mike_dill - Slashdot User

Human Tests of Mind-Controlled Artificial Arm To Begin 119

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 03, 2010 @11:04PM from the do-what-i-mean dept.

kkleiner writes "The world's first human testing of a mind-controlled artificial limb is ready to begin. A joint project between the Pentagon and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Modular Prosthetic Limb will be fully controlled by sensors implanted in the brain, and will even restore the sense of touch by sending electrical impulses from the limb back to the sensory cortex. Last week APL announced it had been awarded a $34.5M contract with DARPA, which will allow researchers to test the neural prosthetic in five individuals over the next two years."

2-D Avatar To Be Pulled From Theaters In China 344

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 19, 2010 @06:43PM from the hard-to-be-blue dept.

SimonTheSoundMan notes that Avatar is being pulled from screens in China for being too successful, and too provocative in its anti-authoritarian message. (The 3-D and IMAX versions will remain.) "The communist nation's state-run movie distributor China Film Group is unexpectedly yanking the James Cameron-directed blockbuster Avatar from 1,628 2-D screens this week in favor of a biography of the ancient philosopher Confucius starring Chow-Yun Fat. ... According to a report in the Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, the move was made at the urging of propaganda officials who are concerned that Avatar is taking too much market share from Chinese films and drawing unwanted attention to the sensitive issue of forced evictions."

USPTO Grants Google a Patent On MapReduce 191

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 19, 2010 @02:52PM from the reductio-ad-absurdum dept.

theodp writes "Two years ago, David DeWitt and Michael Stonebraker deemed MapReduce a major step backwards (here are the original paper and a defense of it) that 'represents a specific implementation of well known techniques developed nearly 25 years ago.' A year later, the pair teamed up with other academics and eBay to slam MapReduce again. But the very public complaints didn't stop Google from demanding a patent for MapReduce; nor did it stop the USPTO from granting Google's request (after four rejections). On Tuesday, the USPTO issued U.S. Patent No. 7,650,331 to Google for inventing Efficient Large-Scale Data Processing."

Feed Sun says Apple is switching to ZFS in Leopard (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Thursday June 07, 2007 @12:52AM

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Storage

You dealt with it when Apple switched you from MFS to HFS, and again you were switched from HFS to HFS+ (and even journaled HFS+), and you'll deal with it again: according to Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz (whom you may know for his totally righteous pony tail), Apple is going to use Sun's crazy advanced ZFS filesystem when they move users over to Leopard. The material advantages may not be immediately apparent to the average user (when was the last time you whipped up a multi-exabyte file?), but it will do some excellentay things like storage pooling (aka virtual storage), block-journaling, and plenty of other nerdy things about which you can read up on elsewhere. Expect to hear more about this one next Monday at WWDC.

Watch - Schwartz talks it up [Via MacRumors]
Read - More about why this is a Good Thing (TM)

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Submission + - Bush derails attempts to end illegal wiretapping

Submitted by

P. Rivacy

on Thursday June 07, 2007 @12:01AM

P. Rivacy writes: "Remember how the Congress tried to outlaw the already illegal NSA wiretaps authorized by the President?

Bush is now using delaying tactics to derail the passage of that bill by not providing documents related to the President's warrantless wiretapping program to the Senate Intelligence Committee that is currently reviewing the proposed legislation."

Feed Dell Set To Jump On The IT Services Bandwagon (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Wednesday June 06, 2007 @11:32PM

As Dell has begun to clarify its long awaited turnaround strategy, the market has rewarded the company by pushing its stock higher over the last few months. Meanwhile, a number of analysts believe the company is on the right path, although this is by no means a universal sentiment. In addition to its retail strategy, CEO Michael Dell is also indicating that the company will beef up its IT services business. At the moment, the company has a small, but rapidly growing service unit, and it's not surprising that the company would like to expand would like to expand in that area. All across the industry, companies have turned to services to offset slow growth and commoditization in their traditional lines. IBM is the most shining example of a company that's successfully undergone such a transformation. But while Dell's intentions are logical, it's not going to be easy. Michael Dell says the company wants to make acquisitions in this area, but any such deals are going to be pretty expensive, since everyone has the same idea these days. Furthermore, Dell will have to overcome its reputation for being weak on support in order for this business to really thrive.

Feed In a Virtual Universe, the Politics Turn Real (nytimes.com)

From feed by nytfeed on Wednesday June 06, 2007 @11:12PM

In what appears to be a first, players of the Internet game Eve Online will elect independent auditors.

Forgetting May be Part of the Remembering Process 191

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 06, 2007 @11:11PM from the what-was-I-talking-about dept.

CFTM writes "The New York Times is running an interesting article about how human memory works and the theorized adaptive nature of forgetfulness". From the article, "Whether drawing a mental blank on a new A.T.M. password, a favorite recipe or an old boyfriend, people have ample opportunity every day to curse their own forgetfulness. But forgetting is also a blessing, and researchers reported on Sunday that the ability to block certain memories reduces the demands on the brain when it is trying to recall something important. The study, appearing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, is the first to record visual images of people's brains as they suppress distracting memories. The more efficiently that study participants were tuning out irrelevant words during a word-memorization test, the sharper the drop in activity in areas of their brains involved in recollection. Accurate remembering became easier, in terms of the energy required."