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Robotics

Robot Soldiers Are Already Being Deployed 258

Posted by timothy from the from-my-cold-dead-solenoids dept.
destinyland writes "As a Rutgers philosopher discusses robot war scenarios, one science magazine counts the ways robots are already being used in warfare, including YouTube videos of six military robots in action. There are up to 12,000 'robotic units' on the ground in Iraq, some dismantling landmines and roadside bombs, but 'a new generation of bots are designed to be fighting machines.' One bot can operate an M-16 rifle, a machine gun, and a rocket launcher — and 250 people have already been killed by unmanned drones in Pakistan. He also tells the story of a berserk robot explosives gun that killed nine people in South Africa due to a 'software glitch.'"
Biotech

Texas Makes Zombie Fire Ants 398

Posted by samzenpus from the what-could-go-wrong dept.
eldavojohn writes "What do you do when a foreign species has been introduced to your land from another continent? Bring over the natural predator from the other continent. Scientists in Texas have introduced four kinds of phorid flies from South America to fight fire ants. These USDA approved flies dive bomb ants and lay an egg inside the ant. The maggot hatches and eats away juicy tender delicious ant brain until the ant is nothing more than a zombie that wanders around for two weeks before the head falls off and the ant dies. A couple of these flies will cause the ants to modify their behavior and this will be a very slow acting solution to curb the $1 billion in damage these ants do to Texas cattle ranches and — oddly enough — electrical equipment like circuit breakers. You may remember zombifying parasites hitting insects like cockroaches."

Comment Correction (Score 2, Insightful) 114

by The Tomer (#25398629) Attached to: Internet Use Can Be Good For the Brain

The summery above says that the internet savvy test subjects were younger than those who have never used it before, however, the article linked clearly mentions that all subjects were aged 55-76, and that "the groups were similar in age, gender and education."

Also, the test only included 24 subjects, which is not very much to base a theory on. A larger study showing similar results would be more reliable.
The Military

Hearing Voices? Could Be the Lasers 225

Posted by kdawson from the or-maybe-the-sharks dept.
An anonymous reader sends us to Wired for a piece about some declassified Pentagon research from 1998 that has been revealed in a freedom-of-information filing. Apparently the Pentagon has investigated lasers that put voices in your head, among other non-lethal technologies such as microwave heating. The report suggests the techniques could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations. There is no context for the research or any indication whether it has continued, although the microwave heating bit sounds rather like the Active Denial System we have discussed recently.
Software

Promoting FOSS to People Who Don't Care 432

Posted by Soulskill from the old-dogs-new-tricks dept.
MarcoF brings us his take on how to cultivate interest in open-source software to casual users who aren't interested in or necessarily aware of its existence. Many people simply have trouble leaving their comfort zone of older proprietary software; what's the best way to get them to look at an open-source alternative? "Since most people would rather die than write or study software source code, it is actually counterproductive to promote software 'because you can modify it yourself and be part of its community'. Look for really practical advantages which can be enjoyed every day by the person you want to convince. Start from the actual deep passions, beliefs, interests and practical needs of the people in front of you and go backwards from there, delaying the apparition of terms like 'source code', 'the four software freedoms', GPL, Gnu, Linux, etc."
Supercomputing

Military Running a Parallel Earth Simulator 470

Posted by Zonk from the in-that-reality-i'm-an-ardent-fan-of-this dept.
Fantastic Lad writes "The US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality. Putting supercomputers to an innovative use, the military is simulating our planet in an effort to predict the outcome of different scenarios. They might run tests to see how long 'you' can go without food or water, or how 'you' will respond to televised propaganda. Billions of nodes are created in the system, intended to reflect every man, woman, and child. 'Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project. Simulex is the company developing these systems, and they list pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin among their private sector clients. The U.S. military is their biggest customer, apparently now running the most complex version of the system. JFCOM-9 is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence."
The Almighty Buck

An Ad Upstart Forces Google to Open Up a Little 58

Posted by Hemos from the from-the-smallest-mustard-seeds dept.
The Firehose brought us a link from the NYTimes about Quigo. As the Times feed says: "Yahoo and Google are facing a challenge from a tiny adversary named Quigo Technologies over contextual text ads online." And while obviously not in the same financial league, it is good to see more competition in this space.
Security

Campaign Sites Full of Vulnerabilities 36

Posted by Hemos from the not-surprising dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Bloggers have been buzzing about the new wave of "Web 2.0" campaign sites, but it seems that a lot of presidential candidates haven't bothered to protect themselves from cross-site scripting attacks. A blogger has found a collection of XSS vulnerabilities including the websites of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, John Cox, Newt Gingrich, Tom Tancredo, the Democratic National Committee, and even a surprise from Whitehouse.gov. Some of the holes are low-risk, but others would allow a user's accounts on the affected website to be compromised. A victim would simply have to click on a maliciously crafted link that appears to lead to the candidate's site."

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