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Science

Submission + - Vegetative state man "talks" by brain scan (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by c0lo
c0lo writes: Severely brain-injured Scott Routley hasn’t spoken in 12 years. None of his physical assessments since then have shown any sign of awareness, or ability to communicate, thus being diagnosed as vegetative (vegetative patients emerge from a coma into a condition where they have periods awake, with their eyes open, but have no perception of themselves or the outside world).

Scott Routley was asked questions while having his brain activity scanned in an fMRI machine. British neuroscientist Prof Adrian Owen said Mr Routley was clearly not vegetative.
"Scott has been able to show he has a conscious, thinking mind. We have scanned him several times and his pattern of brain activity shows he is clearly choosing to answer our questions. We believe he knows who and where he is."

As a consequence, medical textbooks would need to be updated to include Prof Owen's techniques, because only observational assessments (as opposed to using mind-readers) of Mr Routley have continued to suggest he is vegetative.

The professor in an earlier interview functional MRI machines are expensive (up to $2 million), but it’s quite possible that a portable high-end EEG machine, costing about $75,000, can be used at a patient’s bedside.

Phillip K Dick's world is one step closer.
Google

Submission + - Motorola Wants 2.25% of Microsoft's Surface Revenue (geekwire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On the opening day of a patent trial between Microsoft and Google-owned Motorola Mobility, Motorola filed a brief (PDF) arguing that the WiFi tech central to the case is also critical to Microsoft's new Surface tablet. Motorola says royalties totaling 2.25% of all Surface revenues is a good starting point. They wrote, 'Microsoft’s new Surface tablet will use only 802.11, instead of cellular or wired connections, to connect to the internet. Without 802.11 capability, the Surface tablet would be unable to compete in the market, because consumers can readily select tablet devices other than the Surface that have 802.11 capability.' Microsoft, of course, says this figure is outrageous, given 'Motorola’s promise to standards bodies to offer access to the "standard essential" patents on fair and reasonable terms.'
Space

Submission + - Total Solar Eclipse Bedazzles Northern Australians (rawstory.com) 1

Submitted by Penurious Penguin
Penurious Penguin writes: Tuesday at 6.38am (2038 GMT Tuesday) thousands of Australians witnessed a solar eclipse in northern Queensland, where it was the first total eclipse in over 1000 years for the specific region. The most prominent view occurred in Cairns, while elsewhere in locations such as New Zealand, parts of Indonesia and Australia, partial eclipses were visible. Totality lasted approximately two minutes — a video (YouTube) can be seen here. Scientists are also taking the opportunity to study both land and aquatic wildlife in affected areas.

Submission + - AT&T Data usage definition proprietary???

Submitted by
stox
stox writes: "As many of you know, AT&T has implemented caps on DSL usage. When this was implemented, I started getting emails lettting me know my usage as likely to exceed the cap. After consulting their Internet Usage web page, I felt the numbers just weren't right, so with the help of Tomato on my router, I started measuring my usage, and ended up with numbers subnstantially below what AT&T was reporting on a day to day basis. Typically around 20-30% less. BTW, this usage is the sum of inbound and outbound. At this point, I decided to contact AT&T support to determine what exactly they were defining as usage, as their web pages never really define it. Did I get a suprise, after several calls, they finally told me that they consider the methodology by which they calculate bandwidth usage to be PROPRIETARY. Yes, you read that right, it is a secret. They left me with the option to contact their Excutive Offices via snail mail, email was not an option.

So, I bring my questions to you, all knowing slashdotters, are there any laws that require AT&T to divulge how they are calculating bandwidth? Should I contact my state's commerce commission or the FCC to attempt to get an answer to this?"
Cloud

Submission + - Yes, the FBI and CIA can read your email. Here's how (zdnet.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Petraeus-gate," some U.S. pundits are calling it. How significant is it that even the head of the CIA can have his emails read by an albeit friendly domestic intelligence agency, which can lead to his resignation and global, and very public humiliation? And, it's not just limited to U.S. citizens. Through the Patriot Act, they can access EU/U.K. and Australian citizens' data, too. Here's how they do it.
AMD

Submission + - AMD hires bank to explore sale options (reuters.com)

Submitted by Dainsanefh
Dainsanefh writes: Advanced Micro Devices has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore options, which could include a potential sale, as the chipmaker struggles to find a role in an industry increasingly focused on mobile and away from traditional PCs, according to three sources familiar with the situation.
Security

Submission + - Eugene Kaspersky: Clear Need to Define Cyberweapons and Cyberwar (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The term cyberwar has become a catch-all used by politicians, talking heads and others to encompass just about any online threat, regardless of the attacker or the target. Among security professionals, however, the word has a specific connotation--an attack by one nation against another nation's infrastructure. Aside from the semantic issues, one of the major challenges for government agencies and security teams dealing with his problem is attribution and recognizing what constitutes an actual act of cyberwar. Stuxnet, Flame and their cousins may qualify, but more discussion is needed to help define the terms of these new conflicts, experts say.

