Robot Prison Guard Being Tested, Swears It’s Not Preparing to Enslave Humanityumanity

While it isn’t quite as bad-ass as Alex Murphy, South Korea’s robot prison guard promises to uphold its prime directives: watch over prisoners and snitch to their human colleagues if needed.

As you can see the prototype looks far more serious than the smiley-faced concept, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t care about its ward. Supposedly it can gauge the prisoners’ emotional state and record their normal habits so that it can watch out for errant behavior such as suicidal tendencies. Hopefully it won’t reprimand folks for being too happy.

The robot is also equipped with a camera and a two-way audio system so the human guards can talk to prisoners remotely. The robot can also be controlled via an app, which is both a user-friendly feature and a horrible security risk.

I wonder if they’re going to install weapons or defense mechanisms to the final version.

source

TOP 25 TECHNOLOGY QUOTES

It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.-Clive James

 

Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
-NASA in 1965

 

Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
-John F. Kennedy

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
-Karl Marx

 

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted -Albert Einstein

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
-Thomas Alva Edison

 

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." -Albert Einstein

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
-Albert Einstein

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.-Aldous Huxley

"The perfect computer has been developed. You just feed in your problems and they never come out again."-AL Goodman

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
-B. F. Skinner Contingencies of Reinforcement, 1969

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

-Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams, 1923

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
-Isaac Newton

Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.
-Jeff Pesis

 "Beware of computer programmers that carry screwdrivers."
-Leonard Brandwein

All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.
-Mark Kennedy

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-Pablo Picasso

"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer."
-Paul Ehrlich

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
-Rich Cook

Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.
-Sam Ewing

“Technology has the shelf life of a banana.”
-Scott McNealy

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.
-Steve Wozniak

The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them
-Sir William Bragg

 

Anyone who puts a small gloss on a fundamental technology, calls it proprietary, and then tries to keep others from building on it, is a thief.
-Tim O'Reilly

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
-Winston Churchill

Infogeeze: Tips On How To Repair Slow Computers

Sometimes computers are very slow due to overloading of files and programs that leads to low hard disk space. It can also be slow because of spyware viruses and corrupt OS. There are so many solutions and steps that can be used to repair slow computer to reduce the demand of resources. There are more than ten ways that can help you solve this computer problem. You should always have a back up in your computer to make sure that your documents are safe. This is a perfect way to ensure that you do not loose documents after you engage the machinery to revive your computer.

If your computer is slow when performing tasks then it, means that you need to update your windows regularly. Automatic updates secure the computer from any threat originating from external mass storage devices like flash disks or CDs. Spyware is a small program that records information about the internet activity and relays it back to the users. By using spyware software to repair slow computer you can detect the sudden decrease in performance when there is a mar law infection and any spy wares. Viruses are small computer programs that you get mostly when downloading some of the applications and programs.

These viruses slow down your computer and most of the times it tends to crash. To prevent this you need to have a computer antivirus and it should be always updated at all times. The viruses also contribute to the slowdown and as a result, you have to be alert in case of any. The other solution to repair slow computer is the registry repair. The register is like a directory of all the computer programs and can be reorganized and cleaned up by removing all the unwanted files. This tends to increase your computer speed if it was the only cause of slowness.

You should make sure there is only one security suite by always removing one suite before installing the other. Turning off the unnecessary programs can also help to increase the speed. The security suite protects your computer and data and most of all your identity thus speeding up the computer. By use of a firewall protection to repair slow computer prevents any unauthorized data from been sent or received thus speeding the computer. The computer can also be slowed down by keeping many useless files or the programs that are not being used.

Removing the unwanted programs can increase the speed of your computer because the creation of space in the drive allows data execution to be faster. The computer can be slow with delay due to temporary and unnecessary files from your hard drive. Removing them can help in speeding up the computer. you can repair slow computer and saves time by running the disk cleanup on your computer. The disk defragmentation is the other way of speeding up the computer and preventing the data from being broken into pieces and making it harder to retrieve and update them. This makes it easy to save the documents and update them regularly

Other solutions of repairing slow computer include the system recovery, complete system restoring, free utility, removal of hardware that is old and finally checking the size of your memory. All these tips help to repair slow computer and mostly the fan and the heat sink requires regular cleaning. Turning off glitters helps speed up the computer thus reducing the consumption of charge being consumed. Avoid using shortcuts because they can have adverse effects on your computer. Consulting an expert can also be beneficial because there are faster tips that can revive your computer.

source

Facebook Acquires Instagram For $1 Billion

Facebook buys the iPhone app of the year in 2011 —-Instagram, for whooping purchase price of $1 billion will be paid in cash and Facebook shares.

