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Sci-Fi

Submission + - Does This Headline Know You're Reading It? (hplusmagazine.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Not yet, but it could." German artificial intelligence researchers are combining JavaScript with eye-tracking hardware to create "text 2.0," which "infers user intentions." Unimportant words also fade out while you're skimming the text, and a bookmark automatically appears if you glance away. It can pronounce the words you're reading, and reading certain words can trigger the appearance of footnotes or even translations, biographies, definitions, and sound effects or animations, almost like the truly interactive books in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. "With the help of an eye tracker, Text 2.0 follows your progress and presents effects just in time," the researchers explain in a video. Meanwhile, DFKI has already created a free "Processing Easy Eye Tracker plugin" (or PEEP) to manipulate windows with what they call "gaze-controlled tab expose," while there's speculation similar technology may be adopted by Apple. Apple has already purchased Tobii's eye-tracking hardware, and "Whether these are for internal research only or for a future product, Apple is characteristically not saying.
Input Devices

Research Lets You Type Words By Thought Alone 114

Posted by StoneLion from the put-on-your-thinking-cap dept.
An anonymous reader writes "How about typing on a computer just by thinking about it? The downside is you have to wear a skull cap with electrodes that capture your brain waves like an EEG machine. According to this EE Times story, a team of researchers from Belgium and the Netherlands has presented Mind Speller, a thought-to-text device intended to help people with movement disabilities. The system does rely on a lot of processing on a remote computer, but it is a wireless system. And these thought-to-computer systems have wider applicability than medical support. One of the research groups involved in this development has already looked at wireless electroencephalography (EEG) to enable measures of emotion to be fed back into computer games."
Handhelds

Submission + - Linux Ported to Dingoo A320

Submitted by Busshy
Busshy writes: Linux has arrived on the Dingoo, a console that was recently released in Asia (Bundled with emulators for 16bit consoles)and looks like the bottom half of a DS Lite and has an XMB that closely resembles those that PSP and PS3 owners are used to. Homebrew Coders have already ported ScummVM, PRBoom (Doom Engine) to Dingoo Linux.

Comment Possible alternate explaination (Score 1) 364

by ayana (#23362722) Attached to: Microsoft IM Blocking YouTube Links
I'm one of the seemingly many who submitted this to Slashdot, and it certainly annoys me, however... I was thinking, what if Microsoft are doing this because of Youtube having rather a lot of unauthorised copyrighted content? You can often find whole episodes or even whole seasons of TV shows on Youtube, split up into 10 minute segments in Youtube's fantastic, high resolution better-than-bluray quality, and perhaps Microsoft had some legal paranoia that if they allow links to potentially copyrighted material, they could get in legal trouble... either that or they're in so deep with the media companies that they want to act as "Copyright Cops". In favour of this theory, there's that whole story posted recently about the Zune potentially refusing to play "pirated" content. On the other hand, I've not heard anything about them blocking popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, and if they're setting up a competing service I can see them pulling this sort of crap. Whatever the truth turns out to be, this whole thing is very, very weird.
Censorship

Journal Journal: MSN Messenger blocking Youtube links

Journal by ayana
I find this rather interesting - just today, I tried to send a Youtube link to a friend over MSN Messenger, only to find the message blocked, similar to how certain other messages are blocked by MSN Messenger (anything with some known malware urls, for instance). Searching on Google, it seems that others have noticed this problem - at least two forums (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=293291, and
Graphics

NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Software Mod 152

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the you-bought-it-might-as-well-use-the-whole-thing dept.
babyshiori writes "The NVIDIA Quadro family of professional graphics cards are very, very expensive. But many people know that Quadro and GeForce graphics cards are virtually identical in hardware. Obviously, you cannot just use Quadro drivers with your GeForce graphics cards. However, there is an easy way to soft-mod an NVIDIA GeForce desktop graphics card into an NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics card. Tech ARP shows us just how to do it. 'It all revolves around the driver support for professional 3D applications like 3ds Max or Maya. Quadro drivers allow the Quadro to be used to accelerate the rendering operations of such professional 3D applications while GeForce drivers do not. This is the basis for the premium prices NVIDIA (and ATI) charge for their professional-grade graphics cards.'"
Wine

First Release Candidate of Wine 1.0 Released 284

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the come-a-long-ways dept.
moronikos writes to mention that the first release candidate of Wine 1.0 was announced and released into the wild today. This new version includes only bug fixes as the team is in a code freeze while pushing for the full 1.0 release.
Google

Google's Street View Meets Resistance In France 201

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-surrendering dept.
Ian Lamont writes "Google has begun to scan the streets of Paris as part of its Street View service, but the company may be hindered from publishing them unedited. The reason? French privacy laws. Google may be forced to blur faces or use low-resolution versions of the photographs. The Embassy of France in the US has a page devoted to French privacy laws, that says the laws are needed to 'avoid infringing the individual's right to privacy and right to his or her picture (photograph or drawing), both of them rights of personality.'"
Privacy

UK Uses CCTV, Terrorism Laws, Against Pooping Dogs 303

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the let-this-be-a-lesson dept.
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that it seems the UK is trying make up for their judicious use of surveillance cameras that, according to recent research, do not actually deter crime, by using the surveillance network to prosecute petty crimes. "Conjuring up the bogeymen of terrorists, online pedophiles and cybercriminals, the U.K. passed a comprehensive surveillance law, The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, in 2000. The law allows 'the interception of communications, carrying out of surveillance, and the use of covert human intelligence sources' to help prevent crime, including terrorism. Recent reports in the U.K. media indicate that the laws are being used for everything but terrorism investigations."
NASA

NASA Wants to Take the Blast Out of Sonic Booms 187

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the softer-side-of-soar dept.
coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA and JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) have announced a partnership to study the sonic boom. Hoping to find the key to the next generation of supersonic aircraft, the research will include a look at JAXA's "Silent Supersonic Technology Demonstration Program." "The change in air pressure associated with a sonic boom is only a few pounds per square foot -- about the same pressure change experienced riding an elevator down two or three floors. It is the rate of change, the sudden onset of the pressure change, that makes the sonic boom audible, NASA said. All aircraft generate two cones, at the nose and at the tail. They are usually of similar strength and the time interval between the two as they reach the ground is primarily dependent on the size of the aircraft and its altitude. Most people on the ground cannot distinguish between the two and they are usually heard as a single sonic boom. Sonic booms created by vehicles the size and mass of the space shuttle are very distinguishable and two distinct booms are easily heard."
Earth

Estimated World Population to Pass 6,666,666,666 Today 645

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the you're-special-and-unique-just-like-everyone-else dept.
suso writes ""The estimated population of the world will pass 6,666,666,666 today. No doubt an interesting number for people everywhere (not referring to any religion connotations). 5,555,555,555 was passed about 14 years ago. You may not realize that only 80 years ago, the population of the Earth was only around 2 billion. This shows how the population of the world has increased at an alarming rate in recent times, although the growth rate is almost half what it was at its peak in 1963, when it was 2.2%. Unrelated but also an interesting coincidence, the estimated number of available IPv4 addresses is getting very close to 666,666,666. It should cross over today as well.""

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