The Enigma cracking machines. A nice inside look at the working circumstances and the funny notes frustrated enigineers made. Also great insides in Von Neumann (Turings brilliant companion).

Turing’s Cathedral (70min)

Turings contribution to Maths covers at least 6 major fields. Directly linked back to his turing machines again, he made a good stab at the notion that some logic implies that some things cannot be calculated: The Church-Turing Thesis.

Note: the follow 2 videos are really technical and not light material.

The mathematics of Alan Turing [50 minutes]

It still is worked on, into that what can and which cannot be explained.

Church-Turing Thesis – Story and recent progress [70 minutes]

Turings ideas about Artificial Intelligence lead him to develop the Turing test; how to distinguish humans from machines. His test was dead-simple: Create a test. If we cannot make the difference anymore, AI simply succeeded in coming into existence.
It is quite obvious that with more and more computer in our real life, this becomes increasingly important.

For starters, building a smart brain (Computing Beyond Turing [neuroscience & brains]- Jeff Hawkins [80 minutes] ) is not that easy. Seeing the difference between a cat and a dog is even toooo hard!

Bekijk de video in andere formaten.

Het Arcus College in Heerlen wist 60 miljoen euro te sparen en werd zo het rijkste ROC. Het geld werd opzij gezet voor de bouw van een futuristisch scholencomplex. Het onderwijs werd er niet beter op. [via]

En nu allemaal heel veel centjes sparen om later goed privaat onderwijs te fixen voor de kleine

Update: 3 man uit TU Delft Top declareert bijna 1 miljoen in 3 jaar aan reiskosten. Hoezo videoconferences?

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures
in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call
Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.
There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like
Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they
circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works,
without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the
studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations – it’s all based on being
able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create.
If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing
other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the
rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow
people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take
over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).
It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition.
We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech.
We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws
should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe – but we’ve stayed out of the
USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this:
The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence.
They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the
rest of us obedient consumers.
The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with
trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that
you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the
hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to
mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.
To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re
creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls
become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching
movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones
is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had
no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy
in the world – because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more
honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information
when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.

THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

The above does not imply artists cannot be rewarded, only that those rewards can easily come in an other way(s). Moreover, rewards should be seen from the feed-back loop culture and the public good provides us. No artist can claim all, nor should we be obliged to it. Get over it and start live in the 21th century. For starters, what about creative commons for example?

Bill Maher gets OWNED by Guests for Supporting SOPA

Bill Maher seems to think that just because his crappy religious hit piece “Religulous” was pirated, that Washington D.C. should control the internet totally with the SOPA bill. He refers to people downloading copyrighted materials as people who “just want free shit”. Mr. Maher perhaps there are some of us out there who would rather download something to see if its worth buying, instead of spending our hard earned money and being disappointed.

Most shocking part of this Youtube clip is the notice the user added to the video:

NOTICE: Fair Use Copyright Law
This video may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, scientific, and social justice issues etc. We know that our use of any such copyrighted material constitutes a ‘fair use’ as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this video is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

The fear the entertainment industry, nitwit politicians and other 20th century dinosaurs try to evoke seems to work … Sadly with these penny-wise pound-foolish remarks Bill Maher, his network and of course the advertisers of his show lost me as a fan.

Let’s forget Bill for a while and watch some Michael Moore retro clips from e.g. 2006.

From the February 2012 issue of Esquire, an interview with former President Bill Clinton about the current political and governmental landscape in America.

One of the real dilemmas we have in our country and around the world is that what works in politics is organization and conflict. That is, drawing the sharp distinctions. But in real life, what works is networks and cooperation. And we need victories in real life, so we’ve got to get back to networks and cooperation, not just conflict. But politics has always been about conflict, and in the coverage of politics, information dissemination tends to be organized around conflict as well. It is extremely personal now, and you see in these primaries that the more people agree with each other on the issues, the more desperate they are to make the clear distinctions necessary to win, so the deeper the knife goes in.

