Clipmarks | Complexity Clips

C# Web Mapping Service

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:08:28 GMT

clipped by: mbrush

Free Maps from the Web Using Web Mapping Service

This tutorial introduces the Web Mapping Service (WMS) protocol standardized by the OpenGIS Consortium for retrieving geographic maps over the internet. The tutorial provides C# examples of progressively increasing complexity to illustrate use of the protocol and programmatic access from Windows .Net applications. Several utility classes for accessing WMS servers and information are provided and described.

Tags: maps, c#, wms, web service, gis

Ten paradoxical traits of the creative personality

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:57:21 GMT

clipped by: a_chink_in_ur_armor

Clip Source: www.psychologytoday.com

When we're creative, we feel we are living more fully than during the rest of life. The excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab comes dose to the ideal fulfillment we all hope to get from life, and so rarely do. Perhaps only sex, sports, music, and religious ecstasy--even when these experiences remain fleeting and leave no trace--provide a profound sense of being part of an entity greater than ourselves. But creativity also leaves an outcome that adds to the richness and complexity of the future.

Tags: creativity, arts, imagination

Messy Truth about Georgia

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:39:14 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Article deals with US foreign policy. What's horribly remarkable about this human tragedy is how utterly predictable have been many responses by those unwilling (or unable?) to consider the situation in its full historical complexity.

Clip Source: www.spiked-online.com

It is remarkable how quickly other people’s bloody tragedies can be transformed into simple morality tales by Western observers sitting in cushioned, air-conditioned offices.

The problem with this fairytale script that is being cut-and-pasted on to the horrendous massacres of people in South Ossetia and Georgia is that it is almost entirely wrong.

As one columnist says, ‘The history behind Georgia’s “frozen conflicts” is long and complex… but complexity is no excuse for abdicating moral judgement in situations of this importance.’

In short? Don’t let the facts – pesky complexity – get in the way of a good morality tale. People in South Ossetia and Georgia have suffered the double horror of being attacked, maimed and killed in a conflict unleashed by new post-Cold War instabilities, and then being marshalled like political ghosts in a morality tale that is likely to make things worse.

Tags: georgia

UBS Universal Bank Model Breaks

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:28:25 GMT

clipped by: Forbes Markets
clipper's remarks: More UBS's risk controls than its model that broke, me thinks.

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

UBS's (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) blunt admission that its universal banking model blurs risk, adds complexity and can eat up capital will put pressure on rivals with a similar strategy to reassess their future.

UBS -- Europe's biggest casualty of the credit crunch -- said on Tuesday it will separate its wealth management arm from its troubled investment bank, which analysts expect to lead to a spin-off or sale of the latter.

Tags: ubs, banking, credit crisis

Handle With Care

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:21:45 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "Last year, a private company proposed “fertilizing” parts of the ocean with iron, in hopes of encouraging carbon-absorbing blooms of plankton. Meanwhile, researchers elsewhere are talking about injecting chemicals into the atmosphere, launching sun-reflecting mirrors into stationary orbit above the earth or taking other steps to reset the thermostat of a warming planet.
This technology might be useful, even life-saving. But it would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo. So a growing number of experts say it is time for broad discussion of how and by whom it should be used, or if it should be tried at all."

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

There are even those who suggest humanity should collectively decide to turn away from some new technologies as inherently dangerous.

“The complexity of newly engineered systems coupled with their potential impact on lives, the environment, etc., raise a set of ethical issues that engineers had not been thinking about,” said William A. Wulf, a computer scientist who until last year headed the National Academy of Engineering.

Rachelle Hollander, a philosopher who directs the center, said the new technologies were so powerful that “our saving grace, our inability to affect things at a planetary level, is being lost to us,” as human-induced climate change is demonstrating.

“It leaves the door open for people to do something that is going to cause long-term problems.”

But he added that progress in robotics was so “insidious” that people might not realize they had ventured into ethically challenging territory until too late.

Beyond Web 2.0: How Tech will Change the World (video)

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:05:52 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks: The video (1h40m) can't be clipped, but you can watch it online at the source.

Dr. Hiroshi Tasaka discusses Beyond Web 2.0: How the Next Tech Revolution will Change the World.

Dr. Hiroshi Tasaka, Professor at Tama University in Tokyo, and President of Thinktank SophiaBank, has authored numerous books on the philosophy of working, management theory, business strategy, the Internet revolution and knowledge society, as well as paradigm shifts in human society.

