19022380
submission
mvar writes
"A 10-year-old boy was so consumed while playing something on his PlayStation Portable that he walked right off a train platform and fell down onto the tracks below. A 23-year-old police officer, Alessandro Micalizzi, quickly jumped down and lifted the boy back onto the platform. The entire event was captured in video."
18526794
submission
alphadogg writes
"A faster, more secure and energy-efficient update to the WiMax wireless Internet standard will get final approval and see commercialization within a year, industry officials said on Monday. An international committee tasked with WiMax development will finalize the standard’s IEEE 802.16m version in March following technical meetings in Taipei this week. It would be put into use at the end of this year or the beginning of 2012.
Final approval of 802.16m will let manufacturers pre-install the not-quite-4G standard that can operate at a frequency of 20 Mhz, twice that of the existing 802.16e, developers said in Taipei. That would enable signals to carry double the amount of network traffic, which has increased with the use of iPhones and other handheld devices.
“By doubling the bandwidth, of course you can work at much higher data rates,” said Rakesh Taori, vice chair of the professional association IEEE’s 802.16 working group.
The updated standard, which has been under development for five years, will increase security for users, including protecting the privacy of their locations, Taori added. It will also help smartphones conserve more power when in idle or sleep mode, he said."Link to Original Source
18419478
submission
alphadogg writes
"When it comes tackling a challenge as tough as answering a human question, the best computational approach may be to break the job down into multiple parts and run them all in parallel, IBM is betting.
IBM will be taking this strategy next month when its custom-built computer, nicknamed Watson, will compete in an episode of the Jeopardy game show against two previous champions. While IBM has been thus far been silent about Watson's exact configuration, Watson lead manager David Ferrucci recently shared a few insights with the IDG News Service about how the system was built to take on this formidable task. "In chess, there is nothing tacit, nothing contextual," Ferrucci said, referring to IBM's past Deep Blue computer victory over chess champ Garry Kasparov. In contrast, the questions in a Jeopardy match assume an understanding of how people communicate, including the many references and allusions they use. "It's a huge challenge," he said.
Watson's approach is to divide and conquer. "You have to look at the data from so many different perspectives and combine the [results], because you can never rely on there being only one way to express that content.""Link to Original Source
