juicy - Slashdot User

Brain Will Be Battlefield of the Future, Warns US 257

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 15, 2008 @06:52PM from the encrypt-all-mental-notes dept.

Anti-Globalism sends this except from the Guardian: "In a report commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency, leading scientists were asked to examine how a greater understanding of the brain over the next 20 years is likely to drive the development of new medicines and technologies. They found several areas in which progress could have a profound impact, including behaviour-altering drugs, scanners that can interpret a person's state of mind and devices capable of boosting senses such as hearing and vision. ...The report highlights one electronic technique, called transcranial direct current stimulation, which involves using electrical pulses to interfere with the firing of neurons in the brain and has been shown to delay a person's ability to tell a lie."

Linux Foundation Paving Way for New Kernel Developers 46

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday August 15, 2008 @06:01PM from the map-and-a-stopwatch-for-flying-blind dept.

Jack Spine writes "The Linux Foundation has published a how-to document for developers who want to negotiate the hidden shoals of open source. According to both the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Consortium, developers can get frustrated with the processes in open source coding, especially for enterprise-class projects like Linux. 'A guide to the kernel development process' aims to encourage participation from new programmers by explaining what's involved. Some developers and businesses attempting to submit changes to the Linux kernel find themselves tangled up with the processes used, according to the guide, which was written by Jonathan Corbet, executive editor of lwn.net and himself a Linux developer."

The US Swim Team's Secret Weapon, Science 180

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday August 15, 2008 @05:11PM from the but-not-chemistry dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "When American Swimmer Margaret Hoelzer goes for the gold tonight in the 200-meter backstroke, part of her success will be due to a new system developed by Tim Wei, a mechanical and aerospace engineer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, that uses fluid dynamics to study human movement allowing scientists and coaches to study how fast and hard a swimmer pushes the water as he moves through it. 'Wei uses a tracking technique called digital particle image velocimetry, commonly used to measure the flow of small particles around an airplane or small fish or crustaceans in water.' Wei filtered compressed air in a scuba tank through a porous hose to create bubbles about a tenth of a millimeter in diameter. When an athlete swims through a sheet of bubbles that rises from the pool floor, a camera captures their flow around the swimmer's body and the images show the direction and speed of the bubbles, which Wei then translates into the swimmer's thrust using software that he wrote."

MythTV Allows Multiple Front-Ends On Wide Range of Platforms 254

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday August 15, 2008 @04:19PM from the how-long-till-the-big-guys-realize-drm-isn't-the-answer dept.

As the DVR becomes a much more pervasive performer in home theater setups, the level of excellence demanded by the general consumer seems to continue to rise. The open source project MythTV has been in this arena for quite a while, and now offers the ability to have multiple front-ends on your MythTV install on a wide range of different platforms. Able to run on Windows XP, Vista, Xbox, and even an Apple iPod, the new flexibility is sure to interest many consumers (and many competitors).

T-Mobile Will Be First To Use Android 203

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday August 15, 2008 @03:32PM from the setting-your-sights-too-high-can-lead-to-disappointment dept.

stoolpigeon writes to tell us that T-Mobile's upcoming phone will try to combine the best elements of many of the new smart phones, and will be using Google's Android software. "The HTC phone, which many gadget sites are calling the 'dream,' will have a touch screen, like the iPhone. But the screen also slides out to expose a full five-row keyboard. A video of the phone has been posted recently on YouTube. A person who has seen the HTC device said it matched the one in the video. The phone's release date depends on how soon the Federal Communications Commission certifies that the Google software and the HTC phone meet network standards. Executives at all three companies are hoping to announce the phone in September because they would benefit from holiday season sales."

ISO Rejects OOXML Protest Appeals 258

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday August 15, 2008 @02:47PM from the money-can't-buy-happiness-but-it-can-rent-it dept.

snydeq writes "ISO and IEC gave OOXML the greenlight after organization leaders rejected appeals from four countries to protest the vote that approved OOXML as a standard. According to an ISO press statement, appeals by the national bodies of Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela did not garner support from two-thirds of the members of the ISO Technical Management Board and IEC Standardization Management Board, which is required by ISO/IEC rules to keep the appeals process alive."

British Government Considers Tenfold Increase To Copyright Penalty 154

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday August 15, 2008 @02:03PM from the bigger-stick dept.

Out-Law is reporting that the British government is planning to increase the maximum fine that can be awarded for online copyright infringement tenfold. "The Government and the Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) are consulting on the plans, which would allow Magistrates' Courts in England and Wales to issue summary fines of £50,000 for online copyright infringement. The larger fine is proposed for commercial scale infringements, where the person involved profits from the infringement. The plan would implement another of the recommendations of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, the 2006 report by former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers which has been the foundation of intellectual property policy since its publication."

"War On Terror" Board Game Confiscated In UK 598

Posted by kdawson on Friday August 15, 2008 @01:19PM from the security-theater-as-low-comedy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The board game The War On Terror is a satirical game in which George Bush's 'Axis of Evil' is reduced to a spinner in the middle of the board, which determines which player is designated a terrorist state. That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word 'Evil' stitched onto it. Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava 'could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act.' Balaclavas are freely sold all over the place in the area." Schneier has blogged this stupidity, of course.

NASA Tests Space's Effects On Fat People 3

Posted by samzenpus on Friday August 15, 2008 @12:48PM from the space-is-a-big-place dept.

Imagine how big you could get in a zero-g environment.

How NASA Will Bomb the Moon To Find Water 280

Posted by kdawson on Friday August 15, 2008 @11:46AM from the black-eye-on-green-cheese dept.

mattnyc99 writes "A few weeks ago we got first word of NASA's plan to crash a spacecraft into the moon next February. The new issue of Popular Mechanics has an in-depth look at the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and its low-cost, lightning-fast mission prep — even if delays have pushed it to late February or early March. Quoting: 'Andrews had no budget for an expensive lander to seek water, and conditions in the eternally dark polar craters would kill rovers, with temperatures close to minus 300 F. Instead, Blue Ice and its partners at Northrop Grumman came up with a concept to bring the lunar floor out in the open.... Since engineering precision hardware would break the budget, the LCROSS team had to make existing components work together.'"

Comment Sounds like another iPod to me (Score 1) 151

by juicy on Thursday December 07, 2006 @11:39AM (#17146368) Attached to: iPod Alternatives for Mac OS X?

Of course what you really want is an iPod.

Everything else is a kludge with imaginary technical (and otherwise) support and weak-or-broken-to-the-point-of-amusing interfaces.

In fact, in these days of disposable electronics on all frontiers, I don't understand at all why going through two iPods over several years is reason or cause to 'take your business elsewhere,' unless you're just pouting over the same thing that two hundred and eleventy trillion other people deal with daily.

I'm also on my third iPod, and having tried other players (I was a pre-order customer for the very first portable mp3 player), I wouldn't touch anything else with a ten-foot pole.

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