Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Hummmmm… IBM thinks that you do! They are predicting a technology (already under development) that will allow your computer (via a headset that you will wear) to “read your mind” and allow you to control the compouter! Sounds cool to me! Especially for gaming! Imagine moving your space craft in a game via mental instructions! I like it!

IBM: Mind-Reading Machines Will Change Our Lives

“In five years, we’ll simply be able to think something, and a computer will respond. That’s the vision from IBM, which just published its ‘5 in 5’ forecast, which attempts to predict five technologies that have the potential to significantly change our lives in the next five years. One of the more surprising candidates: machines that will read our thoughts.

Well, not exactly, IBM Senior Inventor Kevin Brown told Mashable. The idea is a little more down-to-earth — and less scary — than the science-fiction scenarios of mind-reading robots that the description evokes. IBM’s vision is this: a person wears a headset that can detect general electrical signals from the brain, and sends them to a computer. Sophisticated software interprets those signals and, in turn, tells a machine what to do.

‘One of the common misconceptions is that this headset is reading your thoughts,’ says Brown. ‘It’s not. It’s just reading a level of excitement. It’s not understanding.’

The technology behind the idea has existed for a while. The headset, which costs just $299 and is made by a company called Emotiv, is able to detect electrical signals in the brain (via electroencephalography, or EEG) as well as muscular movements (electromyography, or EMG), both well known in the medical community.

Once you have those signals, Brown says the real magic begins, which is the ability to map signals to different actions. By doing so, the user is effectively teaching the machine how to read a specific mind. In much the same way speech-recognition software gets tailored to an individual’s accent, inflections, and pronunciation, the mind-reading software can adapt to a person’s unique ‘thoughts.’

The next step is mapping specific thoughts to specific actions, analogous to programming a universal remote control. The key here is that the thought and action don’t necessarily have to be the same. For example, if you want to use the headset to, say, turn on a TV, you might program the headset to perform that action when you think about kittens.”

Two cross-posts (below) from my other blog, the Hand Held Hack, may seem extreme. (And, maybe it is.) But, the two blogs reach different audiences and the news I mentioned in the posts are of interest to both the HHH readers, and our Dr. Bill.TV readers. So, please excuse the double-up!

Cross-posted from the Hand Held Hack:

“Robots in disguise!” Yeah. Like there would be confusion over a tablet and a toy robot. Well, Hasbro is concerned!

Hasbro Sues Asus Over ‘Transformer’ Name

“Toy maker Hasbro has filed suit against Asus for trademark infringement over the use of the “Transformer” name.

At CES earlier this year, Asus unveiled the Eee Pad Transformer, an Android-based tablet that can convert to a notebook via a docking station. Last month, it expanded the line with the Transformer Prime, a tablet-laptop hybrid that is the first to include Nvidia’s next-gen Tegra 3 mobile chip.

But as any child of the 80s is aware, a Transformer is more than just a fancy tablet. Hasbro unveiled the Transformers in 1984, a line of tiny robots that converted into other forms. In addition to plastic toys and various other paraphernalia, the Transformers were available via a cartoon, a comic book series, an animated film and, more recently, several live-action films. There was even a Transformer Camaro, according to court filings.

In a lawsuit filed last week, Hasbro said it contacted Asus about the Eee Pad Transformer earlier this year, asking the company not to use the name. ‘Asus refused to comply,’ according to the lawsuit, filed in a California district court.

Hasbro claims that ads for Asus’s Transformer Prime (below) use imagery that ‘closely resembles imagery used in Transformers movies and video games, in particular evoking the Transformers home planet of Cybertron.'”

Riiight! I am sure they were trying to invoke images of Cybertron! I guess I would protect my product name too, but this is a little silly guys!

Cross-posted from the Hand Held Hack:

Awesome! I LOVE my new Kindle Fire! And now, with the 6.2.1 software upgrade, it is faster, slicker, and has less restrictions, as this article in GigaOm, points out:

Kindle Fire no longer blocks Android Market website

“Earlier this week, I grilled Amazon for attempting to control web browsing activities on its Kindle Fire. Any attempts to browse Google’s Android Market website were redirected to Amazon’s own AppStore on the tablet. I understand why Amazon did so: It wants to have Android apps installed on the Fire directly from its own curated application store, and it doesn’t want to field support calls when users have issues with Android Market apps on the Kindle Fire. Still, I feel the browser is sacred, and no browsing activities should be hijacked like this.

