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| Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com. |
| Mining the "Deep Web" |
| 1:54:39 am mst / 25 January 2001 found by paul / filed in internet / source NY Times 324 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Most traditional search engines cover as little as 1% of web pages out there. The article describes some specialty search engines that can help users find information in the other 99% known as the "deep Web" or the "invisible Web". |
| I guess I'll have to take a closer look at HumorSearch... |
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| Plaster casts show ant colony architecture |
| 10:26:33 am mst / 25 January 2001 found by paul / filed in science / source ABC News 221 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| Florida State University biologist Walter Tschinkel has found a way to make casts of the interior of ant colonies by pouring dental plaster down the holes, then carefully digging up the solidified plaster. The article includes a link to images of some of the astonishing casts. (Update: To see a some of the casts, look at the bottom of the page for the link titled "Ant Nest". Clicking on this generates a popup window which has pictures of the pouring and excavation process as well as a couple of the casts.) |
| I just hope the Ants' Rights activists don't get wind of this. |
| read 1 comment |
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| There's cyber gold in them thar islands |
| 11:39:37 am mst / 25 January 2001 found by paul / filed in business / source The Times 42 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Many are already familiar with the island nation of Tuvalu cashing in on its ".tv" domain names, and other small countries are also trying to get into the act. Among the more interesting ones is the island nation of Niue, "thought to be the world’s smallest independent, self-governing nation". The ".nu" addresses are especially popular in Scandinavia and France, where it means "now" and "naked", respectively. The money from the sale of the ".nu" addresses "has enabled Niue to become the most wired nation on Earth -- every one of the 2,000 citizens has free Internet access via satellite". |
| I need to start a small country named Xanadux, and ask for the country code of ".xx"... |
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| DirecTV attacks hacked smart cards |
| 3:46:48 pm mst / 25 January 2001 found by paul / filed in security / source Register 219 hits / 0 comments / 2 e-mails |
| DirecTV attacked signal pirates on Sunday night by transmitting a signal from its satellites that destroyed thousands of smart cards which had previously allowed its owners to receive free satellite television programming. Until "Black Sunday", the cards used to be worth hundreds of dollars on the street, but now one pirate said, "It turned all these cards into ice scrapers." |
| The best part was that DirecTV stealthily downloaded its killer program into those pirate cards a few bytes at a time over several months. Spy vs. spy, indeed! |
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| Time for real intelligence? |
| 7:56:07 pm mst / 25 January 2001 found by paul / filed in robotics / source BBC News 27 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Michigan State University computer scientist Juyang Weng believes that intelligent robots need to go through a period of mental development similar to that experienced by animals as they mature from infancy to adulthood. His SAIL robot is a prototype of this developmental approach to artificial intelligence. |
| His approach is at least plausible. Natural intelligences evolved in order to handle problems associated with controlling physical bodies that include a development phase. A version of that approach could help generate machine intelligences, provided that one can duplicate the relevant aspects of the external environment, including the problems and incentives faced by a budding intelligence. |
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