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Robotics

Another Step Towards the Driverless Car 224

jtogel writes "At Essex, we have for some time been working on automatically learning how to race cars in simulation. It turns out that a combination of evolutionary algorithms and neural networks can learn how to beat all humans in racing games, and also come up with some quite interesting, novel behaviours, which might one day make their way into commercial racing games. While this is simulation, the race is now on for the real thing — we are setting up a competition for AI developers, where the goal is to win a race between model cars on real tracks. As the cars will be around half a meter long, the cost of participating will be a fraction of that for the famous DARPA Grand Challenge, whereas the challenges will be similar in terms of computer vision and AI."
Windows

Surprise, Windows Listed as Most Secure OS 499

david_g17 writes "According to a Symantec study reported by Information Week, Microsoft has the most secure operating system amongst its commercial competitors. The report only covered the last 6 months of vulnerabilities and patch releases, but the results place Microsoft operating systems above Mac OS X and Red Hat. According to the article, 'The report found that Microsoft Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest average patch development time of the five operating systems it monitored in the last six months of 2006.' The article continues to mention the metrics used in the study (quantity and severity of vulnerabilities as well as the amount of time one must wait for the patch to be released)."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Greenies: Why ethanol instead of methanol? 14

If this has been written or posed elsewhere, please let me know? It just dawned on me the other day.

Why is ethanol supposed to be so great when racers have been using methanol for a long time? Plenty of methanol data and experience out there, but ethanol had to be dragged into a market with a bunch of government "help".

Operating Systems

Submission + - Self Booting Games?

pentalive writes: Most games available now require you to leave the CD in the CD-ROM drive, Most machines available today can boot from CD-ROM? Why doesn't anyone market games that boot directly from their CD-ROM (using something like Ubuntu behind the scenes as the OS). I don't play FPS or MMORG (I play roller coaster tycoon mainly), you who do, do you play Diablo and also edit "that report" in word at the same time? Doom and Excel? Put the CD in and reboot the machine to play the game, Who cares what OS it runs when it's "working". What do you think? good idea?

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