It's a question that has baffled scientists, academics and pub bores through the ages: What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Now a team made up of a geneticist, philosopher and chicken farmer claim to have found an answer. It was the egg.

Put simply, the reason is down to the fact that genetic material does not change during an animal's life.

Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in prehistoric times, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg.

Though e-mail is a powerful and convenient medium, researchers have identified three major problems. First and foremost, e-mail lacks cues like facial expression and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for recipients to decode meaning well. Second, the prospect of instantaneous communication creates an urgency that pressures e-mailers to think and write quickly, which can lead to carelessness. Finally, the inability to develop personal rapport over e-mail makes relationships fragile in the face of conflict.

In effect, e-mail cannot adequately convey emotion. A recent study by Profs. Justin Kruger of New York University and Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago focused on how well sarcasm is detected in electronic messages. Their conclusion: Not only do e-mail senders overestimate their ability to communicate feelings, but e-mail recipients also overestimate their ability to correctly decode those feelings.

One reason for this, the business-school professors say, is that people are egocentric. They assume others experience stimuli the same way they do. Also, e-mail lacks body language, tone of voice, and other cues - making it difficult to interpret emotion.

"A typical e-mail has this feature of seeming like face-to-face communication," Professor Epley says. "It's informal and it's rapid, so you assume you're getting the same paralinguistic cues you get from spoken communication."

To avoid miscommunication, e-mailers need to look at what they write from the recipient's perspective, Epley says. One strategy: Read it aloud in the opposite way you intend, whether serious or sarcastic. If it makes sense either way, revise. Or, don't rely so heavily on e-mail. Because e-mails can be ambiguous, "criticism, subtle intentions, emotions are better carried over the phone," he says.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--With the spread of online games, virtual worlds and services like Google Earth and MySpace.com, people may soon be spending more time, communicating more and shopping more in complex 3D Web environments.

That's why several dozen of the most influential figures in video game design, geospatial engineering, high-tech research, software development, social networking, telecommunications and other fields gathered here Friday and Saturday for the first Metaverse Roadmap Summit.

The proliferation of social networking sites, online games and virtual worlds may lead to complex 3D Web environments.
Bottom line:

The notion of the so-called metaverse attracted dozens influential tech figures to conceive a path to an Internet dominated by 3D technology, social spaces and economies.

The event, held at the SRI International and produced by the Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF), was the initial step toward what organizers and attendees alike hope will be a coherent path to the so-called metaverse--an Internet dominated by 3D technology, social spaces and economies.

As such, the invite-only group spent the two days in a series of talks, small breakout discussions and group presentations--all in the pursuit of consensus about what the metaverse, or some would say 3D Web, will look like in 10 years.

In the end, organizers will sift through hours of recordings of the various discussions and plan to produce a public document by the end of the summer that will lay out what they believe were the overriding conclusions and directions of the event. First, though, attendees will pore over two drafts of the document in the coming months to weigh in on the organizers' take on the so-called road map.

Ultimately, the ASF hopes to produce regular small Metaverse Roadmap gatherings, as well as full summits at least every two years.

In the meantime, the organizers have their work cut out for them because agreement about the metaverse of 2016 was hard to find.

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One employee passed me with a smile on his face and exclaimed, "All you guys have GOT to get together for a photo, because no one is ever going to believe this!" Another came up to me and said, "Let me guess, you're waiting on your friend? Good answer." I guess at that point he had heard that answer more than a few times.

The reaction from the employees was pretty typical as far as our missions go. The lower level employees laughed and got a kick out of it while the managers and security guards freaked out. Some employees speculated that we were a cult, or maybe protesters. One employee tried to get a date out of the incident, informing one agent, "Tell that girl in the computer section that 'Mike says hi.'" Another employee after being told to go get some merchandise from the back, declared, "You should ask one of these other 50 people to do it!"

Security guards and managers started talking to each other frantically on their walkie-talkies and headsets. "Thomas Crown Affair! Thomas Crown Affair!," one employee shouted. They were worried that were using our fake uniforms to stage some type of elaborate heist. "I want every available employee out on the floor RIGHT NOW!"

Through the whole of his life he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is at all times in his power, and which, if in the extremity of old age he should at last attain to it, he will find to be in no respect preferable to that humble security and contentment which he had abandoned for it. It is then, in the last dregs of life, his body wasted with toil and disease, his mind galled and ruffled by the memory of a thousand injuries and disappointments which he imagines he has met with from the injustice of his enemies, or from the perfidy and ingratitude of his friends, that he begins at last to find that wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility, no more adapted for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of mind, than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys.

