13457606
submission
religious freak writes:
IBM has created and made the question answering algorithm, Watson, available online. Watson has competed in and won a majority of (mock) matches against humans in Jeopardy. Watson does not connect to the Internet to answer his questions and seeks answers using many different algorithms then employs a ranking algorithm to choose the best answer. Click on 'original source' below to try your luck against Watson.
3152045
submission
Ensign Taco writes:
I'm sure nearly every one of us has had it happen. All of a sudden your Windows PC slows to a crawl for no apparent reason. Yeah, we all like Linux because it doesn't do annoying things like this, but the Windows desktop still reigns supreme in most managed LAN work environments. I'm running XP with 4G of RAM and a decent CPU, and everything was fine, until one day — it wasn't. I've run spybot, antivirus, and looked at proc explorer — no luck. There is no one offending, obvious process. It seems every process decides to spike at once at random intervals. So I'm wondering if there's a few /. wizards out there that know what to look at. Could this be a very clever virus that doesn't run as a process? Or could this just be some random application error that's causing bad behavior? I've encountered this a few times with Windows PCs, but the solution has always been to just add more hardware. Has anyone ever successfully diagnosed this kind of issue?
1329769
submission
religious freak writes:
For those looking to justify their interest in porn or looking for something to read after, well... whatever, here's a surprisingly interesting (though somewhat lengthy) article regarding the problems and issues the porn industry is currently facing. The story outlines the origin and business model of YouPorn, its founder's apparent shame regarding his role in creating YouPorn, and how the old school pornographers are trying to cope with so much free content online.
1329757
submission
religious freak writes:
A number of news outlets bring us a story outlining Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts in China. Using a system update, Microsoft changes the wallpapers of pirated Chinese systems to solid black. The update does not prevent users from continuing usage of Windows, but will automatically revert back to the black wallpaper every 60 minutes. Certain Chinese users are calling this a "violation of their rights".
1149463
submission
religious freak writes:
Bloomberg Newswire has accidentally published Steve Jobs' obituary. TFA states "Some investors were undoubtedly rattled to see, as our tipster did late this afternoon, the Apple CEO's obit cross the wire and then suddenly disappear. Jobs's battle with pancreatic cancer, and speculation over his health, jarred Wall Street earlier this year and continues to be the subject of speculation."
786839
submission
religious freak writes:
San Jose Mercury news brings a story regarding the health of Steve Jobs and the evasive answer given by one of his top managers during a conference call. The question was asked as a result of Jobs' gaunt appearance at the Apple developer conference in June of this year. Given the huge impact Jobs has had in the innovation seen at Apple, could a departure by Jobs be bad news for Apple, or potentially, the entire industry?
667166
submission
religious freak writes:
Powerset has just gone into a public beta with its "understanding engine" reaching towards a semantic web experience (ala web 3.0). A searchengineland article highlights some of the hits and misses for the engine.
