Software Wars

Software Wars

A Fraude da fraude

Não é só no brasil que aparecem arqui-vigaristas:

In May 2008 the Fraud Discovery Institute, which claims to be a consumer watchdog organisation, reported that laboratory test results of Herbalife products showed lead levels in excess of limits established by law in California under Proposition 65. The Fraud Discovery Institute was founded by fraudulent entrepreneur Barry Minkow, who served seven years in jail for stock fraud, and since disclosed that his company was profiting from the allegations by shorting Herbalife stock.

Guess Which Economy Doubled in Size Last Year

Believe it or not, the virtual economy of Second Life, a popular online computer game that lets users create a new reality for themselves, doubled in size last year. Users spent more than a billion dollars on virtual goods over the last year, compared to $360 million for the year before.

Second Life's economy is now larger than the economies of nations such as East Timor, Samoa and Dijibouti.

Memory-Editing Drugs

Did you find director Michel Gondry's argument for his "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" movie too far-fetched?

Well... read on.


The Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs | Wired Science | Wired.com

The Messy Future of Memory-Editing Drugs

• By Brandon Keim
• April 10, 2009 |
• 3:10 pm |
• Categories: Brains and Behavior
• 
  

The development of a drug that controls a chemical used to form memories sparked heady scientific and philosophical speculation this week.

Granted, the drug has only been tested in rats, but other memory-blunting drugs are being tried in soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. It might not be long before memories are pharmaceutically targeted, just as moods are now.

Some think this represents an opportunity to eliminate the crippling psychic effects of past trauma. Others see an ill-advised chemical intrusion into an essential human facility that threatens to replace our ability to understand and cope with life's inevitabilities.

Oxford University neuroethicist Anders Sandberg spoke with Wired.com about the future of memory-editing drugs. In some ways, said Sandberg, our memories are already being altered. We just don't realize it.

Wired.com: Will these drugs, when they become available, work as expected?

Anders Sandberg: A lot of discussion is based on the false premise that they'll work as well as they would in a science fiction story. In practice, well-studied, well-understood drugs like aspirin have side effects that can be annoying or even dangerous. I think the same thing will go for memory editing.

Wired.com: How selective will memory editing be?

Sandberg: Current research seems to suggest that it can be pretty specific, but there will be side effects. It may not even be that you forget other memories. Small, false memories could be created. And we're probably not going to be able to predict that before we actually try them.

Wired.com: What's the right way to test the drugs?

Sandberg: The cautious approach works. Right now, there are small clinical trials using propranolol to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a good start. We should also find better ways of doing the trials, because we don't really know what we're looking for.

When testing a cancer drug, we look at side effects in terms of toxicity. Here we might want to look at all aspects of thinking, which is really hard, because you can't test for all of them.

In the future, since we're getting more technological forms of recording and documenting our lives, those will have a bigger part in testing the drugs. We'll be able to ask, How does this help in everyday life? How often do you get "tip of the tongue" phenomena? Does it increase in relation to the drug?

Wired.com:
It seems that it would be easy to test "tip of the tongue" drug effects on the sorts of small things one recalls on an everyday basis. But what if it's old, infrequently recalled but still-important memories that are threatened by side effects?

Sandberg: It's pretty messy to determine what is an important memory to us. They quite often crop up, but without us consciously realizing that we're thinking of the memory. That's probably good news, as every time you recall a memory, you also tend to strengthen it.

Wired.com: How likely is the manipulation of these fundamental memories?

Sandberg: Big memories, with lots of connections to other things we've done, will probably be messy to deal with. But I don't think those are the memories that people want to give up. Most people would want to edit memories that impair them.

Of course, if we want to tweak memories to look better to ourselves, we might get a weird concept of self.

Wired.com: I've asked about memory removal — but should the discussion involve adding memories, too?

Sandberg: People are more worried about deletion. We have a preoccupation with amnesia, and are more fearful of losing something than adding falsehoods.

The problem is that it's the falsehoods that really mess you up. If you don't know something, you can look it up, remedy your lack of information. But if you believe something falsely, that might make you act much more erroneously.

You can imagine someone modifying their memories of war to make them look less cowardly and more brave. Now they'll think they're a brave person. At that point, you end up with the interesting question of whether, in a crisis situation, they would now be brave.

Wired.com: You use another example of memory-editing drugs for soldiers in your article with S. Matthew Liao, that if the memory of a mistaken action is erased, a soldier might not learn from his remorse.

Sandberg: To some extent, we already have to deal with this. My grandfather's story of having been in the Finnish winter war as a volunteer shifted over time. He didn't become much braver from year to year, but there was a difference between the earlier and later versions.

