Depression

After reading   Science Times today about Douglas Prasher,a scientist who might well have won the Nobel Prize but  today earns less than ten dollars an hour driving a shuttle bus for a Toyota dealership in Huntsville, Alabama   I feel depression will not  interferes with productivity to the detriment of the sufferer, the nation, and humankind.

This month, Roger Tsien, of UC San Diego, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University, and Osamu Shimomura, of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on a fluorescent jellyfish protein that can be used to tag cell constituents. Their discoveries were based on Prasher’s.He isolated the relevant gene — and gave the information away freely. He understood how the protein it elaborates could be used as a tracer molecule. And he began to elaborate the gene and protein structures. Generously, Chalfie has said, “They could’ve easily given the prize to Douglas and the other two and left me out.” Another colleague is has called Prasher’s current situation a “staggering waste of talent.”

But for various reasons – none of the press sources is very clear – Prasher was sidetracked, first into other scientific work and then out of research altogether. The one consistent part of the story is a reference to recurrent depression. Of course, this vague information does not constitute a diagnosis. We don’t know what Prasher suffers. But “depression” is the shorthand for the condition, and it will do — because this is what depression does. It causes job interruptions and then underemployment. In time, a young genius has exhausted his life savings and is driving a courtesy bus.

Timeline of Microblogging a.k.a Twitter like EcoSystem

Microblogging services -which let subscribers post short personal updates online or broadcast them as text messages—have inspired a slew of ancillary services.

Clients -These are desktop or mobile-device applications that access microblogs’ content.

Toys -are sites that present the content in new ways, often combined with other data.

Accessories meet needs specific to microbloggers—such as a way to shorten Urls so that they fit inside status updates.

more here

Mind of a Researcher

1. Asking Question : Mind should be curious to ask questions and have a blind trust to that that questions are the ones worth asking.

2. Attention to the detail :Observing patterns from the varetiy of data we get

3. Tolerance to Confusion by being patient this will allow the questions arised to become difficult and complex before they begin to give up a result.

4. Through Hands-on – playing around and tweaking with possibilities, creating drafts, and then constantly tinkering with and improving them.

5.Be a Sceptic – asking how it works ,what’s your warrant for that statement, why should I believe you.Unless and until you cant replicate the result there is no result

Google Chrome My Views

Google has released Google Chrome a beta browser built with open source code from Chromium.

Design Decision I liked:

1)Making chrome a multi-process application instead of multi-threaded

2)New JS engine

3)Implementing blacklisting of sites(both malware and Phisihng sites ) by default which is powered by Google .

4)Sandboxing all the tabs making it detach from the underlying OS makes it at least safe

5)Task manager for each tab with the stats of CPU and memory usage makes it cool.

6)Loading is pretty fast DNS- prefetching is activated by default

Issues :

1)As I was seeing Process Explorer, each tab process runs in a sandboxed process with the unsandboxed browser process as the parent but when the browser process is sandboxed it doesn’t appear to be able to create it’s own sandboxed children as compared to firefox sandboxed can launch other process in the sandbox with charm .This ties me not to use 3 rd party Sandboxing tools

2)Popups are not blocked but open in minimized window. This feature can be used for malicious activities

3)Plugins used by Chrome may bypass the security model of Sandboxing looks like there is POC up and running on this attack

4)It also suffers from other Dos attack according to this advisory

Looks like the whole innovation of Chorme is driven by Green Border acquisition by Google last May 2007 like the patent “Methods and systems for providing a secure application environment using derived user accounts” (technology presumably incorporated in Chrome).

Here is the Chromium source code.
Google V8 JavaScript Engine Source Code

Will post some screen shots in the follow up post

Love and Conflict

When ever I think of love there is this dialogue in my mind between my two selfs,as two opposite ideas often reflect reality more accurately than one idea can I tried figuring out what the fucking is this Love
Here is the dialogue posted live :

Lover says :I can’t help falling in love it completes me it builds my character. It makes my life worth living.Love makes me humane.Its worth a compormise.Look the old couple crossing the raod how happy they are helping each other. We all need someone to care for us and to care for. So love? Of course, what could be more true, natural, and good? And besides, I can’t live without it.

