geekosystem

Attention college students: Do you like playing video games? More specifically, do you like a game called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim? If so, then I suggest you hightail it on down to Rice University in Houston, Texas, the only school that I know of with a course devoted entirely to the epic open-world RPG. For one semester only, English majors can sign up for Scandinavian Fantasy Worlds: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim, a course that studies the psychology of gamers and the influence of Scandinavian culture in western fantasy stories.

If you've ever done any programming, you know that one of the best things about computers, and also one of the most annoying things about them, is that they don't make mistakes. A computer will always do exactly what you tell it to, and if you don't get the right result, it is 100% your fault. At least, this is usually the case. Researchers at Rice University have made an interesting discovery, however. If you build your computer chips so that they can make mistakes, you can boost your efficiency by crazy amounts, to the point where more accident-prone chips can be 15 times more efficient than their always-perfect counterparts.

Researchers at Rice University have developed a system for remotely searching images stored on mobile devices. The goal of the software, called Theia, is to give searchers a near-realtime view of what is being photographed on with now-ubiquitous camera phones. It's like that bit in The Dark Knight where Batman turns every phone in Gotham into a sonar/microphone, except with pictures and it's for real. Obviously, there are going to be some privacy concerns with something like this, but let's focus on why this information would be useful. The most dramatic example would be that of a lost or abducted child. With Theia, law enforcement could search cell phones the world over for the child, hoping to catch an image accidentally caught by someone's phone. The hope is that with the staggering number of camera-equipped cellphones in the world, someone will catch what you're looking for -- intentionally or not. The system works through a server for addressing the searches and an app installed onto the phones.

Rice University has issued a statement saying that Leticia Aguirre, a 48-year old Houston grandmother, is the nation's first user of "Super WiFi" technology. The technology has been in the works for some time and promises to better access to users in the future. Aguirre was already receiving Internet service through a community WiFi network that covered three miles, but apparently never received adequate access since she lived on the edge fo the network. This made her the perfect candidate for Super WiFi, since the technology is meant to provide more coverage than traditional WiFi.