Specialist2k - Slashdot User

Submission + - Creating Artificial Consciousness (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by

jzoom555

on Saturday May 23, 2009 @11:56AM

jzoom555 writes: "In an interview with Discover Mag, Gerald Edelman, Nobel laureate and founder/director of The Neurosciences Institute, discusses the quality of consciousness and progress in building brain-based-devices (BBD's). His lab recently published details on a brain-model that is self-sustaining and 'has beta waves and gamma waves just like the regular cortex'."

Linux Reaches 1% Usage Share 414

Posted by kdawson on Friday May 01, 2009 @12:46PM from the hitslink-confirms-it dept.

je ne sais quoi writes "The April data is out for the Net Applications 'market share' survey of operating systems (more accurately referred to as a usage share). For the first time, Linux has reached 1%. This past month the Linux share increased by 0.12% which is well above the average monthly increase of 0.02%. Historically, the Net Applications estimate of market share has been lower than that of other organizations who measure this, but the abnormally large increase reported this month brings it closer to the median estimate of 1.11%. For other operating systems, Windows XP continued its slow decline by 0.64% to 62.21%, whereas Vista use is still increasing to 23.90%, but its rate of adoption is slowing. That is, this month's increase of 0.48% is well below the 12-month average increase of 0.78% and down from the peak rate of increase of 1.00% per month on average in January-February 2008. The total Windows share dropped to 87.90%. Mac OS use decreased slightly to 9.73% from 9.77%, but usage share of the iPhone and iPod Touch combined increased by 0.1%."

Is Your Mood a Result of Where You Live? 364

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @07:49PM from the home-is-where-the-misery-is dept.

Ed writes "Apparently, the Centers for Disease Control released a study indicating that geography can have a significant impact on mood. You may not be surprised to learn that Kentucky is more depressing than Hawaii. However, ranking up there with Hawaii are Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin. Frustratingly, they have not yet published the study on the web, so it is left as an exercise for the reader to find the original study and post a link for the rest of us."

iPhone App Causes Google To Shut Down SMS Service 420

Posted by kdawson on Sunday March 15, 2009 @05:35AM from the free-as-in-no-longer dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A few days ago, Inner Fence released a paid iPhone app called Infinite SMS, which let iPhone users employ Google's free SMS gateway to send SMS messages without paying their service providers. The resulting surge in traffic on Google's SMS gateway forced Google to block all third-party applications from using the free SMS feature — including Google's own GTalk client."

Submission + - Sun Slips Firefox Extension Into Java Update (paulcardno.com)

Submitted by

pcardno

on Saturday February 21, 2009 @01:01AM

pcardno writes: "It seems it's not just Microsoft that have spotted a good opportunity to distribute their software through Firefox Addons. On installing the latest annoying, sysbar bubble based Java update, my Firefox informed me that I had a wonderful new Java addon automatically. Here's the addon screenshot. Yes, I could opt out of it, but why are Sun installing Addons to my Firefox without me making specific choices in the application itself? To be clear — I have never chosen to install this Addon, yet it has been installed without my permission with the latest Java Update."

Submission + - Goatse Mail To Spammer Ends In Police Citation 2

Submitted by Dave on Friday February 20, 2009 @08:05PM

Dave writes: Locally, we have a happy hour event for Information Technology professionals to meet up and have a few drinks. Each month, it is hosted at a different location, and each month a different business sponsors the beer. As part of this event, there is an e-mail sign up for the actual happy hour mailing list to receive information about where the next event takes place and who is sponsoring it. The business where the event took place happened to take their own copy of this list and used it to start e-mailing me about their non-related promotions (Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, etc).

I replied nicely the first time with a title of 'UNSUBSCRIBE', the full original message (including the header showing which e-mail address the message was sent to), and quotes from the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 which says that there must be a clear unsubscribe mechanism (which there was not), and that requests must be honored within 10 days. This past week, I received more promotional materials and replied with an attached image of goatse.

I was contacted today by an officer in reference to "Unlawful Use Of Computerized Communication Systems". I was told that this could be prosecuted under state criminal law but that "since I had cooperated and returned the officer's phone call", I will instead be issued a municipal citation (locally adopted state law, references the same exact legal code 947.0125) for $300.

I fully plan on going to my court date to contest the citation on principle, but I thought maybe some other slashdotters might have had similar experiences or may be able to provide me with some basis on which to fight this.

