make dev - Slashdot User

Submission + - Yale finds link between cell phone use during pregnancy and behavioral disorders (yale.edu)

Submitted by fezzzz on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @08:38AM

fezzzz writes: Dr. Hugh S. Taylor performed a study on pregnant mice by placing a cell phone, with an active phone call on top of a cage and another cell phone, deactivated on top of the cage of the control group. He found that the mice exposed to cellphone radiation had reduced memory capacity and tended to be more hyperactive than the mice in the control group. This is not the first study to link cellphone radiation to a variety of problems, but the first I know of which were performed by Yale. Does anyone know if this study is remotely relevant to modern humans or not?

Submission + - NDAs to use software at the University

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14, 2012 @01:02PM

An anonymous reader writes: I'm studying a Master in System on Chip [1] at Lund University in Sweden and we need to accept the terms of a NDA, or like they call it, an "End User Agreement" in order to use software by Cadence in the labs. We can't do the labs if we don't accept it, or at least, none of the teachers seems to know the answer of that question. Is it ethical to let a private company to control who can receive an education in a public institution? Shouldn't Lund University take the responsibility of making an greement with Cadence instead of relying on the (good) (sic) will of the students? When I asked the teachers about this matter, all of them reacted badly and gave us no explanations futher than "it is like that and you need to accept it".

[1] http://soc.eit.lth.se/

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

Submitted by c0lo on Wednesday November 14, 2012 @03:04AM

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.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Geek tools to better organize my daily life?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07, 2012 @12:05PM

An anonymous reader writes: Okay, so like most of Slashdot readers I spend pretty much every waking hour in front of the computer. Which means the rest of my life is in vast disarray, more so now that I'm a daddy. I forget when the car registration is due (they no longer mail out reminders in MA), I forget dentist appts, the bathroom looks like a frat house after a party, the laundry seems to never get done, car maintenance happens only when something prevents the car from getting from point A to B. A simple online calendar program isn't really enough because 1) I use Linux at home and Windows online and 2) I don't want my schedules and appts and life to be in the cloud (as it would be with a Google Cal) and 3) I don't even manage to write down a lot of what should be written in the calendar. Many calendars have the basic US holidays included, but is there anything out there that has other stuff as well? For example, car tune ups? Vaccuming/housework? Think "plugins" where someone who is a car buff could create a list of basic maintenance dates..."oil change every three months" "yearly tuneup" etc. And I could choose the ones that make sense and have a calendar that will really greatly help me organize my life...without me having to remember to put all these items in?

Submission + - A hero of Linux on his last leg of life - unless we help! (blogspot.com) 7

Submitted by

bastiji

on Friday August 17, 2012 @11:31AM

bastiji writes: "http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-is-where-we-are.html

Ken Starks of HeliOS fame is down, but not out yet. His cancer is about to spread to a lethal condition, and only surgery can prevent it. Prevention is possible but due to the stupid healthcare system we have in this country, he can't afford it.

Read the link for the sordid details and do what you can to help someone who's helped thousands selflessly.

Here's another Slashdot link about him: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/08/12/10/001236/when-teachers-are-obstacles-to-linux-in-education"

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to Sync a Local Copy of Wikipedia/Wikibooks? 8

Submitted by jerquiaga on Wednesday June 27, 2012 @05:19PM

jerquiaga writes: I'm working on a project with a rural school in Africa that has limited bandwidth through satellite. What we'd like to do is be able to setup a local copy of Wikipedia and Wikibooks on a server for them so the kids can use those resources but not cut into their bandwidth to get to it. I can find plenty of info on downloading database dumps and setting those up, but I'm wondering if any Slashdot readers have come up with a good way to sync only the changes that happen after the initial dump (again, to save bandwidth). What say you, Slashdot readers?

Submission + - Ask Slashdot:How to add new tech to old van? 1

Submitted by

Dslice_allstar

on Wednesday June 27, 2012 @11:49AM

Dslice_allstar writes: "I have a '77 GMC Van that I would like to take into the 21st century with some good tech. I have several large LCD monitors, and I want to hook at least one up for watching movies and doing some mild PC gaming. I am concerned about power, i.e. using an inverter and not frying the computer every time the van starts/stops, and I'm worried about whether the alternator will support a computer/monitor setup as well as LEDs and the like. Would a UPC backup be a good idea? I would also like to be able to play music over the sound system, preferably off the computer. Should I be thinking mini ITX HTPC, or would a netbook better serve my purposes? How would you all pimp out an old conversion van?"

Submission + - Youtube Identifies Birdsong As Copyrighted Music Owned By "Rumblefish" (google.com) 2

Submitted by eeplox on Saturday February 25, 2012 @02:52AM

eeplox writes: I make nature videos for my Youtube channel, generally in remote wilderness away from any possible source of music. And I purposely avoid using a soundtrack in my videos because of all the horror stories I hear about Rumblefish filing claims against public domain music.

