Comment Re:What is the limit? (Score 1) 418
"
Why would a key that is twice as long take 36 orders of magnitude less time to crack?
Facial Expressions Are "Not Global" 137
An anonymous reader sends in a BBC report on new research out of Glasgow University, which detected differences in how facial expressions are read between Westerners and East Asians. Using eye tracking, the researchers determined that "people from different cultural groups observe different parts of the face when interpreting expression. East Asians participants tended to focus on the eyes of the other person, while Western subjects took in the whole face, including the eyes and the mouth." Interestingly, the researchers point out that the emoticons used online by the two groups reflect this difference.
First Look At Palm's Mojo SDK 128
snydeq writes "Peter Wayner puts Palm's Mojo SDK through its paces and finds the general outline of the system solid and usable despite 'numerous rough edges and dark, undocumented corners.' The main draw, of course, is the reliance on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which lower the barriers to entry, though with Mojo, HTML and JavaScript do at times work against each other, with JavaScript occasionally 'wiping out anything you do with HTML.' But more than anything, Wayner sees the current version of Mojo as 'merely the start of access to a very fertile platform. 'Developers are actively digging into the Linux foundations of the Pre and finding they can build tools that work with the raw guts of the machine. Some are talking about writing Java services underneath,' Wayner writes, pointing to sites such as PalmOpenSource.com and PreCentral.net that are cataloging dozens of apps that come complete with the source code. 'I know people are doing similar things with the iPhone — such as selling the source to people who must install it themselves — but the entire scene emerging around Palm has a much more organic and creative vibe. It's not getting hung up on parsing and reparsing the App Store rules.'"
Searching Google, Where Internet Access is Scarce 130
Internet searching means that finding information mundane, obscure, or fantastically useful is just a few keystrokes away — but not if you're without a connection to the Internet (or can't read), both the norm for many of the world's poor. itwbennett writes "Rose Shuman developed a contraption for this under-served population called Question Box that is essentially a one-step-removed Internet search: 'A villager presses a call button on a physical intercom device, located in their village, which connects them to a trained operator in a nearby town who's sitting in front of a computer attached to the Internet. A question is asked. While the questioner holds, the operator looks up the answer on the Internet and reads it back. All questions and answers are logged. For the villager there is no keyboard to deal with. No complex technology. No literacy issues.' This week, Jon Gosier, of Appfrica, launched a web site called World Wants to Know that displays the QuestionBox questions being asked in real time. As Jon put it, it's allowing 'searching where Google can't.' And providing remarkable insight into the real information needs of off-the-grid populations."
Comment Re:Duh. (Score 2, Informative) 355
Gender and sex are not synonymous when discussing discrimination. There is a sharp distinction between sexual discrimination and gender discrimination. As an example, sexual discrimination would be something like "you must have a penis to be in management," whereas gender discrimination is when a male that identifies (and thus dresses) as a woman gets harassed when entering a public restroom.
And I don't know if snakes really have gender.
Comment Re:Another one bites the dust (Score 1) 588
Would you be willing to tutor a male student at the same rates?
Comment Re:How would this fail the hunter-gatherer? (Score 1) 183
Are you giving the aforementioned goods away in striving to hoard less?
Comment Re:Fragility (Score 1) 117
Finally, you have to worry about inductors to a lesser extent. Current inductors aren't quite good enough, but we're working on that too =) Nanoscale metallic alloys are definitely the way to go.
Now my experience with electronics is quite brief at best, but I was under the impression that inductors were specifically avoided in electronic circuitry for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they tend to be bulky. This is not a big problem because the effects of an inductor can be simulated with an RC circuit.
Is this a typo, or is there some reason why they use inductors on nano-scale circuits (where the size issue would be even more pronounced)?
President Signs Law Creating Copyright Czar 555
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "President Bush has signed the EIPRA (AKA the PRO-IP Act) and created a cabinet-level post of 'Copyright Czar,' on par with the current 'Drug Czar,' in spite of prior misgivings about the bill. They did at least get rid of provisions that would have had the DOJ take over the RIAA's unpopular litigation campaign. Still, the final legislation (PDF) creates new classes of felony criminal copyright infringement, adds civil forfeiture provisions that incorporate by reference parts of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, and directs the Copyright Czar to lobby foreign governments to adopt stronger IP laws. At this point, our best hope would appear to be to hope that someone sensible like Laurence Lessig or William Patry gets appointed."
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