mailchandra - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Not so fast... (Score 3, Informative) 176

by mailchandra on Monday July 07, 2008 @08:36PM (#24092493) Attached to: The Future of Mind Control of Physical Objects

One of the big issues with recording from the skull is the quality of the data. The skull attenuates the signals considerably and besides you have all sorts of artifacts from head motion etc.Anyway, there is yet reason to hope. Finding usable realtime data from noninvasive recordings is going to be very very difficult. The reason you do want to shove things or place electrodes in the brain is to improve the signal to noise of the recordings. With implanted electrodes in specific areas of the brain such as the motor cortex you get excellent clean signals which can then be further processed using clever machine learning algorithms. However, there are still problems because gunk builds around the electrodes and chances of infection and so on. Having said that, as electrodes become smaller and smaller, it should soon be possible to place electrodes a few microns thick inside the skull. Presumably in the future you will be able to have a USB like plug on your skull to control things. This is optimistically 10 - 15 years off in the future.

Monkeys and Humans Learn the Same Way 91

Posted by Zonk on Thursday August 02, 2007 @06:40PM from the we're-all-ugly-bags-of-mostly-water dept.

Lucas123 writes "A new study from UCLA showed that monkeys, like humans, learn faster by being actively involved in the learning process rather than just having information placed before them, according to a story in ScienceDaily. In the study, two rhesus macaque monkeys learned to put up to 18 photos on an ATM-like touch screen in a row. 'The monkeys did much better on the first three days when they had the help than when they didn't, but on the test day, it completely reversed. When they studied with the hint, there is no evidence they learned anything about the list. They learned the lists when they didn't get the help.'"

Google Shows Off Ad-Supported Cell Phone 290

Posted by Zonk on Thursday August 02, 2007 @05:52PM from the gotta-love-freebies dept.

taoman1 writes "Today Google showed off a ad-supported cellphone that the company plans to offer for free to interested parties. The product could reach the marketplace within a year, and will offer Google search, email, and a web browser. 'The move would echo another recent product launched by a phone industry outsider, Apple Inc.'s iPhone. But Google's product would draw its revenue from a sharply different source, relying on commercial advertising dollars instead of the sticker price of at least US$499 for an iPhone and $60 per month for the AT&T Inc. service plan. Negotiating the fairest way to split those advertising revenues with service providers could be a big hurdle for Google, one analyst said. Another problem is the potential that consumers could be scared off by the prospect of listening to advertisements before being able to make phone calls, said Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst in Atlanta.'"

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