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Comment It's a product review ranking system (Score 2) 76

by seanzig (#39970969) Attached to: First Amendment Protection For Search Results?
I don't see how it's any different than Consumer Reports, JD Power, etc. that do reviews of products. Sure, there are companies that might object to the final results and rankings especially when they have crappy products, but the bottom line is that these product review are protected by their authors' First Amendment rights. The only time libel might be involved is if they produced reviews without any factual basis. Google does have a factual basis for their search results - their ranking algorithms, which attempt to figure out for what a person is truly searching. And it's in there best interest to keep it that way, else people move on to another search engine.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft revamps chkdsk in Windows 8 to minimize downtime (tech-stew.com)

Submitted by
techfun89
techfun89 writes: "Microsoft is proclaiming that with Windows 8 they have revamped the process of checking the disk for errors and it is faster and less disruptive than ever before. A lot of the checking for errors is now done on the fly, behind the scenes.

Along with a tweak of the chkdsk utility comes the tweaking of the NTFS file system. In the past the NTFS "health model" saw the machine's hard disk as a single unit that was either in good shape or damaged.

"Downtime was directly proportional to the number of files in the volume," according to a post by Kiran Bangalore, senior program manager of the Windows Core Storage and File Systems.

With Windows 8, the NTFS system scans for problems in the background while the system is online and initial attempts to fix the issue are done on-the-fly. If it can't be fixed while the system is online the details are logged so the time to fix is shorter when offline. Microsoft has termed the downtime from fixing the system "SpotFix"."
Biotech

Submission + - Researchers Use Stem Cells To Grow New Teeth (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: Scientists from the College of Dental Medicine at Nova Southeastern University have successfully grown new teeth from stem cells. After extracting stem cells from existing oral tissue, the cells are molded into the shape of a tooth using a polymer scaffold. Using this method, teeth have already been successfully grown in mice and monkeys, with human clinical trials under way.
Windows

Submission + - Windows 7 to Windows 8 upgrade info revealed? (neowin.net)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "It's not exactly a shock to learn that Microsoft is preparing a way for people who will buy a new Windows 7 desktop or laptop in the near future to upgrade to the upcoming Windows 8. Microsoft has made similar upgrade paths available to consumers whenever a new version of Windows was close to launching.

News.com reports that, according to their sources, consumers who buy a Windows 7 PC running Home Basic or higher will be able to get an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro when it is launched later this year. The story claims that the program will begin either on or around June 2nd."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft to bring full Internet Explorer browsing to Xbox 360 with Kinect contr (theverge.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Microsoft is currently testing a modified version of Internet Explorer 9 on its Xbox 360 console, according to our sources. The Xbox 360 currently includes Bing voice search, but it's limited to media results. Microsoft's new Internet Explorer browser for Xbox will expand on this functionality to open up a full browser for the console. We are told that the browser will let Xbox users surf all parts of the web straight from their living rooms."

Submission + - Netherlands cements Net Neutrality in Law (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "A while back, Dutch Telcos started to sing the "We are losing money due to internet services!" song and floated new plans that would make consumers pay extra for data used by apps that comflicted with their own services — apps like Skype for example. The politicians stepped in however, and wrote laws forbidding this. Now, the legislation has finally passed through the senate and the Netherlands is an officially Net Neutral country, the second in the world — Chile did this a while back. That's not to say that Telcos aren't smarting from the new laws, they have been busy severly reducing data on plans and charging extra for their services while using the very same apps in their marketing campaigns — sorry, I should rephrase that to "adapting to the new marketplace"."
Canada

Submission + - Wear a Mask During a Protest in Canada: 10 Years in Jail (www.cbc.ca) 5

Submitted by Phrogman
Phrogman writes: The Conservative government of Steven Harper in Canada has proposed a new bill that would impose a jail term of 10 years for anyone wearing a mask while "participating in a riot or unlawful assembly". The conservative backbencher who proposed the bill makes it clear that he intended it to allow police to arrest anyone wearing a mask "before protests spiral out of control". Since this is the same government that arrested hundreds of protesters during the G8/G20 summit using a law that didn't actually exist, it raises the question as to how they will define "unlawful". This is the latest in a series of "tough on crime" legislation being promulgated by the Conservatives now that they have the power of a majority government. The 10 year penalty is more than double the penalty awarded to a person who murdered someone in a fit of "road-rage" recently.
IBM

Submission + - Beyond 'Jeopardy': How IBM Will Make Billions On Watson (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "At a time when companies spend billions on patent wars and frivolous acquisitions, IBM makes money the old-fashioned way: through R&D, writes Tech Bottom Line's Bill Snyder. 'IBM is not the juggernaut it once was, nor is it quite the paradise for researchers it used to be. But a company that can still spend some $6 billion a year on R&D and embark on what [Watson's] Gold calls "a grand challenge" every decade is a light-year ahead of companies pouring money down the rat holes of useless litigation and frivolous acquisitions,' Snyder writes. Early projects making use of Watson range from cancer treatment to customer service, and early estimates peg Watson's payoff for IBM at $2.7 billion in revenue by 2015, adding 52 cents of earnings per share."

