home Page: http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/Grand_Challenges/

vnunet.com The Grand Challenges for computer science

An interesting discussion of how Google manages it's server farm...

Paper on Google's filesystem

I was reading my weblogs earlier today, and noticed this webpage linking to my Projector webpage. It claimed to have the solution technique for Sanborn's decade-old Cyrillic Projector, though it didn't have any English plaintext or any kind of contact information.

I've seen anonymous "solutions" before with no basis in reality, so treated it with skepticism at first, but, several hours and a flurry of IMs, emails, and Excel spreadsheets later, I can confirm -- somebody's cracked it! More details will be coming soon, as I try to find out *who* did it so that they can be congratulated properly, and post the full English plaintext. In the meantime, anyone who wants to see the Russian plaintext, email or IM me privately and I'll show you what I've verified so far. I need help translating!

Elonka :)

Cyrillic Projector Code - Cracked!

] Plans to build the "world's biggest spiking neural
] network" to mimic the brain were announced by Mountain
] View, Calif.-based Artificial Development at the
] Accelerating Change Conference on Sunday.
]
] The CCortex system will be a "massive spiking neuron
] network emulation and will mimic the human cortex, with
] 20 billion layered neurons and 2 trillion 8-bit
] connections," according to AD's President and CEO Marcos
] Guillen, listed in the Guardian's "The Young Rich" for
] his former position as Director of Red Internauta of
] Spain, valued at 29.6 million pounds.
]
] The network will run on a 1000-processor supercomputer
] cluster operating at 4.8 teraflops, with 1.5 terabytes of
] RAM and 80 terabytes of storage, he said.

This is about 3 orders of magnitude short of the computational power required to simulate a human brain. By Hans Moravec's estimate, this is about as much power as it would take to simulate a rat's brain -- if one had a good model of how a rat's brain worked. Still, a lot of cognitive science has been done with rats, and if these folks are serious, it could be a step forward.

In the article, critics of this approach say that the 10^15 ops/sec estimated requirement is low by 7 orders of magnitude.

KurzweilAI.net

Neal Stephenson has a new book, "Quicksilver", coming out next week.

Pursuing the 17th-Century Origins of the Hacker's Grail

] ... teaching computers to read lips might boost the accuracy
] of automatic speech recognition. Listeners naturally use
] mouth movements to help them understand the difference
] between "bat" and "pat," for instance. If distinctions
] like this could be added to a computer's databank with
] the aid of cheap cameras and powerful processors, speech
] recognition software might work a lot better, even in
] noisy places.

A good step, but ultimately one would want to include gestures and other elements of "body language".

Beyond Voice Recognition, to a Computer That Reads Lips

] KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT revolves around the concept that one
] of the most valuable corporate assets is the experience
] and expertise floating around inside employees' heads. In
] order to manage this intellectual capital, executives
] must devise a way to capture and share that knowledge
] with coworkers. If done right, KM is supposed to create a
] more collaborative environment, cut down on duplication
] of effort and encourage knowledge sharing

Stumbled over this looking for information about CereByte, a KM software company in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

When Bad Things Happen to Good Ideas - KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT - Magazine - Darwin Magazine

inignoct wrote:
] ] The hellish climate of Venus may have arisen far more
] ] recently than previously supposed, suggests new research.
] ] If so, pleasant Earth-like conditions probably persisted
] ] for two billion years after the planet's birth - plenty
] ] of time for life to have developed.

Another point mentioned in the article: If this theory is correct, the habitable zone around stars is larger than previously estimated.

RE: Venus possibly habitable for billions of years - New Scientist