http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22339/?a=f

I imagine it is because the final episode of Battlestar is very fresh in my head but the increasing advancement towards a synthetic brain is looking eerily predicted by that show.  On one side we have IBM creating software to mimic the workings of a brain, and on the other side we have an international team of european scientists recreating the physical hardware of a brain on a chip..  What happens when both of these projects merge?

This is where it really gets scary though:

“The advantage of this hardwired approach, as opposed to a simulation, Karlheinz continues, is that it allows researchers to recreate the brain-like structure in a way that is truly parallel. Getting simulations to run in real time requires huge amounts of computing power. Plus, physical models are able to run much faster and are more scalable. In fact, the current prototype can operate about 100,000 times faster than a real human brain. “We can simulate a day in a second,” says Karlheinz.

Take  a long hard minute to think about the implications of that statement.  ‘We can simulate a day in a second’ .  If we as a species, in our relative technological infancy are already glimpsing at technology where we can create a synthetic human brain that can simulate an entire day in one second, what does that imply?  Again keep in mind we are in our technological infancy, in 20-40 years this technology will no doubt be realized and probably be millions times more powerful than today, meaning we could simulate a lifetime in a second.  You have now created a nearly infinitely powerful brain and could live aeons out in a matter of minutes, you have in essence created a god in it’s own universe.   It then becomes time to start asking ourselves if we are simply 1 second being lived out in one of these infinite brains.

I was appalled when the first page of search results for this came up with instructions on how to do this for a Windows server.  So I felt it my duty to add to the tutorials out there for people actually running a real web server (BSD/Linux/Etc)

Parse in the .sql file into an already existing DB

In shell simply issue the following command

$ mysql -u root -p db-name < backup-file.sql

To create a new DB and then import

Login to Mysql:
$ mysql -u root -p

Now create database called sales using SQL statement:

mysql> CREATE DATABASE myDB;
mysql> quit;

Now restore database, enter:
$ mysql -u root -p myDB < /path/to/your-DB-file.sql
Easy Peasy isn’t it?

http://www.chromeexperiments.com

Such a powerful and underappreciated pillar of our online existence.   There should be java  shrines erected throughout the lands to celebrate what this tool can do and has done to change our lives.  Thank you Sun

Stumbled across this video today that made me go hmmmm

An interview with him on CNN:

Wow is about all I can say about this short film.  We are within decades of achieving this which makes it all that much more amazing.  But beyond it being just about great tech it is a touching and emotion story.
A strange man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves. This is a short by filmmaker Bruce Branit known also as the co-creator of 405.

This is a HD copy so make sure to enlarge it

The act of playing music with people of different cultures, religions, economics and politics is a powerful statement. It shows that we can find ways of working together and sharing our experiences with one another in a positive way. Music has the power to break down the walls between cultures, to raise the level of human understanding.
~ Mark Johnson, founder, Playing for Change