intelligent

The Moron Test is a smart and snarky game that taunts you with trick questions, memory tests, Simon Says-type instructions, and other brain teasers. The Moron Test doesn't require any specialized knowledge--just patience, attention to detail, and a little bit of creative thinking. A timer tracks your progress through successive levels (from "Bonehead" and "Average Mammal" on up to "Genius"), and any incorrect answer triggers a hearty "FAIL!" and sends you either back to the beginning or to the game's halfway checkpoint.

Overall, this is a fun (if somewhat limited) … Read more

Windows 7 is four to five times less vulnerable to malware infections than is Windows XP.

Those are the findings of Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report (PDF), which detailed in depth the state of software vulnerabilities, exploits, security breaches, and malware in 2010.

Overall, the study found that infection rates for newer Microsoft operating systems with the latest service packs are consistently lower than those for older OSes, giving Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 the highest marks for security.

Looking at the number of reported infections per 1,000 computers, Microsoft found that Windows 7 64-bit had … Read more

Is that a speck in your eye? Or just a microrobot helping preserve your vision? Researchers are working on tiny machines that can be directed through eyes to help treat conditions like macular degeneration, which can impair vision.

Scientists at the Swiss-based Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) led by Bradley Nelson are developing tiny, electromagnetically controlled microrobots that can move to a target location in the eye and remain there for months, releasing drugs.

The therapy is seen as an alternative to multiple eye injections to treat macular degeneration, which can lead to legal blindness. In the New Scientist vid below, the robot is seen moving in an eye taken from a dead pig.

The microbots can also position a biodegradable drug capsule before they are removed with a magnetic needle. … Read more

editor's notebook Since you've all no doubt shut off your smartphones for the "National Day of Unplugging" and hence can't rely on Angry Birds to help you procrastinate on doing your taxes (you have just a little more than a month, you know), I'll gallantly help you shirk (with an assist from the illustrious New York Times).

The Times' Web site is proudly making it difficult to get anything constructive done today, by offering up an interactive feature in its Science section that lets you try out your roshambo chops against a computer opponent. … Read more

If you're anything like me, you've fantasized about being a contestant on "Jeopardy"--how you'd write your name in the name box, how much you'd wager on a Daily Double, and how you'd awkwardly banter with Alex upon your introduction. Last week I got to live my dream of playing a full "Jeopardy" game--and to make the situation even more amazing, I got to do it against Watson, the famous IBM supercomputer.

In segments to be aired starting today, Watson--which boasts nearly 3,000 Power7 processors and 16 terabytes of memory and has the ability to compute more than 30 billion operations per second--will take on "Jeopardy" champs Ken Jennings (the winningest champion in the "Jeopardy" history) and Brad Rutter (the biggest money earner in the show's history, with more than $3.2 million).

Watson trained for its game show stint in its own faux "Jeopardy" studio at IBM Research's Yorktown, N.Y., facility. That's also where I had my chance at "Jeopardy" stardom.

Turned out Watson's a formidable challenger, having been fed massive amounts of information from a range of thesauri and encyclopedias, plus the Bible. And since a "Jeopardy" answer has to be deduced in around three seconds, Watson's response rate is lightning-fast.

Indeed, Watson rang in with blazing speed on every question posed to us--ranging on topics from international sports trophies to laundry detergent to fashion to tennis vocabulary--which gets frustrating when you actually know the answers. … Read more

Computers that reliably understand human communications have been a staple of fiction going back decades or more. The Enterprise's computer in the 1960s vintage "Star Trek" series is as good an example as any. And truth is, that particular science-fictional ability probably would not have seemed all that remarkable to the typical person of the time.

Access billions of pages of text, pictures, and video from a gadget I can fit in my pocket? Play a game with immersive graphics on a huge, high-resolution screen that hangs on the wall? For a computer engineer, the fact that … Read more

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y.--The first words publicly spoken by a talking computer named Watson were, "WHAT IS JERICHO?"

Watson was following the rules. Like any contestant on game show "Jeopardy," the IBM Research-built machine was required to phrase his answer in the form of a question. And Watson was playing "Jeopardy." More specifically, it was a test run this morning at IBM Research's headquarters in preparation for a televised weekend challenge against famed "Jeopardy" champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, and Watson nearly shut out those champions in a category … Read more

I spend a fair bit of my working life meeting with people, listening to their plans for their next product, project, strategy, initiative, or campaign. My job? Review, evaluate, and give feedback. It's great when I can confirm they've got things right. Check! Good! Yep! Oh, yeah, I like that! I help confirm and build confidence in the plan.

It's a good thing I have the opportunity to be positive, because the larger and more important part of the job is decidedly less affirming: figuring out where they've gone wrong. What's missing? What's vague … Read more

MENLO PARK, Calif.--If you've never seen a robot climb straight up an entirely flat vertical wall, I dare you not to be impressed the first time you do.

That was my certainly experience when I watched a wall-climbing robot do its thing at SRI International here the other day. Indeed, my host, who had been with me through several product and project demonstrations over about three hours, noticed how excited I was by watching this little device go straight up the wall, and, I think, began to wonder if I was actually interested in any of the other … Read more