One of the key problems is that virtually any attack tool could be defined as a cyberweapon, depending upon the context, the target and the attacker. Certainly tools such as Duqu fall into that category, but so might simple remote-access Trojans under certain circumstances. Who makes that call? Right now, it's mainly made by either the victim or a security researcher on the outside.

"There's no definition of cyberweapons. What's the difference between cyberweapons and traditional ones?" said Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab, in a discussion on Tuesday. "One difference is software is software. People can make a copy, disassemble it, learn its tricks."
Google

Submission + - Google Guts Oregon Data Center to Pump Up Power (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: Google recently “gutted” the electrical infrastructure of its data center in Oregon to upgrade it for more powerful servers. The rip-and-replace was done in phases, according to Joe Kava, Vice President – Data Centers at Google, so the work didn't interrupt uptime. "We’re always changing things,” he said. “You may be putting four or five generations of equipment into that facility over its lifetime." In a conference presentation, Kava also revealed that Google has an alligator living in a pond at its South Carolina data center.
The Internet

Submission + - French Company Building a Mobile Internet Just for Things (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: "France now has a dedicated cellular data network just for Internet of Things devices, and the company that built it is rolling out the technology elsewhere, says MIT Technology Review. SigFox's network is slower than a conventional cellular data network, but built using technology able to make much longer range links and operate on unlicensed spectrum. Those features are intended to allow the service to be cheap enough for low cost sensors on energy infrastructure and many other places to make sense, something not possible on a network shared with smartphones and other consumer devices."
Transportation

Submission + - Airlines Face Acute Pilot Shortage 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The WSJ reports that US airlines are facing their most serious pilot shortage since the 1960s, with federal mandates taking effect that will require all newly hired pilots to have at least 1,500 hours of prior flight experience—six times the current minimum—raising the cost and time to train new fliers in an era when pay cuts and more-demanding schedules already have made the profession less attractive. Meanwhile, thousands of senior pilots at major airlines soon will start hitting the mandatory retirement age of 65. "We are about four years from a solution, but we are only about six months away from a problem.,” says Bob Reding, recently retired executive vice president of operations at AMR Corp. A study by the University of North Dakota's aviation department indicates major airlines will need to hire 60,000 pilots by 2025 to replace departures and cover expansion over the next eight years. Meanwhile only 36,000 pilots have passed the Air Transport Pilot exam in the past eight years, which all pilots would have to pass under the congressionally imposed rules and there are limits to the ability of airlines, especially the regional carriers, to attract more pilots by raising wages. While the industry's health has improved in recent years, many carriers still operate on thin profit margins, with the airlines sandwiched between rising costs for fuel and unsteady demand from price-sensitive consumers. "It certainly will result in challenges to maintain quality," says John Marshall, an independent aviation-safety consultant who spent 26 years in the Air Force before overseeing Delta's safety. "Regional carriers will be creative and have to take shortcuts" to fill their cockpits."
AI

Submission + - Fabricating Nature and a Physical Turing Test

Submitted by arrow3D
arrow3D writes: A new startup in Norway is focused on design and fabrication at the level and quality of nature. Using pure mathematical volumes, rather than surfaces or voxels, they are developing a new generation of 3D modelling tools specifically aimed at high resolution 3D printing, to "support the future of design and manufacturing". Their software was recently used to create the multi-material Minotaur Helmet by Neri Oxman from MIT, as featured in Wired UK last month. An interesting thought (as recently illustrated in Dilbert) is the idea of a Physical Turing Test for synthetic objects and that both Turing Tests may require each other — i.e. only by designing and building at the resolution of nature can we achieve the intelligence of natural objects. Their software platform is still very much under development but they've started trying to "save the world from polygons" with a KickStarter campaign that's live now.
Security

Submission + - Cyberespionage For Everyone (darkreading.com)

Submitted by Mephistophocles
Mephistophocles writes: A chilling article by Darkreading's Kelly Jackson Higgins describes how the growing accessibility of hacking tools like RAT's (Remote Access Trojans) have made cyber-espionage possible for more than just those financially backed by large nation-states, and speculates on what the implications of this may be:

"Researchers at Norman Security today revealed that they recently analyzed malware used in phishing emails targeting Israeli and Palestinian targets and found that attackers used malware based on the widely available Xtreme RAT crimeware kit. The attacks, which first hit Palestinian targets, this year began going after Israeli targets, including Israeli law enforcement agencies and embassies around the world. Norman says the same attacker is behind the attacks because the attacks use the same command-and-control (C&C) infrastructure, as well as the same phony digital certificates.

This attack campaign just scratches the surface of the breadth and spread of these types of attacks around the world as more players have been turning to cyberspying. "We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg," says Einar Oftedal, deputy CTO at Norman."

