The newest installment of the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ came out Tuesday, drumming up unprecedented excitement among gamers. Industry experts talk to the AP about the game and its cast of characters. (April 29)
© 2008 The Associated Press
When it comes to chronicling a trip with digital photos, getting everything organized for presentation can be somewhat of a challenge. AP’s Nick Jesdanun put Google Earth to the test to see how well it handles organizing and viewing. (May 1)
© 2008 The Associated Press
Boris Johnson has officially taken up the post of London mayor.
Mr Johnson’s reign began at midnight, when he accepted the seals of office from predecessor Ken Livingstone, mayor for the past eight years.
Since his win in Thursday’s election was announced, Conservative Mr Johnson has pledged to tackle violent crime and said he will work to unite communities.
The new mayor has also said he will make public transport safer and protect taxpayers’ money.
On Sunday Mr Johnson attended the Sikh New Year festival, Vaisakhi, in Trafalgar Square, where he pledged to be a “mayor for all London”, which he said was “the whole world in a city”.
The new mayor had been accused during his election campaign of being a divisive figure who could not represent all of the metropolis, and is expected to attempt to build bridges with the city’s ethnic minority groups.
Â
“I won’t rest till we have started to make a difference”
Boris Johnson
Â
Operation Black Vote’s Simon Woolley said Mr Johnson “must now demonstrate that he understands what it means to govern a multi-cultural metropolis” and address issues of poverty.
Speaking at the event in Trafalgar Square Mr Johnson said: “The last few days have been very, very exciting and very, very exhausting, but this is the single most wonderful job in British politics.
“I am going to be a mayor for all London and work to unite communities.
“One of the wonderful things we have got in London is fantastic diversity – we have got the whole world in a city.”
On the topic of crime, he said: “I certainly think it’s extremely important that we get to grips with violent crime, which is going up, and we get to grips immediately with the scourge of so-called minor crime and disorder on the buses and the places in which the mayor is directly responsible.”
“I am not pretending we can transform this overnight, but it is the job of the mayor to give a lead, and I won’t rest till we have started to make a difference,” he said.
His aides said he would use his first days as London mayor to start work on key pledges such as 440 police community support officers on the Tube and trains, weapons scanners at stations and a review of the western zone of the congestion charge.
Asked about Mr Johnson’s victory in an interview with the BBC, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he wished him well but the “test” was now what Mr Johnson would do in the job.
Hackney North Labour MP Diane Abbott said he was “an accident waiting to happen”.
Mr Livingstone had been London’s mayor since the office was introduced in 2000, initially as an independent after being overlooked as the Labour candidate. He was welcomed back into the party in 2004, when he won a second term
A fire in which a large number of animals were killed, is being treated as arson, police have confirmed.
Twenty pigs, a horse and a Shetland pony died in a blaze at a small-holding in Tanfield Lea, near Stanley, early on Saturday morning.
Rabbits and geese also died in the fire, which Durham Police detectives have said was started deliberately.
A force spokesman said officers were working with fire service investigators and appealed for witnesses.
Â
A 19-year-old German woman has been charged with attempting to smuggle £500,000 worth of cocaine into the UK.
She was arrested after about 11kg of the Class A drug was allegedly found in her VW Golf car at the Port of Ramsgate ferry terminal in Kent.
The haul was discovered by officers from the UK Border Agency (UKBA) in the rear quarter panels of the vehicle.
The teenager, who had arrived on a ferry from Ostend, Belgium, on Saturday, is due in court later.
Â
A building in north Devon has been sealed off after a home-made explosive went off, injuring a man.
The Royal Navy’s bomb disposal team also carried out a controlled explosion on a second device found at the flat in Barnstaple on Sunday afternoon.
Police said a 47-year-old man was being treated for hand injuries, apparently caused by the first explosive.
Neighbouring flats at the property in St George’s Road were evacuated. Police have ruled out any terrorist links.
The man was taken to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital for treatment. His condition is described as stable.
Residents were moved from the house and the area was cordoned off as a safety measure whilst bomb disposal officers and police forensic teams carried out further searches
Have you ever wanted to control your computer with your mind? I have. And come next December maybe we will. It’s been almost a year since I first talked about Emotiv Systems and the company’s EPOC headset. They’ve stayed somewhat secretive since then (crypticness and stealth that also extended to my email correspondence with them). But last February 19th they came out of the cave at the GDC’08 conference with a brand new bone, the latest version of their consumer based brain-computer interface that is quite frankly geeking me out. The headset will be marketed for the game industry and is expected to go for $299. Read on for what to expect. The features are, well, pretty unbelievable.
