syntaxeater - Slashdot User

Submission + - Verizon to allow "any app, any device" (electronista.com)

Submitted by

JonathanF

on Tuesday November 27, 2007 @10:16AM

JonathanF writes: "Looks like Verizon decided it was better to go with the flow and is opening up its network so that 'any' device or program can run on its cellular and Internet services. Of course, this being a major US carrier, they're not going to unlock their own cellphones — you'll have to roll with something you've bought separately instead. But at least Verizon will test devices to make sure they hold up. Hopefully this means that phones running Google Android will work on Verizon's network."

Submission + - OLPC "Give One, Get One" offer extended to

Submitted by jc42 on Friday November 23, 2007 @05:34PM

jc42 writes: The One Laptop Per Child program has extended its North American "Give One, Get One" program to the end of the year. It seems they've been deluged with orders, and are realizing that this thing could be very popular in the First World, too. My wife and I have ordered some as Xmas presents for children/grandchildren, since it seems to be the first computer aimed at kids that, as some reviewers comment, "isn't a toy". We're wondering if we should get some for ourselves, for our second childhood. We're both software developers who'd like to get our hands on this new GUI. Anyone else have any comments, pro or con? Have you ordered one? Why?

Submission + - MPAA Toolkit Raises Privacy, Security Concerns

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 23, 2007 @09:39AM

An anonymous reader writes: The Motion Picture Association of America last month sent letters to the presidents of 25 major universities, urging them to download and install a "university toolkit" to help identify students who were downloading/sharing movie files. The Washington Post's Security Fix blog reports that any university that installs the software could be placing a virtual wiretap on their networks for the MPAA and the rest of the world to listen in on all of the school's traffic. From the story: "The MPAA also claims that using the tool on a university network presents "no privacy issues — the content of traffic is never examined or displayed." That statement, however, is misleading. Here's why: The toolkit sets up an Apache Web server on the user's machine. It also automatically configures all of the data and graphs gathered about activity on the local network to be displayed on a Web page, complete with ntop-generated graphics showing not only bandwidth usage generated by each user on the network, but also the Internet address of every Web site each user has visited. Unless a school using the tool has firewalls on the borders of its network designed to block unsolicited Internet traffic — and a great many universities do not — that Web server is going to be visible and accessible by anyone with a Web browser.

Submission + - Decoding the Brain's Network of Neurons

Submitted by

Reservoir Hill

on Monday November 19, 2007 @12:46PM

Reservoir Hill writes: "New technologies that allow scientists to trace the fine wiring of the brain more accurately could soon generate a complete wiring diagram — including every tiny fiber and miniscule connection — of a piece of brain. "The brain is essentially a computer that wires itself up during development and can rewire itself," says Sebastian Seung, a computational neuroscientist at MIT. "If we have a wiring diagram of the brain, we might be able to understand how it works." With an estimated 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses in the human brain, creating an all-encompassing map of even a small chunk is a daunting task. Winfried Denk, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, has developed a new technique to make more fine-scaled wiring maps using electron microscopy. Starting with a small block of brain tissue, the researchers bounce electrons off the top of the block to generate a cross-sectional picture of the nerve fibers in that slice. They then take a very thin — 30-nanometer — slice off the top of the block and repeat the process going through slice by slice to trace the path of each nerve fiber. "Repeat this [process] thousands of times, and you can make your way through maybe the whole fly brain," says Denk. To speed the process, the researchers train an artificial neural network to emulate the human tracing process. To date, they've been able to speed the process about one hundred- to one thousand-fold."

Submission + - Wall Street Journal opens up for DIGG 1

Submitted by

alek

on Wednesday November 14, 2007 @04:57PM

alek writes: "The New York Times recently dropped the pay-for-Select program, leaving the Wall Street Journal as the last major media company to charge for online news using a subscriber based model. However, they announced today a partnership with Digg that not only put the blue icon on every article, but "users clicking on a Wall Street Journal article link on Digg will be able to read that article for free on WSJ.com." My guess is they are keying off the referer to allow you behind the subscriber pay-wall.

While the WSJ may eventually remove their subscriber-only status (as Murdoch has implied), this speaks to the power of Digg and social networks in general in terms of attracting eyeballs. So when will Slashdot get the same arrangement?!? ;-)"

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