Wow. I just saw a link to an amazing article over at Scott Adams’ blog. The article’s about how science is learning more and more about the mechanics that go into “decision making”. They also explore the implications to society. I wrote a piece on the concept of free will recently as well, and this latest bit is in sync with it completely.

Check out this excerpt from the article: it’s pretty compelling stuff:

Two neuroscientists working in Australia have taken Libet’s discovery one step further. They found that, when asking people to choose to move either their left or right hands, it was possible to influence their choice by electronically stimulating certain parts of their brains. So, for example, the scientists could force the subjects always to choose to move their left hands. But despite their choice being electronically directed, these patients continued to report that they were freely choosing which hand to move.

Read that again if you believe in free will. They still thought they were choosing.:

65 Million. Holy crap. This is a total dream scenario. Now we get to see the best of both organizations fight each other. Dude, I’m so enthused about this…

Oh, and say goodbye to boxing. That’s a done deal. MMA is the future.

I’ve been known to bash Microsoft in the past, but damn if they they didn’t do some good things with Office 2007. Nice job, guys.

In a recent article of mine I put forth that obscurity can be used as a layer to bolster true security in a useful way. What follows is a thread on Reddit.com with someone arguing the opposite with me.

I’d love to hear what you guys think about these two viewpoints. I’m specifically looking for others who agree with him and not with me.

[ Reddit.com: Portknocking Security Debate ]

[Edit: Oh, and be sure to check out this thread on the topic at DSLR security ]

Uh, yeah…this is sick bandwidth. Here in my apartment, no less.

See, that’s all I needed. Everyone loves swords.

[ Link: Swords Cutting Stuff ]

http://xkcd.com/

daniel@kairin .ssh $ ssh pix@192.168.1.x Warning: use of DES is strongly discouraged due to cryptographic weaknesses pix@192.168.1.x’s password:

The only thing I’ve ever touched that uses an SSH version from the 1940’s, and it’s a Cisco PIX. Fitting.

OpenSSH doesn’t even support it by default; I had to create an ~/.ssh/config file and explicitly tell it to use DES. My local SSH install did everything but spit on me to keep me from doing so.

My buddy Jason just posted a good like guide to getting started with RoR development, including using Subversion.

You should also check out his Ruby section.

[ Link: How I Develop Ruby on Rails Applications ]

I recently started a major programming project using RoR and had to make the requisite decisions involving programming environments.

I elected to go with Textmate, as it was strongly recommended by two of the best RoR programmers in the world. But upon opening the application I realized that, unlike BBEdit which I normally use, Textmate doesn’t have the ability to open remote files via FTP or SSH.

Luckily there’s a workaround: if you install MacFuse and SSHfs, you can mount your remote Rails filestructure as a drive on your local system. Now I simply code using Textmate as if everything was local and Textmate doesn’t know the difference.

Browse –> Open –> Code –> Save –> Enjoy.: