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Comment Re:At what point... (Score 1) 527

by conlaw (#29070633) Attached to: Team Aims To Create Pure Evil AI
I agree that the avatar for E looks like he's"'threatening' or' unstrustworthy," rather than truly evil. IMHO, anyone must be psycopathic/sociopathic in order to be truly evil. And, as we know from seeing people like Ted Bundy in the flesh, their evil nature does not show through. Bundy looked like a college kid -- in fact, one reason that allowed him to catch so many of his victims was that he appeared trustworthy and totally non-threatening.

Near the end of the article, Bringsjord says that if he creates a robot/android based on his AI creation, he'll be sure to follow Asimov's three rules of robotics. However, I don't believe that an "evil" robot would ever follow Rule 1, let alone the other two.

Comment Re:Incoming 1st Amendment Challenge (Score 1) 587

by conlaw (#29059287) Attached to: Illinois Bans Social Network Use By Sex Offenders
Forget about the 1st Amendment challenge -- you don't even get to that issue until somebody figures out a way to enforce the law. How can they tell that the name and photo I'm using on Facebook, for example, are really mine. If I'm a registered sex offender joining one of the social networks to cruise for victims, I'm probably not going to tell the truth.

Comment Re:It's Already Legally Governed, Drop It (Score 1) 184

by conlaw (#29058513) Attached to: Making the Case That Virtual Property Is a Bad Idea
Your analysis reads like that of a practicing attorney--succint and well-reasoned--but then you say

How this author went on a 33 page 'analysis' about this, I'll never know.

If you'd suffered through three years of law school, you should know that almost every law school professor can write 33 pages of 'analysis' on just about any subject and if they can find a case or two to cite, they can usually drag it out to fifty or sixty pages.
Biotech

Submission + - salt water irrigation of normal farm crops (wired.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Instead of using desalination plants for farm irrigation or salt water tolerant crops, they use plastic pipes that let only clean water filter out while holding the salt and dirt within (to be flushed away later). This should be cheap enough for 3rd world use, thereby allowing all fresh water to be used for human and animal consumption only. Assuming the pipes are cheap enough, this will massively effect the cost and quality of life for most of humanity. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-05/01/irrigation-system-can-grow-crops-with-salt-water.aspx
Censorship

Submission + - Malaysian government wants Internet filtering (fudzilla.com) 1

Submitted by
adewolf
adewolf writes: "According to Fudzilia the Malaysian government is looking to filter anti-government blogers under the guise of porn blocking.
"..Yatim claimed that porn on computers had led to child sex because apparently we didn't have paedophiles before the advent of the Internet..." what a joke."
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Schiller Responds To iPhone Dictionary App Drama (pcworld.com)

Submitted by beef curtains
beef curtains writes: Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, responded by e-mail to a blog post discussing Apple's rejection of a dictionary app.

If Schiller's e-mail is to be believed, it offers an interesting perspective on this whole issue. PC World has an article summarizing the drama to-date, the blog post, and Schiller's response.
Social Networks

Submission + - xBook response to social hacking on Facebook

Submitted by Keanu
Keanu writes: Another controversy has emerged on Facebook with third party advertisers using users' photos for generating customized advertisements. Facebook has refuted this as "rumors" in their recent blog posting and claimed that "the advertisements that started these rumors were not from Facebook but placed within applications by third parties." This has created a huge buzz among the concerned Facebook users with thousands sharing their opinions on the blog. It can be also be observed that the understanding of Facebook users regarding the security mechanisms behind Facebook — or how their private data is handled — is limited. While Facebook might not be responsible for passing the photos directly to the advertisers, there is an inherent weakness in the Facebook design that allows third-party applications to leak users' data to outside parties (such as advertisers). These applications are only bound with an agreement with Facebook and Facebook has no way to police that the agreement is being followed. Since Facebook allows anyone to develop an application for its platform, this has lead to a frequent violation of the agreement by the third-party applications.

In a recently published work at USENIX Security conference, researchers at GerogiaTech and Google (with contributions from IBM Research) have proposed the design of xBook, a novel framework for building privacy-preserving social networking platforms in view of these third-party applications. They use information flow techniques to control what untrusted applications can do with the information they receive, thereby preventing any data leaks to outside parties such as the advertisers in the aforementioned case. They have also developed a prototype implementation of their system. The paper is available here. Here is the abstract from the paper:

"Social networking websites have recently evolved from being service providers to platforms for running third party applications. Users have typically trusted the social networking sites with personal data, and assume that their privacy preferences are correctly enforced. However, they are now being asked to trust each third-party application they use in a similar manner. This has left the users' private information vulnerable to accidental or malicious leaks by these applications. In this work, we present a novel framework for building privacy-preserving social networking applications that retains the functionality offered by the current social networks. We use information flow models to control what untrusted applications can do with the information they receive. We show the viability of our design by means of a platform prototype. The usability of the platform is further evaluated by developing sample applications using the platform APIs. We also discuss both security and non-security challenges in designing and implementing such a framework."
Censorship

Submission + - Skype Threatens Russian National Security

Submitted by Mr.Bananas
Mr.Bananas writes: Reuters reports that "Russia's most powerful business lobby moved to clamp down on Skype and its peers this week, telling lawmakers that the Internet phone services are a threat to Russian businesses and to national security." The lobby, closely associated with Putin's political party, cites concerns of "a likely and uncontrolled fall in profits for the core telecom operators," as well as a fear that law enforcement agencies have thus far been unable to listen in on Skype conversations due to its 256-bit encryption, as reported by the Russian language Vedomosti Business Daily.

Comment Re:Then again it's not really Circuit City (Score 1) 134

by conlaw (#28075827) Attached to: Circuit City Returns Under Systemax

The other major brands HP, Compaq that kind of surprises me because you couldn't just take that fancy laptop back to HP or Compaq and get a refund.

The Consumerist is just taking advantage of Systemax's poor wording of a policy that NewEgg also has. HP, for instance, might provide that all warranty issues with their products must sent by the original purchaser to the HP technical folks. In that case, it would waste time and money if you sent it to Systemax, they sent it back to you and you then sent it to HP. Plus, in all that shipping, the package might get broken or the warranty may have run out.
Classic Games (Games)

What Made Those Old, 2D Platformers So Great? 249

Posted by Soulskill from the simple-yet-entertaining dept.
TheManagement writes "Many current developers of web games seem to have a fondness for 2D platformers. However, their desire to capture what made Sonic and Mario games so great is rarely achieved. In an attempt to breach that gap, Significant Bits takes a look at three common design principles that made those classic titles so enjoyable. 'To start off, the interface needs to be quick and responsive. Input should have an immediate effect on the character in order to foster a sense of full control. Granularity and different control techniques, i.e., pressing, tapping and holding, are also important as they provide a level of precision to the movement. ... Now, as far as the environments themselves, it's not a coincidence that they're often filled with all sorts of slides, bridges, trampolines, ladders, etc. In a way, they're simply playgrounds for the player, both literally and figuratively. They're catered to the moveset, and they enhance the flow of the game.'"

Comment Re:Greed is Good (Score 1) 452

by conlaw (#27880643) Attached to: College Threatens Students Over Email Addresses

Not that I can understand why anybody would want to drink McDonald's coffee anyway -- it's HORRIBLE! But that's just my opinion.

I used to think that the reason they were serving it so hot was to numb your throat so you didn't notice how horrible it was. So, IMHO, that was the best part of the fallout from the lawsuit; McDonald's now serves some fairly good coffee at a decent temperature.

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