“These are not learning machines. These are not people with so-called photographic memory,” he told ABC News. “These are people who learn certain things about their lives and don’t forget.”

These are people who remember almost everything. Dates, times, names. Yes, even former lovers. The sort of people who remember that they were born on a Wednesday, lost their virginity on a Sunday and were arrested for the first time on a Monday.

“It’s like a hard drive,” said Bob

China has unveiled the first official rule on the use of virtual currency in the trade of real goods and services to limit possible impact on the real financial system. The Chinese government also spelled out the definition of “virtual currency” for the first time, which includes prepaid cards of cybergames, according to a joint announcement from the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Commerce Friday. It said:

The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certai

Yahoo has escape clause in Microsoft search deal

Some tweets now of out bounds at ESPN

Google buys video compression outfit On2

At Black Hat and Defcon, hackers talk shop

Hanging with hackers can make you paranoid

Also in today’s podcast: Sony releases new e-book readers; Google picks up a video compression start-up; ESPN limits employee tweets; and more of today’s top headlines.

With new Reader

Razdow wants the True Numbers system to be open and free for all, but hopes to make money selling enterprise server products to support it.

True Numbers is an interesting experiment in bringing a social space to numbers. If the concept gets traction at engineering or manufacturing companies, and if using True Numbers is not onerous, it could end up supplementing wikis as a collecting point for group intelligence.

There’s more to True Numbers than just the hyperli

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DEA)

Scientists at the University of Missouri are using computational models to show how the brain's synaptic mechanisms react to cocaine, which could help shape effective treatment.

“Our model showed that the glutamate transporters, a protein present around these connections that remove glutamate, are almost 40 percent less functional after chronic cocaine usage,” says Ashwin Mohan, a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering. “

The U.S. Congress allows the federal courts to charge a fee–currently set at 8 cents a page–to search for and download documents. The database, called PACER, is strict about charging and even levies fees for searches that result in no matches.

Which is why a pair of Princeton University graduate students, with some help from Harvard University’s Berkman Center, have developed a
Firefox browser plug-in called RECAP (PACER spelled backward). It’s designed to make more court docum

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Royal Society)

With that in mind the group evaluated the safety, expense, effectiveness, and quickness of deployment for projects falling under two main classes of geoengineering: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar-radiation management (SRM).

The report “Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty” (PDF) urged carbon emissions reduction as the primary means of halting climate change. But it looked at geoengineering–engineering the environm

Project Natal is both great gaming and a great workout, as CNET News' Ina Fried experienced firsthand when she got to try out the technology last week.

In an interview with CNET News last month, Bill Gates talked about how the technology has applications well beyond just gaming.

At last week’s analyst meeting, Bach and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer, also outlined the broad appeal of being able to interact more directly with computer interface

Pandeya was not immediately available to comment on Gonczi’s version of events but said Saturday he was skeptical that Bergman had left.

It should be noted that it is not up to Swedish stock exchange AktieTorget to issue press releases about the movements of board members for individual companies, a Swedish businessman told CNET.

Show us the money
On Friday, AktieTorget officials halted trading of Global Gaming’s shares after they were unable to obtain proof that

Also of interest, and something we didn’t do when comparing open and closed companies for last year’s shows, is the make-up of products that launched at the show. Were they for consumers or businesses?

What’s often more impressive is how quickly some of these companies that aren’t live, go on to sort things out and open up. Although last year that wasn’t necessarily the case. Just seven months after the conferences many of the companies that were not yet live