Submission + - Univ. of Minnesota compiles database of peer-reviewed, open-acces textbooks (insidehighered.com) 1

Submitted by
BigVig209
BigVig209 writes: "Univ. of MN is cataloging open-access textbooks and enticing faculty to review the texts by offering $500 per review. Despite the author calling the open-source rather than open-access, this may be the first time a land-grant, public university makes this kind of resource available to faculty and students."
AI

Submission + - Game-powered Machine Learning (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: There is a lot of data on the web and this is why machine learning and "big data" have tended to rise together. Unfortunately most of the available data is "unlabeled" and for supervised training you need labeled data.
A team at UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering has come up with an idea that might solve lots of similar problems — turn the labeling task into a game. Their Herd It game on Facebook uses people enjoying themselves to label music samples. Of course the users don't think that they are helping with an AI training task — as far as they are concerned they are testing their knowledge of music trivia. They can challenge friends and there is a leader board.
The really clever part is that the machine learning algorithm can create modifications of the game to get it more data in the areas it isn't doing too well on.
The algorithm works well enough to be used to create a music search engine by classifying new music without the help of a human.
Perhaps more important the gamification of machine learning might be a way to get humans to provide the labeled data we need.
Science

Submission + - Anything Can Be A Touch Screen Thanks To Disney Research

Submitted by surewouldoutlaw
surewouldoutlaw writes: Remember that scene in Fantasia where Mickey turns all the brooms into an army of workers? Well, Disney isn't quite there, yet. But scientists with the company's research lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have been able to turn virtually any surface, including liquid water and the human body, into a multi-touch interface. The new system is called Touché, and it is as awesome as it sounds.
China

Submission + - China Developing X-37B Copycat Plane (the-diplomat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: China is developing a smaller version of the American X-37B. The American X-37, "(could) also perform surveillance missions, resupply the International Space Station or even sneak up on and inspect spacecraft of other nations." The Chinese version is noted to be smaller. However, it is a strong sign demonstrating advances in Chinese aerospace design and technology.
Piracy

Submission + - Minecraft creator's new game will promote (virtual) piracy (playerattack.com)

Submitted by UgLyPuNk
UgLyPuNk writes: Notch endorses piracy... as long as it's ingame. He's announced today that his new game 0x10c will include — and potentially encourage — code-stealing between players.
Because I want virtual piracy as a gameplay element, the EULA for 0x10c will say you surrender all claims to code you upload to the game.
Biotech

Submission + - Japanese scientists use particle accelerator to create salt-resistant rice (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "An unfortunate and little reported side effect of last year’s Japanese earthquake and tsunami is that thousands of acres of farmland were contaminated with seawater. Rice is a staple crop in Japan, and it requires large amounts of water to grow. The salt in seawater, however, stunts or outright kills the plant. Researchers out of Riken Nishina Centre near Tokyo have been looking at the problem, and it just so happens they have a particle accelerator laying around. Mutations naturally accumulate over time (this is evolution), but this rate is far too slow for meaningful research. Past efforts in inducing mutations have relied on X-rays or gamma radiation to cause mutations in crops, but a particle accelerator should be able to accomplish the same thing much faster. Dr. Tomoko Abe is leading the research and hopes that the particle accelerator will prove superior to traditional methods. Initial results indicate this approach can produce 10-100 times more mutations. After bombarding 600 seeds in her particle accelerator, Dr. Abe has created 250 mutant strains that were able to grow in salt water and produce fertile seeds of their own. The next step is to replant the most successful specimens and begin sorting out the traits that make them grow so well. With enough testing, Dr. Abe hopes to be able to generate an edible strain of rice in four years that can grow in a high-salt environment. If this research is a success, the effects could reach much farther than northern Japan; there are many coastal locations around the world that could benefit from a more hearty strain of salt-resistant rice."
Idle

Submission + - Stone-Throwing Chimp Is Back -- And This Time It's Personal (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Three years ago, a stone-throwing chimpanzee named Santino jolted the research community by providing some of the strongest evidence yet that nonhumans could plan ahead. Santino, a resident of the Furuvik Zoo in Gävle, Sweden, calmly gathered stones in the mornings and put them into neat piles, apparently saving them to hurl at visitors when the zoo opened as part of angry and aggressive "dominance displays." But some researchers were skeptical that Santino really was planning for a future emotional outburst. Now Santino is back in the scientific literature, the subject of new claims that he has begun to conceal the stones so he can get a closer aim at his targets—further evidence that he is thinking ahead like humans do.

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