Hater says :Love is like cocaine a dangerous and expensive drug I’m best off avoiding or at least limiting.It’s addictive.It’s for weak will people with a apetite of symboytic realtionship.
Its the one which drives the mutual admiration society,in which I find someone who will say untrue things about how exceptional I am so long as I reciprocate.
Love is like a Credit Card enjoy(spend)-now, (pay)commitment-later.
So why do we fall for it? More often than not, it’s looks, young people have more thing to do then to fall in love

And the argument continued …

Disaster

This is work by guy named Brain Bress

He is a Los Angeles based artist and filmmaker. He received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1998 and his MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 2006. His collages, photographs, videos and paintings have been exhibited in various group shows and film festivals in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, including Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation, Black Maria Film Festival, New York Director’s Club Biennial and The LA Weekly Biennial. In 2001, he created a pilot for MTV Animation Studios. Upcoming exhibitions include an October solo show at The University of Michigan, School of Art and Design, a group show in November at Cirrus Gallery in Los Angeles, and a project room in December at Angstrom Gallery in Los Angeles. Also Brian is currently working on an artist book to come out in 2007, published by 2nd Cannons Publications.

More at here and here

What we can Learn from Finland’s Education System

Role of Teachers

1)Well-trained teachers who create lessons to fit their students.
2)Teachers must hold master’s degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.
3)They have a very relaxed, back-to-basics approach. Schools have no sports teams, marching bands or prom.
4)Teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. in contrast to other countries where education is like like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are like entrepreneurs

Reading and No language Barrier

1)One explanation for the Finns’ success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck.

2)Finland shares its language with no other country, and even the most popular English-language books are translated here long after they are first published.Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing.

Lesser Disparties

1)FinLand has homogeneous population, teachers have few students who don’t speak Finnish.
2)There are fewer disparities in education and income levels among Finns.

Free Education

1)Finns spend $7,500 per student and government provides education for free.
2)Finland’s high-tax government provides roughly equal per-pupil funding.The gap between Finland’s best- and worst-performing schools is the smallest of any country

No Peer Pressure

1)Finnish students have little angstata — or teen angst — about getting into the best university, and no worries about paying for it. College is free.
2)There is competition for college based on academic specialties — medical school, for instance. But even the best universities don’t have the elite status of a Harvard.
3)Taking away the competition of getting into the “right schools” allows Finnish children to enjoy a less-pressured childhood.
4)Finns don’t begin school until age 7

Self -Reliance at Young Age
1)Once school starts, the Finns are more self-reliant.At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables.
3)There is no Internet filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.

more here

Life of A Loner

Open Source Innovation Challenge by Director of National Intelligence (DNI)

Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has announced an exciting opportunity in conjunction with the DNI Open Source Conference 2008: ‘The Open Source Innovation Challenge.This is a unique occasion for representatives from academia; think tanks; industry; the media; federal, state, local, and tribal government; and other diverse sectors to use open source information to address real intelligence challenges.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has provided two Challenge questions (below) and instructions to all conference registrants. Those who choose to accept the Challenge can submit a answer for one of the two challenge questions posed.The Challenge is open to all conference registrants, including those who are not able to attend due to overwhelming registration demand.

Challenge Questions

1. Using the best open sources to inform your answer, is Al Qaeda a cohesive organization with strong and centralized control, intent and direction?
2. According to open sources, who will be the global leader in alternative fuels and why?

More info can be found here

Daily Links

According to this report and video Atrivo, a Concord, Calif., based network provider is major source of spyware, adware, viruses and fake anti-virus products.See Emil Kacperski, Atrivo’s founder, response in comments section @ Briansblog

Tetris meets Rubik’s Cube a fun filled 3-d game

Michael Nielsen writes a insightful eassy on how to explain Quantum Computation to your MAMA

Google fun

OpenCV is a computer vision library originally developed by Intel. It is free for commercial and research use under a BSD license. The library is cross-platform, and runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It focuses mainly on real-time image processing, as such, if it finds Intel’s Integrated Performance Primitives on the system, it will use these commercial optimized routines to accelerate itself.

Narcissistic Blog Disorder and Other Conditions of Online Kookery

Macfee Released a WhitePaper on security problems related to online games and some possible solutions to address them