trcollinson - Slashdot User

Submission + - Intel: Human, Machine Intelligence Set to Merge (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

CWmike

on Thursday July 24, 2008 @02:18PM

CWmike writes: "On Intel's 40th anniversary, Justin Rattner, CTO and a senior fellow at the chip giant, told Computerworld that perhaps as early as 2012 we'll see the lines between human and machine intelligence begin to blur. Nanoscale chips or machines will move through our bodies, fixing deteriorating organs or unclogging arteries. Sensors will float around our internal systems monitoring our blood sugar levels and heart rates, and alerting doctors to potential health problems. "What we think of as a computer and what we think of as IT, in general, is likely to change," said Rattner, who has been at Intel for 35 of the company's 40 years. "The intelligent systems will move from being information systems to intelligent systems that will carry out a whole variety of tasks that we just won't think of as computing tasks.""

Apollo 14 Moonwalker Claims Aliens Exist 1268

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday July 24, 2008 @12:48PM from the truth-is-out-there dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Former NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell — a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission — has stunningly claimed aliens exist. And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions — but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades. Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'"

Submission + - The Future is in the Past

Submitted by

Ponca City, We love you

on Thursday July 24, 2008 @12:42PM

Ponca City, We love you writes: "The Washington Post had an interesting article last weekend on Disney's Tomorrowland that convinced us that humanity's future soared among the stars back in 1955 when television only had three channels and Sputnik was unheard of. Wander around Tomorrowland today and it no longer gleams with white plastic and blue trim. It is an antique future, a bronze future, full of things that look like astrolabes channeling Leonardo da Vinci. "It's much harder to astound people today, " says Marty Sklar, the former principal creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering. "They see the speed of change all around them." For example, Disney's house-of-the-future has plenty of whiz-bang gizmos, but most of them are already on the market. "Americans feel very little connection to the future anymore," says Danny Hillis, vice president for R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering and co-chairman of the Long Now Foundation which fosters long-term thinking and responsibility for the next 10,000 years. "What I think it says is that we are nostalgic for a time when we believed in the future. People want to feel some connectedness to the future. The way Disney delivers that is to reach back in time a little bit to the past when they did feel connected.""

Submission + - SPAM: NASA used cadavers to test Orion moonship

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Thursday July 24, 2008 @12:13PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "NASA officials recognized last week that dead bodies were used to develop Orion landing systems. According to NASA, 'three human bodies were used in the tests at Ohio State University Medical Center' in 2007. Even if the results of the experiments helped NASA, one of its spokesman said that the space agency followed widely accepted ethical standards for using cadavers donated for research. He added that 'it's a socially awkward topic. The bodies are all carefully handled through all of the tests. We follow ethical medical procedures with these bodies that have been donated for science.' In fact, NASA relies more on computer simulations than on experiments with cadavers, but read more for additional details and a picture showing NASA's Orion six crew configuration and its potential risks of injuries during landings."

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