IBM’s latest super computer to be on Jeopardy next week, beginning February 14, 2011.
So, in February IBM’s Watson will be in an official Jeopardy tournament-style competition with titans of trivia Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. That competition will be taped starting tomorrow, but hopefully we’ll get to know if a computer really can take down the greatest Jeopardy players of all time in “real time” as the show airs. It will be a historic event on par with Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov, and we’ll absolutely be glued to our seats.
AV is developing the Global Observer unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to be the first to provide robust, cost-effective and persistent communications and surveillance over any location on the globe, establishing an entirely new category of UAS. Global Observer’s unique combination of both extreme flight duration and stratospheric operating altitude is designed to deliver advantages in cost, capacity, coverage, flexibility, and reliability that make it a compelling complement to existing satellite, aerial and terrestrial assets.
A former government contractor says that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation installed a number of back doors into the encryption software used by the OpenBSD operating system.
The allegations were made public Tuesday by Theo de Raadt, the lead developer in the OpenBSD project. DeRaadt posted an e-mail sent by the former contractor, Gregory Perry, so that the matter could be publicly scrutinized.”The mail came in privately from a person I have not talked to for nearly 10 years,” he wrote in his a posting to an OpenBSD discussion list. “I refuse to become part of such a conspiracy, and will not be talking to Gregory Perry about this. Therefore I am making it public.”
For a long time some of my gmail messages were gone, missing, and not findable. A likely explanation for the missing items, was that they somehow got deleted, or moved to the trash, and/or erased. Then it happened just the other day, while meaning to type into a gchat IM window, somehow the focus was not on the IM box, but in the gmail app itself, thus all the keys pressed, presumed to be in an IM window, were actually being given to the gmail app as keyboard shortcuts. Likely in the past this has happened, and the D key was mistakenly processed as a shortcut to delete some messages without knowing it or meaning to.
A simple visit to Gmail’s settings page to turn off the keyboard shortcuts, and since then, no more missing items. The bad news - there’s no way to ever get those mistakenly deleted items back afaik. It’d be sweet if there was a script which would show all gmail messages affected by a keyboard shortcut, as it’s likely that feature has been inadvertently used.
A great article appeared in gizmodo yesterday, in which author Joel Johnson explains Quorum Sensing technology (with rad illustrations taboot, by Wendy MacNaughton). The article does a good job of digging into the science and efficacy of Quorumex‘s first anti-quorum sensing product: Topic-QX. What may be even more intriguing is how much McAfee’s current work with quorum sensing mimics his work of 20-some years ago with computer virii. Johnson cleverly ties the two worlds together in the title of his piece, but doesn’t explore the connection much beyond that. The similarities are significant, imo.
Output both 1080p HD video and digitalaudio with this all-in-one HDMI adapter.The Mini DisplayPort w/ 5.1 Channel Digital Audio to HDMI Adapter lets you connect a high definition monitor or television, to a Mac Pro 2009, Mac mini 2009, iMac 2009, MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air with Mini DisplayPort. Combine Full 1080p HD mini DisplayPort output with 5.1 channel digital audio output from your Mac in a single HDMI connection to your TV or other HD display.Features:Connect your Mac with Mini DisplayPort to your HDTV or HDMI Display.Supports full 1080p resolution via Mini DisplayPort.Supports Mini DisplayPort 1.1a input, USB 2.0, Apple®Mini Jack Optical Audio InputWatch movies from your Mac in surround sound where available on your TV with the use of one adapter.Over 3 feet of cable for versatility in cable management.Bus powered…no AC adapter required.
FastCompany did an expose on John McAfee in the May 2010 issue – sadly they didn’t really seem to live up to their name with this piece, they didn’t even mention McAfee’s newly formed, anti quorum sensing company, QuorumEx. The language used by author Jeff Wise seemed to be rather polemic throughout, presenting just one side of McAfee’s legal woes.
John McAfee, the antivirus-software pioneer, says he’s lost most of his fortune — but doesn’t care. To the contrary, he now hopes to give something back by deriving antibiotics from jungle plants in Belize. Really?
On that day, what had started out as a sympathetic profile for Fast Company would slowly evolve into something more like a take-down…
Lots of doubt sprinkled through the article – nothing wrong with that, but the author questions McAfee’s intent with ending his snippet with the snide question “Really?” and admitting his piece was a “take-down.” What Mr. Wise failed to realize is how much the rapidly evolving field of anti quorum sensing technology today is a reflection and type of “deja vu all over again” of the anti-computer virus technology, the then newly developing ecosphere in the mid to late 1980s, when McAfee created the software which made him famous. Becoming famous and successful primarily due to giving his software away, yet Mr. Wise seems to doubt McAfee’s intents by suggesting he’s simply running away from lawyers and lawsuits. Did the author even bother to contact McAfee’s lawyers, or read the QuorumEx site, and the thought, concepts, dedication and thinking behind McAfee’s anti-QS ideas? If QuorumEx is truly able to interrupt certain bacterias’ ability to communicate and thus turn pathogenic – this would be a major discovery in modern medicine. (and may prove why some known natural remedies are effective).
only a wandering soul would look here for anything. non-sequiturs, links to good coffee and hot sauces is what you're likely to find here. apologies in advance.
Very sweet software. 
