Courts taking a look at the "obviousness" of patents

About fucking time. Some of the patents are so ridiculously stupid that it's a wonder that people even think of patenting them. This tuesday the supreme court is going to re-examine the way they determine if pattents are obvious. The main issue are patents that cover the combination of existing technologies in a new way. The current policy is that to deny such a pattent there needs to be explicit documentation that demonstrates teaching, motivation, or suggestion of the idea that precedes the patent application. Some argue that this is too braud. Basicaly the partys are divided into two camps. The first says that this braud definition hurts innovation, specificaly in the fast moving technology industry, where people don't often document their motivation or intention to combine existing technology. The other camp says that if the rulling is overturned that it will have a serious domino effect on a large amount of existing pattents. This sounds like pretty poor fucking argument. "Don't change the policy because it will mean fixing a lot of mistakes, and that's going to be hard, tedious work, and it's going to invalidate our bullshit patents." Seriously, this is your argument? I hope the supreme court doesn't pay any heed to something that stupid. But who knows.

Why music gives us chills - not sure after reading article

Those crazy Germans with their new agey studies...how cushy does this job sound? Anyway the article mentions that the following 3 things bring chills on: 1. Change from quiet to loud 2. enterance of solo voice or instrument 3. contrasting voices in two singers (harmony).

They don't actualy give you any facts about what the mechanism of getting the chills is. They only mention that people who are reawarded oriented experience chills more frequently then people who are thrill/adventure-seekers. Also, people who interpret the music better, and give it emotional meaning experience chills more...YOU NEED A FUCKING STUDY FOR THIS? They say music can also lesson labor pains, bring out strong memories, aliviate depression, and reduce the need for sedation during surgery...yeah, i'd like to see someone actualy try the last one. Getting chills from music is associated with increased blood flow to the brain areas associated with food, sex, and drugs...it's all the same area, they make it sound like it's 3. THIS ARTICLE BLEW! The title is misleading, and it's not very informative. It doesn't tell anything that people don't already know, if they stop and think about it.

Experiment to determine if two photons communicate by sending a message back in time

This is a pretty interesting experiment to even think up. John Cramer from Washington University is going to test if "spooky action at a distance" happens by communication that is sent to the past. Spooky action at a distance, is what einstein described as the communication that takes place between two entangled photons, where one photon reacts instanteniously to what happens to the other photon. This would require communication that travels at a speed faster than light. And einsteing said that nothing travels faster than light. Many current theories try to describe this phenomenon by eliminating communication. Cramer will be conducting test to prove communication, and then also testing for retrocausality, which he believes is subatomic particles being able to communicate backwards and forwards in time.

He will test this by shooting a ultraviolet laser into a special crystal which will release two low-energy entangled photons. Photon one will be sent through a slit screen which will detect it is either a wave or a particle, the second photon will be sent through 6.2 miles of fiberoptic cable, which will delay it's arrival at a movable detector by 50 microseconds. Moving the detector will determine whether the photon is detected as wave or particle. The experiment will test if the detecting the second photon as a wave or particle will change the way the first particle is detected. If it does, and since the second particle is detected 50 microseconds later, this should prove retrocausality.

I don't know if it will nescesserily prove that communication travels into the past, or maybe there is some other form of communication. Regardless, I'm not sure how this experiment will work. Once you detect the first particle, haven't you already determined what the second one will be. And if you can specify how the second photon is detected by moving the detector, then how do you redetect the first photon? I'm going to ask Reddit.

Exercise Improves Fatigue

Scientists conducting 70 randomized trials with 6,807 individuals concluded that regular exercise improved fatigue by as much as .37 standard deviations. This was true for all the different groups studied - healthy adults, cancer patients, diabetics, heart disease. This was better than improvement from medication modafinal, a narcolepsy drug, which improved symptoms by .27 standard deviations. Personally, I can't say that this has been true for me. Whenever I would exercise I would just feel like I expanded energy, and can't say that I felt an overall increase in my energy levels throughout the day. Of course, I would force myself to exercise, which felt like an energy drain. I must admit that I feel more energy, and less struggle, when I'm playing sports like football, ultimate, tennis, and hockey, but I never noticed the effect carrying over to when I was at work. Even when I was playing an aerobic intensive sport like ultimate on a regular basis, I didn't feel more awake, alert, or energetic while at work. The results leave me skeptical. Maybe the fact that the people actually performed the exercise influenced their perception of having more energy, when it was nothing more than just will-power. The article does say that the results would seem counterintuitive. I agree exercise is important, and I force myself to do it, but I don't seem to get the benefits they described, at least not that they are noticeable, except when I am playing sports.

Learn While You Sleep - Not as interesting as it sounds

Stupid, misleading Digg story. The reasearch is thing. Basicaly some neuroscientist from the university of luben applied a .75 hz electric current during non-rem sleep to participants. Before going to sleep the participants were given a word list to and finger tapping task to remember. The word list would test their delcaritive memory, facts. The finger tapping would test their motor memory. The conclusion was a 8% increase in the word list memory only. Rightly, another scientist points out that these results don't really prove anything since so many factors are at play here. I would like to have him test something other than word pairs. No great memory cure here. The most interesting fact was that we spend 20% in Rem sleep, and the rest in non-rem sleep. This guy thinks that during the non-rem sleep, when the brain waves are slow and synchronized, we neurons replay events and form strong memories. The article is was so weak, I have a hard time trusting anything it said.

"shaddy" economics in blighted areas not too different from communist russia

There is a rather large, 500 billion a year, underground economy at work in the united states. People offering services under the table in exchange for money, goods, and services. This does not sound all that different from the stories my grandpa would tell me about communist russia, sounds like you had to do the same kind of hustle. Except crack we had vodka! Another difference, is that in russia you had to hustle because there were no goods available to the public, supply was limited and everyone was trying to get his. In this case it's got to be different, unless what makes things prohibitive is the price of goods, so people hustle to get goods and services for cheap. Which is interesting, because you artificially undervalue the worth of the other human being, where's in russia the economy did that for you.

Anyway, if you're interested, there's a book about this called "Off-the-books: the underground economy of the urban poor," from an economics professor who lived with poor, urban, chicago families and witnessed this economy at work first-hand.

Boring World Sex Study

Nothing interesting here. 268 studies of people under 25 found that attitudes about safe sex around the world are the same. Namely, guys are preassured to have sex when they get the opportunity, whether hey have a condom or not. Pressured by whom though? They're pressured by years of fucking evolotuion. Girls feel that they will be seen as easy or sluty if they carry a condom. Ok...so if you give it up, but don't have a condom with you, is that going to change how you're seen? At least this way you can be seen as a responsible slut. Also, people are reluctant to talk about sex, safe-sex, and they try to guess if a person has HIV by apperances and how well they know them. So, the safe-sex campaigns need to tackle the issue of getting people to talk about safe sex and stereotypes of behaviour, not just hand out condoms.

PS3 Facts

It sounds like most people aren't too interested in the PS3. 400K untis are set to launch in the US, and 80K in Japan, although that might go up. The stupid article didn't say when it's due to launch, which is pretty fucking stupid. Anyway...something intesting is that you'll have the option to install some game data on the hard-drive, which will let you decrease load times. You'll be able to remove the data without effecting your saved games. Good idea. It'll support up to 7 controllers...that's a starange number, coudl they not squeze out 8 so that you can have even teams? The blue ray drive is quiter than the xbox 360 dvd drive. The xbox is pretty fucking loud. No blue tooth keyboard and mouse at lunch, but usb plug n' play will work. Blue tooth headset should work. The article doesn't talk to much about games. How about mentioning Metal Gear?