Comment Different Species (Score 1) 190
Homo floresiensis is different than Homo Erectus. Homo erectus died out a million years ago. Homo floresiensis died out 18000 years ago.
Comment Re:Lazy (Score 1) 391
Is it laziness or is it pressure from the deadlines? When I think of the press, I think of fast-paced people who work all day and all night, the opposite of laziness.
External Airbag Designed to Protect Pedestrians 253
Thanks to researchers at Cranfield University, you don't have to feel bad when you plow into a group of pedestrians who are crossing the street too slowly. They have designed an external airbag that mounts to your hood at the base of the windshield. Research shows that this is the area where a pedestrian's head is most likely to hit in an accident. "Test results indicate that the system works extremely well. When fitted to a demonstrator vehicle not originally designed with pedestrian protection in mind, the results were well inside all current legal criteria for pedestrian protection currently in force in Europe," Roger Hardy of the university's Cranfield Impact Centre said.
Wolfram Alpha vs. Google — Results Vary 255
wjousts writes "Technology Review has an article comparing various search results from Wolfram Alpha and Google. Results vary. For example, searching 'Microsoft Apple' in Alpha returns data comparing both companies stock prices, whereas Google top results are news stories mentioning both companies. However, when searching for '10 pounds kilograms,' Alpha rather unhelpfully assumes you want to multiply 10 pounds by 1 kilogram, whereas Google directs you to sites for metric conversions. Change the query to '10 pounds in kilograms' and both give you the result you'd expect (i.e. 4.536 kg)."
Unpaid Contributors Provide Corporate Tech Support 221
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times writes about Justin McMurry of Keller, TX, who spends up to 20 unpaid hours per week helping Verizon customers with high-speed fiber optic Internet, television and telephone service. McMurry is part of an emerging corps of Web-savvy helpers that large corporations, start-up companies, and venture capitalists are betting will transform the field of customer service. Such enthusiasts are known as lead users, or super-users, and their role in contributing innovations to product development and improvement — often selflessly — has been closely researched in recent years. These unpaid contributors, it seems, are motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers. 'You have to make an environment that attracts the Justin McMurrys of the world, because that's where the magic happens,' says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon. The mentality of super-users in online customer-service communities is similar to that of devout gamers, according to Lyle Fong, co-founder of Lithium Technologies whose web site advertises that a vibrant community can easily save a company millions of dollars per year in deflected support calls' and whose current roster of 125 clients includes AT&T, BT, iRobot, Linksys, Best Buy, and Nintendo. Lithium's customer service sites for companies offer elaborate rating systems for contributors, with ranks, badges and kudos counts. 'That alone is addictive,' says Fong. 'They are revered by their peers.' Meanwhile McMurry, who is 68 and a retired software engineer, continues supplying answers by the bushel, all at no pay. 'People seem to like most of what I say online, and I like doing it.'"
Comment Re:Big surprise (Score 1) 262
XP has 33% shorter battery life, Ubuntu has 25% longer battery life
The 4-3=1 hour difference is magnified more when you have less battery life.
Comment Re:Security and Radioactivity (Score 1, Insightful) 432
Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.
That sentence is so wrong with that "only" there. When good commercial uses are found for nuclear explosions, then that is a good thing.
Comment Re:Not very well (Score 1) 111
There is much more to Facebook than its LAMP stack, so you shouldn't just blame LAMP stack. And even if the LAMP stack does not work perfectly, there are still insights that developers can glean from it.
Microsoft Begs Win 7 Testers To Clean Install 420
Barence writes "Microsoft is imploring millions of Windows 7 beta testers to perform a clean install of the forthcoming Release Candidate, rather than upgrade from the beta. 'The reality is that upgrading from one pre-release build to another is not a scenario we want to focus on because it is not something real-world customers will experience,' the company claims on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. Those who attempt to install the Release Candidate over the beta will find their path blocked." I've read complaints that reviews of new Linux distros often focus too much on the installation process; Microsoft seems to understand that complications at installation time (dual booting? preserving an existing data partition?) can sour one's experience pretty thoroughly.
EFF Says Obama Warrantless Wiretap Defense Is Worse than Bush 904
SonicSpike writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just said that 'In the warrantless wiretapping case, Obama DOJ's new arguments are worse than Bush's.'"
Comment Re:Karma (Score 1) 233
Patents are there to encourage innovation. What's the use of trying to think of new ideas when your competitor can just copy them once you're done. No company would have research divisions as they can just easily use the research of other companies. Research gives no solid benefit to a company if it can be easily copied so there would be minimal research.
It is only when these patents are abused that people get angry. Patenting trivial things sometimes give you a monopoly because it is very difficult to get around trivial things.
Microsoft Ordered To Pay $388 Million In Patent Case 233
jeffmeden writes "BusinessWeek reports today that Microsoft suffered a loss in federal court Monday. The judge rendering the verdict ordered Microsoft to pay $388 Million in damages for violating a patent held by Uniloc, a California maker of software that prevents people from illegally installing software on multiple computers. Uniloc claims Microsoft's Windows XP and some Office programs infringe on a related patent they hold. It's hard to take sides on this one, but one thing is certain: should the verdict hold up, it will be heavily ironic if the extra copies of XP and Office sold due to crafty copy protection end up not being worth $388 million."
Comment Re:One captcha I've seen... (Score 1) 522
If a popular website like Yahoo implements that type of captcha, you can bet that by the next day, someone figured out how to pick out the colors. That instruction is easy to implement with a program.
The captcha keeps out the 15 year olds who want some fun. The site's obscurity keeps out the people who break captchas for a living.
Comment Re:After three tries (Score 1) 522
The 3 tries can be easy captchas then. If you get easy captchas right 80% of time, then you're good. It is only when you try to create multiple accounts, that you get into the problem of those 20% wrong catching up with you. And the only people who try to create multiple accounts are bots.
Comment Use the turing test (Score 1) 522
Ask the person to guess if the person/computer talking back to it is a person or computer. As long as the website is popular enough, then you can sometimes pair humans with humans. You might get some interesting conversations going too, especially if the site using this is like Slashdot where people of similar interests come to. In addition, people rarely sign up for accounts so these turing tests would not be too much of a hassle.
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