Mozilla Extension Would Tap Into Typed Commands

PC World - August 26, 2008 by Stephen Lawson

An experimental extension to Mozilla Firefox lets people substitute simple text commands for complex Web tasks such as putting links to maps in e-mail messages.

On Tuesday, Mozilla Labs released its first version of Ubiquity, which is related to software called Enso that was developed at a small Chicago company called Humanized. Mozilla hired three executives of Humanized in January, and Aza Raskin, the former president of that company, introduced Ubiquity 0.1 in a Mozilla Labs blog entry on Tuesday. Raskin is now head of user experience at Mozilla Labs.

Ubiquity is designed to help ordinary people create something like mashups and to do it on a personal basis instead of in the form of a public Web page. The commands that users type in Ubiquity, such as "map" and "e-mail," find resources on the Web and can gather information from those sources in one place.

Read original article>>

Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

FUSION EFFORT IN FLUX

MSNBC - August 28, 2008 by Alan Boyle

Researchers have finished the first phase of an unorthodox, low-cost nuclear fusion experiment that has generated a megawatt's worth of buzz on the Internet – and they are now waiting for a verdict from their federal funders on whether to proceed to the next phase.

Richard Nebel, leader of the research team at EMC2 Fusion in New Mexico, declined to detail the results of the project, saying that was up to the people paying the bills. But he did said “we have had some success" in the effort to reproduce the promising results reported by the late physicist Robert Bussard.

Read original article>>

Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

IBM tests 4-terabyte solid-state drive tech

CNET News - August 28, 2008 by Brooke Crothers

First it was Intel. Now, Big Blue is keen on solid-state drives.

IBM said Thursday it is testing a 4-terabyte, high-speed solid-state drive array targeted at the enterprise, as the technology giant gives its imprimatur to flash-memory-based storage.

For years, flash memory cards--the first mass-market SSDs--have been limited to digital cameras and music players like the iPod. But SSDs are now poised to hit technological critical mass in terms of storage capacity, speed, and availability as they find their way into everything ranging from tiny netbooks to massive enterprise storage arrays.

High-performance enterprise storage is where IBM comes in. Engineers and researchers at the IBM Hursley development lab in England and the Almaden Research Center in California have demonstrated performance results that outperform the world's fastest disk storage solution by more than 250 percent, according to IBM.

Read original article>>

Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Technology That Outthinks Us: A Partner or a Master?

NYT - August 25, 2008 by JOHN TIERNEY

In Vernor Vinge’s version of Southern California in 2025, there is a school named Fairmont High with the motto, “Trying hard not to become obsolete.” It may not sound inspiring, but to the many fans of Dr. Vinge, this is a most ambitious — and perhaps unattainable — goal for any member of our species.

Dr. Vinge is a mathematician and computer scientist in San Diego whose science fiction has won five Hugo Awards and earned good reviews even from engineers analyzing its technical plausibility. He can write space operas with the best of them, but he also suspects that intergalactic sagas could become as obsolete as their human heroes.

The problem is a concept described in Dr. Vinge’s seminal essay in 1993, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” which predicted that computers would be so powerful by 2030 that a new form of superintellligence would emerge. Dr. Vinge compared that point in history to the singularity at the edge of a black hole: a boundary beyond which the old rules no longer applied, because post-human intelligence and technology would be as unknowable to us as our civilization is to a goldfish.

Read original article>>

Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Robots to be more intelligent than humans in 40 years

techradar.com - August 22, 2008 by Gareth Beavis

Intel has had a little chat about the future of the computing and robotics at the recent IDF event, and has come out with some alarming facts.

The firm predicts in just over 40 years machines may have the reasoning power of humans, though stopped short of saying they will become our masters and we will be forced to do their bidding.

"The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago," said Justin Rattner, CTO of Intel said.

"There is speculation that we may be approaching an inflection point where the rate of technology advancements is accelerating at an exponential rate, and machines could even overtake humans in their ability to reason, in the not so distant future."

Read original article>>

Technological Singularity and Futurism is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Advancing machine intelligence - Photos

CNET News - August 22, 2008

Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner agrees with futurist Ray Kurzweil's assessment that the "singularity," when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence, is nigh.

To provide some evidence that technology is moving in that direction, he showed a number of advancements in robotics, communication, and other areas in a keynote speech Thursday at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

Here, Rattner snatches an apple from the grasp of a robot arm and hand that can sense objects purely by changes in the surrounding electric field.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Robot aircraft will ride thermals to save fuel

NewScientist.com - August 21, 2008

Glider pilots harness upward-moving thermal air currents to keep them aloft for hours, while soaring birds use them to save energy. Uncrewed aerial vehicles may soon borrow the same technique to save precious fuel, using software that identifies regions of rising air.