We can't trust our memories. But on the other hand, our memories are the basis for most of our decisions. We take it as a given that we can trust them, which is problematic.

Wired.com: But this fluidity of memory at least exists in an organic framework. Might we lose something in the transition to an abrupt, directed fluidity?

Sandberg: There's some truth to that. We have authentic fake memories, in a sense. My grandfather might have made his memories a bit more brave over time, but that was affected by his personality and his other circumstances, and tied to who he was. If he just went to the memory clinic and wanted to have won the battle, that would be more jarring.

If you do that kind of jarring change, and it doesn't connect to anything else in the personality, it's probably not going to work that well.

Wired.com: In your article, you also bring up forgiveness. If we no longer remember when someone has wronged us, we might not learn to forgive them, and that's an important social ability.

Sandberg: My co-author is more concerned than I am, but I do think there's something interesting going on with forgiveness. It's psychological, emotional and moral — a complex can of worms.

I can see problems, not from a moral standpoint, but legal. What if I hit you with my car, and to prevent PTSD you take propranolol, and afterwards in court think it wasn't too serious? A clever lawyer might argue that the victim's lack of concern means the crime should be disregarded.

I'm convinced that we're going to see a lot of interesting legal cases in the next few years, as neuroscience gets involved. People tend to believe witnesses. Suppose a witness says, "I'd just been taking my Ritalin" — should we believe him more, because we've got an enhanced memory? And if a witness has been taking a drug to impair memory, is that a reason to believe that her account is not true?

With this kind of neuroscientific evidence, it's very early to tell what we can trust. We need to do actual experiments and see measure how drugs enhance or impair memory, or more problematically, introduce a bias. Some drugs might enhance emotional memories over unemotional, or vice versa.

Wired.com: Is it paranoid to worry that someday people will be stuck drifting in a sea of shifting and unreliable memories?

Sandberg: I think we're already in this sea, but we don't notice it most of the time. Most people think, "I've got a slightly bad memory." Then they completely trust what they remember, even when it's completely unreliable.

Maybe all this is good, because it forces us to recognize that the nature of our memory is quite changeable.

A Wonderful Thing

Kerry Patterson

When Old Man Hubback pulled up to my grandfather's grocery store it always caused quite a stir. Cars pulled over so people could take a gander. Dogs yelped themselves silly. And kids came running from every corner. The fact that the German immigrant looked like a homeless version of Santa Claus would have been enough to catch some people's attention, but that wasn't his drawing card. When Mr. Hubback traveled from his home a mile away to Noonan's Grocery, he hooked up his horse to a hay wagon and clip-clopped his way down the lane. This took place in the early 50s, and that made him the last person in Bellingham to travel by means of a one-horse-power vehicle. That's what caught everyone's attention.

The boys who came running to catch a glimpse also had something else they wanted to witness. The stoic German would climb down from the wagon, walk through the front door of Granddad's grocery store, walk straight to the counter, and slap down a dime. Without a word Grandpa would march to the back of the cooler and fetch an ice-cold bottle of Coke.

Hubback would grab the icy bottle in his massive hand, take it to the wall that sported the bottle opener, and pop off the lid. Then he'd whip the Coke bottle to his lips, tilt it and his head back, and in an act repeatedly attempted and failed by every boy in the room, Hubback would down the icy, burning liquid in three or four gulps—without so much as a single pause, belch, tear, or gasp for air. Then, to the cheering of little boys, Hubback would smack the empty bottle down on the counter, turn on the heel of his boot, and head back home. Most of the boys would remain behind and speak in reverent tones about the old man's gift.

As the crowd dispersed, for me the encounter was far from over. When the old German climbed on his wagon, I'd often try to sneak onto the back where I would hide in a pile of loose hay. If he didn't spot me, I'd get a free ride home on a horse-drawn wagon.

Hubback had a different plan. He didn't like kids climbing on his wagon and he let them know by twisting on his perch and turning his bull whip on anyone who had the temerity to invade his space.

On this particular day as Hubback pulled away with me perched on the back of his wagon, I quickly slid under a pile of fresh-cut hay. I had made it onto the vehicle undetected. Eventually I ventured out far enough from underneath the hay to dangle my legs off the back and enjoy the slow clip-clopping as we meandered down the dirt road that led toward my home.

I should have known better than to expose myself, because it wasn't long until a stray dog charged up the road, barking at the horse and Mr. Hubback turned to give the mongrel a taste of his whip. Seeing me sitting there on his precious wagon, unharmed and with a stupid grin on my face, Hubback immediately changed targets by re-cocking his arm to give me a sharp smack.

