Jack Henderson

There’s an earlier post here on this initiative at IBM, and the advancements continue. To me, this sort of natural-language research is the most intriguing area in artificial intelligence. It’s not so much the ability to come up with the correct response (difficult enough, since the “machine” is disconnected from the resources of the Internet); [...]

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The story I’m working on now isn’t about robots, but it does center around the extension of human capabilities through technology.  That’s something that’s been going on since ancient times, of course, but the technologies are getting a little more gee-whiz every day. Take a look at this video, and check out the move around [...]

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from The London Evening Standard 70-year gag on Kelly death evidence 24.01.10 Evidence relating to the death of Government weapons inspector David Kelly is to be kept secret for 70 years, it has been reported. A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death, means medical records including the [...]

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The quotation “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance“ has been attributed to a number of likely figures, including Jefferson, Lincoln, and Paine. (For you sticklers, there’s more on the probable original source here.) While I’m sure this thought occurred to each of them independently in their time, the sentiment is so enduring that it [...]

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Well, it certainly was at the time, but not anymore. “The Biggest Scandal Ever” was the New York Times headline on May 29, 1990, referring to the Savings and Loan bailout. Half a trillion dollars was the high-end estimate of the theft from the taxpayers; that figure sounds almost quaint by current standards, doesn’t it? [...]

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General Ali Fazli, who was recently appointed as a commander of the Revolutionary Guards in the province of Tehran, is reported to have been arrested after he refused to carry out orders from the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to use force on people protesting the controversial re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” read more

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from John Markoff at The New York Times Artificial intelligence is back in fashion, which raises the question: Will computer intelligence surpass our own? Others who have observed the increasing power of computing technology are even less sanguine about the future outcome. The computer designer and venture capitalist William Joy, for example, wrote a pessimistic [...]

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The goal of this bill is simple: direct the Government Accountability Office to complete, before the end of 2010, an audit of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and of the federal reserve banks, and provide a detailed report to Congress. The bill also retains/reaffirms the power of the Comptroller General to [...]

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Few science teams can match the flash and audacity of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.  Last week DARPA showed off 9 future projects that tackle building blazing, secure networks, longer-flying unmanned aircraft, faster vaccine delivery, and more. read more | digg story

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I suppose the two books I’ve written (and the third that I’m working on now) are historical thrillers, in that there’s a lot of inter-mixing of things that actually did happen, with things that probably happened (though we may never be able to verify them), rounded out with some other exciting things that didn’t happen [...]

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from The Guardian An MP who was involved in last month’s G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds. Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. [...]

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