bendodge - Slashdot User

Submission + - Babies Make Social Judgements (foxnews.com)

Submitted by

bendodge

on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @03:03PM

bendodge writes: "
Babies as young as 6 to 10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk, according to a study by researchers at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center published in Thursday's journal Nature.

The infants watched a googly-eyed wooden toy trying to climb roller-coaster hills and then another googly-eyed toy come by and either help it over the mountain or push it backward. They then were presented with the toys to see which they would play with.

Nearly every baby picked the helpful toy over the bad one.

The babies also chose neutral toys _ ones that didn't help or hinder _ over the naughty ones. And the babies chose the helping toys over the neutral ones.
"

Submission + - How to Combat Infected Boxes? 1

Submitted by

bendodge

on Friday October 26, 2007 @05:18PM

bendodge writes: "As a Slashdot reader, I've been dismayed by the recent progress of the Storm Worm botnet. I'm not a security expert and can't write virus definitions or anything like that, but I've wondered what "ordinary" geeks like me can do to help combat botnets.

We all get plenty of spam, so is there an efficient way to tell the machine owner (probably a non-technical home user) that he is infected, or notify his ISP? It seem like there ought to be a centralized "grassroots" effort to help clean infections and slow the rise of botnets. What can people like me do to help warn owners of zombie boxes?"

Submission + - US Patent Office To Try Wiki Style Patent Reviews

Submitted by

bendodge

on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @11:15PM

bendodge writes: "From the Washington Post:

The Patent and Trademark Office is starting a pilot project that will not only post patent applications on the Web and invite comments but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by the agency's examiners. A first for the federal government, the system resembles the one used by Wikipedia, the popular user-created online encyclopedia.
"

Submission + - Gates and Jobs to Make Historic Joint Appearance

Submitted by

bendodge

on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @06:08PM

bendodge writes: "http://www.primenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d= 114073

From the article:

"Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, the seminal figures in the development of the personal computer, will make a rare joint appearance at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference this year. The two men will jointly discuss the history and future of the digital revolution in an unrehearsed, unscripted, onstage conversation on May 30 with D co-producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher."
"

Submission + - Nanomagnetic Vortices May Improve RAM HDs

Submitted by

bendodge

on Friday September 08, 2006 @10:45PM

bendodge writes: "Endgadget published a story about a possible storage breakthrough using nana-sized disks of magnetic cobalt.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/08/nanomagnetic-vo rtices-could-lead-to-bigger-hard-drives-faster-r/

A team over in Houston used a scanning ion microscope to create and measure "ultra-thin circular disks of soft magnetic cobalt" ranging in diameter from one micron to 38 microns. According to a press release issued by the university, the six micron wide (about the size of a red blood cell) magnetic vortex is "a cone-like structure that's created in the magnetic field at the disk when all the magnetic moments of the atoms in the disk align into uniform concentric circles." (Whatever that means.) Lead researcher Carl Rau, professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, said that this new advance may lead to storage densities "in the range of terabits per square inch," and went on to say that "magnetic processors" and "high-speed magnetic RAM" may also be in the works."

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