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Submission + - Meet 'Future You.' Like What You See?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The WSJ reports that computer scientists, economists, neuroscientists and psychologists are teaming up to find innovative ways of turning impulsive spenders into patient savers and one way to shock Americans into saving more for their retirement is software that lets users stare into a camera in a virtual-reality laboratory and see an image staring back of how they will look in the year 2057. By enabling the young to see themselves as they will be when they are old, virtual-reality technology can transform their urge to spend for today into a willingness to save for tomorrow because to the extent that people can more vividly imagine how badly they will feel in the future with little to no retirement savings, they can be motivated to save more money now. In one test experimental subjects who saw a persuasive visual analog of a 70-year old version of themselves by morphing the shape and texture of his avatar to simulate the aging process reported they would save twice as much as those who didn't (PDF). "An employee's ID photo could be age-morphed and placed on the benefits section of the company's website," says Dan Goldstein of London Business School. "From there, we're just a few clicks and a few minutes away from someone making a lasting decision that can be worth thousands [of dollars].""
Businesses

Submission + - Friends Don't Let Geek Friends Do Finance

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: If Vivek Wadhwa remade Pinocchio, instead of The Coachman luring naughty boys to Pleasure Island to engage in mischievous behavior and be transformed into donkeys, you might find Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein luring bright engineering grads to Wall Street to, well, engage in mischievous behavior and be transformed into, well, asses. While the practice of poaching engineering talent slowed after the economy tanked in 2008, Wadhwa is dismayed to report that thanks to hundred-billion-dollar taxpayer bailouts, investment banks have recovered and gone back to their old, greedy ways, snagging engineering grads who might otherwise solve the world's problems, making them financial offers they can't refuse, and morphing them into quants, investment bankers and management consultants. 'Not only are the investment banks siphoning off hundreds of billions of dollars from our economy with financial gimmicks like CDOs,' writes Wadhwa, 'they are using our best engineering graduates [25% of MIT grads in '06] to help them do it. This is the talent that our country has invested so much resource in producing.' He concludes: 'Let's save the world by keeping our engineers out of finance. We need them to, instead, develop new types of medical devices, renewable energy sources, and ways for sustaining the environment and purifying water, and to start companies that help America keep its innovative edge.' Amen, but how 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the Engineering farm after they've seen Wall Street?

Comment 'more accessible viewer experience' for who? (Score 1) 1

by techfun (#35626218) Attached to: Monetizing March Madness
Turner explains it as "Extensive meta tagging has helped Turner deliver a richer, more accessible viewer experience of the tournament." but is it the viewers that are the real beneficiaries or are the advertisers? It's kind of a win/win but I suspect the decision to lay out the manhours was to benefit the ad sales teams more than the viewers who know what they want to watch.
AMD

Submission + - AMD Challenges NVIDIA To Graphics Throw-Down (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Over the last couple of weeks, the two most powerful graphics cards released for the PC to date made their respective debuts, the dual-Cayman GPU powered AMD Radeon HD 6990 and the dual-GF110 GPU powered NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590. With such powerful products in their line-ups, both AMD and NVIDIA have claimed the offer "the world's fastest graphics card". AMD says it's theirs. Dave Erskine, the Senior Public Relations Manager for Graphics Desktop at AMD, challenged NVIDIA directly. "So now I issue a challenge to our competitor: prove it, don't just say it. Show us the substantiation.""

Submission + - Using the Open Records Law to Intimidate Critics (nytimes.com) 4

Submitted by Layzej
Layzej writes: On March 15 Professor Bill Cronon posted his first blog. The subject was the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council in influencing recent legislation in this state and across the country. Less than two days later his university received a communication formally requesting under the states Open Records Law copies of all emails he sent or received pertaining to matters raised in the blog.

