Could Joaquin Phoenix pass the Turing test?

[Tags: joaquin_phoenix david_letterman ]

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If you are having the crcdisk.sys hang in Vista, check this forum. You’ll know that you have this problem if your screen goes blank and hangs during startup, and if when you do a Safe Mode startup, it hangs at the line that says it’s doing the crcdisk.sys thang (which does a check on your hard drive).

The hang apparently can be caused by a few different factors, including trying to install Vista 64 with 4 GB of RAM (although this may have been fixed by now). For me, it was a problem with one of the drives that is not the boot drive that has Vista on it; it is probably not a coincidence that this occurred when I was rebooting after a power outage and — to pile it on — when an automatic update was due to be installed upon reboot. I physically unplugged the flaky drive and the system started up.

Yay.

[Tags: visa crcdisk.sys ]

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Douglas Kaye, founder of IT Conversations and the Conversations Network, has launched SpokenWord.org. Here’s part of the announcement:

There are perhaps millions of audio and video spoken-word
recordings on the Internet. Think of all those lectures,
interviews, speeches, conferences, meetings, radio and TV
programs and podcasts. No matter how obscure the topic,
someone has recorded and published it on line.

But how do you find it?

SpokenWord.org is a new free on-line service that helps you
find, manage and share audio and video spoken-word
recordings, regardless of who produced them or where
they’re published. All of the recordings in the
SpokenWord.org database are discovered on the Internet and
submitted to our database by members like you.

This is another public-spirited work from a public-spirited guy who has assembled and inspired a public-spirited collective. [Disclosure: I’m on the board of advisers.]

[Tags: spokenword aggregators collaboration doug_kaye douglas_kaye ]

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David Reed blogs about recent research on “practical ways to construct EM (radio) waves with new, complex 3D structures that propagate while maintaining that structure, not necessarily in spherical or cylindrical shapes.” I am not even close to understanding the physics, but, as David writes, this sort of possibility makes it clear how foolish it is to regulate the airwaves as if they were real estate that has to be divided up into slices that are awarded as monopolies to the highest bidder. David writes:

… the policy issue is that such systems for multiplexing such EM fields don’t fit the “law of the land” regarding sharing the medium. So, like UWB [ultra wideband] and spread spectrum underlay, and white spaces, all that capacity will evaporate in attempting to fit the technology into the procrustean bed of the FCC’s “property rights in spectrum” legal framework.

The “property rights” model of spectrum allocation and radio regulation is based on physics-by-analogy, ignoring the reality of propagation. It’s time to end the ignorance of economists and lawyers, and replace physics-by-analogy with better physical analysis.

Or, to put the analogy the other way, if real estate operated the way energy and information do, the little slice of beach front you’re charging $5,000 a night for would go from having room for four honeymooning couples to being the 127 miles of the New Jersey coastline and simultaneously a set of holiday villas in Brazil, just because a Swedish scientist found some new way of twisting it around. In such a case, the FCC (Federal Coastal Commission) would probably want to rethink its rules for allocating beachfront properties. [Tags: david_reed fcc spectrum open_spectrum ]

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How about if there were a magical shape we could draw on top of a slide that would magnify what’s under it? So, if you were showing a slide of a screen capture, you could invoke these shapes to come and go, enlarging the elements to which you want to call attention.

kthxbye.*

Yes, not an entirely appropriate use of the term, but I find it an amusing youthicism. Its marginal appropriateness in this case is that I’m acknowledging that I’m talking into the wind when it comes to making product enhancement suggestions. And, yes, now the footnote is longer than the post. kthxbye.

[Tags: powerpoint keynote ]

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Dan Bricklin has posted a recording of a reduced version (only five hours!) of a course he took with Rabbi Reuven Cohn about the Passover Haggadah. The Haggadah is the book Jews read aloud before the Pasover meal, recounting one of the religion’s founding events. Because it is a story of liberation, it has resonances all over the place. Dan writes about the class:

The book, mainly in Hebrew, seems to be a random mishmash of different readings and blessings. With the help of the class I learned about its origins 2000 years ago by studying the ancient books of the Talmud, especially the parts called the Mishnah. Through the class I saw this book that I had been reading carefully for my whole life (and the ceremony it describes) in an entirely new light. I got to see it’s important place in the evolution of the Jewish religion after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. It also helped give me some insight into the parallel development of Christianity at the same time.

