wbm6k - Slashdot User

Nerve-tapping Neckband Allows 'Telepathic' Chat 205

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 13, 2008 @02:09AM from the mouth-of-cyber-sauron dept.

ZonkerWilliam writes "Newscientist has an interesting article on tapping the nerve impulses going from the brain to the vocal chords, allowing for 'Voiceless' phone calls. "With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerized voice." It's not quite telepathy, but it's pretty close."

Big Delays, Small Laptops: OLPC XO Recipients Mad 165

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 25, 2008 @09:15AM from the give-one-get-one-if-you-are-lucky dept.

PCWMike writes to tell us about the growing concern over the failure of OLPC to deliver laptops to some of its customers. PC World editor-in-chief Harry McCracken notes that record-keeping was poor for some of the people who paid via PayPal. A report on LinuxJournal also suggests that customer information was lost due to errors in the database software used by OLPC. Quoting PC World: "OLPC spokesperson Jackie Lustig acknowledges problems with the ordering and the fulfillment process, but says the biggest challenges are a short supply of XO laptops and the organization's ability to meet consumer demand for the XO laptop. Some also wonder whether chronic delivery problems for Give One, Get One donors may bode poorly for the 15 countries slated to receive nearly 500,000 XO notebooks. Lustig says delivering in bulk to just over a dozen countries is infinitely simpler than processing and delivering 80,000 individual laptops."

Feed Techdirt: Don't Underestimate Google's Ability To Shake Up Established Markets (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @05:12PM

The generally-reliable Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is planning to introduce a free network storage product. Larry Dignan suggests that Google is late to the party and worries that they'll turn customers off with annoying ads cluttering up their desktop. This gives Google too little credit. In the first place, virtually every successful product Google has launched has entered an already crowded market. Most obviously, there were already plenty of search engines when Google was founded. More recently, GMail and Google Maps were both launched in what were thought to be relatively mature markets, but Google nevertheless found ways to shake up those markets by producing extremely polished offerings that had features missing from existing products. It may very well do the same thing in the storage market. By the same token, it would be shocking if Google tried to shove intrusive desktop ads down users' throats. Google has always been careful not to let its efforts to generate revenue interfere with the usefulness of its products. For example, it offers POP and IMAP features for GMail, despite the fact that it doesn't have any way to directly monetize users who check their mail that way. Google does that because it knows that almost every POP or IMAP user will check their mail on the web some of the time, and it will get the chance to display ads to users at that point. By the same token, I expect that Google will find non-intrusive ways to present ads in some parts of the GDrive product, while offering other parts of the product ad-free. The most obvious way to do this is to follow the GMail model: ad-free access from the desktop alongside an ad-supported web-based interface. As Mike pointed out earlier today, one of the secrets to Google's success is to recognize the power of complementary goods. Google understands that if it can get a lot of users using its products, it will eventually find a way to monetize those eyeballs. And more importantly, it understands that it's short-sighted to generate revenue in a way that alienates customers and thereby reduces long-term traffic growth.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Submission + - NASA to scientists: Reveal sex history or lose job 1

Submitted by

Markmarkmark

on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @04:57PM

Markmarkmark writes: "Wired is reporting that all NASA JPL scientists must 'voluntarily' (or be fired) sign a document giving the government the right to investigate their personal lives and history 'without limit'. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists this includes snooping into sexual orientation, mental & physical health as well as credit history and 'personality conflict'. 28 senior NASA scientists and engineers, including Mars Rover team members, refused to sign by the deadline and are now subject to being fired despite a decade or more of exemplary service. None of them even work on anything classified or defense related. They are suing the government and documenting their fight for their jobs and right to personal privacy."

Comment Re:how on earth? (Score 1) 748

by wbm6k on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @02:32PM (#20308227) Attached to: Playing Music Slows Vista Network Performance?

Slashdot DOES include the year; the URL for a slashdot story starts with YY/MM/DD/

The post in question is from 1999.

Dungeons, Cities, and Psionics 177

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday September 12, 2006 @01:23PM from the guess-what-i'm-thinking dept.

It's time to check in with the table-top scene, with a slew of products from earlier this year. With one exception, everything I have to discuss today is from Wizards of the Coast (WotC). The well-known maker of Dungeons and Dragons is having a banner year, a year they've been referring to as the 'Year of Dragons'. Their draco-specific products will get a look here on the site in a month or two, and later this month I should have a full report on the 4th Edition of the Shadowrun RPG. Today, though, we've got demons, psionics, epic-level play, and a second Player's Handbook. Oh yeah, and a 670-page, $120 sourcebook called Ptolus. Read on for my impressions of these great excuses to throw a d20.

New PS3 and Revolution Info at GDC 67

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 09, 2006 @02:27PM from the delicious-information dept.

GameDailyBiz has a talk with Jamil Molena, the Director of the Game Developer's conference, about the upcoming event. Some interesting stuff about what to expect out of the event, as well as some happy news about the Sony and Nintendo keynotes. From the article: "BIZ: What can you tell us about Phil Harrison's keynote? Will we finally get some new information on the PlayStation 3? JM: The answer is yes. In general, platform providers have a unique opportunity at the GDC to share knowledge with and inspire the people who will make or break their consoles, namely the game developers themselves. With that in mind, this GDC keynote, along with the Nintendo keynote by Satoru Iwata, have both been in development for several months, and contain significant editorial value and developer takeaway."

What's Known About the PS3 234

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 03, 2006 @01:52PM from the devil-in-the-details dept.

1up has an expansive piece up exploring everything they know about the PlayStation 3. They cover rumours, prices, technology, and the limited information currently out there on upcoming games. From the article: "While the hard facts are still tough to nail down, the general consensus is that the PlayStation 3 is the most powerful of the three next-generation systems, although probably not by as much of a margin as Sony would like us to think. The arguments for the technical strengths of the PS3 go into CPU floating-point capabilities and the difficulties surrounding programming for parallel architectures, but the long and short of it is that whether or not the advantages of the PS3 are apparent will depend on developers' ability to utilize the PlayStation 3's unique architecture."

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