According to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg:

This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.
We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

For 18 months, Instagram have been on the limelight of photo sharing app gathering 30 million iOS users alone, not taking into consideration that the app have just debuted on the Android platform and got millions of downloads immediately.

According to recent company valuation done by Sequoia Capital, Thrive, Benchmark and Greylock, Instagram is reported  worth $500 million. And Facebook got a seemingly preventive offer of twice the worth of the company (which totally a crazy number) against Google, Twitter and Microsoft eying to take over the Instagram. “Facebook has the money (almost $4 billion in cash on hand as of December 2011), and certainly isn’t desperate for more users, most if not all of whom are already on Facebook,” as cited in a Forbes’ report.

The bad news all be to Yahoo’s Flickr as Facebook is taking the photo space and Instagram acquisition might put the final puzzle to conclusive takedown, though we still see that the Facebook-Instagram integration will need fine tuning in terms of aesthetics such bigger resolution and detailed filter effects done on the image.

source

Google Glasses With Virtual And Augmented Reality

As per many reports, Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. These glasses will have the combined features of virtual reality and augmented reality.

The Google Glasses can use a 4G cell connection to pull in information from Google’s mountain of data and display info about the real world in augmented reality on the lens in front of your eye. As you turn your head you’ll get information about your surroundings and nearby objects from Google Goggles, info on buildings and establishments from Google Maps, even your friends’ nearby check-ins from Latitude. The company has no plans to sell ads into your newly augmented view of the world, but will consider it if the product really catches on.

The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor.

Google glasses are basically wearable computers, that will use the same Android software that powers Android smartphones and tablets. Like smartphones and tablets, the glasses will be equipped with GPS and motion sensors. They will also contain a camera and audio inputs and outputs.

Several people who have seen the glasses, but who are not allowed to speak publicly about them, said that the location information was a major feature of the glasses. Through the built-in camera on the glasses, Google will be able to stream images to its rack computers and return augmented reality information to the person wearing them. For instance, a person looking at a landmark could see detailed historical information and comments about it left by friends. If facial recognition software becomes accurate enough, the glasses could remind a wearer of when and how he met the vaguely familiar person standing in front of him at a party. They might also be used for virtual reality games that use the real world as the playground.

The expectation is that we will get a really cool demonstration of this technology at Google I/O in June.

source

A Very Old Plant From Stone Age Brought Back to Life, From 32,000-Year-Old Seeds

32,000-Year-Old Plant

A Russian team discovered a seed cache of Silene stenophylla, a flowering plant native to Siberia, that had been buried by an Ice Age squirrel near the banks of the Kolyma River. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the seeds were 32,000 years old.

The mature and immature seeds, which had been entirely encased in ice, were unearthed from 124 feet (38 meters) below the permafrost, surrounded by layers that included mammoth, bison, and woolly rhinoceros bones.

The mature seeds had been damaged—perhaps by the squirrel itself, to prevent them from germinating in the burrow. But some of the immature seeds retained viable plant material.

The team extracted that tissue from the frozen seeds, placed it in vials, and successfully germinated the plants, according to a new study. The plants—identical to each other but with different flower shapes from modern S. stenophylla—grew, flowered, and, after a year, created seeds of their own.

“I can’t see any intrinsic fault in the article,” said botanist Peter Raven, President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden, who was not involved in the study. “Though it’s such an extraordinary report that of course you’d want to repeat it.”

The new study suggests that permafrost could be a “depository for an ancient gene pool,” a place where any number of now extinct species could be found and resurrected, experts say.

“Any insight gained on seeds which have been frozen and how to thaw them and sprout them is very valuable,” she said.

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s Raven added that, if we can uncover the conditions that kept the seeds viable for 32,000 years, then “if you were doing it yourself, you’d be able to preserve [seeds] for longer.”

source

Translate your Gmail Messages into your Language

Gmail users will now be able to translate e-mails in foreign languages into the their own, with Google introducing a new feature. 

Google on its official Blog has said a new 'Translate message' header will be soon introduced in Gmail. 

"Over the next few days, everyone who uses Gmail will be getting the convenience of translation added to their email. The next time you receive a message in a language other than your own, just click on Translate message in the header at the top of the message," Jeff Chin, Product Manager, Google Translate, said. 

The idea mooted after Google introduced automatic message translation in Gmail Labs and prompted the labs team to go for a survey in which the teams found the necessity of Gmail message translation. 

"Since message translation was one of the most popular labs, we decided it was time to graduate from Gmail Labs and move into the real world. Over the next few days, everyone who uses Gmail will be getting the convenience of translation added to their email," Chin added. 

The feature also automatic translation feature. Google had recently announced that it is increasing everyone's free storage in Gmail from 7.5 GB to 10 GB.

Courtesy