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Technology

Submission + - Creepiest Tech Around

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Doubt that technology ever creeps anyone out but in the spirit of Halloween a recently published article rounds up some of the creepiest technologies at play these days. The article talks about gadgets like the Kiss Transmission Device which requires users to make out with a machine to services like Apple's highly disturbing location tracking application.
Printer

Submission + - Paper-based explosives sensor made using an inkjet (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Detecting explosives is a vital task both on the battlefield and off, but it requires equipment that, if sensitive enough to detect explosives traces in small quantities, is often expensive, delicate and difficult to construct. Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute have developed a method of manufacturing highly sensitive explosives detectors incorporating RF components using Ink-jet printers. This holds the promise of producing large numbers of detectors at lower cost using local resources.
Digital

Submission + - Madagascan villagers get mobile access (telecoms.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new project in Madagascar helps villagers to share a handset using unique IDs to help the poorer sections of society gain access to mobile technology
Facebook

Submission + - McDonald's Facebook scam: Happy Birthday to...Dona (blogspot.com)

Submitted by stormdesign
stormdesign writes: I'm sure a McDonald's themed Facebook scam seemed like a good idea to somebody at the time, but wow is this one all over the place. It's your typical "Click here to Like", "Post a spam comment saying how good this is" then "do one of these offers" affair. However, there are many things about it that don't make any sense starting with the URL: macdonalds(dot)in.

Comment Re:More nostalgia goggles (Score 1) 401

by spokenoise (#37727778) Attached to: Who Killed Videogames?
Game: 'Valkarie is about to die' Me: 'shit shit shit shit where are more coins.....' Loved the game- it was the first game you *could* pay to continue rather than dying and having to restart. Would love the arcade version @ home!
Cloud

Submission + - NASA cloud architect forms open source startup (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: The lead architect of NASA's cloud platform, which spun off into the open-source OpenStack cloud operating system, is launching a new company and product aimed at helping enterprises more easily build private clouds. Piston Cloud Computing will sell an OpenStack distribution that offers automation for easy deployment, security features to meet the needs of security-conscious businesses and interoperability with public clouds that are also built on OpenStack. "The rationale for starting the company is that the options for deploying private clouds are complicated, hard to configure, time-intensive to maintain and don't necessarily scale terribly well," said Joshua McKenty, CEO of Piston Cloud and formerly cloud architect and technical lead at NASA.

Submission + - Linus Torvalds speaks about kernel fun, gadgets .. (linux-bg.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Linus Torvalds speaks about the fun in developing the Linux kernel, his gadgets, his interest in starting a desktop project and finally making "the next year" the year of the Linux Desktop. Not to miss also his "eerie resemblance" with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

These and more can be found in the new interview that he gave for Linux-BG.org
Linux

Submission + - Gnome creator: Linux has only 10 good desktop apps (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
nk497
nk497 writes: "Gnome co-creator Miguel de Icaza has said Linux is struggling on the desktop because fragmentation makes creating apps too difficult, with incompatibilities between distributions — and even between different versions of the same one. "When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10," de Icaza said, according to a post on Tim Anderson's IT Writing blog. "You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We’ve managed to p*** off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time.""

Submission + - Thorium key to future base load electricity? (google.com.au)

Submitted by crutchy
crutchy writes: I was reading in an IEAust (http://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/) magazine about the case for thorium as a fuel for nuclear power generation. While I generally support nuclear power for base load power generation, I'm aware of its risks and obstacles to widespread use particularly in Australia. On face value there appears to be a lot of promise in Thorium. There will always be those that oppose it of course (vested interest is a powerful motivator), but a quick Google search reveals that tehre doesn't seem to be that much negative publicity surrounding it yet; a story by The Guardian received many comments debunking the article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium). For those that have never heard of it, have a squiz at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Thorium_as_a_nuclear_fuel). Keeping in mind the huge projected demand for energy in the future and that carbon is a naturally occurring substance (so treehuggers who think it should be illegal to fart need not reply, although NOx & SOx emissions should definitely be on the environmental agenda regarding current energy generation technologies), I'm interested to help get some debate/discussion about Thorium going on slashdot to see what arguments there are. No doubt there will be many armchair experts out there with strong opinions both ways, but as an engineer working in the power industry I want to hear both sides. This may well be flamebait, but the future of electricity generation is topical lately and important, so I don't think this sort of discussion is irrelevant. Who knows; maybe there is the odd politician reading that may have the balls to speak up (not likely but we can only hope).
AI

Submission + - Cleverbot Passes Turing Test (geekosystem.com)

Submitted by
kruhft
kruhft writes: "It seems that Cleverbot, the chatbot so ready to admit that it was a unicorn during a discussion with itself, has passed the Turing test. This past Sunday, the 1334 votes from a Turing test held at the Techniche festival in Guwahati, India were released. They revealed that Cleverbot was voted to be human 59.3% of the time. Real humans did only slightly better and were assumed to be humans 63.3% of the time. That being the case, Cleverbot's success in conning people into thinking it was human is greater than chance, and therefore, one could argue that it has technically passed the Turning test."

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