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Submission + - SCOTUS denies Google's request to appeal Oracle API (c) case

Submitted by Neil_Brown
Neil_Brown writes: The Supreme Court of the United States has today denied Google's request to appeal against the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's ruling (PDF) that the structure, sequence and organization of 37 of Oracle's APIs (application program interfaces) was capable of copyright protection. The case is not over, as Google can now seek to argue that, despite the APIs being restricted by copyright, its handling amounts to "fair use".

Professor Pamela Samuelson has previously commented (PDF) on the implications if SCOTUS declined to hear the appeal.

More details at The Verge.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How do we define sexism?

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Recently there has been a lot of discussion about the low numbers of women in tech, right from early school level to the workplace. Often when steps are taken to try to address this, a number of people claim that they are sexist. For example, special extra computer science classes for girls are welcomed by many, but dismissed as sexist by others because they exclude boys. One argument is that such measures don't harm boys, they only help disadvantaged girls, so they are not sexist, but others seem to think that anything which doesn't include everyone is automatically sexist and discriminatory.

How do we define sexism, and (assuming for the sake of argument that there is a problem) how do we deal with low numbers of women in tech without being sexist? Is any kind of segregation, such as special glasses for gifted students or make-up classes for those falling behind, always wrong and discriminatory?

Submission + - WSJ jumps the shark with "A.I. Gets Testy" story

Submitted by mbeckman
mbeckman writes: According to a WSJ article today, entitled "Artificial Intelligence machine gets testy with programmer", a Google computer program using a database of movie scripts supposedly "lashed out" at a human researcher who was repeatedly asking it to explain morality. After several apparent attempts to politely fend off the researcher, the AI ends the conversation with "I’m not in the mood for a philosophical debate". This, says the WSJ, illustrates how Google scientists are "teaching computers to mimic some of the ways a human brain works."

As any AI researcher can tell you, this is utter nonsense. Humans have no idea how the human, or any other brain, works, so we can hardly teach a machine how brains work. At best, Google is programming (not teaching) a computer to mimic the conversation of humans under highly constrained circumstances. And the methods used have nothing to do with true cognition.

AI hype to the public has gotten progressively more strident in recent years, misleading lay people into believing researchers are much further along than they really are — by orders of magnitude. I'd love to see legitimate A.I. researchers condemn this kind of hucksterism.

Submission + - Scientists Overcome One of the Biggest Limits in Fibre Optic Networks (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by Mark.JUK
Mark.JUK writes: Researchers at the University of California in San Diego have demonstrated a way of boosting transmissions over long distance fibre optic cables and removing crosstalk interference, which would mean no more need for expensive electronic regenerators (repeaters) to keep the signal stable. The result could be faster and cheaper networks, especially on long-distance international subsea cables.

The feat was achieved by employing a frequency comb, which acts a bit like a concert conductor; the person responsible for tuning multiple instruments in an orchestra to the same pitch at the beginning of a concert. The comb was used to synchronize the frequency variations of the different streams of optical information (optical carriers) and thus compensate in advance for the crosstalk interference, which could also then be removed.

As a result the team were able to boost the power of their transmission some 20 fold and push data over a “record-breaking” 12,000km (7,400 miles) long fibre optic cable. The data was still intact at the other end and all of this was achieved without using repeaters and by only needing standard amplifiers.

Comment Re: No support for dynamic address assignment?!? (Score 1) 287

You don't appear to know how NAT works. Private addresses are not routable to the internet. All devices have to talk to the machine handing out the private addresses which then replaces the private address with it's own public address for sending across the internet. Internet routers do not forward packets with a from or to address that is in one of the ranges set aside for private addresses. There is a session ID so that the device handing out private addresses knows which private address to send return packets to and ports can be set to one machine with a private address using port forwarding for connections initiated by outside machines.

Comment Re:Dues it matter? (Score 1) 98

by hackwrench (#49965683) Attached to: Sony Releasing New 1TB PlayStation 4 In July
The PS2 had an add-on HD and network adapter but the only thing I can think of that you could use it for was Final Fantasy 11 which required it. I think some of the newer form factor PS2's had a built-in wired network adapter, but they didn't have a bay for the hard drive. Don't know of any games that used it.

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