runamock - Slashdot User

Submission + - Why Intel and OLPC Parted Ways (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

runamock

on Saturday January 05, 2008 @05:40PM

runamock writes: "The New York Times has an article that sheds some light on why Intel left the OLPC board: 'A frail partnership between Intel and the One Laptop Per Child educational computing group was undone last month in part by an Intel saleswoman: She tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country's commitment to buy a quarter-million of the organization's laptops in favor of Intel PCs. Intel and the group had a rocky relationship from the start in their short-lived effort to get inexpensive laptops into the hands of the world's poorest children. But the saleswoman's tactic was the final straw for Nicholas Negroponte..'"

Submission + - Doping: Beyond Sports? (latimes.com)

Submitted by runamock on Tuesday December 25, 2007 @12:16AM

runamock writes: The Los Angeles Times ran a story on the growing use of 'mind drugs': 'Forget sports doping. The next frontier is brain doping.. Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions.. Unlike the anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and blood-oxygen boosters that plague athletic competitions, the brain drugs haven't provoked similar outrage. People who take them say the drugs aren't giving them an unfair advantage but merely allow them to make the most of their hard-earned skills.'

Comment Great Mashup (Score 1) 3

by runamock on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @02:23AM (#20549447) Attached to: Skype Enabled, Voice Controlled, Remote Spy Robot

This is quite a brilliant mashup of both hardware and software. Now, if only I could get Roboquad to wash the dishes and mow the lawn on my command!

Submission + - Smarter-than-Human Intelligence (singinst.org)

Submitted by

runamock

on Sunday September 09, 2007 @04:57AM

runamock writes: "Brilliant technologists like Ray Kurzweil and Rodney Brooks are gathering in San Francisco for The Singularity Summit. The Singularity refers to the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence beyond which the future becomes unpredictable. The concept of the Singularity sounds more daunting in the form described by statistician I.J Good in 1965: 'Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.' What do Slashdotters think about the hypothetical Singularity? Could it happen and what are the technologies that are likely to lead us to the Singularity?"

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