But then fate intervened. Before Mr. Hubback could whip me we both heard a strange shout emanating from somewhere up the road. In unison we turned our attention to the ruckus. It was Maxine, a middle-aged lady who lived nearby. Maxine not only marched to the beat of a different drummer, she marched to the beat of a wildly insane drummer. Whenever she walked up the road, she tilted forward as if struggling against a hurricane-force wind and would peer ahead until she saw another human being coming her way. Then, no matter the distance, Maxine would start shouting a garbled monologue that only she could understand.

Realizing that the chatter was just Maxine, Mr. Hubback smiled at me with a sardonic grin and raised his right arm to give me a thrashing. But I was saved once again. This time it was the sound of "Buggy Baker" bouncing down the bumpy road in her old war-surplus jeep. Ms. Baker had earned the appellation of "Buggy" because she was a high school biology teacher who loved bugs and acted, well, sort of buggy. For one, she drove an open jeep—not common for a woman in her fifties in the fifties. Two, she was always accompanied in her jeep by Billy, who was not only her best friend, but, as his name might suggest, was also a goat. On this day as Buggy bounced down the road in her jeep, so did Billy. The poor creature could hardly stay on his assigned perch on the back bench because Ms. Baker was driving far too fast for a road that was more pot hole than path.

As Mr. Hubback and I paused to watch, it became clear that Buggy's intention was to pass the wagon at a dangerous clip.

Just as Buggy began to hurl past us, Maxine (still yammering) drew close enough to stand in the path of the careening jeep, so Buggy was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid a horrible disaster. As she stomped on the brake pedal, the jeep hit a huge pothole and nearly flipped bumper-over-steering-wheel. This convulsive action pitched poor Billy into the front passenger seat, legs splayed forward where he ended up sitting there in the distinctly human pose of someone riding shotgun.

The curiously embarrassed look on the goat's face coupled with the fact that he appeared as if he were pretending to be a human being who was casually cruising the countryside was simply too funny for words. As I looked at Old Man Hubback and he looked at Maxine and Maxine looked at Buggy we all grinned widely. Then, in a moment of truce, Hubback sat down his whip, leaned back his head, and let out a howl that was half laugh, half choke. Buggy tittered, Maxine cackled, and I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks. After a full minute of laughter, Buggy shooed Billy to the back, carefully edged her jeep past the wagon, and pulled away. Maxine leaned precariously into the imaginary wind and strode off at full yammer. And, true to form, Hubback grabbed his whip and menacingly aimed it at me again.

That was the end of that. I leaped from Hubback's wagon and hurried the rest of the way home. Ten minutes later I burst in the front door and excitedly told my mother the story of the shotgun goat and the bull whip. Mom laughed along with me until we were both forced to sit down on the couch to catch our breath.

Then as Mother gathered her composure she exclaimed, "Isn't it wonderful!"

"Isn't what wonderful?" I asked.

"Living in this neighborhood!" mother explained. "We have people from all walks of life and that makes this a perfect place to live."

In my moment of near crisis, Mom chose to focus on the joys of diversity. She loved people of all shapes, looks, beliefs and sizes. She loved to chat with immigrants. When I grew old enough to study biology, Mom took me by Buggy's enchanted home where I discovered a menagerie filled with mysterious creatures and shiny microscopes. Buggy in turn introduced me to the joy of scientifically exploring the swamp in her backyard.

"To each his own." That had been Mom's mantra. Long before the topic of diversity had become popular in HR departments worldwide, Mom knew the joy that came from meeting, associating with, and loving people of every ethnicity, lifestyle, and belief.

No matter the direction of the political winds, mom never broke stride. While it's true I never actually heard Mother use the word "diversity," it was what she cherished. When Mr. Hubback grew feeble, it was she who took him soup and sat with him. And when Mom returned to college at age forty to study speech therapy, it was Maxine she took on as her first benefactor.

Mom never changed. Forty-five years later, on the eve of her death, she gifted a family of Mexican immigrants several dolls that she had made by hand to adorn her Christmas tree. Mom had invited the new neighbors and their five children into her home for hot chocolate one evening, and when the kids had complimented her on the dolls, she gave them away without a second thought.

Later that night as mom settled into her over-stuffed chair for the very last time to knit wool hats for the children of Bosnia (we found a bag of twenty beautiful hats when we went through her things), I'm sure she smiled deeply as she imagined the joy she would bring to a people she had never met, but whom she had been dutifully studying in her encyclopedia.

