Canadian doctors say they have found an inventive way to treat lazy eye – playing the Tetris video game. The McGill University team discovered the popular tile-matching puzzle could train both eyes to work together. [1]
It reminds me of the era when we were all convinced that smoking was good for the blood flow and the circulatory system…
Quantum cryptography has entered the friendly skies. A precise beam of photons sent from an airplane allowed researchers on the ground to create a nearly unbreakable encryption key to protect information. The experiment, which was reported on March 31 in Nature Photonics, is an important step toward creating a secure global communication network based on beaming photons to and from satellites. [1]
I am just waiting to see the Basic Law of Cryptography applied here. You know… the Universal Unbreakable Law that states that every encryption (even the… unbreakable ones) will be eventually broken… 🙂
Researchers in the Sheffield Centre for Robotics, jointly established by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, have been working to program a group of 40 robots, and say the ability to control robot swarms could prove hugely beneficial in a range of contexts, from military to medical. [1]
The researchers have demonstrated that the swarm can carry out simple fetching and carrying tasks, by grouping around an object and working together to push it across a surface.
Wow! Decades of fake promises that we “will have a robot in each house”, we are still playing fetch with small dummy machines… We are talking about SOLID RESULTS DELIVERED here… Hehehe… (no, no it is not a matter of fooling us to get funding. These ARE the things they get funded for! The other robots advertised are just for the new Star Wars episode…)
Microsoft is working on an interactive whiteboard that aims to interpret users’ sketches to complete the diagrams they were drawing. [1]
It was about time!
We have been thinking too much. Now that God is proclaimed dead, now that Philosophy is proclaimed dead as well, it was obvious what was next in line:
Thought is dead too.
We will have computers do the “thinking” for us. And then we will spend hours wandering about… Well, why do that?!?!?
Thousands of computers running Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system were unable to connect to the internet after installing an anti-virus update [1]. Users said they were also unable to access their internal company networks. It is not the first time an anti-virus update results in a disaster (see here).
This reminds me of how much we misunderstand computer viruses.
On the eve of computer programming (see Cohen, F., Computer Viruses – Theory and Experiments, 7th Security Conf., DOD/NBS, September 1984 – see here) viruses were considered also as a very good tool. One could use them to diseminate information to many computers throughout a network, control situations, make updates (the case of anti-virus updates), use multiple computers in a network to perform complex calculations (see the Xerox PARC Worm – see here) et cetera.
A good tool is a good tool. If it is used in a bad way, that does not change the fact that it is still a… good tool!
Take frequent backups and stop being afraid of viruses!
Rest assured. Your computer and data security is on the hands of a virus.
You use a virus every day!
