Maison Fleury

Ok here are two: 1- Ratatouille. Great, great movie. Went there with all the kids except #4 (who is 9 mo) and we all loved it. It is a glamorous picture of Paris and cooking which is all alright by me. GO SEE IT. 2- Shooter . Best movie in 10 years. Yeah it is that good. A classic. GO BUY IT. Please leave some DVD recommendation in the comments if you would. Remember I have a lot of time :)

I used to hate Apple. I had some beef about how they designed their screen or something. Well it is all forgotten. The iPhone is a gorgeous techno-device. I couldn't resist and I went to the store to check it out. I was thinking about one for myself. Not as a phone mind you, I don't want a new phone. But as a web-browsing device with a touch screen UI. I have tried the Mylo, the eReader, and the ultra portable from Sony. From the moment you pick up that thing it feels great. The design is slick and the screen is gorgeous. It reminded me of the first time I picked up the PSP. I couldn't stop giggling. Apparently the glass surface doesn't scratch easy so the result is a breath taking screen. I tried gmail immediately. Navigating the UI was really intuitive. The touch screen works great. The zoom feature is really nifty and something badly needed on all the portable touch devices. As many others, I found the keyboard thing really got in my way. I hear that people ge...

Before I forget all about this software world, I wanted to put in a word for the GPL for a different reason that I have done in the past. Explaining the advantages of freedom for software in a business setting was always a difficult excercise. Reading a manifesto makes you look like a bomb throwing anarchist most of the time. So in fact we focused on the free as in beer, as opposed to the free as in freedom when it comes to corporate america. But place yourself at the point of singularity . In 10, 20 or maybe 200 years, man and machine will merge. Increasingly we will use software to control functions of the body. In that world, you want to have "free software" as in "freedom". Money wont really be the issue, freedom to run and modify will be. You want freedom to run the software that backs up your memories, you want the freedom to modify the HUD software in your field of vision. Imagine waiting for "human service pack 3.1" to fix bugs, it can't ...

Thanks to Juha Lindfors for pointing out, via comments on the previous blogpost, the bit of news about teletransportation. It seems the "vienna" school of thought of quantum physics, is busy demonstrating "spooky action a distance" from Tenerife to La Palma (100km). Scaling up the effect discussed in the previous blog. Slashdot had news threads about it. This morning I decided to catch up on my slashdot feed. There I saw this bit of Slashdot coverage on brain implants that make your brain the computer. It is a CNN rehash of an old Business 2.0 article of old Nature news . It made the cover of Nature in early 2006, and it was great to read a highly speculative piece about the technology possible futures. The brain emits electricity and therefore electromagnetism as it "thinks". We have the tech to read some electrical signatures. From MRI, to portable bands (in Nature: a pill sized implant). Some signatures are unique and therefore can be mapped back to...

I am covering a recent bit of Science news reported in Nature. It has to do with "spooky action at a distance". I had studied this quantum mechanics phenomena under Prof. Alain Aspect (not kidding you on the name) while at the Polytechnique School in Paris. So when I saw him pen the coverage of the research I was somewhat excited. Prof Aspect is famous for an experiment done in the 80's whose results violate Bell's inequalities and confirm predictions of Quantum Mechanics instead. First hypothesized by Einstein, Podolski and Rosen, this class of "thought experiment" was about pointing out a weird prediction that spooky action at a distance was predicted with particles in a Quantum state called "entangled". Einstein famously did not believe in this possibility. Since then, a lot of observed data has dodgedly confirmed the QM predictions to the dismay of many physicists. As Alain Aspect puts it in the "news and view" coverage of the new r...

I just have to put a word in for the PS3. It is a superb console and the games are getting quickly better. I am completely blown away by the graphics engine. It is so good that travelling through NYC in Spiderman3 (the game) makes the whole game. I just finished Call of Duty, that was a great game. I have enjoyed my PSP, my XBox 360 (Gears of War, what a great game) and I even am enjoying the WII. But after all the noise settles down, for my tastes, the PS3 is the winner hands down. And the best part of it? It is absolutely silent, it is good citizen in the bedroom. I remember why I like Sony. Lovin it, any games you guys recommend? any console listed above is game :) marcf

Interesting result reported from Arizona State University. Scientist at ASU have used artificial mutations on existing proteins that bind ATP (the body's energy source) and rapidly selected the results. Rinse and repeat increase selection so you see the best at "survival of the fittest". This way they improve on nature's natural rate of mutation and selection. In no time, they found a protein that is extremelly stable and binds ATP twice as much as the natural one . Interesting... Even more interesting is that they start thinking they can probably do this for any protein in the human body, today. So they could find better ways to speed metabolism, transport oxygen, increase mental capacities by just tuning existing proteins. The 10 million dollar question becomes: how do you bring those protein blueprints back in your body? You are talking about serious tinkering at this point. Sign me up Scotty! marcf