RIP Steve Jobs

Kung Fu Part 2

Here is part 2 of the Kung Fu posted yesterday.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-S6_8dhFbw

Kung Fu Panda 2 Opening Weekend Part 1

The kids performed in a demo this weekend for the Kung Fu Panda 2 opening weekend at a local mall.  I had to break up the vid into 2 becasue of the You Tube leangth limit of 15 minutes.  The second part has the kids and I will post that when it is done rendering.

Or check it out at the link: http://youtu.be/Ennz5oaVCSw

Everyone was Kung Fu Fighting

In January 2011 the Jing Ying Institute of Kung Fu & Tai Chi in Arnold Maryland did a demonstration at the National Aquarium in Baltimore for the Asian Pacific cultural festival.  The below video is a small piece of that demo.  The camera and sound men who keep getting in the way are filming for the show “D.C. Cupcakes”, but less than 3 seconds of any of the demo made it on the TV show.

Now that I have finished this semester and have some time I will try to catch-up on the videos I have to render.

How to Build a Schizophrenic Computer

From article:

"Schizophrenia is one of the most infamous and mysterious mental disorders. Attempting to get to the root of the problem, scientists recently came up with an extraordinary solution: They built a schizophrenic computer. In a study published in the online version of Biological Psychiatry in March, researchers altered an artificial neural network capable of learning language and stories, to the point where it started "acting" schizophrenic.

People who suffer from schizophrenia often have difficulty thinking logically or discerning what is real or not real in their lives. "It is characterized by delusions or disassociation of language, often with hallucinations of spoken speech," says psychiatrist Ralph Hoffmann of Yale University, coauthor of the study along with computer scientist Risto Miikkulainen of the University of Texas, Austin. Because of that language disassociation, struggling to recount stories correctly is one of the early signs of schizophrenia. So to gain new insight into how schizophrenia might affect the human brain, Hoffmann and Miikkulainen tried to give a storytelling computer system the same problem."

Read more: DISCERN Artificial Neural Network - How to Build a Schizophrenic Computer - Popular Mechanics

Writer Cutting Out Traditional Publishers With Amazon Kindle

From the Article:
"Welcome to disruption. 26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling "indie" writer on the Kindle store, meaning she doesn't have a publishing deal, Novelr says.



And she shouldn't. She gets to keep 70% of her book sales -- and she sells around 100,000 copies per month. By comparison, it's usually thought that it takes a few tens of thousands of copies sold in the first week to be a New York Times bestselling writer.



The comparison isn't entirely fair, because Hocking sells her books for $3, and some $.99. But that's the point: by lowering the prices, she can make more on volume, especially impulse buys. Meanwhile e-books cost nothing to print, you don't have to worry about print volumes, shelf space, inventory, etc. And did we mention the writer keeps 70%?"

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/amanda-hocking-2011-2#ixzz1Ff3qQpI9

I love it when people use technology for to their benefit.

More about Anonyomous and HBGary

No, we have not seen the end of this.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/anonymous-vs-hbgary-the-aftermath.ars

Anonymous vs. HBGary

Anonymous is "The loose hacker collective had been responsible for everything from anti-Scientology protests to pro-Wikileaks attacks on MasterCard and Visa, and the FBI was now after them. But matching their online identities to real-world names and locations proved daunting. Barr found a way to crack the code....But did he?"

Read the article below for more info.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/how-one-security-firm-tracked-anonymousand-paid-a-heavy-price.ars