BurdMan - Slashdot User

Voters Swayed By Candidates Who Share Their Looks 266

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 23, 2008 @12:23AM from the govern-by-proxy dept.

iandoh writes "Stanford researchers have found that voters are subconsciously swayed by candidates who share their facial features. In three experiments, researchers at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab worked with cheap, easy-to-use computer software to morph pictures of about 600 test subjects with photos of politicians. And they kept coming up with the same results: For the would-be voters who weren't very familiar with the candidates or in perfect lockstep with their positions or political parties, the facial similarity was enough to clinch their votes."

US's First Internet Votes To Be Cast This Friday 143

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @03:44PM from the but-counting-commences-thursday dept.

longacre writes "If you thought online voting in America was a distant pipe dream (nightmare?), think again: the nation's first Internet-based voting system goes online this Friday, just days after the release of the Damning Report On Sequoia E-Voting Machine Security we discussed yesterday. In the first real world run of the Okaloosa Distance Ballot Piloting (ODBP) test program, election officials from Okaloosa County, Florida have set up kiosks in Germany, the UK and Japan where 600-700 absentee voters — mostly military personnel — are expected to cast ballots. Security experts still have many questions, of course, particularly on the potential for interception of voting data while it travels across oceans (via 'secure VPN'), the security of the kiosks ('hardened laptops' with no hard drives and other sensitive components disabled) and the security of the three data centers (one of which is itself housed overseas, in Barcelona, Spain), not to mention the fact that Florida doesn't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to vote counting. Florida's Dept. of State also has a fairly detailed outline of ODBP's components and processes [PDF]."

Linux Kernel Surpasses 10 Million Lines of Code 432

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @01:32PM from the nice-round-figures dept.

javipas writes "A simple analysis of the most updated version (a Git checkout) of the Linux kernel reveals that the number of lines of all its source code surpasses 10 million, but attention: this number includes blank lines, comments, and text files. With a deeper analysis thanks to the SLOCCount tool, you can get the real number of pure code lines: 6.399.191, with 96.4% of them developed in C, and 3.3% using assembler. The number grows clearly with each new version of the kernel, that seems to be launched each 90 days approximately."

Algorithms Can Make You Pretty 288

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 09, 2008 @06:48PM from the too-late-for-me dept.

caffeinemessiah writes "The New York Times has an interesting story on a new algorithm by researchers from Tel Aviv University that modifies a facial picture of a person to conform to standards of attractiveness. Based on a digital library of pictures of people who have been judged 'attractive,' the algorithm finds the nearest match and modifies an input picture so it conforms to the 'attractive' person's proportions. The trick, however, is that the resultant pictures are still recognizable as the original person. Here's a quick link to a representative picture of the process. Note that this is a machine-learning approach to picture modification, not a characterization of beauty, and could just as easily be used to make a person less attractive." Note: As reader Trent Waddington points out, the underlying research was mentioned in an earlier story as well.

Boston University Working On LED Wireless Networks 179

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 09, 2008 @02:43PM from the line-of-sight dept.

Madas writes "This article on Absolute Gadget details how researchers at Boston University's College of Engineering are working on devloping wireless networks that use LED lights instead of normal radio waves. This research apparently has other uses in the automobile industry. Apparently the LEDs could warn you if the driver in front has put the brakes on so could avoid hitting the car in front. Personally, I'd use the vision balls that are in my thought box."

No IPv6 For UK Broadband Users 298

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 09, 2008 @01:19PM from the not-now-love-not-now dept.

BT (the incumbent telephone company in the United Kingdom) are in the process of spending millions of pounds on upgrading their network to an all-IP core. However, they have failed to consider 21st Century protocol support, preferring to insist that IPv4 is enough for everyone. Haven't they noticed the IPv4 exhaustion report yet?

Obama & McCain Conflicting On Net Neutrality 427

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday October 09, 2008 @10:04AM from the of-course-they-do dept.

longacre writes "For all their incessant bickering in the first two presidential debates over conflicts of interest and government regulation, PopMech columnist Glenn Derene is puzzled that the candidates have yet to be challenged on a vital issue directly related to both those topics: Net neutrality. John McCain and Barack Obama have stated elsewhere their opposing views on the issue, with McCain being opposed to Net neutrality and favoring light regulation of the Internet, while Obama is in favor of neutrality and seeks Government involvement. In any case, since there is no standard accepted definition of 'network neutrality,' until the candidates elaborate on their positions (which they both declined to do for this piece, nor anywhere else so far, for that matter), 'both sides can make a credible case that they're the ones defending freedom of innovation and open communication.'"

Comment Wooden Ships & Iron Men (wsim.org) (Score 1) 583

by BurdMan on Saturday March 05, 2005 @06:38PM (#11855186) Attached to: Fun Tabletop Games?

I suggest you try your hand at "Wooden Ships & Iron Men" an old Avalon Hill title. They don't make the game anymore, you'll have to fight on eBay for one of the few complete copies of it. I'm in the middle of revising the rule book and adding a computer simulation addendum. I'm also updating and re-releasing the 'ships (6)' command line version of the game. My bookmarks related to wsim are on del.icio.us.

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