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Windows

Submission + - Microsoft released IE8 as Critical Update for XP (msdn.com)

Submitted by Binestar
Binestar writes: If you've checked windows update today you'll have noticed that IE8 is now listed as a critical update. For those not interested in upgrading to IE8 at this time, the MSDN released information back in January on how to keep IE8 off your machine.
IBM

Submission + - IBM Computer Program to Take On 'Jeopardy!' (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
longacre
longacre writes: "From the article, "I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human 'Jeopardy!' contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward. ... The team is aiming not at a true thinking machine but at a new class of software that can 'understand' human questions and respond to them correctly. Such a program would have enormous economic implications. ... The proposed contest is an effort by I.B.M. to prove that its researchers can make significant technical progress by picking "grand challenges" like its early chess foray. The new bid is based on three years of work by a team that has grown to 20 experts in fields like natural language processing, machine learning and information retrieval. ... Under the rules of the match that the company has negotiated with the 'Jeopardy!' producers, the computer will not have to emulate all human qualities. It will receive questions as electronic text. The human contestants will both see the text of each question and hear it spoken by the show's host, Alex Trebek. ... Mr. Friedman added that they were also thinking about whom the human contestants should be and were considering inviting Ken Jennings, the 'Jeopardy!' contestant who won 74 consecutive times and collected $2.52 million in 2004." Any chance IBM could hire Sean Connery to be its voice?"
The Internet

Submission + - Alpha - The Wolfram search engine (readwriteweb.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The hype around Wolfram|Alpha, the next "Google killer" from the makers of Mathematica, has been building over the last few weeks. Today, we were lucky enough to attend a one-hour web demo with Stephen Wolfram, and from what we've seen, it definitely looks like it can live up to the hype — though, because it is so different from traditional search engines, it will definitely not be a "Google killer." According to Stephen Wolfram, the goal of Alpha is to give everyone access to expert knowledge and the data that a specialist would be able to compute from this information.

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