Mind Reading

This article talks about "mirror neurons" in the brain and how this essentially makes all people with working mirror neurons can "read minds." This is misleading, as it does not mean you'll be able to hear what someone is thinking. It really sounds much closer to empathy and, on some level, psychic abilities based on the descriptions they give.

I can see this happening in my own life. My friends and I, whom I have known for many years, are able to finish each other's thoughts, sometimes without a word being spoken. We can sense when something is wrong.

I think it would be interesting now to see what energy these mirror neurons create that extend outside of the body and get picked up by other people.

Have you ever misread a headline?

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D89HSDA80.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down

First of all, it is sad that people are unable to let go of something that happened a half a century ago and use it as an excuse to act like children.

On the less serious side, they need to rename the headline of this story, as the first thing that came to mind that I thought this story would be about was cosplay. I must need help.

From the way too much free time department

This makes a lot of cents. Urm sense. ;)

Audioscrobbler

I just came across Audioscrobbler recently and will let this snippet taken from their page speak for itself:

"Audioscrobbler builds a profile of your musical taste using a plugin for your media player (Winamp, iTunes, XMMS etc..). Plugins send the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler server, which updates your musical profile with the new song. Every person with a plugin has their own page on this site which shows their listening statistics. The system automatically matches you to people with a similar music taste, and generates personalised recommendations."

I've signed up and will have to see if it makes good recommendations.

From the way too much free time department

What happens when you cross someone with too much free time and a microwave? You get this.

Do you want a company dictating how you do IT?

Microsoft is going to remove the blocking feature that allows enterprises to prevent employees from downloading Windows XP Service Pack 2 downloads using Automatic Update.

While I understand the concern with security and the dangers of keeping old, unpatched software around, I do not feel that any company should automatically force something like this on their customers. I can only imagine the havoc that may happen at these companies that suddenly have Windows XP Service Pack 2 on their computers without IT's approval. It has to make you wonder where in the licensing agreements it allows Microsoft to do this. There must be better ways to do this - either don't support any Windows XP that is not at Service Pack 2 or start charging those companies more money. This allows IT to run things the way they want to but have consequences for doing it that way. And I'm sure Microsoft would not argue with making more money.