"Bosnians!" She had said to me as she knitted hats one day the week before—The Encyclopedia Britannica lying open next to her. "Aren't they a fascinating bunch!"

Mom made diversity a wonderful thing.

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.

The wink that changed the world

The wink that changed the world. - By Michael Meyer - Slate Magazine

This is the way the Warsaw Pact folded, not with a bang but a gesture.

By Michael MeyerPosted Monday, July 6, 2009, at 9:26 AM ET

Nicolae Ceaucescu in Bucharest in 1989

On July 7, 1989, the masters of the Eastern empire gathered in Bucharest for a fateful summit. They were a rogue's gallery of the world's dictators, assembled in the capital of the worst among them: Romania's own Nicolae Ceausescu, Europe's last Stalinist, the dark lord of the old Eastern bloc's most repressive Communist regime.

They were the hunters: Erich Honecker, the murderous boss of the German Democratic Republic, architect of the wall that separated his East Germany from the West. There was Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski, the man who declared martial law in 1980 and broke the famed trade union Solidarity. Czechoslovak strongman Milos Jakes was there, as well as Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, whose secret police stooges once tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II.

This day, however, the hunted was one of their own: reformist Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, whose determination to bring democracy and free markets to his country threatened them all. And so, in the interests of self-preservation, the satraps of the Warsaw Pact marshaled their forces. The goal: a classically Commie "fraternal intervention" of the sort the world had seen before—Hungary in 1956 and Prague in 1968. Only one man stood between them and their quarry. His name: Mikhail Gorbachev.

For many, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was a glorious moment, emblematic of the West's victory in the Cold War. It seemed to come out of the blue. But if you watched the Eastern bloc's disintegration from the ground, over the course of that epic year, you know that the process was far longer and more complex than most people realize. Often, it unfolded in melodramatic little chapters, unnoticed by the rest of the world, as on that fine summer day in Bucharest two decades ago.

To grasp the full dimension of that drama, you must remember how Europe was still locked in the old order defined by the Cold War—and glimpse the changes afoot that would, abruptly, transform it. Nemeth arrived on the scene in late November 1988 as a new-generation "reform" Communist in the mold of Gorbachev himself. But if his titular master in Moscow remained a committed socialist, however liberal by contrast to his old-guard predecessors, Nemeth was the real deal.

Moving quickly, he had drafted a new constitution for Hungary—modeled on America's, complete with a Bill of Rights and guarantees of free speech and human rights. Then he allowed new political parties to form and promised free elections. And if the Communist Party should lose, hard-liners asked, what then? Why, said Nemeth, with perfect equanimity, "We step down." Worst, just a few months before, in early May, Nemeth had announced that Hungary would tear down the fence along its frontier with Austria. At the height of the Cold War, he cut a hole in the Iron Curtain.

In the Communist world, this was heresy. It had to be punished. And so it was that the Warsaw Pact's leaders assembled in Bucharest. Seated in a great hall, surrounded by banners and the full pomp of Communist circumstance, they launched their attack. Ceausescu went first, brandishing his fists and shouting an impassioned indictment: "Hungary will destroy socialism." His "dangerous experiments" will destroy the entire Socialist Union! Honecker, Jakes, and Zhivkov followed. Only Jaruzelski of Poland sat quiet, sphinxlike behind his dark sunglasses, betraying no emotion.

Nemeth had been in office for only seven months. This was his first Warsaw Pact summit. He was nervous, but he knew his enemies would act only with Soviet support. The man who could give it sat roughly opposite him, 30 feet away on the other side of a large rectangle of flag-draped conference tables. As Ceausescu and the others ranted on, calling for armed intervention in Hungary, Nemeth glanced across at the Soviet leader. Their eyes met, and Gorbachev … winked.

"This happened at least four or five times," Nemeth later told me. "Strictly speaking, it wasn't really a wink. It was more a look, a bemused twinkle. Each time he smiled at me, with his eyes, it was as if Gorbachev were saying, 'Don't worry. These people are idiots. Pay no attention.' " And so he didn't. As the dogs of the Warsaw Pact brayed for his head, Nemeth went outside to smoke a cigarette.

On this small moment, history turned. Nemeth flew back to Budapest and continued his reforms, dissolving the country's Communist Party and opening Hungary's borders so that tens of thousands of East Germans could famously escape to the West—and causing, four months later, the Berlin Wall to topple. Erich Honecker went home a spent political force who would be ousted in a coup d'état that began taking shape even before he left Bucharest. As for Nicolae Ceausescu, he would die by firing squad during the revolution that convulsed Romania at year's end.