Krondor - Slashdot User

Taliban Demands Downtime on Afghanistan Cellphone Networks 659

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday February 26, 2008 @12:05PM from the since-you-asked-nicely dept.

faster_manic writes "The Taliban has demanded that cellphone network providers in Afghanistan cease service between the hours of 5pm and 7am each night of the week, as they believe American troops are able to track down Taliban members using their cellphones."

Fish Can Count to Four 103

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday February 26, 2008 @12:02PM from the incredible-mr.-limpet dept.

Khemist writes "Fish can count, according to scientists, who have found that North American mosquito fish have the ability to count up to four. Previously it was known that fish could tell big shoals from small ones, but researchers have now found that they have a limited ability to count how many other fish are nearby. This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys and dolphins and humans with very limited mathematical ability."

Open US GPS Data? 327

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday February 26, 2008 @10:36AM from the directions-want-to-be-free dept.

tobiasly writes "I read an article today about a map error on the popular Garmin GPS devices which often leads to truckers in a particular town becoming trapped. From my own experience, every electronic map I've ever seen (Google, Mapquest, my Mio GPS) has the layout of my neighborhood completely and frustratingly wrong. A quick search turned up only one open-source mapping project, but it's for New Zealand only. Why are there no comparable projects in the U.S. or elsewhere? Obviously such a project would need a good peer-review/moderation/trust system but I'd gladly put in the time necessary to drive around town with my GPS in "tracking" mode, then upload, tag, and verify my local data. Has anyone with more technical knowledge in maps and auto-routing looked more into this? Are there technical limitations to such a project? Should the government subsidize a project to create open, free, up-to-date electronic maps? Surely there is a public benefit available from such a project."

Submission + - FSF may sue Microsoft over GPLv3 (groklaw.net)

Submitted by

mjasay

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @01:30PM

mjasay writes: "As Groklaw reports, the Free Software Foundation has issued a press release decrying Microsoft's attempts to distance itself from its obligations to abide by GPL Version 3. Citing Microsoft's earlier refusal to abide by GPLv3, the Free Software Foundation declared, "Microsoft cannot by any act of anticipatory repudiation divest itself of its obligation to respect others' copyrights." The press release goes on to imply that the Free Software Foundation may sue Microsoft over the issue."

Submission + - Zap2It Replacement Scheduling Service Goes Online

Submitted by

Krondor

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @10:36AM

Krondor writes: "Schedules Direct, the TV listing service created to replace the soon to be discontinued Zap2It Labs free listings, is now accepting registrations. This comes in advance of the pending Zap2It TV Listing shutdown and is obviously excellent news for many open source projects, such as MythTV. The service, though no longer free, does intend to reduce pricing as demand increases and exists as a non-profit specifically for the purpose of providing TV listing data to "Free and Open Source Applications". Slashdot has previously covered the Zap2It Labs TV Listing Discontinuation as well as the pricing expectations for Schedules Direct."

Hitachi Develops New Visual Search 166

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @04:28PM from the which-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other dept.

Tech.Luver writes to tell us that Hitachi has developed a new visual search engine that can supposedly find similar images from within millions of video and picture data entries in around 1 second. "The technology assesses the similarity of images based on image characteristics presented as high-dimensional numeric information. The information is acquired by automatically detecting information regarding the images, such as color distribution and shapes."

Submission + - Yahoo building open source Map/Reduce and GFS (yahoo.net)

Submitted by

owenomalley

on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @04:21PM

owenomalley writes: "Yahoo is developing Hadoop, which is an open source implementation of key pieces of Google's infrastructure (namely, Map/Reduce and GFS). Hadoop's framework allows you to write applications that reliably process very large datasets (100's of terabytes) efficiently on large (1000+) clusters of computers. Without a framework like Hadoop, writing applications on large clusters requires a lot of duplicated effort as each application deals with distribution, reliability, and reporting. Hadoop handles those parts for you and just requires you to write your application logic.

Hadoop is managed under Apache."

Submission + - Hitachi develops 'brain-machine interface' (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by

Frosty Piss

on Friday June 22, 2007 @10:56AM

Frosty Piss writes: "A new technology from Hitachi could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity. Underlying Hitachi's brain-machine interface is a technology called optical topography, which sends a small amount of infrared light through the brain's surface to map out changes in blood flow. Hitachi's scientists are set to develop a brain TV remote controller letting users turn a TV on and off or switch channels by only thinking. A key advantage to Hitachi's technology is that sensors don't have to physically enter the brain."

Submission + - Hitachi develops brain-machine interface

Submitted by

Gary

on Friday June 22, 2007 @10:28AM

Gary writes: "Forget the clicker: A new technology in Japan could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity. The "brain-machine interface" developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain's blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals. Underlying Hitachi's brain-machine interface is a technology called optical topography, which sends a small amount of infrared light through the brain's surface to map out changes in blood flow."

Submission + - Manhunt 2 banned in Ireland, too (www.rte.ie)

Submitted by Sternocera on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @08:34AM

Sternocera writes: The video game Manhunt 2 has become the first game to be banned in Ireland.

Submission + - Blockbuster Chooses Blu-Ray

Submitted by coop247 on Monday June 18, 2007 @09:42AM

coop247 writes: In what has to be the worst news yet for HDDVD, Blockbuster will only rent Blu-Ray disks for stores nationwide. FTFA, "Blockbuster has been renting both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles in 250 stores since late last year and found that consumers were choosing Blu-ray titles more than 70 percent of the time."

Submission + - Giant Squid Caught

Submitted by BravoFourEcho on Friday December 22, 2006 @11:03AM

BravoFourEcho writes: A giant squid has been captured by Japanese scientists.
"Nobody has ever seen a live giant squid except fishermen," team leader Tsunemi Kubodera of the museum's zoology department said in an interview on Friday. "We believe these are the first ever moving pictures of a giant squid." Little was known until recently about the creature thought to have inspired the myth of the "kraken", a tentacled monster that was blamed by sailors for sinking ships off Norway in the 18th century.

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