A specialist in complexity systems, Dr. Tasaka will explore how next technology revolution will further empower the individual, blending the monetary and voluntary economies to create a new system of Capitalism. Dr. Tasaka will also discuss ways in which technology will help build bridges between the U.S. and Japan, as well as among countries in Asia in the emerging post-knowledge society - Imagining Global Asia

He talks about Dialectic Philosophy, Complexity Sciences & Collective Psychology among other th

Clip Source: fora.tv

Beyond Web 2.0: How Tech will Change the World

Audio (Mp3)	48 MB	12 min
Video (Mp4)	364 MB	1.5 hr

Tags: technology, society, future, web 2.0, internet, web, complexity, psychology, philosophy, innovation

Playing With Complexity

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:35:56 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: leapfrog.nl

Playing With Complexity

In brief, in the presentation I argue two things: one — that the more sophisticated applications of interactive data visualization resemble games and toys in many ways, and two — that game design can contribute to the solutions to several design issues I have detected in the field of data visualization.

Below are the notes for the talk, slightly edited, and with references included. The full deck of slides, which includes credits for all the images used, is up on SlideShare.

In my work I focus on three areas: mobility, social interactions, and play.

My talk is roughly divided in three parts. First, I will briefly describe what I think data visualization is. Next, I will look at some applications beyond the very obvious. Third and last, I will discuss some design issues involved with data visualization. For each of these issues, I will show how game design can contribute.

Tags: visualization, data visualization, game, games, interaction, complexity, design, information design

One more game has been won

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:50:02 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Go, played by placing stones on a uniform 19x19 grid, does not allow for that kind of shortcut. The strategy that's proved most effective for computer Go is the Monte Carlo method, in which possible moves are assembled in a tree structure, and given statistical weight based on how likely they are to lead to a win."

Clip Source: www.popsci.com

Rise of the Game-Playing Machines

We humans are no longer undefeated in the classic game of Go. Next year: the first computer poet laureate

The game of Go has long been a bastion of human brilliance. While computers have gotten steadily better at playing chess and poker, they've had a harder time wrapping their silicon minds around the elegant Japanese strategy game. That's why it's a big deal that a computer Go player known as MoGo beat a top-ranked human, Myungwan Kim, yesterday.

While the complexity of chess is quite high -- there are an estimated 10¹²³ possible ways a chess game can play out -- the systematic nature of that game is susceptible to the sorts of strategies computers are good at, with libraries of endgames and simple heuristics for eliminating possible but nonsensical plays.

For yesterday's game, the MoGo software ran on a supercomputer with 800 parallel processors

It's starting to seem as though it won't be long before computers can reliably beat human

Tags: computer, games, ai

searching for Oakland's signature cocktail

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:10:49 GMT

clipped by: Lexica
clipper's remarks: The VanOakhatten sounds good (Bulleit bourbon and four bitters? yum!), but vodka martini? Pabst Blue Ribbon? Long Island Iced Tea?

Come on, people, let's use SOME creativity here.

Clip Source: www.insidebayarea.com

Finding a signature cocktail that represents Oakland is turning out to be more of a challenge than I expected when the seemingly bright idea struck me a few months ago. How to pin down a city as diverse and multifaceted as Oakland in just a few ingredients?

Peter Van Kleef, the chief of Cafe Van Kleef

nominated the VanOakhatten

Van Kleef substituted Makers Mark and Bulleit bourbons for the rye whiskey conventionally used in a Manhattan. Then he added four bitters that he said make magic with the cocktail, giving it "a nose and high-end complexity like a fine wine."

"The taste," he said, is very Oaklandish and strikes a chord with the diverse, ethnically mixed residents of Oakland, whether they are the Courvoisier cognac-sippers or Jameson whiskey-drinkers.

Tags: cocktails, oakland, for:spiritualmonkey

Strong password rules #1

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:46:22 GMT

clipped by: cyberwiz

Clip Source: www.thegeekstuff.com

I. Two essential password rules:

Following two rules are bare minimal that you should follow while creating a password.

Rule 1 - Password Length: Stick with passwords that are at least 8 characters in length. The more character in the passwords is better, as the time taken to crack the password by an attacker will be longer. 10 characters or longer are better.

Rule 2 - Password Complexity: Should contain at least one character from each of the following group. At least 4 characters in your passwords should be each one of the following.

Lower case alphabets

Upper case alphabets

Numbers

Special Characters

I call the above two rules combined as “8 4 Rule” (Eight Four Rule):

8 = 8 characters minimum length

4 = 1 lower case + 1 upper case + 1 number + 1 special character.

If your banking and any financially sensitive website passwords doesn’t follow the “8 4 Rule”, I strongly suggest that you stop everything now and change those passwords immediately to follow the “8 4 Rule”.

