jp25666 - Slashdot User

Excluding Intelligent Design Principles From the Search For Alien Life 308

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 28, 2008 @03:42PM from the irreducible-simplicity dept.

KIdPanda writes "Prompted by pictures of man-made structures in the Utah desert, a SETI astronomer explains the sometimes-ambiguous difference between seeing the hand of God, alien intelligence, or nature. 'In my photographs, Shostak's SETI-trained eye — standing in for a pattern-crunching computer program — searched for an unexpected increase in visual order (or, in thermodynamic terms, a decrease in entropy caused by the rebellion of life against universal decay). A road or a tended field is mathematically simpler than a mountainous jumble or naturally varied vegetation. ... But there's an obvious problem: nothing is simpler than a sweep of blue sky, or the inky blackness of space. If simplicity is the benchmark, space itself is evidence of design."

Cisco Demos Public Rooms For Telepresence 65

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 15, 2008 @07:43PM from the can-you-see-me-now dept.

CWmike writes "Matt Hamblen reports that Cisco Systems Inc. has announced the first telepresence videoconferencing rooms available for public use. It demonstrated the technology simultaneously in four locations in India, the US and the UK Three of the four demonstration sites were retrofitted rooms in Taj Hotels in London, Bangalore, India and Boston. The luxury hotel chain will build the videoconferencing rooms for business and guest use at rates starting at $400 an hour in the Boston location. Cisco said prices will vary from $299 to $899 an hour at various locations globally, depending on the number of users. The rooms can accommodate from one to 18 people."

Comment Re:Interesting, but... (Score 1) 213

by jp25666 on Wednesday February 06, 2008 @05:06AM (#22318662) Attached to: Toddlers May Learn Language By Data Mining

For irregular verbs, the general pattern of acquisition (which I have heard about) is three stages. First, children learn the irregular forms, e.g. "ran" as the past form of "run". Second, children learn that the "-ed" suffix means past tense, and so they form words like "runned" and "ranned". Finally, children recognize that some verbs use the general "-ed" suffix, and other verbs are irregular, and at this point their language is similar to the language of an adult in this respect.

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