dczanik - Slashdot User

Google Reportedly Ditching Windows 1003

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 31, 2010 @08:09PM from the it's-ok-microsofties-use-bing dept.

Reader awyeah notes a Financial Times report that Google is ditching the use of Windows internally. Some blogs have picked up the FT piece but so far there isn't any other independent reporting of the claim, which is based on comments from anonymous Googlers. One indication of possibly hasty reporting is the note that Google "employs more than 10,000 workers internationally," whereas it's easy enough to find official word that the total exceeds 20,000. "The directive to move to other operating systems began in earnest in January, after Google's Chinese operations were hacked, and could effectively end the use of Windows at Google. ... 'We're not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,' said one Google employee. ... New hires are now given the option of using Apple's Mac computers or PCs running the Linux operating system. 'Linux is open source and we feel good about it,' said one employee. 'Microsoft we don't feel so good about.' ... Employees wanting to stay on Windows required clearance from 'quite senior levels,' one employee said. 'Getting a new Windows machine now requires CIO approval,' said another employee."

Nero Files Antitrust Complaint Against MPEG-LA 247

Posted by Soulskill on Monday May 24, 2010 @03:40PM from the hot-topics-getting-hotter dept.

hkmwbz writes "German technology company Nero AG has filed an antitrust complaint against the MPEG-LA, the company that manages the H.264 patent pool. Nero claims that the MPEG-LA has violated the law and achieved and abused 100% market share, by, among other things, using 'independent experts' that weren't independent after all, not weeding out non-essential patents from the pool (in fact, it has grown from the original 53 to more than 1,000), and retroactively changing previously-agreed-on license terms."

Can We Create Fun Games Automatically? 198

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday January 15, 2009 @05:50AM from the sounds-much-easier,-i-like-it dept.

togelius writes "What makes games fun? Some (e.g. Raph Koster) claim that fun is learning — fun games are those which are easy to learn, but hard to master, with a long and smooth learning curve. I think we can create fun game rules automatically through measuring their learnability. In a recent experiment, we do this using evolutionary computation, and create some simple Pacman-like new games completely without human intervention! Perhaps this has a future in game design? The academic paper (PDF) is available as well."

Ray Kurzweil Wonders, Can Machines Ever Have Souls? 630

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday November 19, 2008 @08:52AM from the i'd-settle-for-a-chobit dept.

Celery writes "There's an interview with Ray Kurzweil on silicon.com talking up the prospects of gene therapy as a means to reverse human aging, discussing different approaches to developing artificial intelligence, and giving his take on whether super intelligent machines could ever have souls. From the interview: 'The soul is a synonym for consciousness ... and if we were to consider where consciousness comes from we would have to consider it an emerging property. Brain science is instructive there as we look inside the brain, and we've now looked at it in exquisite detail, you don't see anything that can be identified as a soul — there's just a lot of neurons and they're complicated but there's no consciousness to be seen. Therefore it's an emerging property of a very complex system that can reflect on itself. And if you were to create a system that had similar properties, similar level of complexity it would therefore have the same emerging property.'"

Artist Wants to Replace Lost Eyeball With Webcam 156

Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 17, 2008 @02:33PM from the all-the-better-to-film-you-with dept.

A one-eyed San Francisco artist, Tanya Vlach, wants to replace her missing eye with a Web cam. There has even been talk of her shooting a reality TV show using the video eye. "There have been all sorts of cyborgs in science fiction for a long time, and I'm sort of a sci-fi geek, with the advancement of technology, I thought, 'Why not?'" said Vlach. I'm a bit perplexed that the obvious things you'd want in a cyborg eye: range finder, infrared/lowlight vision, and a hypno-ray are not discussed in the article.

Comment Think about the possibilities (Score 3, Interesting) 30

by dczanik on Monday June 06, 2005 @01:57PM (#12738861) Attached to: Mixed Reality Pacman

While these folks may look funny, I think augmented Reality is a very exciting area. Think of the military training, and gaming possibilities. It's one step closer to the holodeck.

Thought Doom was scary? Imagine playing Doom, but the monsters are in your house, and in your neighborhood.

What about Co-op? It could be set up so you can look however you want to your team. Sure, you may be a 90 lb. ugly geek, but your game character could look like an 8 foot Predator alien.

Think of the military too. It's a cheap way to teach the soldiers. A Virtual America's Army game? What about virtual tracers rounds?

And like every new technology, think of the pr0n possibilities!

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