I talked Reuven into giving a short version of the course (only about 5 hours) to some of my friends while I recorded it for sharing on the Internet (under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no-derivative works license). With the help of a few microphones and a PDF of the handouts, you should be able to feel as if you were there. The participants had a wide range of Jewish backgrounds, from very little Jewish education to extensive. The class was conducted in English.

Reuven is a very gifted teacher, with an interesting background. He received a law degree from Yale and once was a lawyer at a well-known Boston firm. He also received ordination from Yeshiva University and teaches at Hebrew College in Newton and Maimonides School in Brookline.

I have not listened to the podcasts yet, but trust Dan’s judgment implicitly. I find the Jewish method of exegesis to be fascinating, and quite admirable, even while I am unconvinced of the divinity of the work being explained.

It would be interesting to find a similar project explaining some aspect of Islam. [Tags: judaism haggadah pesah passover ]

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I read David Ogilvy’s “Confessions of an Advertising Man” when I was a kid and was greatly impressed, I think by the subtlety with which humans could be influenced. It was also quite entertaining. Here’s David Susskind’s hour-long interview of him from 1983.

(Thanks to Richard Pachter for the link.)

[Tags: david_ogilvy advertising marketing ]

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We saw Slumdog Millionaire last night. Excellent. Going in, you should maybe know that it’s more about slumdogs than about millionaires and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” The non-linear narrative style is the opposite of a gimmick; it makes total sense as a style. The narrative itself is oddly 1930s/1940s-ish, which is not a strength. On the other hand, it shows you something we in America don’t get to see much of.

Best movie of the year? Tough one. I thought Milk was terrific, with some great performances. Between Milk and Slumdogs I think I’d have to say that we have an example of the ridiculousness of trying to pick a single best movie. I mean, Wall-e had some pretty great filmmaking in it, too.

I’ve been reading Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane thinking that it would be more than a good crime novel. I’m actually finding it to be less, with too many wince-worthy sentences, and too many characters written from their quirks outward. I’m only half way through so maybe it picks up, but since my problem is with the writing, I doubt it. I may not even finish it. Too bad. It’s the first Lehane book I’ve read, and I was looking forward to having a new author to enjoy.

[Tags: slumdog_millionaire slumdog harvey_milk milk oscars dennis_lehane lehane ]

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The latest Radio Berkman podcast is with David Hornik of August Capital. David is delightful — not always the term applied to VCs — and finds some reasons for optimism in the current darkling gloom. [Tags: berkman podcasts radio_berkman david_hornik vcs recession innovation ]

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I really enjoyed the first episode of How’s Your News?, a new series on MTV (Sundays at 10:30 pm EST/PST).

It’s tough to describe. (Tom Shales does a good job.) It documents the travels of a roving bus of “reporters” who are developmentally disabled. The reporters do person-in-the-street interviews and interviews with MTV-ish stars. It’s deeply funny, and bounces around through multiple levels all at the same time.

The obvious criticism is that the show exploits these folks. I don’t think it does even for a minute, although there are undoubtedly people who view it meanly. But, what are you going to do? There are idiots and bullies everywhere. The show in fact takes these folks for what they are. It doesn’t turn them into saints and it doesn’t condescend. The show is created by a guy who works closely with the developmentally disabled.

Now, the truth is that I know this group pretty well. I have a relative who goes to the same summer camp from which this project sprung, and I have spent enough time with them to know that the reporters are participating voluntarily, happily, enthusiastically, aware of their limitations but also of their special strengths and vantage points.

There’s nothing like it on TV.[Tags: hows_your_news jabberwocky developmentally_disabled ]

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