Free Republic

Dying prof tackles final dream -- the NFL By Allison M. Heinrichs TRIBUNE-REVIEW Thursday, October 4, 2007 It wasn't quite playing in the National Football League, but to Randy Pausch it was close enough. The Carnegie Mellon University professor who became a worldwide sensation last month after giving his "last lecture" about achieving childhood dreams, achieved his last dream on Wednesday: He practiced with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Quantum Politics By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, September 30, 2007 Candidates and their strategists always look for a way to get inside the head of the voter, especially one who is undecided or has specific negative opinions of a candidate. A candidate cannot win if his message isn't delivered in a way that connects and says, "I share your pain." One tool that has been used to perfect candidate messaging is dial-testing -- the continuous gathering of real-time feedback from a candidate's speech or debate performance. Focus groups are given hand-held devices to measure -- on a scale of 0...

CMU, Google collaborate on robotic camera By Allison M. Heinrichs TRIBUNE-REVIEW Thursday, September 27, 2007 Carnegie Mellon University said Wednesday it is collaborating with Internet search engine giant Google to let people explore, in great detail, places around the world -- such as a Guatemalan open air market, a castle in Dublin or even exhibits at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh -- without leaving home. "We all know that imagery is compelling," said Illah Nourbakhsh, associate professor in the school of computer science's Robotics Institute. "Imagery is something that we can really use to learn about the world in a...