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Programming

Can Curiosity Be Programmed? 269

Posted by samzenpus from the killing-the-computer-cat dept.
destinyland writes "AI researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber says his main scientific ambition 'is to build an optimal scientist, then retire.' The Cognitive Robotics professor has worked on problems including artificial ants and even robots that are taught how to tie shoelaces using reinforcement learning, but he believes algorithms can be written that allow the programming of curiosity itself. 'Curiosity is the desire to create or discover more non-random, non-arbitrary, regular data that is novel and surprising...' He's already created art using algorithmic information theory, and can describe the simple algorithmic principle that underlies subjective beauty, creativity, and curiosity itself. And he ultimately addresses the possibility that the entire Universe, including everyone in it, is in principle computable by a completely deterministic computer program."
The Internet

New Study Shows Youth Plugged In Most of the Day 157

Posted by samzenpus from the turn-on-tune-in-drop-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The amount of time youngsters are spending on the web has ballooned to exceed the average adult's full working week, according to a new study. A few years ago, the same researchers thought that teens and tweens were consuming about as much media as possible in the hours available. But now they've have found a way to pack in even more. Young people now devote an average of seven hours and 38 minutes to daily media use, or about 53 hours a week according to Kaiser Family Foundation findings released today."
Windows

Newly-Found Windows Bug Affects All Versions Since NT 393

Posted by Soulskill from the staying-power dept.
garg0yle writes "A researcher has found a security bug that could allow privilege escalation in Windows. Nothing new there, right? Well, this affects the Virtual DOS Machine, found in every 32-bit version of Windows all the way back to Windows NT. That's 17 years worth of Windows and counting. 'Using code written for the VDM, an unprivileged user can inject code of his choosing directly into the system's kernel, making it possible to make changes to highly sensitive parts of the operating system. ... The vulnerability exists in all 32-bit versions of Microsoft OSes released since 1993, and proof-of-concept code works on the XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, and 7 versions of Windows, Ormandy reported.'"
Privacy

Blizzard Adds Timestamps To WoW Armory 318

Posted by Soulskill from the hope-your-boss-doesn't-know-your-character-name dept.
Kharny writes "In a move that could cause serious privacy problems for players of World of Warcraft, Blizzard has added timestamps and an RSS feed to the game's online armory site. This new feature will mean that anyone can follow 'real-time' developments in a World of Warcraft character, which display the exact time and date, so that others can see that person's playing habits. Many players have already complained about the fact that there is no opt-out setting, and this opens very big possibilities for online stalking."

Comment Name vs Email (Score 1) 1049

by ikarigullwing (#30724194) Attached to: Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter?
The biggest problem lies in when you get an email address that just sounds bad. And I don't mean bad like @aol.com, I mean somethin' bad like my old boss, who tried to make an email address using his intials, the company he "owned", and all of this @verizon. It was just wretchworthy in my opinion. Truth be told though, I'll look just as hard at who the person registers the email address as, like gmail has you do. Anyways, my $0.02.

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The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. -- Paul Erlich

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