The good news is that Amazon has rethought its approach. With the new Kindle Fire software update, made available on Wednesday, you can now browse to the Google Android Market website. After I installed the software update to the Fire – we have complete instructions on the five-minute process here — I verified the browsing block was gone. I did get a security certificate warning, but was able to continue in the Fire’s browser with no other issues.

Does this mean you can now install Android Market apps to the Kindle Fire over the web? Not exactly, because there’s no simple way to associate the Kindle Fire with a Google account, which is how Google’s web-based Android Market links to devices. Regardless, this step was the right one for Amazon to take because it allows people to see which Android apps Google does offer, and it no longer hijacks the web page a user wants to view.”

Here’s a video from the Verge on the new software, “before and after.”

Well, that was quick! No sooner than 6.1 is out, now 6.2 is out! Dewd!

CentOS and Oracle release their Red Hat 6.2 clones

“The CentOS project must have overclocked its coffeemakers to the max, as the team released CentOS 6.2 only a week after it let go with CentOS 6.1. As noted by The H, the surprise appearance of CentOS 6.2 coincided with Oracle’s release of its own RHEL clone Oracle Linux 6.2 (see farther below).

CentOS 6.1 was almost seven months in the making, but followed its Red Hat Linux Enterprise (RHEL) 6.1 master at a faster clip than did CentOS 6.0 in its imitation of RHEL 6.0. The CentOS 6.2 release bests that pace by a long shot, trailing RHEL 6.2 by only two weeks.

The community-driven, freely available CentOS 6.2 offers almost all the non-proprietary portions of RHEL 6.2, and is said to be 100 percent binary compatible. The distribution is available for i386 and x86_64 architectures.

Oracle Linux 6.2

Oracle Linux is a RHEL clone of a different stripe, as adds a RHEL-based Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. In Oracle Linux 6.2, the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel appears to be the main addition to the RHEL 6.2 foundation. The kernel, which is optimized for performance on Oracle software, was claimed by Oracle last year to be more than 75 percent faster than a RHEL kernel in OLTP performance, and 200 percent faster than Infiniband messaging.The kernel was also said to provide optimizations for large NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) servers, plus improved power management and energy efficiency.

Both the CentOS and Oracle Linux releases are based on a RHEL 6.2 upgrade that introduced some fairly significant performance and scalability enhancements, especially on multicore platforms. Improvements were said to have been applied to resource management, high availability, storage and file system, and identity management components.

As an indication of its improved scalability on multicore systems, the release scored an all-time-high 22,000 users on the SAP SD benchmark, according to Red Hat.

In addition, RHEL 6.2’s new Transmit Packet Steering (XPS) technology, which lets administrators pre-assign a CPU to handle network transmission requests, can improve network throughput by up to 30 percent, says Red Hat. The new release also offers file system enhancements that reduce read-write times and boost overall system utilization, claims the company.”

Check it out! Go to Google and type in “let it snow” and hit return, then wait and watch!

“Let it snow” becomes latest Google Easter egg

“Google has added another trick to its bag just in time for the holidays. If you search for ‘let it snow,’ you will receive a wintery visual treat which adds snow fall and a ‘foggy glass’ effect to the results page. After a few moments pass, you can then wipe away the fog away with your mouse cursor.

It is important to note this trick only works on the most modern of browsers that support the ‘Canvas’ element, a feature unique to HTML 5. I have verified it works in IE9, Chrome and Firefox 8.0.1. Your mileage will most definitely vary with older and alternative browsers.”

Check out the other “Easter Eggs” that Google has in the link above.

Your handheld device is watching you and recording your tracks around the world. Yeah, and what else is new? All you computers and devices are spying on you, because your digit habits are of great interest to businesses so they will know how to sell to you. There you go, evil corporate monkey business marches on!

Is Your Cell Phone Listening in on You?

“When a Connecticut programmer revealed that Carrier IQ, a hidden program on many smartphones, had the power to transmit information about the user’s location, web searches and text messages, the blogosphere erupted with commentary. Senator Al Franken of Minnesota sent a letter to Carrier IQ, Inc., asserting that the use of the software without the consumer’s consent could violate the federal wiretap statute.

But the Carrier IQ incident is just the tip of the iceberg of surreptitious collection of information about us using key features of our smartphones — their cameras, their microphones and their ability to connect to the Internet. And our legal protections are far less secure than Franken thinks.

