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Political Affiliation Can Be Differentiated By Appearance Screenshot-sm 262

Posted by samzenpus from the if-it-looks-like-a-liberal-and-quacks-like-a-liberal dept.
quaith writes "It's not the way they dress, but the appearance of their face. A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size. Undergrads were asked to categorize each person as either a Democrat or Republican. In the first study, students were able to differentiate Republican from Democrat senate candidates. In the second, students were able to differentiate the political affiliation of other college students. Accuracy in both studies was about 60% — not perfect, but way better than chance."
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."
Google

Google CEO Says Privacy Worries Are For Wrongdoers 671

Posted by kdawson from the get-over-it dept.
bonch writes "In a surprising statement to CNBC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' This will only fuel concerns about Google's behavior as it becomes an ever more powerful gatekeeper of information; though Google says it is aware of these concerns and has taken steps to be transparent to users about the information that is stored."
Education

How Men and Women Badly Estimate Their Own Intelligence 928

Posted by timothy from the lake-woebegone-effect dept.
theodp writes "In investigating the question of whether men are smarter than women, British researcher Adrian Furnham came up with some startling results. His analysis of some 30 studies showed that men and women are fairly equal overall in terms of IQ, but women underestimate their own intelligence while men overestimate theirs. Surprisingly, both men and women perceived men being smarter across generations — both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their mothers and their grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers. And if there are children, both men and women think their sons are brighter than their daughters."
Google

Google Launches Public DNS Resolver 540

Posted by timothy from the their-interest-is-understandable dept.
AdmiralXyz writes "Google has announced the launch of their free DNS resolution service, called Google Public DNS. According to their blog post, Google Public DNS uses continuous record prefetching to avoid cache misses — hopefully making the service faster — and implements a variety of techniques to block spoofing attempts. They also say that (unlike an increasing number of ISPs), Google Public DNS behaves exactly according to the DNS standard, and will not redirect you to advertising in the event of a failed lookup. Very cool, but of course there are questions about Google's true motivations behind knowing every site you visit."
Software

Fixing Bugs, But Bypassing the Source Code 234

Posted by timothy from the wrapping-puzzles-in-enigmas dept.
shreshtha contributes this snippet from MIT's Technology Review: "Martin Rinard, a professor of computer science at MIT, is unabashed about the ultimate goal of his group's research: 'delivering an immortal, invulnerable program.' In work presented this month at the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in Big Sky, MT, his group has developed software that can find and fix certain types of software bugs within a matter of minutes." Interestingly, this software doesn't need access to the source code of the target program.

Comment Re:blackouts (Score 1) 332

by hitchhacker (#29736565) Attached to: High-Temp Superconductors To Connect Power Grids

Hmm OK. My BS meter is kind of tingling... its possible, but for 25 million TX citizens, plus or minus some illegals, that's like 1500 watts average on a cool weekday midday... Ya'll have a lot of aluminum refineries down there on the ranch?

Why Texas Has Its Own Power Grid: "The state uses more electricity than any other, 44 percent more than runner-up California. Much of this is used by industrial customers such as petrochemical plants and oil refineries."

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Transportation

(Near) Constant Internet While RV'ing? 438

Posted by timothy from the use-a-thumper dept.
Neilio writes "What systems would Slashdotters recommend for staying connected while RV'ing across the US and Canada? While a 3G data plan seems obvious, the intrepid RV'er wants to get remote and into those parts of the coverage map that are usually gray (no coverage). But satellite can be expensive, includes high latency for VoIP and gaming, and requires a clear view of the southern sky. I've come across some intriguing products that use an amplified 2G/3G signal and bridge to WiFi, like WiFi In Motion, and CradlePoint's MBR1000 (I have no affiliation with either). Do folks have any experience with these, or can you recommend another approach (even homebrew)? While I am an electrical engineer by degree, you have to go back a few decades since I last expertly sported a soldering iron, so the less DIY the better. My wife and I now run a web-based business, so nearly daily connectivity is a must, no matter where we are."
Announcements

ESA Sent Takedown Notices For 45 Million Infringements In Fiscal 2009 81

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-say-they-aren't-trying dept.
eldavojohn writes "The Entertainment Software Association has released this year's fiscal report (PDF), putting out their numbers to level the finger at new targets. Following up on last year's published report, this one has a whole bunch of new numbers to ponder. The top five P2P game piracy countries this year are: Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Poland. The ESA's anti-piracy program notes, 'Chief among this year's actions were five separate law enforcement raids against game pirates in California, resulting in the seizure of several thousand games and dozens of modded consoles, and the arrests of five individuals.' But don't worry, they've expanded to other countries. 'The ESA sent takedown notices to ISPs covering more than 45 million instances of infringement of member company games in more than 100 countries worldwide.' They also strive to show they are actually doing things, like endorsing 43 bills aimed at regulating content or controlling access to video games — with not a single one of them making it into law. They did put some into effect at the state level; mostly making it a crime to sell mature games to minors. You can also find their activities localized to you, as this report has sections arranged by state and country. Conspicuously absent this year are any global numbers of what piracy cost the entertainment industry, so unfortunately Ars Technica will have to find someone else to audit, although Venture Beat has a good breakdown."

Comment Re:full circle (Score 2, Interesting) 71

by hitchhacker (#29018597) Attached to: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed

Google Reader is an RSS aggregator, not a social networking site.

The group of people I currently see sharing content on Google Reader suggests otherwise. It has been moving towards the social aspect for awhile now. eg. Sharing content, commenting, 'liking'. It feels like a precursor to what Google Wave is trying to be.

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Comment full circle (Score 4, Interesting) 71

by hitchhacker (#29018079) Attached to: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
How many social networking sites are we gonna go through before we settle on an open platform? Anybody remember Friendster? Myspace, Orkut, Facebook, Google Reader. Oh, I found a really long list of them.

I honestly can't believe that Facebook will be worth much considering how many other sites we've already gone through. I'm usually wrong though, so who knows.

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Moon

Submission + - First Apollo Images From LROC (asu.edu)

Submitted by bsdphx
bsdphx writes: LROC, the camera suite aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken it's first images of Apollo landing sites. Image resolution is from 1.0 to 1.4 meters per pixel and includes zoomable, scrollable images of the sites of Apollo 11, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17. These are only the first of many images to come, and as LRO reaches its nominal orbit we will see resolutions of approx. 0.5 meters per pixel!

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