"It could increase the vehicles' endurance during surveillance missions," says Rhys Watkin of Roke Manor Research in Hampshire, UK, a member of the team that developed the system.

To seek out nearby thermal currents, the software first analyses video of the sky taken by an on-board camera. It searches for the telltale grey, dome-shaped clouds that are formed by rapidly rising hot air. The system combines this with real-time weather forecasts and computer simulations of air flow across the local terrain to predict the locations of further thermal currents. The team also fed the software information from anecdotal reports by expert gliders, highlighting areas of rising air in specific locations and in various weather conditions.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Intel, Yahoo to Offer Software for Web Access on TV

Bloomberg.com - August 20, 2008 by Ian King

Intel Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. are creating software to give televisions the ability to display the Web without interfering with the programming, allowing a viewer to check the bio of an actor in the movie on the screen.

TV watchers can access a news story, sports score or weather forecast from the Web by clicking an on-screen icon with the remote control, Intel Senior Vice President Eric Kim said today at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The software will be given for free to TV-service providers.

A drop in the price of computer-processors brought on by increasing competition has sent Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, seeking growth with consumer-electronics devices. For Yahoo, owner of the second most-used Internet search engine, offering content on TV may yield more viewers for its Web ads.

``Consumers are ready for more,'' said Kim. Internet traffic increased during the Super Bowl, one example of TV watchers wanting simultaneous access to more information, he said.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games

TimesOnline - August 18, 2008 by Jonathan Richards

'Emily' will set a new precedent for photo-realistic characters in video games and films, says her creator, Image Metrics

Extraordinarily lifelike characters are to begin appearing in films and computer games thanks to a new type of animation technology.

Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated.

She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Do subatomic particles have free will?

ScienceNews - August 15th, 2008 by Julie Rehmeyer

If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove.

“If the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect—what is the source of the free will possessed by living things throughout the earth?”—Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman philosopher and poet, 99–55 BC.

Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably.

The finding won’t give many physicists a moment’s worry, because traditional interpretations of quantum mechanics embrace unpredictability already. The best anyone can hope to do, quantum theory says, is predict the probability that a particle will behave in a certain way.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

The Brain Unmasked - New imaging technologies reveal intricate architecture

Technology Review - Wednesday, August 06, 2008 by Emily Singer

The typical brain scan shows a muted gray rendering of the brain, easily distinguished by a series of convoluted folds. But according to Van Wedeen, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, that image is just a shadow of the real brain. The actual structure--a precisely organized tangle of nerve cells and the long projections that connect them--has remained hidden until relatively recently.

Traditional magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, can detect the major anatomical features of the brain and is often used to diagnose strokes and brain tumors. But advances in computing power and novel processing algorithms have allowed scientists to analyze the information captured during an MRI in completely new ways.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Beyond 3G: Ultra-fast Mobile Radio Networks Of The Future

ScienceDaily - August 8, 2008

Today’s growing third generation (3G) of mobile data services are only a taste of what is to come. Now, European researchers are paving the way to a world where ultra-fast internet access is available from every mobile device.

What started out as a luxury item for high-flying executives is now a fashion accessory for teenagers throughout Europe, and increasingly, in the rest of the world. In November 2007 the number of mobile phone subscriptions passed 3.3 billion, more than half the population of the globe. In most EU countries there are now more mobile phones than there are people.

But the real growth today is in the mobile data communication segment, via new 3G digital networks being created by providers. Such 3G services include video telephony and broadband internet access. Industry sources report that the number of EU users of 3G services doubled to 112 million in the year to April 2008.

But what will the next generation of mobile radio networks look like?

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Speculations on the Future of Science - Kevin Kelly

Edge: The Third Culture

Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprise us. At the core of science's self-modification is technology. New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery. The achievement of science is to know new things; the evolution of science is to know them in new ways. What evolves is less the body of what we know and more the nature of our knowing.

Technology is, in its essence, new ways of thinking. The most powerful type of technology, sometimes called enabling technology, is a thought incarnate which enables new knowledge to find and develop news ways to know. This kind of recursive bootstrapping is how science evolves. As in every type of knowledge, it accrues layers of self-reference to its former state.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Virtual hand gets under the skin

NewScientist - August 14, 2008 by Colin Barras





These new amazingly realistic animations of the human hand go way beyond the demands of Hollywood (see video, right). They are detailed enough to shed light on the mystery of how the tendons and muscles of the human hand interact when we move, and should help surgeons reconstruct damaged hands more effectively.