Submission + - Computer Glitch Creates Voting Precinct With No Residents (startribune.com)

Submitted by
phishead
phishead writes: "Barry Clegg, who chairs the line-drawing Charter Commission elaborated that the software "could not draw the line around the edge of the lake without putting a census block in the wrong ward; it would just connect along the shortest distance between two points, which meant a line across the lake.""
Power

Submission + - Atomic Comics: Comic books and the atomc education of America (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Great review of the book "Atomic Comics." Includes wonderful old illustrations from Atomic Rabbit, Atoman, Buck Rogers, True Comics, Whiz Comics, etc. Here's a quote: "Still, the comics had been dealing with atomic beams, weapons, and propulsion through most of the war, and if these comic strips and books were wrong about the details, Szasz notes, "the fact that the American public instantly grasped the basic outlines of the atomic age almost surely has its roots in the larger-than-life adventures of Superman, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Mickey Mouse, and well as other long-forgotten characters from that 'loose and baggy creature' of American popular culture.""
Biotech

Submission + - Study Claims Human Intelligence Peaked Two to Six Millennia Ago (independent.co.uk) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Professor Gerald "Jerry" Crabtree of Stanford's Crabtree Laboratory published a paper (PDF warning) that has appeared in two parts in "Trends in Genetics." The paper opens with a very controversial suggestion, 'I would be willing to wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions' and from there speculates we're on the decline of human intelligence and we have been for at least a couple millennia. His argument seems to suggest that agriculture and, following from that, cities have allowed us to break free of such environmental forces on competitive genetic mutations — a la Mike Judge's theory. However, the conclusion of the paper urges humans to keep calm and carry on as any attempt to fix this genetic trend would almost certainly be futile and disturbing.
Robotics

Submission + - 1 million robots to replace 1 million humans at Foxconn (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "Foxconn, the Chinese electronics manufacturer that builds numerous mobile devices and gaming consoles, previously said the company would be aiming to replace 1 million Foxconn workers with robots within 3 years. It appears as if Foxconn has started the ball in motion. Since the announcement, a first batch of 10,000 robots — aptly named Foxbots — appear to have made their way into at least one factory, and by the end of 2012, another 20,000 more will be installed"
Programming

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to catch Photoshop plagiarism 4

Submitted by jemenake
jemenake writes: A friend of mine teaches electronic media (Photoshop, Premiere, etc.) at a local high-school. Right now, they're doing Photoshop, and each chapter in the book starts with an "end result" file which shows what they're going to construct in that chapter, and then, given the basic graphical assets (background textures, photos, etc.), the students need to duplicate the same look in the final-result file.

The problem, of course, is that some students just grab the final-result file and rename it and turn it in. Some are a little less brazen and they rename a few layers, maybe alter the colors on a few images, etc. So, it becomes time-consuming for her to open each file alongside the final-result file to see if it's "too perfect".

When I first discovered that she was doing this, my first reaction was that there's got to be some automated way of catching the cheaters. Of course, my first idea of just doing MD5 hashes of each file won't work, since most kids alter the file a little bit.

A second idea I had was to alter the final-result file in a way that isn't obvious, like removing someone's shoelace, mis-spelling a word in the background, or removing/adding some dust-specks. (I know map publishers and music transcribers use this trick to catch copiers). But this still requires that she look for the alteration in each file. I'd think that Photoshop, after all these years, would have some kind of scripting language which also supports some digital watermarking, but I've just never dabbled in that realm.

And, of course, I guess another solution would be for her to not provide the end-result file in Photoshop format, but to export it as a flat image. But I'm still intrigued by the notion of being able to "fuzzily" compare two photoshop files or images to find the ones which are too similar in certain aspects (color histograms, where the edges are, level of noise, whatever).

Anybody else have any clever ideas for this?
Robotics

Submission + - Mind-Controlled Robot Avatars Inch Towards Reality (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Researchers at the CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory (a collaboration between France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) are developing software that allows a person to drive a robot with their thoughts alone. The technology could one day give a paralyzed patient greater autonomy through a robotic agent or avatar.
Google

Submission + - Acer C7 Chromebooks Expand Chrome OS Market (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "Google is following up last month’s Samsung Chromebooks with a new, lower-priced one developed by Acer. Retailing for $199, the 11.6-inch Acer C7 Chromebook features an Intel Celeron 847 processor, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB hard drive, three USB 2.0 ports and an HDMI port for various cords and auxiliary devices. It’s designed for portability, weighing 3.05 pounds and measuring an inch thick. Boot time is reportedly less than 18 seconds.

If the new Chromebook has a weakness, it’s the advertised 3.5 hours of battery life. That’s less than the MacBook Air (which features anywhere from 5-7 hours’ battery life, depending on specs) and many of the Windows-backed Ultrabooks, some of which claim up to 11 hours of battery life depending on usage. It’s also far less than the posted battery life for tablets such as Apple’s iPad and Google’s Nexus 7, which are widely viewed as the most prominent competition to laptops in the extra-portable category."
Businesses

Submission + - Here come the humanoids. There go U.S. jobs (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "Rethink Robotics founder Rodney Brooks took to the stage at the Techonomy conference here to talk about the wonders of his new robot, Baxter, which is designed to work on factory floors doing dull and necessary tasks. He costs just $25,000 and works for what amounts to $4 an hour.

Baxter is a step forward in robotics with mass potential. It has a face and sensors to tell it when people are near. It's about as close to a humanoid robot as we can get, and Brooks said it's just the beginning.

"Within 10 years, we're going to see humanoid robots," said Brooks, who was a co-founder of iRobot, maker of iRoomba, the vacuum cleaner robot."

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