It’s not surprising that we’re being tracked on our cell phones — data tracking on computers through browsers and Internet service providers has been going on for years, and what are our phones but mini-computers? But the information our phones convey is more revealing and intimate than data from our PCs, including our movements from place to place in real time and our conversations as well as our emails, status updates and web searches.

Some tracking programs, such as Carrier IQ, are installed without your permission. For others, you may intentionally download the smartphone app but not be aware of its full capabilities. Still other apps cannot be easily uninstalled if you decide to try to stop the privacy invasion.”

Farmville is stupid. Most of their games are stupid. So, they had a stock IPO. It was a fail as well. Wanna buy some stock cheap?

Zynga shares slump 10 percent below IPO in first day

“While there was hope for Zynga, the largest technology flotation since Google’s public debut in 2004, the company’s share price dropped by nearly 10 percent in its first day.

At the end of Zynga’s first day of public trading today, the company fell to just over $9 a share, in what could be the most disappointing stock market debut for a technology company this year.

In the biggest valuation since Google’s initial public offering in 2004, the FarmVille and Mafia Wars game maker’s shares dipped below IPO almost immediately.

Trading had initially opened at $11 a share, a dollar higher than its IPO price of $10. But the share price dipped below the crucial IPO benchmark by early afternoon.

Analysts expected at least a mild dip from market opening this morning, based on poor economic conditions, continuing Eurozone worries, and crucially a less-than steady business model.”

Get ready! Microsoft will soon be forcing you to upgrade. (Which is a good thing, pretty much!)

IE to Start Automatic Upgrades across Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7

“Everyone benefits from an up-to-date browser.

Today we are sharing our plan to automatically upgrade Windows customers to the latest version of Internet Explorer available for their PC. This is an important step in helping to move the Web forward. We will start in January for customers in Australia and Brazil who have turned on automatic updating via Windows Update. Similar to our release of IE9 earlier this year, we will take a measured approach, scaling up over time.

As always, when upgrading from one version of Internet Explorer to the next through Windows Update, the user’s home page, search provider, and default browser remains unchanged.”

This is fine except for corporate folks that have software that won’t run under the latest versions of IE. So, be aware! There is a way that corporate folks can block it, but you have to be proactive!

My favorite Linux server distro is out with a new, major version! However, they are still one version behind RHEL.

CentOS turns 6.1, still trails Red Hat by a lap

“CentOS 6.1 has arrived to bring the features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 to those who can live without a Red Hat subscription. CentOS 6.1 offers almost all the non-proprietary portions of RHEL 6.1, including virtualization performance optimizations, enhanced development and monitoring tools, and YUM package management enhancements.

As usual with CentOS releases, there’s not much to talk about in version 6.1 because the distro is a free community clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.1, released back in May. In addition, RHEL 6.1 appears to be a relatively minor release compared with versions 6.0 and 6.2.
Nevertheless, a CentOS release is always newsworthy in the Linux world due to its continuing popularity. The server-focused distro has ranked between seven and 10 on the DistroWatch page rankings over the last year.

Considering that Red Hat has just released RHEL 6.2, the CentOS community has once again fallen behind Red Hat’s development schedule, although it is a bit more timely this time compared to the much delayed CentOS 6.0 released in early July. It must be harder to strip out all the Red Hat trademarked components in the operating system than one might think.

CentOS 6.1 follows RHEL 6.1’s lead in offering virtualization performance optimizations, improved operational efficiency, and high availability improvements. Newly enhanced development and monitoring tools are said to include a Gdb debugger with improved C++ and Python handling and a Valgrind memory tracing tool tuned for multicore processors. There’s also an updated Eclipse development environment that includes enhanced breakpoint and code generation for C/C++ and Java.

Enhancements to YUM command-line package manager

According to the CentOS community, the new release carries through a number of RHEL 6.1 enhancements to the Yellowdog Updater, Modified (YUM) command-line package manager. These are said to include a more user-friendly search function, new “updateinfo” and “versionlock” commands, and the ability to add one’s own .repo variables.

CentOS users who run the continuous release CentOS-Release-CR, starting with version 6.0, are already running code that is included in the 6.1 install media, says the CentOS community.

Availability

CentOS 6.1 is available now for free download on 386 and x86_64 computers. More information may be found in the CentOS 6.1 announcement and the CentOS 6.1 release notes.”