You can do very well in speculation where land or anything to do with dirt
is concerned.
International Spam Ring Shut Down
smooth wombat writes "An international spam ring with ties to Australia, New Zealand, China, India, and the US is in the process of being shut down. Finances of members in the US are being frozen using the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 while the FBI is pursuing criminal charges. The group sent spam advertising male enhancement herbs and other items using a botnet estimated at 35,000 computers, and able to send 10 billion emails per day. The Federal Trade Commission monitored the group's finances and found that they had cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Machines Almost Pass Mass Turing Test
dewilso4 writes "Of the five computer finalists at this year's Loebner prize Turing Test, at least three managed to fool humans into thinking they were human conversationalists. Ready to speak about Eminem to Slaughterhouse Five and everything in between, these machines are showing they we're merely a clock cycle away from true AI. '...I was fooled. I mistook Eugene for a real human being. In fact, and perhaps this is worse, he was so convincing that I assumed that the human being with whom I was simultaneously conversing was a computer.' Another of the entrants, Jabberwacky, can apparently even woo the ladies: 'Some of its conversational partners confide in it every day; one conversation, with a teenaged girl, lasted 11 hours.' The winning submission this year, Elbot, fooled 25% of judges into thinking he was human. The threshold for the $100K prize is 30%. Maybe next year..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
FCC Report Supports Use of White Spaces For Wireless
After the FCC's tests mentioned early last month, andy1307 submits word of the FCC's report (released Friday), writing that "the major telcos disagree with the FCC's report that concluded that using white spaces to provide free wireless internet 'would not cause major interference with other services. ... The FCC concluded that sufficient technical protections would prevent major problems.' FCC chairman Kevin Martin's proposal is to auction off the spectrum, with some rules attached. 'Some of the spectrum would be used for free Internet service, which would have content filters to block material considered inappropriate for children.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Welcome to the Jony.net Relaunch
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Hands-On With Microsoft's Touchless SDK
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister takes Microsoft's recently released Touchless SDK for a test spin, controlling his Asus Eee PC 901 with a Roma tomato. The Touchless SDK is a set of .Net components that can be used to simulate the gestural interfaces of devices like the iPhone in thin air — using an ordinary USB Webcam. Although McAllister was able to draw, scroll, and play a rudimentary game with his tomato, the SDK still has some kinks to work out. 'For starters, its marker-location algorithm is very much keyed to color,' he writes. 'That's probably an efficient way to identify contrasting shapes, but color response varies by camera and is heavily influenced by ambient light conditions.' Moreover, the detection routine soaked up 64 percent of McAllister's 1.6GHz Atom CPU, with the video from the Webcam soon developing a few seconds' lag that made controlling onscreen cursors challenging. Project developer Mike Wasserman offers a video demo of the technology."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
EMP-Shielded Power Grids Under Development
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from MarketWatch: "A one-megaton nuclear bomb detonated 250 miles over Kansas could cripple many modern electronic devices and systems in the continental US and take out the power grid for a long time. ... A solar storm similar to the one that occurred in 1859, which shorted out telegraph wires in the United States and Europe, could wreak havoc on electrical systems. Each of the above scenarios can create a powerful electromagnetic pulse that overloads electronic devices and systems. IAN staff and Frostburg State University physics and engineering professor Hilkat Soysal are teaming — through a $165,000 project recently approved by the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program — to create renewable energy-powered, electromagnetic pulse (EMP)-protected microgrids that could provide electricity for critical infrastructure facilities in the event of a disaster." Also available are an EMP threat assessment (PDF) written for the US Congress and an estimate of economic impact (PDF).Read more of this story at Slashdot.
CNET UK Credits Claim That Apple Will Release Networked TVs
r2k writes "While the Apple rumours posted yesterday highlight some of the most commonly talked-about opinions, a writer for CNet UK sat down with Mahalo's Jason Calacanis, who told CNet he knew for a fact that Apple is developing fully networked LCD TV sets. As the writer points out, Apple dropped 'Computer' from its company name for a very good reason."Read more of this story at Slashdot.