Comment Mad Scientist's Club books (Score 1) 458
I loved them, and then I got them for my son when he was 9. It was awesome sharing them and generated a good love of science...
Study Shows Babies Think Friendly Robots Are Sentient 159
seanonymous writes "A study from University of Washington claims that babies think robots are human, so long as the robots are friendly. No word on what evil robots are thought to be. From the article: 'At 18 months old, babies have begun to make conscious delineations between sentient beings and inanimate objects. But as robots get more and more advanced, those decisions may become harder to make. What causes a baby to decide a robot is more than bits of metal? As it turns out, it takes more than humanoid looks — babies rely on social interaction to make that call.'"
Dogs Can Be Pessimistic 99
Not that it will change anything, but researchers at Bristol University say that your dog might be a gloom-monger. In addition to the downer dogs, the study also found a few that seemed happy no matter how uncaring the world around them was. "We know that people's emotional states affect their judgments and that happy people are more likely to judge an ambiguous situation positively. What our study has shown is that this applies similarly to dogs," said professor Mike Mendl, an author of the study and head of animal welfare and behavior at Bristol University.
Milky Way Is Square(ish), According To New Map 123
KentuckyFC writes "The structure of the Milky Way is notoriously difficult to work out because we see our galaxy edge on. That means nearer clouds and stars are superimposed on more distant ones and telling them apart is hard. However, astronomers have unveiled a new map based on velocity measurements made on 870 clouds of carbon monosulphide. This has revealed a number of new features of the Milky Way including a previously unknown spiral arm, some 30,000 light years from the galactic core. But the most surprising finding is that some of our galaxy's spiral arms are straight rather than curved, giving the Milky Way a distinctly square look. That's not quite as outrageous as it sounds. Astronomers know of a number of other galaxies with straight arms, such as the pinwheel galaxy M101. So ours probably looks something like this."
Aussie Gamer Loses PS3 Court Case Over 'Other OS' 206
dotarray writes "An Australian man who took Sony to court over the company's decision to remove Linux functionality from the PS3 console has now lost his claim, with the court clearing the manufacturer of any wrongdoing regarding the upgrade."
State of Virginia Technology Centers Down 190
bswooden writes "Some rather important departments (DMV, Social Services, Taxation) in the state of Virginia are currently without access to documents and information as a technology meltdown has caused much of their infrastructure to be offline for over 24 hours now. State CIO Sam Nixon said, 'A failure occurred in one memory card in what is known as a "storage area network," or SAN, at Virginia's Information Technologies Agency (VITA) suburban Richmond computing center, one of several data storage systems across Virginia.' How does the IT for some of the largest departments in a state come to a screeching halt over a single memory card? Oh, and also, the state is paying Northrup Grumman $2.4 billion over 10 years to manage the state's IT infrastructure."
Reader miller60 adds, "Virginia's IT systems drew scrutiny last fall when state agencies reported rolling outages due to the lack of network redundancy."
China's Nine-Day Traffic Jam Tops 62 Miles 198
A traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet expressway has now entered its ninth day and has grown to over 62 miles in length. This mother-of-all delays has even spawned its own micro-economy of local merchants selling water and food at inflated prices to stranded drivers. Can you imagine how infuriating it must be to see someone leave their blinker on for 9 days?
Comment Re:Already happened in Virginia (Score 3, Informative) 374
Yes the iFile saved the state of virginia millions of dollars. The removal of it will increase paper filing tremendously. They bribed(lobbied) our officials completely to remove it. It was fast free and easy, and it's gone now.
There was only discussion by our local rag after the law was passed almost unanimously.
Another example of corporate greed raiding the coffers in the name of "Helping" the poor...
Comment Re:CENTOS? (Score -1, Offtopic) 396
My First First Post! I'm such a proud Pappa!!! Cigars?
Comment CENTOS? (Score 0) 396
Linux seems to be less vulnerable. Using as few windows boxes as possible helps. Using blacklists in the host files of bad servers (Spybot's list is good). May Bluecoat device, we have one here and it's helped a LOT. Email vectors are still huge, and the user error 1D107...
Comment Re:Java Is Victorious (Score 1) 558
Just searched Monster.com for last 30 days of postings
Java had 4282 hits nationwide. .NET 2822
Java has ~2 times as many job postings
JAVA WINS.
Comment Senior Citizen Linux (Score 4, Insightful) 496
Someone should make a version of Ubuntu or openSuse or Fedora or whatever that is designed for Seniors. Large Fonts, easy to use, very little duplication of apps, no problems... I bet it would spread far and wide. We have the kids checking it out, time to take the seniors...
Also, why does all the netbook distros never fit the dialogs on the screen? 800x480 is not much to work with granted...
Comment Re:Blame Northrop? (Score 1) 211
Really blame doesn't fix anything. THere was a move to consolidate IT back in the 80's called DIT, and it also failed. Consolidation of IT doesn't work. The initial savings of consolidating software licenses from all Agencies worked. Having VA negotiate with Microsoft etc once for all seats and getting them at a good rate saves money. Trying to consolidate Helpdesk as a commodity fails. The current Helpdesk merely takes a message (garbled of course) and sends it to Tier 3 workers to fix. THey used to be able to fix things directly with their own knowledgebase. Also, CESC and SWESC are 2 consolidated Datacenters does work. Instant on backup etc. They did do some stuff correctly. But mandating that all Agencies be on the same Microsoft DOMAIN, with the same Security Policy and the same everything else opens HUGE security Holes really. Also, not having sufficient Networks and Network backups have caused major outages like it says. Then they tell you that there was "no loss in service" when you've been down for 32 hours because someone unknown removed your DNS entries for your webapp. The Iceburg is HUGE!!!
Comment Re:419 Scams (Score 1) 808
All these guys that "Earned" it had the Keys to Power, the ability to go to college and hobnob with the rich and posture themselves to earn even more than their parents had. Like Gates for instance, it's not like his dad was dirt poor... He was in Harvard for peat's sake.
All these guys inherited it pretty much, there might be one that came from the "wrong side of the tracks" so one out of thousands of millionaire/Billionaires...
UK Royal Society Claims Geo-Engineering Feasible 316
krou writes "The BBC is reporting that a UK Royal Society report claims that geo-engineering proposals to combat the effects of climate change are 'technically possible.' Three of the plans considered showed the most promise: 'CO2 capture from ambient air'; enhancing 'natural reactions of CO2 from the air with rocks and minerals'; and 'Land use and afforestation'. They also noted that solar radiation management, while some climate models showed them to be ineffective, should not be ignored. Possible suggestions included: 'a giant mirror on the Moon; a space parasol made of superfine aluminum mesh; and a swarm of 10 trillion small mirrors launched into space one million at a time every minute for the next 30 years.'"
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