From A Robot in Every Home by Bill gates
One such technology will help solve one of the most difficult problems facing robot designers: how to simultaneously handle all the data coming in from multiple sensors and send the appropriate commands to the robot’s motors, a challenge known as concurrency. A conventional approach is to write [...]

The concept of a comprehensive encyclopedia of life on the Internet proved too popular. Its computers were overwhelmed and couldn’t keep it alive when it debuted Tuesday.
The encyclopedia, which eventually will have more than 1 million pages devoted to different species of life on Earth, quickly crashed on its first day of a public unveiling, [...]

Link via Engadget

There Is ‘Design’ In Nature, Biologist Argues
“The idea that there is ‘design’ in nature is very appealing,” Miller said. “People want to believe that life isn’t purposeless and random. That’s why the intelligent design movement wins the emotional battle for adherents despite its utter lack of scientific support.
“To fight back, scientists need to reclaim the [...]

Excellent article on Social Networking from the NYT Freakonomics blog.
Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum
The big picture: social networking technologies support and enable a new model of social life, in which people’s social circles will consist of many more, but weaker, ties. Though we will continue to have some strong ties (i.e., family [...]

Back to back stories in my reader this morning:
Poor People Use Yahoo, Those Better Off Use Google
Yahoo is strong in “struggling societies,” “blue collar backbone,” and “remote America,” where as Google obtains higher use in “small town contentment,” “affluent suburbia,” and “upscale America.
and
2008 Republican National Convention Names Official Innovation Provider
Embracing technology that will [...]

Unplugged Forbes Editor in Tears After Two Days

thx Jon

Reading through old Dennettalia, I stumbled on this:
Consciousness in Human and Robot Minds
(3) Robots are artifacts, and consciousness abhors an artifact; only something natural, born not manufactured, could exhibit genuine consciousness.
…
If consciousness abhors an artifact, it cannot be because being born gives a complex of cells a property (aside from that historic property itself) [...]

just words and so much skin