Ever since I upgraded my WP install, I’ve been seeing some character encoding hiccups, which I think has to do maybe with the UTF-8 setting? I keep seeing things like this:
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Does anybody know how to fix or eliminate this problem? Thanks.
Ever since I upgraded my WP install, I’ve been seeing some character encoding hiccups, which I think has to do maybe with the UTF-8 setting? I keep seeing things like this:
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Does anybody know how to fix or eliminate this problem? Thanks.
I’ve taken the first step towards creating a living multi-author functional spec document for the Mandala OS project. If you’d like to become a collaborator on the development of this project, please contact me with your email address.

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Other things the show touched on was a contact lens that is connected to the internet and acts as a monitor directly on your eye, awakening the ability to regrow lost limbs naturally, like a lizard can, and a number of other innovations that are not as far away as you might think. The name of the show is “Next World”

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NASA scientists have begun to computerize human, silent reading using nerve signals in the throat that control speech. In preliminary experiments, NASA scientists found that small, button-sized sensors, stuck under the chin and on either side of the ‘Adam’s apple,’ could gather nerve signals, send them to a processor and then to a computer program that translates them into words.
So does that mean that in a psifi sense, you would be able to strap somebody into this machine and literally make them talk - unless they were able to control their thoughts and subvocal speech patterns which arise out of it. I wonder EXACTLY where the threshold lies between fervent thoughts uttered loudly within and barely audible sub vocal speech patterns and lexemes?
I guess its not very advanced yet though:

“Subvocal speech recognition deals with electromyograms that are different for each speaker. Therefore, consistency can be thrown off just by the positioning of an electrode. To improve accuracy, researchers in this field are relying on statistical models that get better at pattern-matching the more times a subject “speaks” through the electrodes. But even then there are lapses.”
This one’s dated 2006 though, and says we should have commercial subvocal tech w/in two years.

In two years time a technology that will enable users to speak without uttering a sound might become commercially available. The ability to communicate silently could assist us in every day situations such as a phone conversation on a crowded subway or simply anytime we’d prefer that others wouldn’t hear us. It could aid security and special operations forces, people with vocal cord problems, and might even find a place in gaming.
THIS ONE IS AMAZING!
“In their first experiment, scientists “trained” special software to recognize six words and 10 digits that the researchers repeated subvocally. Initial word recognition results were an average of 92 percent accurate. The first sub-vocal words the system “learned” were “stop,” “go,” “left,” “right,” “alpha” and “omega,” and the digits “zero” through “nine.” Silently speaking these words, scientists conducted simple searches on the Internet by using a number chart representing the alphabet to control a Web browser program.
“We took the alphabet and put it into a matrix — like a calendar. We numbered the columns and rows, and we could identify each letter with a pair of single-digit numbers,” Jorgensen said. “So we silently spelled out ‘NASA’ and then submitted it to a well-known Web search engine. We electronically numbered the Web pages that came up as search results. We used the numbers again to choose Web pages to examine. This proved we could browse the Web without touching a keyboard,” Jorgensen explained.”



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In radio and signal processing, heterodyning is the generation of new frequencies by mixing, or multiplying, two oscillating waveforms. It is useful for modulation and demodulation of signals, or placing information of interest into a useful frequency range. This operation may be accomplished by a vacuum tube, transistor, or other signal processing device. Mixing two frequencies creates two new frequencies, according to the properties of the sine function: one at the sum of the two frequencies mixed, and the other at their difference. Typically only one of these frequencies is desired—the higher one after modulation and the lower one after demodulation. The other signal is either not passed by the tuned circuitry that follows, or may be filtered out.
Associated buzzwords: #codechant, #dreamshare, algorithmic rituals.
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Perhaps the number one significant finding in my estimation was an outcome of this ‘override’ research: namely, the ability to produce what I called ’stage 4′, and will here call, for lack of better term, ‘interactive hallucination’. This state, not dissimilar to a lucid dream itself, appears to produce full-sensory spatial hallucinations in which the subject can direct their own movement and responses to apparently autonomous figures. Further, the state can be affected and crudely directed by introducing ’sense cues’, so that small stimuli impact the experience in large qualitative and content related ways. e.g. a subject in stage 4 is exposed to a faint whiff of pine scent and finds themselves walking in a forested glade, or the faint sound of chant to experience a detailed hallucinatory cathedral. When I initially noticed this effect in the data, I thought I had stumbled on the key to ‘real’ virtual reality, something that might be integrated with nascent computer technologies to leave ‘Virtuality’ and its ilk in the dust.

Fantastic video sent to me by @spencernobleman, about an electronic device which converts images from a camera into electric signals on the tongue, enabling a blind person to - in essence - see.
They have some worthwhile diagrams in this video, showing the typical pathways which stimulus travels through the eyes into the visual cortex. Then they show one with the augmented pathway of the tongue leading up to another part of the brain, then forging interpetive connections with the visual cortex.
A number of consequences of such a technology appeared before me upon watching this:
My moral and aesthetic judgements about this remain neutral. Any technology will expand to fill all possible uses, as Ellul said. Looks like it’s time to get started on the hybrd cunnilingus/glossolalia iPhone app.