Computer animators are adept at making characters that move realistically, largely thanks to advances in motion capture technology that records the way people move.

But even the best motion capture only records the movement of the body's surface. That's fine for a movie, but surgeons are less superficial. They are interested in the movement of muscles and tendons beneath the skin.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

BigDog - Do these gadgets foretell the end of days?

MSNBC.com by Daniel Harrison

Say hello to your future robot overlord: BigDog. His designers at Boston Dynamics hail him as, "The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth." I'm calling him "death on the hoof."

If I've learned anything from watching too many movies, it's that Jerry Bruckheimer likes to blow crap up. If I've learned anything else, it's that you can't trust robots.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense), who incidentally funded the creation of the Internet, now funds this .7-meter-tall, 1-meter-long mechanical quadruped designed to traverse all manner of terrain. Thanks, that just means we'll have nowhere to hide.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

'Slow' light to speed up the net

BBC News - August 13 2008 by Jason Palmer

A huge increase in the speed of the internet could be produced by slowing parts of it down, say researchers.

Applying the brakes could be the "metamaterials" that may make it possible to create invisibility cloaks.

The net's speed limit comes about not in transporting information, but in routing it to its various destinations.

Metamaterials could replace the bulky and slow electronics that do the routing, paving the way for lightning fast speeds.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

A 'Frankenrobot' with a biological brain

Breitbart.com - August 13, 2008


Meet Gordon, probably the world's first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue.

Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon's primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday.

Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers told AFP.

"The purpose is to figure out how memories are actually stored in a biological brain," said Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading and one of the robot's principle architects.

Observing how the nerve cells cohere into a network as they fire off electrical impulses, he said, may also help scientists combat neurodegenerative diseases that attack the brain such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

"If we can understand some of the basics of what is going on in our little model brain, it could have enormous medical spinoffs," he said.

Looking a bit like the garbage-compacting hero of the blockbuster animation "Wall-E", Gordon has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons.

Once removed from rat foetuses and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath, the specialised nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich medium across an eight-by-eight centimetre (five-by-five inch) array of 60 electrodes.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

2028 vision for mechanical engineering - bio- and nanotechnology will dominate

Nanowerk News, August 12, 2008

Mechanical engineers over the next two decades will be called upon to develop technologies that foster a cleaner, healthier, safer and sustainable global environment. According to the ASME report, 2028 Vision for Mechanical Engineering, mechanical engineers will need to collaborate with partners worldwide in order to apply innovative solutions and best practices to improve quality of life for all people.

“Mechanical engineers can be at the forefront of developing new technology for environmental remediation, farming and food production, housing, transportation, safety, security, healthcare and water resources,” says the report, which is based on the proceedings of The Global Summit on the Future of Mechanical Engineering, held April 16-18, 2008, Washington, D.C. The summit, hosted by ASME at the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, convened more than 120 engineering and science leaders from 19 countries for the purpose of defining the elements of a shared vision that will keep the profession at the forefront of grand challenges and great contributions over the next 20 years.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Science close to unveiling invisible man

The Sunday Times - August 10, 2008 by Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

INVISIBILITY devices, long the realm of science fiction and fantasy, have moved closer after scientists engineered a material that can bend visible light around objects.

The breakthrough could lead to systems for rendering anything from people to large objects, such as tanks and ships, invisible to the eye – although this is still years off.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, whose work is funded by the American military, have engineered materials that can control light’s direction of travel. The world’s two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Bionic eye heralds cyborg revolution

Telegraph.co.uk - August 6, 2008 by Roger Highfield, Science Editor

An electronic eye that works like the real thing foreshadows the development of a new generation of bionic eyes and other "cyborg" technology seen in the film "Terminator" and other Hollywood sci-fi movies.

The electronic eye uses a curved detection surface like a human eye, made of "stretchable electronics."
    
The first of its kind, the bionic eye produces exceptional images with lower distortion and with a broader field of view than possible with conventional flat camera microchips.

However, the underlying approach to producing flexible electronic surfaces of silicon chip sensors could find uses in moulding chips to the human body and 'smart' prosthetics, leading to new opportunities for doctors to boost the body with electronics.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Material bends, stretches, conducts electricity?

MSNBC.com - August 8, 2008 by Julie Steenhuysen

Elastic conductor could help mount circuits in places that were impossible

CHICAGO - In the latest twist on electronics, Japanese scientists said on Thursday they have developed a rubbery material that conducts electricity, a finding that could be used to make devices that bend and stretch.