But when uploading my latest video, Youtube informed me that I was using rumblefish's copyrighted content, and so ads would be placed on my video, with the proceeds going to said company. This baffled me.

I disputed their claim with Youtube's system, and Rumblefish refuted my dispute and confirmed that:

"All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content:

Entity: rumblefish Content Type: Musical Composition"

So I asked some questions, and it appears that the birds singing in the background of my video are Rumblefish's exclusive intellectual property.

My only option at this point is to lawyer-up and fight it out in the courts, which of course isn't going to happen over a Youtube video that'll only be seen by a few hundred people. More likely I'll just end up deleting the video.

Submission + - Warner Bros sued for pirating Louis Vuitton tradem (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Sunday December 25, 2011 @06:38PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "You have to love a case where Warner Brothers, copyright maximalist extraordinaire, gets sued for "piracy", in this case for using a knock-off Luis Vuitton bag in a recent movie. This lawsuit has been described as "awkward" for Warner; I have to agree with that characterization. Louis Vuitton's 22-page complaint (PDF) alleges that Warner Bros. had knowledge that the bag was a knock-off, and went ahead, and used it, anyway. Apparently Warner Bros. takes IP rights seriously only when its Warner's IP rights that are involved."

Submission + - Carrier IQ: We Don't Collect Your Personal Informa (allthingsd.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01, 2011 @11:15PM

An anonymous reader writes: Carrier IQ has a simple rebuttal to accusations that its software logs keystrokes on the devices on which it is installed: It doesn'(TM)t.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Cell phone and PC interaction for te

Submitted by abell on Wednesday November 30, 2011 @06:50AM

abell writes: Last year a young man I know had an accident which left him without the use of the four limbs. He only has very limited movement of one arm (but not of his hands).
In order for him to have some social interaction, not limited to visitors who drop by during visit hours, I was thinking of a way for him to use a cell phone: something along the ways of speakers and a mic and possibly a way to start and reply calls with voice commands or at most by pushing a single button, which would need to be installed in his bed by his side and not be so obtrusive as to hinder the nurses' job.
If he were also able in a near future to use a PC with internet connection I think his life quality would improve considerably.
Do you fellow slashdotters have any experience on such setups and any advice to share?
How could one avoid the audio feedback between the speakers and the mic, which would probably need to be in a fixed position at some distance?
Would the cell phone setup be possible to build with cheap off-the-shelf components?
How about a PC interface he might be able to use?
For any location-specific advice, I should specify that my friend is in Poland.

Submission + - Frozen Planet episode will not be shown in the US (wordpress.com)

Submitted by

ColonelZen

on Friday November 25, 2011 @01:21PM

ColonelZen writes: "Jerry Coyne tells about one episode of BBC's Frozen Planet series which will be double-plus-ungooded out of existence for US audiences.

-- TWZ"

Submission + - First Look: Oracle NoSQL Database (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @01:13PM

snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner takes a first look at Oracle NoSQL Database, the company's take on the distributed key-value data store for the enterprise. 'There are dozens of small ways in which the tool is more thorough and sophisticated than the simpler NoSQL projects. You get a number of different options for increasing the durability in the face of a node crash or trading that durability for speed,' Wayner writes. 'Oracle NoSQL might not offer the heady fun and "just build it" experimentation of many of the pure open source NoSQL projects, but that's not really its role. Oracle borrowed the best ideas from these groups and built something that will deliver good performance to the sweet spot of the enterprise market.'"

Submission + - Microsoft Security Essentials Detects Chrome as ZB (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30, 2011 @01:04PM

An anonymous reader writes: I updated my definition files for Microsoft Security Essentials this morning and it detected PWS:Win32/ZBot. I told MSE to remove the malware and then found that Chrome no longer worked. MSE is detecting Chrome.exe as ZBot. I haven't seen confirmation yet on whether this is just a mistake, Chrome is truly infected, or if a conspiracy is afoot.

Submission + - MapReduce vs RDBMS for scalable data processing

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30, 2011 @12:49PM

An anonymous reader writes: I work for a small company that does vehicle tracking using rfid. All of the rfid data is sent to our servers where it is processed and we generate useful reports for our users. The company is growing and we are starting to get more and more data and as a result, our data processing engine is having trouble keeping up with the load. Currently all of the data is stored in a mysql database instance. I have identified some areas in the engine where we could make things more efficient but as we get more data, we will need to implement a solution that can scale. If you had to implement a scalable data processing solution, would you choose a MapReduce type solution, e.g. a Hadoop cluster or use an RDBMS, e.g. Oracle with parallel queries? Is there a point at which the dataset warrants a MapReduce approach vs a traditional RDBMS approach? If you chose an RDBMS approach what RDBMS would you use? What are the tradeoffs between the two approaches?

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