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NASA

NASA Uses AI Customer Service Robot In Second Life 45

Posted by Soulskill from the get-a-first-artificial-life dept.
Linguo writes "Fusing human psychology with an advanced artificial intelligence engine, MyCyberTwin's virtual humans are being used by organizations like NASA and National Australia Bank to improve their customer support levels. MyCyberTwin technology is designed to allow almost anyone to build a virtual, artificial human — called a CyberTwin — which can handle such tasks as personalized customer support, client sales or even entertainment and companionship. CyberTwins can take the form of a clone of yourself, or a representative of your company, and they can live in almost any digital environment, including Web sites, virtual worlds, blogs, social network pages and mobile phones."
Privacy

Judge Rules IP Addresses Not "Personally Identifiable" 436

Posted by Soulskill from the what-about-the-ip-on-the-chip-in-my-head dept.
yuna49 writes "Online Media Daily reports that a federal judge in Seattle has held that IP addresses are not personal information. 'In order for "personally identifiable information" to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies a computer,' US District Court Judge Richard Jones said in a written decision. Jones issued the ruling in the context of a class-action lawsuit brought by consumers against Microsoft stemming from an update that automatically installed new anti-piracy software. In that case, which dates back to 2006, consumers alleged that Microsoft violated its user agreement by collecting IP addresses in the course of the updates. This ruling flatly contradicts a recent EU decision to the contrary, as well as other cases in the US. Its potential relevance to the RIAA suits should be obvious to anyone who reads Slashdot."
Music

Pandora Stabilizes, No Longer Completely Free 268

Posted by Soulskill from the under-a-buck dept.
AbyssWyrm writes "Yesterday, Pandora founder Tim Westergren announced that the music service was on safe ground once again, but will no longer be free for all users. Instead, it will be really cheap — for those with a free account, there will be a cap of 40 hours per month, and a user may pay a one-time fee of $0.99 to resume unlimited listening to music for a month. According to the blog entry, this will affect the top 10% of listeners. Certainly not a bad deal considering the price, and I suspect that Pandora is one of few free internet resources whose users are loyal enough to pay a small fee to keep it afloat. Pandora's future had been uncertain ever since the royalty rates for internet radio were increased in 2007."
The Courts

Cellphones Increasingly Used As Evidence In Court 232

Posted by kdawson from the we-know-where-you-were-last-summer dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the case of Mikhail Mallayev, who was convicted in March of murder after data from his cellphone disproved his alibi, highlights the surge in law enforcement's use of increasingly sophisticated cellular tracking techniques to keep tabs on suspects before they are arrested and build criminal cases against them by mapping their past movements. But cellphone tracking is raising concerns about civil liberties in a debate that pits public safety against privacy rights. Investigators seeking warrants must provide a judge with probable cause that a crime has been committed, but investigators often obtain cell-tracking records under lower standards of judicial review — through subpoenas, which are granted routinely, or through an intermediate type of court order based on an argument that the information requested would be relevant to an investigation. 'Cell phone providers store an increasing amount of sensitive data about where you are and when, based on which cell towers your phone uses when making a call. Until now, the government has routinely seized these records without search warrants,' said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. Last year the Federal District Court in Pittsburgh ruled that a search warrant is required even for historical phone location records, but the Justice Department has appealed the ruling. 'The cost of carrying a cellphone should not include the loss of one's personal privacy,' said Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the ACLU."
Google

Google Announces Chrome OS, For Release Mid-2010 1089

Posted by timothy from the bring-on-the-shiny dept.
Zaiff Urgulbunger writes "After years of speculation, Google has announced Google Chrome OS, which should be available mid-2010. Initially targeting netbooks, its main selling points are speed, simplicity and security — which kind of implies that the current No.1 OS doesn't deliver in these areas! The Chrome OS will run on both x86 and ARM architectures, uses a Linux kernel with a new windowing system. According to Google, 'For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.' Google says that this new OS is separate from Android, as the latter was designed for mobile phones and set-top boxes, whereas Chrome OS is designed 'for people who spend most of their time on the web.'" The New York Times' coverage is worth reading, and there are stories popping up all over the web.
Privacy