1) Don’t equate happiness with money. People adapt to income shifts relatively quickly, the long lasting benefits are essentially zero.
2) Exercise regularly. Regular exercise is an effective cure for mild depression and anxiety. It also stimulates more energy, and is good for the mind and body.
3) Have sex (preferably with someone you love). Need I say more?
4) Devote time and effort to close relationships. Confiding and discussing problems and issues is good for happiness, so work on these relationships.
5) Pause for reflection, meditate on the good things in life. Focusing on the good aspects of life helps to prevent hedonic adaptation.
6) Seek work that engages your skills, look to enjoy your job. Doing well at work creates happiness, and the easiest way of doing well at work, is doing a job you enjoy.
7) Give your body the sleep it needs. Too many people have a sleep deficit, resulting in fatigue, gloomy moods and lack of concentration.
8) Don’t pursue happiness for its own sake, enjoy the moment. Because people don’t understand what makes them happy, pursuing happiness can be self-defeating. Additionally, if people start to aim for happiness they are doing activities for happiness’s sake rather than actually enjoying the activity itself.
9) Take control of your life, set yourself achievable goals. People are happiest when they achieve their aims, so set yourself goals which stretch you, but are achievable.
10) Remember to follow rules 1-9. Following these guidelines sounds easy, but actually requires willpower and effort.

One
Two
Two words
I can count
Syllables are fun
Fibonacci now here I come

New
Day
Get up
Coffee cup
Paper, hat and door
An office bee can't ask for more

Life
Blood
Deep Red
Take a breath
Fire in the belly
Ready for a day in the sun

I
Can
See you
So clearly
Why are you out there?
Darkness blew away with a puff

"The mission of the Conservancy is to provide free and open source software developers with all of the benefits of being a tax-exempt corporate entity without having to do any of the work of setting up and maintaining such an entity," said Dan Ravicher, legal director for the Software Freedom Law Center and one of the initial directors of the Conservancy. "Letting projects pass off the mundane administrative burdens placed on those wishing to benefit from nonprofit status is a significant way to keep developers focused on what they do best -- writing software."

The Software Freedom Conservancy will be a fiscal sponsor for FOSS projects by providing free financial and administrative services to its members. It will provide individual developers protection from personal liability for their projects and will seek to provide participating projects with tax-exempt status, allowing them to receive tax deductible donations. The Conservancy will file a single tax return that covers each of the member's projects and will handle other corporate and tax related issues on behalf of its members. In addition, the Conservancy can hold project assets and manage them at the discretion of the project, which removes another fiscal burden from developers who are focused on software innovation.

For those who don't follow it all the time, it might even be hard to remember what all the pieces of Web 2.0 are (and keep in mind, these elements are often reinforcing, so Web 2.0 is definitely not a random grab bag of concepts). Even compact definitions are sometimes a little hard to stomach or conceptualize But the one I like the best so far is Michael Platt's recent interpretation just before SPARK. Keep in mind, the shortest definition that works for me is that "Web 2.0 is made of people." However, it's so short that important details are missing and so here's a paraphrase of Platt's summary.

Key Aspects of Web 2.0:

- The Web and all its connected devices as one global platform of reusable services and data
- Data consumption and remixing from all sources, particularly user generated data
- Continuous and seamless update of software and data, often very rapidly
- Rich and interactive user interfaces
- Architecture of participation that encourages user contribution

I also wrote a review of the year's best Web 2.0 explanations a while back and it goes into these elements in more detail if you want it. But there's a lot more to Web 2.0 than these high level elements would indicate. A key aspect not mentioned here, though I cover it in Sixteen Ways to Think in Web 2.0, is the importance of user ownership of data. The centrality of the user as both a source of mass attention (over a hundred million people, probably 2 or 3 times that many, are online right now) and an irreplaceable source of highly valuable data, generally encourages that the user be handed control of the data they generate. If control over their own attention data is denied them, they will just go to those who will give them that control. This gives some insight into the implications of Web 2.0 concepts, which were mostly gathered by examining prevailing trends on the Web. Forrester is calling the resulting fall out of these changes Social Computing and it'll be interesting to see what the effects of the widepsread democratization of content and control will ultimately be a generation from now.

"Web 2.0 is comprised of applications that use sophisticated user interfaces, that use the Internet as an operating system, that connect people, and that encourage collaboration."

On April 1st, 2004, Google launched GMail, which went on to ignite the whole Web 2.0 / AJAX revolution which we are witnessing right now. There is no agreed definition of Web 2.0. I like to think of it as the re-birth or second-coming of the web. The Web 2.0 websites are more like web applications, and have a rich, highly interactive and generally well designed user interface. They could also be using web services offered by other sites (for eg, Google Maps, Flickr photo web service, etc). Syndication and community are also associated with a site being Web 2.0. AJAX is the technical term which is responsible for the increased interactiveness of Web 2.0 websites. But the fundamentals remain the same - what's under the hood of a Web 2.0 application is as important as it was a few years ago.

Creative Intelligence Through Synergetic Diversity

What are the generative patterns that would allow the global brain to wire itself?

Access: open access, level playing field, transparency, equal access to information are attributes of any environment with positive outcomes

Connection: enabling individuals to connect and interact with one another. Market solutions, collaboration and wisdom of crowds.

Sense of ownership: skin in the game lets individuals feel there is an investment required to participate and accountability (e.g. reputation systems).