Last year, Mr. King was referred to Dr. Victor Aziz, a psychiatrist at St. Cadoc's Hospital in Wales. Dr. Aziz explained to him that there was a name for his experience: musical hallucinations.

This is interesting. I've had an ongoing interest in some of the finer points of the way we perceive music and relate it to memory..

I'm pretty sure I meme'd an article awhile back, which I can't seem to find, that went into some detail about how our brains and by extension our bodies react to musical patterns. The short of it was that some people are more likely then others to have their psychology follow music patterns they are exposed to. For instance, if you are listening to music that has a beat that's somewhat close to your heart-beat, your heart-beat will adjust to match the beat of the music. You are also more likely to preform physical actions like arm movements or walking in beat. This is the case with everyone, but its more prevalent with some people. Apparently some people are so susceptible to it that its hard or downright impossible to do things out of beat when exposed to one.

One of my favorite oddities, which you can catch yourself do: When you pause or stop music, you are more likely to do it directly in the middle off the song then at any other point. The reason for this is that it "feels right", and you do it unconsciously. Most musical compositions that "feel complete" have the tendency to rise and fall, and display elements of symmetry across their composition. Classical music and pop songs in particular..

Coming Soon: Electronica Mind Control

Neuron Network Goes Awry, and Brain Becomes an IPod

He's somewhat pleased that the court's decision to send the case back to the Ninth Circuit court in effect upheld an earlier Sony decision involving the Betamax VCR, which declined to hold manufacturers liable for illegal acts by their users. But Lessig contends the Supreme Court's decision will chill innovation by introducing a new level of uncertainty about whether a technology creator had an intent to allow copyright infringement.

I don't have such a dire view of this as Lessig. Sure, Sony did market the Betamax in a way that would have snagged the hook set in the Grokster case, but that case did not exist at the time. I don't think that's cause for concern.

If you have a p2p tool, don't market it for infringing uses. That's pretty straightforward and easy to do. The bar has been set, and its an easy one to get over.

However, his larger point is still valid. Litigation chills innovation. That point would still be valid regardless of the outcome of this case. As long as courts exist to handle civil matters between companies, they are going to be used in ways we don't like to protect someone's business model.

Lessig on Grokster

"Open source would be succeeding faster if the GPL didn't make lots of people nervous about adopting it." From the article: "I don't think the GPL is the principal reason for Linux's success. Rather, I believe it's because in 1991 Linus was the first person to find the right social architecture for distributed software development."

In fact, it's political considerations that kept me quiet for a while. For a long time, I judged that any harm the GPL might be doing was outweighed by the good. For some time after I stopped believing that, I didn't see quite enough reason to fight with the GPL zealots. I'm speaking up now because a couple of curves have intersected. It has become more apparent how much of an economic advantage open source development has, and my judgment of the utility of the GPL has fallen.

ESR argues that the social model surrounding Open Source Software has proven powerful enough to enforce good practices even without some of the stronger elements of the GPL.

I tend to agree with him, but I don't expect any paradigm shift in licensing strategies. Five more years, we may be using much more liberal licensing, but I don't think its going to happen fast. People are going to be very conservative about this. The "walk the walk if you are going to talk the talk" style of logic ESR uses here can be bent both ways.

Do we need the GPL to keep companies honest when it comes to giving back to open source projects?

Slashdot | We Don't Need the GPL Anymore

Days beforehand, I had made an internal report of unethical and apparently illegal behavior by the company: Use of open proxies for web harvesting to avoid blockage by web site operators. HMS apparently decided that working with me to address their use of open proxies was not an option.

Health Market Science is a large corporation with, compared to me, effectively infinite resources. My legal bills have topped $40K already over just two months. If HMS succeeds in tarring me with their false accusations, what's to stop your employer or client from doing the same to you, should your relationship sour?

Slashdot | Perl's Chip Salzenberg Sued, Home Raided

The answer a web search engine delivers is what it believes is the correct answer for the majority of users – often referred to as "the tyranny of the majority". For example, when you search for 'apple', the first result on most search engines is Apple Computer. But you may have been searching for information about the fruit or Apple Records.

Decius Wrote:
We don't have the resources that Yahoo has, but we've been at this a hell of a lot longer and I'll bet we get it a hell of a lot better. So, if you've got a million dollars burning a hole in your pocket and chip on your shoulder about Yahoo, I'll bet I can turn it into 10 million while beating the pants off of them in the process. Until such time as someone like that arrives this project will remain a weekend hobby with slow code and design updates.

Industrial Memetics, leading the way since 2001.

Yahoo! Search blog: Search, with a little help from your friends

A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

In a bitter dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the majority had created an ominous precedent. "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," she wrote. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private property, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

"As for the victims," Justice O'Connor went on, "the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

Justice Stevens was joined in the majority by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Justice O'Connor's fellow dissenters were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Justices, 5-4, Back Seizure of Property for Development - New York Times

I've updated the bookmarklets for Internet Explorer. The new IE bookmarklets do not pop up a window, thereby avoiding the annoying problem with IE's pop up blocker. As always, let me know if you have any trouble.

MemeStreams Update for Internet Explorer users

Do you think the Recommend and Discuss Bookmarklets should pop up a new window?

IE's pop up blocker can't tell the difference between a pop up ad and a bookmarklet, so I've had to make new bookmarklets for IE that don't pop up a new window. In truth, the IE bookmarklets work in Firefox, and the Firefox bookmarklets work in IE (assuming you disable pop up blocking) so its possible for users of each browser to use the kind of bookmarklets they prefer.

I prefer to have a new window pop up because I like to refer to the original article while I'm editing. However, I'm wondering what the rest of the site thinks. One might reasonably ask why I don't just let users choose which bookmarklets they want to install. The reason is that MemeStreams is intimidating enough to new users without having to ask them to make a decision about that when first joining the site.

So what are your thoughts? Pop ups good or bad?

Survey Question for MemeStreams Users

Quick journey through changing phone styles in the time before you owned your own phone.

Telephone ads through the decades

Almost didn't recommend it until I saw this in the Alerts box:

Your browser does not support ambient alpha wave memestreams. Concentrate here to upgrade.

The Onion 2056