'Memory palace' = 'method of loci' is a method, i.e. something that an average person can learn and train her or himself to use efficiently.
It is not particularly new, it is attributed to 5th/6th century (BC) Greek poet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

It is actually quite simple and can be taught in an hour or less. Training takes more time.

It is based on a simple fact that our brain is more specialized for remembering spatial facts and relations (has probably a bit to do with being able to quickly remember paths: either to successfully chase that squirrel or find the closest path to the most secure location while running away from a malnourished tiger of some sorts)

These methods map this mental power to non spatial concepts through visual association. Not completely unlike using GPU to do some non graphic tasks efficiently. The trick, in both cases, is to be able to recognize which tasks are best suited for it.

You are both right and wrong.

It is the fault of the IT staff, of course.

However, you are very wrong in saying that availability (in terms of resilience to malicious software) of a mission critical system is achieved by installing decent AV and keeping it updated. And if you call that done you would be very well done working for me.

The number of times I had viruses which no engine with latest signatures was yet able to recognize (so, yes, really new) was less then a dozen times (in two years working in Southeast Asia), but it was definitively not fun cleaning those.

Sysinternals' tools were very usefull as process explorer is really a decent tool which was rarely specifically targeted by malicious software and autoruns was able to disable quite a lot of suspicious things. With these two, normally I was able to disable things AV software would not pickup (or was not able to clean). Some sort of honeypot was useful to detect unusual activity. Locking down the OS helped and keeping it patched is no small thing. Having another OS (mac, linux) as a fail-over option for desktop stuff (for regular users) was also in place and paid out a few times. Booting live Linux distro for cleaning purposes was used a few times, but that's for viruses that are already in signature files (or that you have mapped out). Of course, backups are a must. Checking for rootkits was done periodically. Educating users and having policies was something we did, but it is hard to measure if that worked (if it actually saved any work). Any server service that could go on Linux was moved to Linux. Every little bit helped.

Our systems were not mission critical. The few infections that were successful were hard to clean, but luckily the payload of the viruses in question was mostly harmless in terms of damage to files and services. I really don't like to think what would have happened if these infections were more malicious (for example if they locked and/or damaged documents).

So, yes, US and Europe get new malicious software with a slight delay which is enough for AV software to be an order of magnitude more efficient here, but 0-day exploits and new viruses that can not be detected by AV software are not myths and on a vulnerable OS they are a big part of your security considerations, your continuity plan, IT policies and they do take more resources to achieve approximately same level of system resilience as an OS that is more secure and has less threats.

At a risk of stating obvious I'll point out that stories do much more than 'influence human behaviour in security context'. Stories have shaped entire cultures. (see for example The City of Words by Alberto Manguel, it is a fine read)

If I would to extrapolate I might say that for every action that influenced certain culture it was either direct, like war or famine, or striking gold - but the people who experienced that directly are rarely majority. Most others experience this through retelling. Which can be considered storytelling.
For example the basis of democratic society, an election process, can be considered storytelling in its largest part (cynics would add that in its largest part it is a storytelling of pure fiction).

All of this goes back to rhetoric (be careful in interpreting wikipedia's definition: 'Rhetoric is the art and study of the use of language with persuasive effect' - this art and persuasive effect is essential not only to political and legal speech, but also can be understood as an attribute that, in the end, makes any writing worth reading).

So, in essence they are trying to research analytical and quantitative rhetoric, which I think is a valid effort. Though I would not bet all my money that it is realistic to expect a coherent and testable model without a coherent and testable model of human brain (or at least of linguistic and cognitive areas of it) and society (culture).

Still, military had always had interest in manipulating the moral. Of both sides. It is only natural to research this subject. Don't see it as anything new.

Horatio, here are some ideas for future.

AMD went a long way in supporting linux and it seems that they will stick to it for newer cards (Mobility HD 5650 running stable as a rock on Ubuntu 10.10; with Catalyst Control Center).

If your geo-socio stereotyping is correct, he actually might have much higher chance of getting shot then average citizen of the world.

That's why Sweden is an effective stop word.

Yes, we can 'understand' infinity, but that is not the point.
The point is weather your belief(!) that time is infinite is correct or not (btw, is it circular or not?).
At the end, even though you are imprecise, it might be that you are correct and it might be that you are wrong.

Science is trying to get us closer to answers to such questions.

I would say that you are confused due to your incapacity or unwillingness to imagine a realistic concept of finite time (or you dismiss it as 'obviously' false), which is hardly objective.... for example, under current calculations we have no reason to believe that anything existed before 13.7 * 10^9 units of time (which happen to be very close to current rotation period of Earth). Few billions are hardly infinity and if you were trying to be objective it seems reasonable that you would opt for the finite model of time. But then you would probably have to deal with the question such as 'What caused the Big Bang?' and that is difficult. However, resorting to 'infinite model' is not significantly different - the questions change to: 'how the infinity came to exist?' and 'why is it infinite?' or 'how can it be infinite?'.

Could you provide some references? I found claims on wikipedia that

"Once ignited, a simple solid rocket motor cannot be shut off, because it contains all the ingredients necessary for combustion within the chamber in which they are burned. More advanced solid rocket motors can not only be throttled but also be extinguished and then re-ignited by controlling the nozzle geometry or through the use of vent ports. Also, pulsed rocket motors that burn in segments and that can be ignited upon command are available.

Modern designs may also include a steerable nozzle for guidance, avionics, recovery hardware (parachutes), self-destruct mechanisms, APUs, controllable tactical motors, controllable divert and attitude control motors, and thermal management materials."

Well, that would be useful if bandwidth and latency were not problems; we are not yet at the point of streaming interactive video content 1080p60, for example...

Though it could be used for dynamic pre-rendering (baking textures, etc...), but normally you get all that shipped on DVD when you buy your games.

Once the bandwidth/latency barrier breaks down there will possibly be a lot of changes, and yes, then it would be conceivable to have huge wins - in terms of calculations that are beneficial for multiple users (plus content protection) if you would render insanely complicated things on central server farms (even 'physically correct light' some day).

Well, if Blue-ray can do 1080p24 in H.264 at around 25-35 Mbps then not sure where you pulled out 3Gbps out from (I only get a similar number if I multiply 1080 x 1920 x 50 frames x 32 luma/chroma = 3.31 Gbps).

And OK, maybe today we can not use commodity hardware to do real-time (as in interactive) encoding and decoding of 1080p60, but I have always liked the idea of thin clients and central resources.

http://rtw.ml.cmu.edu/rtw/kbbrowser/arnold_schwarzenegger is female, certainty 100%

...of this might be that MS will get its act together and fix the standards compliance and user experience. MS rarely goes away. When (and if!) they indeed fix it one might think - nice, the environment corrected itself; all is good.

However, if we stop to think of vast amounts of resources (money, time) that could have been saved and used for better purposes that was blown away in the industry on making internet work on IE, just because of MS attitude (would not go as far to call it strategy) and quality of its products. It would be great if business environment could fix that, too.