(via)

Nederland kent 414 gemeentes.. Naast de 18 miljard die het kabinet wil bezuinigen, de 7 miljard die het plots extra moet bezuinigen, komt hiermee dan dus mogelijk nog tussen de 2-10 miljard aan tekort bij.. En dan hebben we het nog niet over de financiele strop voor de bovenmatige kantoor bouw die niks waard is.
In welke mate die meteen ook in de bezuinigingen meegaat is nog niet bekend, maar overheid/nl heeft zijn zaakjes nog niet helemaal crisisproof geregelt. Misschien wat transparanter jezelf opstellen?

The campaign for understanding seems running today a bit, good for now, so how about the wide spectrum? We got ACTA and other monsters.. good that there also things happen.. [among democracy haters]

Western cuisines tend to use ‘pairs’ that share many flavours. But east Asian cuisines tend to avoid ingredients that share them. Read more.

While looking back to 2011 in film, the cultural film festival 2012 @rotterdam is upon us already again.

See also 2011.

De Europese Commissie weigert de lonen van zowat 44.000 Europese ambtenaren te bevriezen. Maar de lidstaten vinden dat in crisis iedereen moet inleveren, zelfs de bureaucratie van Brussel. Zij stapten naar het Europees hof van Justitie om de commissie te dwingen te stoppen de lonen te verhogen. Als het aan de Commissie ligt, wordt het loon van alle 44.000 ambtenaren vanaf januari met 1,7 procent verhoogd.
De Europese raad van ministers, die de nationale regeringen vertegenwoordigt, heeft besloten om naar het Europese hof van Justitie te stappen. Een meerderheid van 20 landen stemde voor. België heeft zich onthouden.(via)

Lyrics | MGMT – Kids
You were a child
Crawling on your knees toward it
Making momma so proud
But your voice was too loud
We liked to watch you laughing
You picked the insects off plants
No time to think of consequences

Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of trees wanting to be haunted

The water is warm
But it’s sending me shivers
A baby is born
Crying out for attention
The memories fade
Like looking through a fogged mirror
Decision to decisions are made and not bought
But I thought this wouldn’t hurt a lot
I guess not

Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of trees wanting to be haunted

Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of trees wanting to be haunted

Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of trees wanting to be haunted

Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of trees wanting to be haunted

Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of trees wanted to be haunted

Control yourself
Take only what you need from it
A family of trees

most true, most searing, most depressing Hitler video yet… where is the outrage? …. damn sheep

Een motie van D66-Kamerlid Kees Verhoeven die Verhagen een spreekverbod zou moeten opleggen, is door een meerderheid van de Kamer verworpen. Aanvankelijk toonde de PVV zich een voorstander voor een dergelijk spreekverbod voor Verhagen, maar de partij draaide op het laatste moment en stemde tegen. (sign)
ACTA is een verdrag dat piraterij van door copyright beschermde goederen tegen moet gaan.
Het Nederlandse parlement moet nog instemmen met het verdrag, maar een groot deel van de Tweede Kamer wil alleen over het verdrag praten als de geheimhouding op belangrijke stukken wordt opgeheven.

Als een groot deel van de 2e kamer dat wil, waarom is de motie dan weggestemd?
Talk is cheap. Goed bestuur ver te zoeken. Note: China leads the way.

Occupy Harvard Teach-In #1 12/7/2011

“Why Has Inequality Grown in America? What Should We Do?” Archon Fung, Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship and Co-Director of Transparency Policy Project, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Visit Occupy Harvard @ Occupyharvard.net or read more here

USA military bases around Iran. Geeh … why would Iran want nucluar weapons?

International aid groups make the same mistakes over and over again. At TEDxYYC David Damberger uses his own engineering failure in India to call for the sector to publicly admit, analyze, and learn from their missteps.

The sound is annoying bad, but hang in there.

Earlier today, Megaupload released a pop video featuring mainstream artists who endorse the cyberlocker service. News of the controversial Mega Song even trended on Twitter, but has now been removed from YouTube on copyright grounds by Universal Music. Kim Dotcom says that Megaupload owns everything in the video, and that the label has engaged in dirty tricks in an attempt to sabotage their successful viral campaign.

Don’t do evil guys.. right.

Oostkapelle