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Censorship

Submission + - More fuel for Facebook censorship advocates in India (oneindia.in)

thodelu writes: Close on the heels of Friday's communal clashes in a town in India that were triggered by a Facebook post which contained morphed images apparently deriding a religious place of worship, there has been another incident. City police have removed images from another similar blog post citing 'cyber criminal' laws. There has been an ongoing effort in India to censor the web which would get more backing as a result of these events. Would we be seeing another Chinese wall?
NASA

Submission + - NASA specialist fired over belief in intelligent design (thestar.com)

period3 writes: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has landed robotic explorers on the surface of Mars, sent probes to outer planets and operates a worldwide network of antennas that communicates with interplanetary spacecraft.

Its latest mission is defending itself in a workplace lawsuit filed by a former computer specialist who claims he was demoted — and then let go — for promoting his views on intelligent design, the belief that a higher power must have had a hand in creation because life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone.

Submission + - Biological nand gates built (dailymail.co.uk)

thodelu writes: Scientists have taken another step towards biological computing, with the creation of logic gates from gut bacteria and DNA.

While something similar's been done before, the team says its logic gates behave more like the standard electronic version. They're also modular, which means that they can be fitted together to make different types of logic gates, paving the way for more complex biological processors to be built in the future.

Space

Submission + - Star falls into black hole (tgdaily.com)

thodelu writes: Astronomers are poring over data from what they say is one of the most puzzling cosmic blasts ever observed. Since Sunday, April 3, it has brightened by more than five times. The astronomers initial theory is that the unusual blast likely arose when a star wandered too close to its galaxy's central black hole.

Comment Thus spake the master programmer (Score 4, Funny) 178

In The Tao of Programming: The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth to the assembler. The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand languages. Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao. But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.
Facebook

Submission + - Deceased's social media account to goto estate

An anonymous reader writes: Estate executors or administrators in Oklahama have the power to access, administer or terminate the online social media accounts of the deceased, according to a new state law. "The number of people who use Facebook today is almost equal to the population of the United States. When a person dies, someone needs to have legal access to their accounts to wrap up any unfinished business, close out the account if necessary or carry out specific instructions the deceased left in their will," Kiesel said.

Comment Desensitizing..!! (Score 1) 557

I have not seen much rotten stuff. One video I watched in my teens made me feel nauseated and I almost puked. Since then, I watched some disgusting videos but the reaction was more subdued than the previous ones. I am now desensitized to most vile stuff and would love to get back my naivety.

Comment Re:Understand the question. Think Evolution! (Score 1) 341

If the question implies "Chicken eggs", it all depends on what you mean by "chicken egg", is a chicken egg "an egg that was laid by a chicken" or "a egg that a chicken hatches from".

If it is the former, then the big answer is "The chicken", if it is the latter, the answer is "the egg".

The counterpart: What is meant by the 'Chicken"? Does it mean a thing that hatches out of a "Chicken egg" or the thing that lays a "Chicken egg".

Comment Re:Software (Score 1) 157

Hmm.. I was not aware that passenger aircrafts land without pilot intervention. It was about an year back that I was researching for exactly such autonomy in aircrafts - are you positive on this?
What I meant by classical AI is AI approaches of 80s - expert systems, neural nets, decision models, etc - current autonomous robots rely little on these types and more on control systems to actually control the transducers. BTW, I am not referring to the path planning code used in these drones which indeed is what I would call classical AI, but am referring to code which moves the flaps, etc.

Comment Software (Score 1) 157

All this improvement in range, capacity, flight time, avionics and control systems is not matched by similar improvements in 'autonomous' AI abilities. The 'AI' used in these systems is not true AI but simply is a very sophisticated control system. No 'autonomous' plane built so far can land on its own. No 'search and rescue autonomous plane' built so far can automatically spot for wreckage. The wisdom in autonomous robotics these days seem to be heavily favoring control system based solutions as opposed to classical AI, something which HAS to happen for Skynet to grow sentient.

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