BT Drops Phorm, Citing More Pressing Priorities 94

Posted by kdawson from the absurdly-invasive dept.
Tom DBA notes a story up at The Register that begins "BT has abandoned plans to roll out Phorm's controversial web monitoring and profiling system across its broadband network, claiming it needs to concentrate resources on network upgrades... BT's announcement comes a day before MPs and peers of the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group are due to begin an investigation of Internet privacy. Their intervention follows the EU's move to sue the UK government over its alleged failure... properly [to] implement European privacy laws with respect to the trials, drawing further bad publicity to the venture." We've discussed Phorm many times in the past.
Software

VLC 1.0.0 Released 419

Posted by Soulskill from the now-supports-kitchen-sink dept.
rift321 writes "VLC media player, which we all know for simplifying the playback of pretty much any codec out there, has finally released version 1.0.0. Here's a quick list of improvements: live recording, instant pausing and frame-by-frame support, finer speed controls, new HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0), new formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS) and major improvements in many formats, new Dirac encoder and MP3 fixed-point encoder, video scaling in fullscreen, RTSP Trickplay support, zipped file playback, customizable toolbars, easier encoding GUI in Qt interface, better integration in Gtk environments, MTP devices on Linux, and AirTunes streaming."
Security

Microsoft Warns of New Video ActiveX Vulnerability 146

Posted by Soulskill from the like-one-of-those-pothole-signs dept.
ucanlookitup writes "Microsoft has warned of a 'privately reported' vulnerability affecting IE users on XP or Windows Server 2003. The vulnerability allows remote users to execute arbitrary code with the same privileges as the users. The vulnerability is triggered when users visit a web site with malicious code. 'Security experts say criminals have been attacking the vulnerability for nearly a week. Thousands of sites have been hacked to serve up malicious software that exploits the vulnerability.' The advisory can be found at TechNet. Until Microsoft develops a patch, a workaround is available."

Comment Re:Thank you (Score 1) 207

by jlp2097 (#28439587) Attached to: An Experiment In BlackBerry Development

Well, as we are all aware, nobody cares how hard the admin's job is. The Enterprise is BB's target market and they're dug in deep. Just the ability to sync with Exchange calendars, contacts and email is 99% of why Blackberry exists - because BES is great if you're a user. If you're an admin, your job is to support the business and the business wants Exchange sync.

Read what he said again. The blackberry requires a whole bunch of 3rd party software to do that in a vaguely okay way, all of which is limiting, and a pain in the ass. By contrast, the iPhone does exchange calendar, contact and email syncing straight out the box, with extra faffing about.

Just for the sake of completeness: and so do all Windows Mobile devices, without the need for any extra software, straight out of the box.
Software

Office 2010 Technical Preview Leaked 341

Posted by Soulskill from the that-didn't-take-long dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft was planning on giving out the Office 2010 Technical Preview to select testers in July on an invite-only basis. Office 2010 will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and both flavors have been leaked to torrent sites and the like. Multiple screenshots of each application are available. '... some applications have changed a lot more than others. The ribbon seems to be on every application now, which is great for consistency's sake. ... The biggest change, in my opinion, is that the no file/orb menu is no longer a menu. When you click the colored office button, you get a screen that is shown in the second screenshot for each application.'"

Comment Re:Oo, oo, oo! I know! (Score 2, Interesting) 314

by jlp2097 (#27542609) Attached to: COBOL Turning 50, Still Important

Your answer, while maybe true in some rare cases, just shows the ignorance of some IT people to business decisions. Maintaining such an old piece of technology might actually result in higher costs than developing a new system based on current technology. Why?

1. People. Probably the most important reason. Cobol is not exactly a widely taught language. People knowledgable in Java, C#, PHP and other languages are younger, much easier to find and thus cheaper. People with real solid Cobol experience are actually quite expensive nowadays (supply->demand).

2. Extensibility and maintainability. While maintainability might be ok, extensibility is a bitch. Connectors to Web Services? Talking to the myriad of other web apps you have inhouse? Accessing that SAP system you have?. There might be some solutions for every one of those problems. Hell, they even made Object Oriented Cobol a decade or so. But all of these (proprietary) solutions cost much more money than simply using a new language / technology which comes with most of these included.

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