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Medicine

Artificial Brain '10 Years Away' 539

Posted by samzenpus from the batteries-not-included dept.
SpuriousLogic writes "A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already built elements of a rat brain. He told the TED global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses. Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said. 'It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,' he said."

Comment why bother trying to be separate services??? (Score 1) 66

by Victor Tramp (#28777597) Attached to: Roku Set-Top Box Gets A/V Aggregation Service

who cares about podcasts? gimmie tv shows..

One of the things i love about boxee is the sheer amount of TV shows i can watch on hulu, joost, cbs, and others..

Quit trying to compete with each other and give the market what it wants, all shows, on demand. Advertize your brains out like you do on broadcast tv, and let people fall all over themselves trying to make decent interfaces for your content.

Seriously. I don't care what the holdup is, just hurry up and make TV like this.

-m
Image

Huge Unidentified Organic Blob Floating Around Alaska Screenshot-sm 424

Posted by samzenpus from the real-reason-Palin-resigned dept.
Z80xxc! writes "The Anchorage Daily News reports that a 15 mile-long blob of unknown, 'gooey,' probably organic material is floating past communities on Alaska's North Slope. The US Coast Guard sent pollution experts to investigate, who determined that it was not an oil spill or other type of pollution, but were unable to determine what it is. A sample is currently being analyzed by experts in Anchorage, while the blob is following the current northwards."
Space

Shiny New Space Fence To Monitor Orbiting Junk 76

Posted by samzenpus from the good-space-fences-make-good-neighbors dept.
coondoggie writes "Some work has begun on tracking and detecting the overabundance of space junk which has become a growing priority as all manner of satellites, rockets and possible commercial space shots are promised in the coming few years. Today Northrop Grumman said it grabbed $30 million from the US Air Force to start developing the first phase of a global space surveillance ground radar system. The new S-Band Space Fence is part of the Department of Defense's effort to detect and track what are known as resident space objects (RSO), consisting of thousands of pieces of space debris as well as commercial and military satellites. The new Space Fence will replace the current VHF Air Force Space Surveillance System built in 1961."
The Media

Google Will Star In New Dow Jones News Model 95

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the free-will-find-a-way dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Dow Jones is getting set to launch a new aggregator, akin to Google News, which will charge Web users for access to high-quality journalism. 'The Journal is one of the many newspapers you might buy in one place and with one payment [...] Watch for it,' said Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton. However, rather than posing a threat to Google News, Andrew Keen, author and entrepreneur, says the aggregator will use Google as a critical partner. The only people who should be worried about this new model, says Keen, 'are all those lucky consumers who, over the last 15 years, have been getting their news for free.'"
Businesses

If You Live By Free, You Will Die By Free 251

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the give-it-away-now dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban writes that the problem with companies who have built their business around Free is that the more success you have in delivering free, the more expensive it is to stay at the top. '"They will be Facebook to your Myspace, or Myspace to your Friendster or Google to your Yahoo," writes Cuban. "Someone out there with a better idea will raise a bunch of money, give it away for free, build scale and charge less to reach the audience."' Cuban says that even Google, who lives and dies by free, knows that 'at some point your Black Swan competitor will appear and they will kick your ass' and that is exactly why Google invests in everything and anything they possibly can that they believe can create another business they can depend on in the future searching for the 'next big Google thing.' Cuban says that for any company that lives by Free, their best choice is to run the company as profitably as possible, focusing only on those things that generate revenue and put cash in the bank. '"When you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free. Your best bet is to recognize where you are in your company's lifecycle and maximize your profits rather than try to extend your stay at the top," writes Cuban. "Like every company in the free space, your lifecycle has come to its conclusion. Don't fight it. Admit it. Profit from it."'"
Image

Cows That Burp Less Methane to Be Bred Screenshot-sm 366

Posted by samzenpus from the belching-bovines dept.
Canadian scientists are breeding a type of cow that burps less, in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gases. Cows are responsible for almost 75% of total methane emissions, mostly coming from burps. Stephen Moore, professor of agricultural, food and nutritional science at the University of Alberta, hopes the refined bovines will produce 25 per cent less methane. Nancy Hirshberg, spokesman for Stonyfield Farm says, "If every US dairy farmer reduced emissions by 12 per cent it would be equal to about half a million cars being taken off the road."
Novell

Novell Ponders "Open-Source Apps Store" 183

Posted by timothy from the return-of-click-n-run dept.
Barence writes "Novell plans to bring the wealth of open-source software to everyday users through an 'open-source apps store.' 'I would compare what's happening on netbooks with what's happening to the smartphone,' Holger Dyroff, vice president of business development at Novell told PC Pro. 'There's a core experience, but then the ability to customise that experience. On the user end, all they'll see is an open-source applications store with one-click downloads of new software. Unlike the other stores though, they won't have to pay for any of those applications, which will be very attractive.'"
Role Playing (Games)

CCP To Discontinue EVE Online Support For Linux 299

Posted by timothy from the adam-also-discontinued-support dept.
maotx writes "CCP's recent support for EVE Online in Linux is now set to be discontinued this March. Released last November along with the Mac OS X client, it has failed to share the expected continual growth as seen with Mac client. Feedback on the EVE Online forums, which includes the e-mail in which CCP announced this decision, suggest that the client was not preferred for Linux users as it did not support the Premium graphics client and did not run as well as the win32 client under Wine. For those who wish to stop playing EVE Online, CCP is offering a refund towards unused game time. Select quote from the e-mail: 'The feedback and commitment we obtained from players like you helped both CCP and Transgaming with our attempts to improve on the quality and stability of the client. Many of us in CCP use Linux and are convinced of its merits as an operating system.'"
Media

New Ads That Watch You 238

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the watching-the-watchers dept.
Pandanapper writes to tell us Yahoo is reporting that if you find yourself watching an ad on a video screen in a public venue, the ad may be watching you as well. "Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity -- and can change the ads accordingly. That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens."
Government

Bush Administration's E-Mail Deluge May Overload Archive System 169

Posted by Soulskill from the hello-sir-madam dept.
Lucas123 writes "The Clinton administration generated 32 million e-mails. Bush's administration has generated 50 times as much data — 140TB, 20TB of which is email — which soon will have to be archived through a new government-built records management system. The new system may not be up to the task because the technology behind it may not be able to handle the sheer volume of data along with the fact that the Bush administration has been slow in providing the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) with needed information about the records, according to a Computerworld story. Questions have also been raised about millions of missing e-mails from between March 2003 and October 2006. 'It wasn't until this summer that an intensive effort began to share information,' said Ken Thibodeau, director of NARA's Electronic Records Archives."
The Internet

Air Force To Rewrite the Rules of the Internet 547

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-they-can dept.
meridiangod writes "The Air Force is fed up with a seemingly endless barrage of attacks on its computer networks from stealthy adversaries whose motives and even locations are unclear. So now the service is looking to restore its advantage on the virtual battlefield by doing nothing less than the rewriting the 'laws of cyberspace.'" I'm sure that'll work out really well for them.
Networking

Microsoft Working For Samba Interoperability 221

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this'll-end-well dept.
JP writes "Andrew Bartlett of Samba fame has written a document describing their recent collaboration with Microsoft's Active Directory team. In brief, it would seem that the sky is falling, as Microsoft's engineers seem to be really committed to making Samba fully interoperable with AD. They have organized interoperability fests and have knowledgeable engineers answering technical questions without legal or marketing drones getting in the way. However according to Andrew the Samba AD team is currently very short on manpower, so if you have network experience, now is the time to get coding."

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