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POPSThe era of the American Internet is ending. “Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”
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POPSLess (Information) Is More When Benjamin Franklin's nephew Joseph Priestley found himself stumped by a complex life decision, he wrote his sage uncle for advice. In his 1772 letter of reply, Franklin described his own method for reasoning out complex problems, which he called "moral algebra." Divide a sheet of paper in half, he counseled his nephew, and make an exhaustive list of pros and cons. Then, over a couple days, weigh the pros and cons, and when a pro and a con seem of equal weight, strike them both out. What is left in the balance is the best answer. Such "balance sheet" calculation is still taught today as the most logical and systematic method for dealing with many of life's complexities. Kids are counseled to choose colleges and careers this way, and managers similarly deliberate the pros and cons in important business decisions; some people are even methodical in matters of the heart. But is moral algebra really the best method for decision making in today's ?
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POPSIf they die, they die. Just don't hurt profits!! Are you kidding me!!!??? The United States government chose to withhold information about airline security because if people knew just how risky it was they may not buy tickets??? OMG...i think we really are living in the United Corporations of America!
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POPSFacebook owns you. I think the said change of terms is a BIG issue. in the face of society of information and flow of availability, the act of facebook is unthinkable. They are providers (and earn much from that) and not owners of the information that flows through the system.
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POPSInformation age leaves our heads full of facts but empty of ideas INFORMATION Overload – what it is and how to get rid of it: • The high volume of information coming from sources such as the internet, 24-hour television and blogs has led to complaints of "information overload". While this sounds like a new phenomenon, the term was first used in 1970 by Alvin Toffler, an author, who warned that the human brain did not have the capacity to take in, interpret and store increasingly large volumes of information. • More recently, a psychiatrist at King's College London found that information overload can harm concentration just as much as marijuana, with men twice as likely to be distracted as women. • Research found information overload can reduce a person's ability to focus just as much as losing a night's sleep. • Psychologists who study visual processing and decision-making have shown the brain can cope with only about five messages at any one time.
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POPSGossip more powerful than truth 
The researchers then took the game a step further and showed the students the actual decisions people had made. But they also supplied false gossip that contradicted that evidence. In these cases, the students based their decisions to award money on the gossip, rather than the hard evidence, showing such information is a powerful tool, Sommerfeld said. "Rationally if you know what the people did, you should care, but they still listened to what others said," he said. "They even reacted on it if they knew better." Researchers have long used similar games to study how people cooperate and the impact of gossip in groups. Scientists define gossip as social information spread about a person who is not present, Sommerfeld said. In evolutionary terms, gossip can be an important tool for people to acquire information about others' reputations or navigate through social networks at work and in their everyday lives, the study said. One example could be using gossip to learn tha
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POPSOur "Digital Shadow" -a Mind-Bending Prediction In terms of numbers, the figures are staggering. The size of the digital universe for 2007 reached 281 billion gigabytes, or, 281 exabytes. This works out to be about 45GB of digital information per person on the planet. And, considering the lack of information for some of the third world countries, one can only imagine how much those of us reading this article will have under their belts. Furthermore, the amount of information about us that is generated automatically on a pretty much daily basis outweighs the total volume of information that we create about ourselves. Naturally this has large security implications that the IT sector will have to address more and more as time passes.
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POPSThe Physics of Information: What the Universe Doesn't Want You to Know The panellists for the discussion were:Dr. Leonard Susskind is widely recognized as one of the most creative researchers in the field of theoretical particle physics. Dr. Seth Lloyd is a Professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Dr. Christopher Fuchs is a Long Term Visitor with Perimeter Institute and is an adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of New Mexico. Sir Anthony Leggett is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
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POPSHow the Personal Genome Project Could Unlock the Mysteries of Life ...You would very quickly begin to see meaningful and powerful correlations between particular genetic sequences and particular physical characteristics, from height and hair color to disease risk and personality. Church has done more than imagine such an undertaking; he has launched it: The Personal Genome Project, an effort to make those correlations on an unprecedented scale, began last year with 10 volunteers and will soon expand to 100,000 participants. It will generate a massive database of genomes, phenomes, and even some omes in between.
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POPSWaht is Mind Mapping? bear with me: once you break the ingrained habit of linear note taking, you won’t look back. Benefits and Uses I think I already gave away the benefits of mind mapping and why mind maps work. Basically, mind mapping avoids dull, linear thinking, jogging your creativity and making note taking fun again. But what can we use mind maps for? * Note taking * Brainstorming (individually or in groups) * Problem solving * Studying and memorization * Planning * Researching and consolidating information from multiple sources * Presenting information * Gaining insight on complex subjects * Jogging your creativity It is hard to make justice to the number of uses mind maps can have – the truth is that they can help clarify your thinking in pretty much anything, in many different contexts: personal, family, educational or business. Planning you day or planning your life, summarizing a book, launching a project, planning and creating presentatio
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POPSIf Americans Only Knew The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation. More stats on site. It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution.
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POPSThe Secret Of Fast Complex Brain Restructuring Up to now, it had been assumed that nerve cells can only exchange information via the synapses which are special contact points. However, synapses require up to two days to become fully functional - a waste of time and energy if the contact is to be broken down again. The brain could take almost 1000 years to develop if a synapse had to mature at each cell contact. It appears that nerve cells can also obtain information about their neighbours even without a synapse. Neurobiologists Christian Lohmann and Tobias Bonhoeffer from the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology have now explained how they do that. The secret to how the information is exchanged: local calcium signals very quickly transmit all the necessary information to the cell. A synapse only actually develops when the cell and the contact point prove to be suitable candidates for long-term contact.
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