Walmart goes local

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:49:03 GMT

clipped by: lindabeekeeper
clipper's remarks: They've always had a brilliant distribution system. It is great that they're able to add this layer of complexity to it. I hope it does benefit local organic growers and does not turn them into one crop wonders.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Last month Wal-Mart announced that it plans to spend $400 million this year on locally grown produce, making it the largest player in that market.

Tags: local eating, wal-mart

Richard Dawkins branded 'secularist bigot' by veteran philosopher

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:21:09 GMT

clipped by: suckmyclip
clipper's remarks: "The fault of Dawkins as an academic was his scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine which he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form."

He says there are five references to Einstein in the index to The God Delusion, but no mention of his belief that the complexity of physics led him to conclude that there must be a divine intelligence behind it.

"An academic attacking some ideological position which he believes to be mistaken must of course attack that position in its strongest form. This Dawkins does not do in the case of Einstein and his failure is the crucial index of his insincerity of academic purpose and therefore warrants me in charging him with having become, what he has probably believed to be an impossibility, a secularist bigot."

He went on: "The whole enterprise of The God Delusion was not, as it at least pretended to be, an attempt to discover and spread knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God but rather an att

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

The prominent scientist Richard Dawkins has been denounced as a "secularist bigot" by a philosopher who was himself once renowned for being an atheist.

He is accused by Prof Antony Flew of being more interested in promoting his personal views than finding the truth, in the latest controversy over his best-selling book The God Delusion.

Prof Dawkins, professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, is also said to have "scandalously" selected particular quotes from Einstein to back up his claims that God does not exist and that people who believe in a divine creator despite an abundance of contradictory evidence are delusional.

In an article for the Christian website Bethinking.org, he writes: "The fault of Dawkins as an academic was his scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine which he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form."

Tags: supercilious

David Deutsch: Quantum physicist

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:01:47 GMT

clipped by: zalisan

Clip Source: www.ted.com

David Deutsch's 1997 book The Fabric of Reality laid the groundwork for an all-encompassing Theory of Everything, and galvanized interest in the idea of a quantum computer, which could solve problems of hitherto unimaginable complexity.

Why you should listen to him:

More than any other thinker, David Deutsch will force you to reconsider your place in the world. This legendary Oxford physicist is the leading proponent of the multiverse (or "many worlds") interpretation of quantum theory -- the astounding idea that our universe is constantly spawning countless numbers of parallel worlds.

In his own words: "Everything in our universe -- including you and me, every atom and every galaxy -- has counterparts in these other universes." If that doesn't alter your consciousness, then the other implications he's derived from his study of subatomic physics -- including the possibility of time travel -- just might.

Tags: quantum theory, parallel worlds, subatomic physics, evolution

Top 10 Concepts That Every Software Engineer Should Know

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:23:38 GMT

clipped by: houpeicn
clipper's remarks: 1. Interfaces接口
2. Conventions and Templates设计模式
3. Layering分层
4. Algorithmic Complexity算法
5. Hashing哈希
6. Caching缓存
7. Concurrency多线程并发
8. Cloud Computing云计算
9. Security安全
10. Relational Databases关系数据库

Clip Source: www.readwriteweb.com

A successful software engineer knows and uses design patterns, actively refactors code, writes unit tests and religiously seeks simplicity. Beyond the basic methods, there are concepts that good software engineers know about. These transcend programming languages and projects - they are not design patterns, but rather broad areas that you need to be familiar with. The top 10 concepts are:

Interfaces
Conventions and Templates
Layering
Algorithmic Complexity
Hashing
Caching
Concurrency
Cloud Computing
Security
Relational Databases

Tags: web 2.0

Camilla d'Errico Release: "Malificent"

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:06:03 GMT

clipped by: stvbee
clipper's remarks: can't get this bit to clip - but here is the intro from juxtapoz:

Fresh off a sold out solo exhibition at LA's Copro Nason gallery, Camilla d'Errico is gearing up for so much more - starting with a new print release from Paper Tiger. Titled Malificent, this beauty is an edition of only 25, and is sure to be a collectors dream.
Already a comic industry veteran, Camilla realized she could expand her style into a variety of other industries; snowboards, magazine covers, toys, clothes. Camilla has begun to carve out a niche for herself in the fine art field thanks to her fiery nature, high level of ambition and persistence in following her dream.
Her work is characterized by an emotional complexity that spans the full array of human emotions and touches the soul. She is part of what may be the first art movement in Western history where women are not second-class citizens, but may even have an edge in the mind of the public, especially when it comes to capturing the essence that is wo

Clip Source: www.juxtapoz.com

Camilla d'Errico Release: "Malificent"

Tags: drawing