Monday, February 19, 2007

Google at work on AI?. "When AI happens, it's going to be a lot of computation, not so much ... clever algorithms," says Google co-founder Larry Page. Given the size of DNA (~600 MB compressed), the algorithms of the brain are "probably not that complicated." "To do the... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 8:10:38 PM      Google It!.

Robotic Arm Aids in Grasping After Stroke. Roland Piquepaille writes "In the U.S., stroke is a major cause of long-term disability which affects 700,000 people annually. Most of them are over 65 years old and some have difficulties grasping objects after their stroke. This is why Californian researchers have developed a robotic therapy which helps restore hand use after stroke. The Hand-Wrist Assisting Robotic Device (HoWARD) has successfully been tested on seven women and six men who had suffered a stroke at least three months before the study. These results, while encouraging, need to be balanced. There must be enough residual motor power in the arm and hand of stroke patients to initiate some movement for this robotic therapy to work."[Slashdot] 8:06:57 PM      Google It!.

OSS Music Composer Gaining Attention. An anonymous reader writes "Following in the footsteps of Psycle, VioLet Composer is a completely GPLed music composer for Windows that has slowly but surely been gaining attention. In an interview at Laptoprockers the author covers not only the program itself but the his reasoning behind choosing to open the source using the GPL."[Slashdot] 8:02:02 PM      Google It!.

Study: Video games help surgeons. Read full story for latest details.[CNN.com] 7:37:32 PM      Google It!.

Sweden to Make Denial of Service Attacks Illegal. paulraps writes "Sweden is to pass legislation making Denial of Service attacks illegal. The offense will carry a maximum jail term of two years, and is thought to be a direct response to the attack which crashed the Swedish police's web site last summer. Nobody was charged for that, but the fact that it came shortly after a raid on the Pirate Bay's servers was thought by many to be not entirely coincidental. Sweden's move follows the UK, which is even tougher on web attackers [~] there the sentence can be over five years in prison. [Slashdot] 4:48:16 PM      Google It!.