Remarkably, the request was sent to the universities legal office by Stephan Thompson of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, with no effort to obscure the political motivations behind it. In a recent editorial the New York Times notes that demanding copies of e-mails and other documents is the latest technique used by conservatives to silence critics.
AI

Submission + - Kinect's AI breakthrough explained (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Microsoft Research has just published a scientific paper and a video showing how the Kinect body tracking algorithm works — it's almost as amazing as some of the uses the Kinect has been put to! This article explains how it does it.

Submission + - Leanord Nimoy turns 80! (startrek.com)

Submitted by
ZosX
ZosX writes: "Leanord Nimoy, who we all will fondly remember as Spock has turned 80 today! StarTrek.com has posted a 3 part interview with Nimoy here, here, and here.

Thanks for the memories Mr. Nimoy! May you live long and prosper!"
Businesses

Submission + - If Search is Google's Castle, Android is the Moat

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Warren Buffet once said that the best businesses were economic castles protected by unbreachable moats. Now Erick Schonfeld writes that if Search is Google’s economic castle, Android is a moat, Chrome browser is a moat, and Google Apps is a moat — all free products, subsidized by search profits, intended to protect the economic castle that is search. "Android, as well as Chrome and Chrome OS for that matter, are not “products” in the classic business sense. They have no plan to become their own “economic castles," says Benchmark Capital VC Bill Gurley. "They are not trying to make a profit on Android or Chrome. They want to take any layer that lives between themselves and the consumer and make it free (or even less than free)." So don’t measure the success of Google’s new businesses by how much revenue or profit they generate directly but measure it by how much they shore up Google’s core search business. "Google is [ ] scorching the earth for 250 miles around the outside of the castle to ensure no one can approach it. And best I can tell, they are doing a damn good job of it.""

Submission + - "Canadian DMCA" copyright bill dead again

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Like some kind of B-movie horror series, the latest attempt to revise Canada's copyright law and introduce DMCA-like provisions, Bill C-32, has again died on the order table as Canada's minority goverment has fallen after a non-confidence vote. This makes it the third copyright revision bill since 2005 to have died. Although this version was regarded as better than previous ones, it still contained awkward anti-circumvision provisions. We can be confident that some kind of DMCA-style copyright bill will be resurrected, but it will have to wait for the next government sequel.
Google

Submission + - Google Starts Testing Google Music Internally (techspot.com)

Submitted by Krystalo
Krystalo writes: Google employees have begun testing Google Music internally. Talks with at least some of the top publishers and four largest record labels are still ongoing. The delays are largely due to the fact that Google is negotiating for cloud music rights and not just the authorization to distribute the songs themselves. The search giant wants to be able to store users' existing music libraries on the company's servers. Labels are in similar discussions with Apple.
Microsoft

Submission + - Expensify CEO: Why we won't hire .NET developers (expensify.com)

Submitted by TheGrapeApe
TheGrapeApe writes: The CEO of San Fransisco-based VC-backed startup Expensify wrote a post on the company's blog today about why he considers .NET experience on a resume a general liability and that it will "definitely raise questions" when screening for developers in his shop:

NET is a dandy language. It’s modern, it’s fancy, it’s got all the bells and whistles. And if you’re doing Windows Mobile 7 apps (which the stats suggest you aren’t), it’s your only choice. But choosing .NET is a choice, and whenever anybody does it, I can’t help but ask “why?”

Does he have a point? Or is it counterproductive to screen devs out based on what platforms or languages they have used in the past? Discuss.
Censorship

Australia To Block BitTorrent 674

Posted by CmdrTaco from the who-saw-that-coming dept.
Kevin 7Kbps writes "Censorship Minister Stephen Conroy announced today that the Australian Internet Filters will be extended to block peer-to-peer traffic, saying, 'Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.' This dashes hopes that Conroy's Labor party had realised filtering could be politically costly at the next election and were about to back down. The filters were supposed to begin live trials on Christmas Eve, but two ISPs who volunteered have still not been contacted by Conroy's office, who advised, 'The department is still evaluating applications that were put forward for participation in that pilot.' Three days hardly seems enough time to reconfigure a national network."

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