The STEPS project is setting out to create “Moore’s Law Software”: a high-risk high-reward exploratory research effort to create a large-scope-and-range software system in 3-4 orders of magnitude less code than current practice.

This is new from Alan Kay's Viewpoints Research Institute.

From the archive:

"Thinking" is a higher category than "just" math, science, and the arts. It represents a synthesis of intuitive and analytical approaches to understanding the world and dealing with it.

STEPS Toward The Reinvention of Programming

dmv wrote:

March 6, 1937: Birth of a Soviet Hero, First Woman Into Space

Happy birthday, Dan!

RE: March 6, 1937: Birth of a Soviet Hero, First Woman Into Space

Don't miss the First USENIX Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats, which will take place in San Francisco, CA, on April 15, 2008.

Best conference name ever!

First USENIX Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats (LEET '08)

Other information:
Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.

An exciting partnership and experience regarding this release will be announced soon.

Linked from Lessig's blog.

Latest NIN Album released under a CC license

Soaring birds, it turns out, use pretty much the same approach. And it’s a good bet that they have never heard of Paul MacCready, the man behind the formula.

Falcons Used Formula for Glider Thermals Before Human Pilots - New York Times

The failure to recognize the housing bubble is the core reason for the collapsing house of cards we are seeing in financial markets in the United States and around the world. If people do not see any risk, and see only the prospect of outsized investment returns, they will pursue those returns with disregard for the risks.

Were all these people stupid? It can’t be. We have to consider the possibility that perfectly rational people can get caught up in a bubble. In this connection, it is helpful to refer to an important bit of economic theory about herd behavior.

Three economists, Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch, in a classic 1992 article, defined what they call “information cascades” that can lead people into serious error. They found that these cascades can affect even perfectly rational people and cause bubblelike phenomena. Why? Ultimately, people sometimes need to rely on the judgment of others, and therein lies the problem. The theory provides a framework for understanding the real estate turbulence we are now observing.

How a Bubble Stayed Under the Radar - New York Times

Someone hacked an ATT billboard in SF.

NSA_1 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history.

Discovery News : Discovery Channel

But two critical errors allowed Pakistan’s action to echo around the globe for at least a brief period on Sunday afternoon, according to Martin A. Brown, a data engineer at the Renesys Corporation, an Internet monitoring company, which posted a timeline of the incident on its Web site.

As part of its effort to block YouTube within the country, Pakistan Telecom created a dummy route that essentially discarded YouTube traffic, sending it into what Internet experts call a black hole.

Pakistan Telecom then made an error by announcing that dummy route to its own telecommunications partner, PCCW, based in Hong Kong, shortly before noon New York time on Sunday, according to Renesys.

PCCW then made a second error, accepting that dummy route for YouTube and relaying it to other Internet providers around the world.

Pakistan Cuts Access to YouTube Worldwide - New York Times

Dandy’s Western Wear, the local cowboy attire shop, cannot keep enough python skin and cowhide boots in stock because of all the Danes and Germans who have come to town to invest and work in the wind fields, then take home Texas souvenirs.

“Wind has invigorated our business like you wouldn’t believe,” said Marty Foust, Dandy’s owner, who recently put in new carpeting and air-conditioning. “When you watch the news you can get depressed about the economy, but we don’t get depressed. We’re now in our own bubble.”

Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind - New York Times