Reverse Engineering a Missile Launcher Toy's Interface 118

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday February 14, 2009 @11:44AM from the target-that-explosion-and-fire dept.

nitro writes "A fairly in-depth technical report by the security researchers at TippingPoint was released on how to reverse engineer the proprietary protocol for controlling a USB missile-launching toy system. They develop an iPhone application to control the device. 'The hardware is coupled with a simple GUI controller written in Delphi (MissileLauncher.exe) and a USB Human Interface Device (HID) interface written in C++ (USBHID.dll). The toys lost their allure within minutes of harassing my team with a barrage of soft missile shots. That same night I thought I would be able to extend the fun factor by coding up a programmatic interface to the launchers in Python. ... One interesting thing is that we have a lot more granular control of the turret movement now than we did with the original GUI. I wrote two simple loops to count the number of possible horizontal and vertical ticks and the results were 947 horizontal and 91 vertical versus 54 and 10 from the original GUI respectively. Granular control allows you to slowly and quietly reposition the turret for stealthy attacks.'"

Submission + - Mark Shuttleworth talks organizational change (cio.com.au)

Submitted by Dabonical on Monday February 09, 2009 @01:20AM

Dabonical writes: The open source leader and founder of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, Mark Shuttleworth, explains the elements that can inspire innovation and change the world--or at least your small piece of it. Shuttleworth has personally made significant technology achievements and also has inspired volunteers to contribute to a community that's trying to make a difference in the world. Here are 5 lessons he's learned about what it takes to get people to change. And the gobal recession is not all bad, according to Shuttleworth: "The scale of economic and financial challenges we face today should not be underestimated, and the effect on individual's lives can be devastating. But disruptive events and periods are also an opportunity to re-evaluate and change. Austerity creates pressure to innovate; necessity is truly the mother of invention. During hard times, we try to get more out of what we have and we assess investments with a different eye. Rather than simply doing 'more of the same, faster,' we ask whether we can do things differently, and we create the opportunity for long-term improvements."

Submission + - High Fructose Corn Syrup - now with bonus Mercury! (ethicurean.com)

Submitted by

Kreylix

on Tuesday January 27, 2009 @02:22AM

Kreylix writes: "I have long believed that High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is the primary cause of the Fattening of America. (Hey, why do you drink 44oz of an HFCS soda, but only 6 oz of fresh-squeezed Orange Juice?)

But now, 1/3 of products containing HFCS comes with a Bonus Ingredient: Mercury! Really not good for the brain, etc.

Classic Coke has the 12th most amount in it. Is this the new Coke Plus?

"Worse: People at the FDA and USDA knew about the presence of mercury in HFCS and did nothing about it."

The Ethicurean has the details: http://www.ethicurean.com/2009/01/26/mercury-in-hfcs/"

Submission + - Connex SMS service hacked in Australia

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24, 2007 @04:21PM

An anonymous reader writes: Train operator Connex is investigating the origin of a hoax text message sent to thousands of Victorian commuters, saying its inspectors loved killing people and would help bomb a train. About 10,000 commuters who subscribe to the train operator's timetable messaging service received the threatening text message on Friday night after hackers broke into the system. The message, sent after 9.30pm (AEDT), reads: ALLAHU AKBR FROM CONNEX! our inspectorS Love Killing people — if you see one coming, run. Want to bomb a train? they will gladly help. See you in hell! http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=229232

Submission + - iPhone to Use XScale Processor

Submitted by Tony Dennis on Sunday January 21, 2007 @07:59AM

Tony Dennis writes: While there is much uncertainty surrounding the new iPhone, another piece of the puzzle has been solved: the iPhone will use the XScale processor. Dario Bucci, Intel's CEO of the Italian operations, stated in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore, a local paper, Apple has turned to Marvell [Italian] to power their revolutionary cell phone. With this being the case, did Intel give up on the XScale architecture a little too quickly?

Submission + - English Wikipedia adds nofollow

Submitted by

Althazzar

on Saturday January 20, 2007 @07:12PM

Althazzar writes: "After being hit by another surge of spam because of a new SEO contest, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales has ordered rel="nofollow" to be placed on all outbound links in the english part of Wikipedia to prevent SEO spam."

Submission + - Apple threatens journalists

Submitted by on Monday January 15, 2007 @09:02AM

An anonymous reader writes: Apple is threatening journalists and bloggers with legal action for reporting on the existence of iPhone skins for other devices. The skins for Pocket PCs were created by a member of the xda-developers forums. It seems Apple hasn't learnt from last time it tried something like this.

Submission + - Sun gives out free Solaris 10 DVDs

Submitted by

Tarmas

on Sunday January 14, 2007 @12:47PM

Tarmas writes: "For a limited time only, just like Ubuntu's ShipIt service, Sun Microsystems lets you order Solaris 10 absolutely free of charge. The operating system comes on a single DVD sporting both the x86 and SPARC versions. Also included is Sun Studio 11."

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