New, tips, and more
From Reuters: The perfect game of checkers ends as a draw, Canadian computer scientists reported on Thursday. The team at the University of Alberta said they had “solved” checkers, the 5,000-year-old popular board game also known as draughts. Their computer program, Chinook, spent more than 18 years playing out the 500 billion possible positions, they …
From the Boston Globe: Listen to an iPod during a storm and you may get more than electrifying tunes. A Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums, and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player’s wires. Last summer, a Colorado teen was hurt when lightning struck nearby as he …
From ZDNet: Microsoft is in the early stages of a plan that will see virtually its entire lineup of underlying Internet services opened up to developers, the software maker made clear this week. In addition to making available its existing services, such as mail and instant messaging, Microsoft also will create core infrastructure services, such …
From the New York Times: Averting a court battle over how it has handled the exodus from its Internet dial-up service, AOL has agreed to make it easier for its remaining customers to leave as part of a $3 million settlement with 48 states and the District of Columbia. The resolution, announced Wednesday, was driven …
From MSNBC: Teenagers can be serious jerks. You don’t need research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project on cyberbullying to know that. It’s interesting to note however, that at the dawn of the 21st century, teenagers have effectively transferred their jerk skills from corporeal to virtual, launching torments once reserved for the lunchroom, …
From ComputerWorld: What if there were a giant database that contained your hidden insecurities, embarrassing medical questions and the fact that you still think from time to time about your high school girlfriend? Well, such a data store does exist — if you’ve ever plugged such private topics into a search engine. The fact is, …
From CNN: Just because you live in a high-tech world doesn’t mean your manners can sink to new lows when using your personal technology, experts say. “No doubt there’ve always been stinkers from the start of time,” says Honore Ervin, co-author of “The Etiquette Grrls: Things You Need to Be Told” and “More Things You …
From the Toronto Star: It took Apple Inc. more than six months to build the iPhone but curious gadget fanatics needed only minutes to tear one apart. Within hours of the first iPhones going on sale Friday, enthusiasts scrambled to be the first to discover what makes the devices tick, posting photos and videos of …
From eWeek: Money is the motivation for scam-spam. The motivation for clicking on it is far less straightforward, and none of us is immune. “It’s not like certain people are going to be nailed by spam all the time. Or that there are certain motivations that will just [always] trigger people [who respond] to spam …
From USA Today: NASA astronauts “twittering” from the moon? It’s not such a far-fetched idea, considering the space agency’s current push to partner with Web 2.0 companies like Twitter and save itself from turning into a dinosaur in the Internet age. Some executives at the struggling NASA believe that if the agency can adopt Web …