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Medicine

Italian Scientists Put Robot Spiders In Your Colon 203

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wait-'til-it-lays-eggs dept.
Sockatume writes "Scientists in Italy have developed a robot which will move around the lower digestive tract using legs. The 'Spider-Pill' is fitted with a camera and will stow its legs until it reaches the lower intestine. Once there it can crawl around and take pictures under direction from surgeons. Its USP is that it's more appealing than an endoscopy." The BBC also has video.
Medicine

Submission + - Psychopaths have brain structure abnormality (examiner.com) 4

Submitted by mmmscience
mmmscience writes: http://www.examiner.com/x-1242-Science-News-Examiner~y2009m8d4-Psychopaths-have-brain-structure-abnormality A group of scientists have identified a structure in the brain of psychopaths that is abnormal when compared to controls. The change is found in the uncinate fasciculus, a bridge of white matter that connects the amygdale (emotion/aggression brain region) and the orbitofrontal cortex (decision making region). Interestingly, the greater the abnormality in the region, the more severe the levels of sociopathy in a subject. A researcher on the team suggests the finding could have considerable implications in the world of criminal justice, where such scans could presumably be presented as evidence in a trial.
Classic Games (Games)

Submission + - A History of Robotron (armchairarcade.com)

Submitted by
blacklily8
blacklily8 writes: "Gamasutra has published our History of Robotron: 2084, Eugene Jarvis' ultimate twitch-game of 1982. Robotron's frantic gameplay, intense difficulty, and elegant control scheme made it a hit in the arcade and a favorite of countless retrogamers. The illustrated article compares the game with Jarvis' earlier hit Defender, describes its gameplay in detail, and traces its roots and impact on later games such as Smash T.V. and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. Robotron's gameplay may be intimidating, but never too complex to grasp--with both hands!"
Hardware Hacking

California Student Arrested For Console Hacking 1016

Posted by Soulskill from the enjoy-your-stay-at-pelican-bay dept.
jhoger writes "Matthew Crippen was arrested yesterday for hacking game consoles (for profit) in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He was released on a $5,000 bond, but faces up to 10 years in prison. This is terribly disturbing to me; a man could lose 10 years of his freedom for providing the service of altering hardware. He could well lose much of his freedom for providing a modicum of it to others. There is no piracy going on, necessarily — the games a modified console could run may simply not be signed by the vendor. It's much like jailbreaking an iPhone. But it seems because he is disabling a 'circumvention device' it is a criminal issue. Guess it's time to kick a few dollars over to the EFF."
Programming

Submission + - Mario AI Competition (togelius.com)

Submitted by
togelius
togelius writes: "We're running a competition to see who can program the best AI for a version of Super Mario Bros. It's about each time step deciding what to do — run, jump, shoot etc. — based on a description of the platforms, items and enemies around Mario.

This is hard. So hard we believe that some sort of machine learning algorithm will be necessary to reach good playing performance. But really, any approach is game. We welcome hard-coded submissions, and we welcome commercial AI programmers, academics and amateurs alike. Whoever wins (maybe you?) this will be really interesting.

The competition is associated with two IEEE conferences and there are cash prizes available for the best submissions."
The Military

30,000-Lb. Bomb On Fast Track For Deployment 707

Posted by kdawson from the can-you-say-boom dept.
coondoggie writes "Published reports today say the Pentagon is rattling swords in the direction of North Korea and Iran by speeding the development a 20-foot, 30,000-lb bomb known as Massive Ordnance Penetrator. This weapon is intended to annihilate underground bunkers and other hardened sites (read: long-range missile or underground nuke development) up to 200 ft. underground. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which has overseen the development of this monster since 2007, says it is designed to be carried aboard B-2 and B-52 bombers and deployed at high altitudes, from which it would strike the ground at speeds well beyond twice the speed of sound to penetrate the below-ground target." Reuters has more specifics on the MOP's chances for deployment by 2010, and the detail that the bomb's load of explosives weighs in at 5,300 lbs.
Businesses

AP Will Sell You a "License" To Words It Doesn't Own 340

Posted by kdawson from the almost-as-ironic-as-disappearing-1984 dept.
James Grimmelmann performed an experiment using the AP's form to request a license to use more than four consecutive words from one of their articles. Except that he didn't paste in words from the (randomly chosen) article, but instead used 26 words written by Thomas Jefferson 196 years ago: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea. The AP cheerfully charged him $12 to use Jefferson's 26 words. Both Boing Boing and TechDirt have picked up the story so far. Grimmelmann adds an update to his blog: the AP has rescinded his license to Jefferson's words and issued a refund for his $12. They did not exhibit the grace to admit that their software is brain-dead.

