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Comment Re:theater (Score 1) 1003

by richardoz (#38389778) Attached to: Why the NTSB Is Wrong About Cellphones

I think that the consensus is that a conversation with a passenger is different from that with some one on the phone - as the passenger is aware of the same environment and you both automatically adjust the tone/pace of the conversation depending on the current conditions. I.E. the passenger will generally keep quiet when you are performing a complex maneuver. That is not to say that passengers can not be a distraction, just that in general a phone conversation is a worse distraction that most passengers.

I would agree with you about the passengers being aware and automatically adjusting the conversation if they are adults who drive as well. But try getting your kids to stop chattering at you is quite another thing.
Biotech

Researchers Teach Subliminally; Matrix Learning One Step Closer 103

Posted by samzenpus from the I-know-kung-fu dept.
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time ever, scientists from Boston University and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan have managed to use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI to decode the process of learning. As the research stands to date, it isn't capable of much. Rather than working with skills like juggling, the researchers relied on images so they could tie into the vision part of the brain, the part that they have managed to partially decode. Nevertheless, they demonstrated that information could be taught using neurofeedback techniques. And it was effective even when people didn't know they were learning."
The Media

Victory For Music Locker Services? 51

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the save-those-redundant-bits dept.
Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, a user writes "Michael Robertson, the owner and founder of the MP3Tunes music locker service, has been locked in a copyright infringement case with EMI Records for a while now, especially because of the Sideloading search engine that is tacked along with the locker service. Now the case has been resolved though: EMI Records won. But lost on all the accounts that actually really matter." The important parts here are that MP3Tunes was granted safe harbor protection under the DMCA, and that merging multiple copies of the same file doesn't make distributing that master copy a public performance.
Linux

Boot Linux In Your Browser 393

Posted by Soulskill from the year-of-linux-in-the-browser dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Fabrice Bellard, the initiator of the QEMU emulator, wrote a PC emulator in JavaScript. You can now boot Linux in your browser, provided it is recent enough (Firefox 4 and Google Chrome 11 are reported to work)."
Google

Google Fires Back About Search Engine Spam 270

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-not-me-it's-you dept.
coondoggie writes "The folks at Google are taking issue over spam and the quality of Google searches, which some claim has gone down in recent months. Today on Google's official blog, Principal Engineer Matt Cutts said, 'January brought a spate of stories about Google’s search quality. Reading through some of these recent articles, you might ask whether our search quality has gotten worse. The short answer is that according to the evaluation metrics that we’ve refined over more than a decade, Google’s search quality is better than it has ever been in terms of relevance, freshness and comprehensiveness. Today, English-language spam in Google’s results is less than half what it was five years ago, and spam in most other languages is even lower than in English.' Cutts also explained that the company has made a few significant changes to their method of indexing."

Comment 120 (Score 1) 264

by richardoz (#34230034) Attached to: Minutes I spend on the phone, on a typical day:
I telecommute 100%. My coworkers are all over the world. We use IM, Email and phone as appropriate. We commonly elevate text threads on IM or Email to a phone calls. Once the phone call is complete, we may follow up the conversation with written specs etc if necessary.

Comment 1..2..3... Profit (Score 1) 218

by richardoz (#33741196) Attached to: Las Vegas Hotel Vdara an Accidental Death Ray
Ah.. I have an idea a simple 7 step plan for profit:
1. Build crazy concave building with highly reflective glass
2. Insure building has an acute focal point for sunlight in the afternoon
3. Build pool deck at focal point to insure maximum people density
4. Sell bathers and “sun worshipers” some “protective” solar cells
5. Wire ‘em up to the utility grid
6. Sell the electricity
7. Profit. $$$
Role Playing (Games)

Looking Back At Dungeons & Dragons 189

Posted by Soulskill from the lightning-bolt dept.
An anonymous reader sends in a nostalgic piece about Dungeons & Dragons and the influence it's had on games and gamers for the past 36 years. Quoting: "Maybe there was something in the air during the early '70s. Maybe it was historically inevitable. But it seems way more than convenient coincidence that Gygax and Arneson got their first packet of rules for D&D out the door in 1974, the same year Nolan Bushnell managed to cobble together a little arcade machine called Pong. We've never had fun quite the same way since. Looking back, these two events set today's world of gaming into motion — the Romulus and Remus of modern game civilization. For the rest of forever, we would sit around and argue whether games should let us do more or tell us better stories."
Games

The Murky Origins of Zork's Name 70

Posted by Soulskill from the murky-enough-for-a-grue dept.
mjn writes "Computational media researcher Nick Montfort traces the murky origins of Zork's name. It's well known that the word was used in MIT hacker jargon around that time, but how did it get there? Candidates are the term 'zorch' from late 1950s DIY electronics slang, the use of the term as a placeholder in some early 1970s textbooks, the typo a QWERTY user would get if he typed 'work' on an AZERTY keyboard, and several uses in obscure sci-fi. No solid answers so far, though, as there are problems with many of the possible explanations that would have made MIT hackers unlikely to have run across them at the right time."

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