The material, described by Tsuyoshi Sekitani of the University of Tokyo in the journal Science, could be used on curved surfaces or even in moving parts, they said.

Sekitani's team developed their material using carbon nanotubes, a long stretch of carbon molecules that can conduct electricity.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Want to Live Forever?

Hartford Advocate - August 7, 2008 by Adam Bulger

The human-life-extension movement sees a glorious future for us all

"Transhumanism is the idea that it's OK to transcend the limitations of the body and brain and take control of reproduction," said former World Transhumanist Association Executive Director James Hughes. "And add to that the belief that it's probably a good idea." It's hardly a surprise that transhumanist ideas have spread widely through the Internet. Dovetailing with its growth is a related idea called the singularity, a projection of future dramatic technological advancement. The singularity was first proposed by science fiction author Verner Vinge in a 1983 Omni magazine article. Vinge wrote, "Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended." Like many such futurist projections, this one is unlikely to come true—we'd have to achieve all this by 2013.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Breakthrough In Quantum Mechanics: Superconducting Electronic Circuit Pumps Microwave Photons

ScienceDaily - August 5, 2008

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have recently reached what they are calling a milestone in experimental quantum mechanics.

In a paper published in the July 17 issue of the journal Nature, UCSB physicists Max Hofheinz, John Martinis, and Andrew Cleland documented how they used a superconducting electronic circuit known as a Josephson phase qubit, developed in Martinis's lab, to controllably pump microwave photons, one at a time, into a superconducting microwave resonator.

Up to six photons were pumped into and stored in the resonator, and their presence was then detected using the qubit, which acts like an electronic atom, as an analyzer. The photon number states, known as Fock states, have never before been controllably created, said Cleland.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Puppies of hero pit bull Booger are world's first commercial clones - Jenny Booth

Times Online - August 5, 2008

South Korea has carried out the first commercial cloning of a pet dog, creating five identical copies of Booger the pit bull terrier for an American client.

Bernann McKinney, 57, a film scriptwriter from Hollywood, blinked back tears of joy as she cuddled her five puppy clones, created at Seoul National University’s veterinary school using some of Booger's refrigerated ear tissue.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Toyota tests Segway-like stand-up-and-ride machine

Physorg.com, August 1, 2008

A model demonstrates Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp.'s new motorized ride "Winglet" during a press conference in Tokyo Friday, Aug. 1, 2008. Toyota will start testing the stand-up-and-ride contraption, that travels at up to 6 kph (3.7 mph), later this year at a Japanese airport and resort complex and next year at a shopping mall to get feedback from people. No plans are set to sell the Winglet as a commercial product. (AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara).

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Dark Energy Signs Seen in Giant Clusters and Voids - Clara Moskowitz

Space.com, August 4, 2008


Scientists have found more intriguing evidence for dark energy — one of nature's most befuddling phenomena.

Dark energy is thought to make up about 74 percent of the universe, while dark matter — a mysterious form of matter that scientists can only detect by noting its gravitational pull on things — makes up about 22 percent. That leaves only 4 percent of the universe composed of things we can see and touch: the normal protons, electrons and neutrons called baryonic matter.

Scientists don't know what dark energy is, but they observe its tugging effect, which causes the expansion of the universe to accelerate. Now they have seen this mysterious force in some of the largest known features of the cosmos, called superclusters and supervoids.

Read original article>>


Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Rumors Abound About 'Potential for Life' on Mars - Alexis Madrigal

Wired Science. August 3, 2008

Rumors are flying this weekend that Mars Phoenix has made a major discovery relating to the potential for life on Mars.

Wired.com reached Sam Kounaves, the mission's wet chemistry lab lead, by cell phone this morning. He quickly directed us to speak with NASA's PR representatives, but not before he said, simply, "Rumors are rumors."

They stem from an article in Aviation Week and subsequent pickup on Slashdot and elsewhere indicating that the White House had been briefed on the potential for life on the planet.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...

Survival of the Machines - David Sachs

The Gazette, Saturday, July 19

In the movie The Terminator, set in the not-too-distant future, computers become smart enough to break free of the tyranny of their human masters. Of course, the computers round up and kill the humans. It doesn't look like a lot of fun in the movie.

In the real world, a few researchers are working toward a moment that feels inspired by such science fiction: a tipping point when smart computers themselves become capable of creating smarter computers, at a speed and in a direction we cannot predict.

That moment is the Singularity.

Read original article>>

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.

Read more...