Comment Re:Oh come on. (Score 1) 794

by vaz01 (#28302811) Attached to: Should Undergraduates Be Taught Fortran?

C++: An octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog.

You definitely earned funny points for that one. I got a good laugh.

Me too, I'm not sure who gets credit for the quote though.

Operator overloading?

Not sure if that makes C++ harder. But I've seen people disagree.

I like the idea of operator overloading a lot. In Ruby it's great. I find it a bit cumbersome in C++ though, things like dealing with friend/global functions, e.g. for appending to a stream with <<.

To the credit of operator overloading and templates, they make the standard library interfaces mostly nice.

Destructors?

finalize

Unfortunately finalize is incredibly quirky as you have absolutely no say or guarantee about when your object will be gc'd. I've tried a few times to find the "right" way to use finalize and it seems to be almost always discouraged.

For me: What makes C++ difficult is ++. :)

Comment Re:Oh come on. (Score 1) 794

by vaz01 (#28297839) Attached to: Should Undergraduates Be Taught Fortran?

Getting rid of memory management and multiple inheritance from C++ doesn't begin to give you Java.

Operator overloading? virtual, pure virtual functions? namespaces (not quite like packages)? Templates? (Even Java generics are less convoluted.) Destructors? Global variables? Const correctness?

I'm not much of a fan of Java (the language), but C++ is just awful. I waste more time when I write C++ than I gain (compared to writing object-oriented C).

C++: An octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog.

How Do IT Guys Get Respect and Not Become BOFHs? 902

Posted by kdawson from the keep-a-curled-upper-lip dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I work for a small software company (around 60 people) as the sole IT guy. It's my first time in a position like this and after about 1.5 years I'm starting to get a bit burned out. I try to be friendly, helpful, and responsive and I get no respect whatsoever. Users tend to be flat-out rude when they have a problem, violate our pretty liberal policies constantly, and expect complex projects to be finished immediately upon requesting them. My knee-jerk reaction is to be a bastard, although I've avoided it up to this point. It's getting harder. For those of you who have been doing this a lot longer, how do you get a reasonable level of respect from your users while not being a jerk?"
Space

NASA Names Space Station Treadmill After Colbert 383

Posted by Soulskill from the running-man dept.
willith writes "The SF Chronicle reports on the results of the International Space Station Node 3 naming contest (which we previously discussed). Comedian and fake-pundit Stephen Colbert conducted a bombastic write-in campaign and repeatedly urged his show's fan base (the 'Colbert Nation') to stuff the ballot box with his name, which resulted in 'Colbert' coming in first in the write-in contest with almost a quarter-million votes. Although the Node 3 component will not be named 'Colbert' — NASA has instead chosen to call it 'Tranquility' — one of the Node 3 components will bear the honor: the second ISS treadmill, which will be installed in Node 3, will be named the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. The formal announcement was made on the air yesterday at 22:30 EDT on the Colbert Report by astronaut Sunita Williams."

Comment Re:Sounds a bit useless (Score 1) 167

by vaz01 (#26843071) Attached to: Euro Parliament Wants "Red Button" For Shutting Down Games

As for why it's useless, if your child is not ready to see "stuff", and they see "stuff", and then you press the panic button, they won't _unsee_ stuff. In fact, they would probably remember it for a very long time.

Yes. Panic button == my parents are panicking. What could possibly be more compelling (and guilt-forming) to a kid than something that makes their parents leap out of their chair pounding a big red panic button?

Fun thing to try with your kids: next time they break some stupid little thing, yell "oh my god", act flustered, hide the remains quickly and insist that they never speak of it again. Let sit for 8-10 years or until emotional problems are fully developed.

Yes you may think brainwashing is wrong. But ...

Brainwashing:
1) reduce target to the mentality of a child
2) imprint them with the values you want them to have.

There is no difference, kids just come pre-washed.

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