rdl - Slashdot User

Submission + - Gamers Have Friends, Girls Like Grand Theft Auto (spring.org.uk)

Submitted by

Jeremy Dean

on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @08:30AM

Jeremy Dean writes: "New research dispels the well-worn stereotypes that computer gamers having no social skills and girls avoid violent games like Grand Theft Auto. Results showed children playing violent M-rated games were more likely to play in groups. Friendship groups amongst boys, in particular, were often based around violent computer games. Also, children used games to help manage their emotions. When angry or stressed they liked to use games to get these emotions out."

Submission + - Scares in space (msn.com)

Submitted by Soft on Sunday June 03, 2007 @05:26AM

Soft writes: `Did you hear the one about (...) the astronaut who became so despondent after his orbital experiment failed that his colleagues feared he would blow the hatch on the space shuttle?' Jon Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon, tells Alan Boyle's cosmic log about a number of horror stories which happened in space over the course of the space program. (To ward off predictable jokes, there are none with diapers; that didn't happen in space, anyway.)

Submission + - Inside Google's Black Box

Submitted by

Pcol

on Sunday June 03, 2007 @05:25AM

Pcol writes: "Google's "ranking algorithm" — the formulas that decide which Web pages best answer each user's question is crucial part of Google's inner sanctum, a department called "search quality" that the company treats like a state secret. Google recently allowed a reporter from the New York Times to spend a day with Google Fellow Amit Singhal and his search-quality team who explained how every week they make about a half-dozen major and minor changes to the vast nest of mathematical formulas that power the search engine. Mr. Singhal has developed a far more elaborate system for ranking pages than PageRank. The system, involving more than 200 types of information, are what Google calls "signals." Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years. Increasingly, Google is using signals that come from its history of what individual users have searched for in the past, in order to offer results that reflect each person's interests. "People still think that Google is the gold standard of search," says John Battelle, author of "The Search," a book about Google. "Their secret sauce is how these guys are doing it all in aggregate. There are 1,000 little tunings they do.""

Submission + - Technology and Terrorism: Are we being too naive? (readwriteweb.com)

Submitted by

ReadWriteWeb

on Sunday June 03, 2007 @03:56AM

ReadWriteWeb writes: "Are web tools like Google Earth, social networks like LinkedIn, and photo-sharing sites like Flickr being used against us by terrorists? Today we learned of a terrorist plot targeting the JFK international airport in New York. Luckily this attack was prevented and three out of the four terrorists are already in custody. But during a CNN report, a curious fact was revealed — terrorists have used Google Earth to get access to aerial views of airport facilities. Obviously it would be ridiculous to argue that tools like Google Earth should not be built because terrorists might use them. Yet, after hearing this on CNN one cannot help but wonder: what other seemingly innocent software technologies are we building that can be used to harm us?"

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