I read that Al-Jazeera had an English language site up, but when I followed the link, it was broken [boingboing]. With a little bit of searching I found a Saudi Arabia based news site in English [Arab News]. CNN is really way too one-sided. Arab News may offer a little more balance. In fact, there is an article on their site comparing Al-Jazeera and CNN [Study in Contrast: CNN Vs. Al-Jazeera]. 4:57:47 PM    comment []  

As some of my colleagues and I were discussing today: why not spend $74.7 billion on developing hydrogen based energy, thus making Saddam Hussein a non-issue? That's so much money that I can't even comprehend it. 4:32:05 PM    comment []  

Following up on research that showed that there is a "mysticism center" of the brain and that it can be externally stimulated, a researcher in Canada has made a helmet that can invoke halucinations like those experienced by mystics [boingboing].

Since I first heard about this research, I have wondered what evolutionary purpose such experiences could possibly fulfill. I'm still at a loss for that however it has helped me to understand the source of beliefs about the Holy Spirit. Christians in general, and Mormons specifically, believe that the Holy Spirit can touch you through your feelings. It is believed by the Mormons that if you pray about Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon, that the Holy Sprit will testify of their veracity through feelings.

It is unquestionable that many people can self induce these feelings of the "Holy Sprit." The desire to believe is enough for many. However, if you are one of those individuals with overactive temporal lobes, then it would be hard, indeed, not to believe. 4:25:08 PM    comment []  

About a year ago, I thought about building a commercial P2P network with the focus on lowering distribution bandwidth costs. The motivation would be to allow the content owner to maintain control over its own content even though the content is being distributed from the P2P cloud. Its a good idea, but like most ideas and nearly all of my ideas, something like it is already in the works [BitTorrent][Open Content Network][via boingboing].

In theory, if a piece of content is distributed on multiple P2P nodes, it should be possible to get download speeds that exceed those that would be typical of a unicast distribution model (i.e. downloading from a website). The key is to make the primary interface to the P2P network be the web browser and not some custom application. The network should be accessible via the standard URI scheme, but require that the user install the client software in order for them to participate in the network. It appears that both BitTorrent and the Open Content Network have adopted this approach.

Eventually, I would like to see the web switch to a completely P2P architecture, where any piece of content would be distributed through a global P2P cloud. This would provide levels of performance and efficiencies that are unimaginable today. 9:52:42 AM    comment []