I’ll start off by noting that there was not one, but two companies demoing brain-computer interfaces at GDC this year. Emotiv Systems & the EPOC neuroheadset, which we’ll be focusing on here, and NeuroSky. The latter is planning on selling their sensors and technologies to partners and will not be developing a specific headset on their own (they had a demo unit at GDC just to show the functionality of their systems).
If you’ve read Think Artificial before, you’re probably somewhat familiar with BCIs. Brain-computer interfaces. Devices that allow us to control machines using only our minds.
The key technology is called electroencephalography (EEG). A device monitors your brain’s electrical activity via sensors on your scalp. It’s been used for medical purposes for years — and the futuristic image on the side here depicts setup for a musical brainwave performance at the Deconism Gallery in 2003, for example. The audience of a concert hooked up to the EEG devices to affect music and lighting.
However, monitoring the waves is different from detecting their patterns and using them reliable “triggersâ€, like Emotiv Systems’ EPOC device and software does. For this to work, two things are essentially required: The user has to practice producing a repeating, recognizable pattern. But there’s always noise (because it takes practice to be able to visualize the same image, or sequence), so the second thing is that the software deciphering the electrical activity must learn to recognize trigger waves.
Naturally, EPOC is not an invasive kind of BCIs — you won’t need a drill and pliers to use it.
But you’ll still have to shave your head (just kidding).
The Emotiv EPOC Neuroheadset uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals naturally produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expression. It connects wirelessly with all game platforms from consoles to PCs. The Emotiv neuroheadset now makes it possible for games to be controlled and influenced by the player’s mind. [link]
Emotiv Systems have been working 4 years on R&D, and have come up with their commercially viable BCI — and at a remarkably low price considering its capabilities and that this is the first time such technology hits the market for general consumers. Which brings us to its features.
Let’s start off with an easy-digest list of features expected to be bundled in the first release of EPOC:
The EPOC system is comprised of three main software components, each of which detects different kinds of brainwave activity.
The Affectiv suite can reportedly measure the emotional states of the user. Anger, fear, frustration. Emotiv puts forth the example that this could be used to have games increase or decrease the difficulty level depending on the player’s state of mind. The Cognitiv Suite is the control mechanism that allows players to control objects, and the Expressiv suite which measures and interpretes facial expressions of the user. The descriptions and demos are vivid, for example: You smile and thus your avatar smiles.
One of my earliest questions regarding EPOC was: can the system discern many patterns at the same time with any knowledge beforehand on what you’re trying to accomplish?
Most of what I’ve seen from their demos is task-and-turn based, where the player is moved between “phasesâ€, each of which requires him to use one and only one specific action at a time. The Stonehenge Demo, for example, moves the player from stone to stone — but the player only applies one action to each stone (e.g. “rotate†or “liftâ€; not both).
Let’s elaborate. A user is inside Second Life and has created a plain box. My question is: Can the system handle rotating the box while the user is smiling/making the avatar smile? Or rotating the box, moving it a bit forward, then up — perhaps even rotating and lifting the box at the same time? Is all of this possible? Because if this were possible I’d be geeked out.
I got mail yesterday. And I geeked out. The letter was from Emotiv reporting, amongst other things, more information on EmoKey — their software for mapping mental intention to keyboards (yes, meaning the Epoc headset will be connectable to virtually any application).
The descriptions almost sound surreal:
EmoKey Software – Use the Emotiv EPOC with your existing software
In our efforts to enabled our users, Emotiv has developed the EmoKey software application in conjunction with the Emotiv EPOC. EmoKey allows you to associate any of the Emotiv EPOC detections with keystrokes on your PC. EmoKey enables all of your existing PC software to be Emotiv EPOC compatible right out of the box! In practice, this means that you can link a “smile†detection to type the “smiley emoticon†in your chat application or link a thought, such as “rotate clockwise†to a series of keystrokes such as “a-w-d-s-a-w-d-s†to rotate your magic wand!
This appears to indicate that you can basically do any action, at any time, anywhere. Right? Well, almost. It’s not clear whether you can only “press†one button at a time (â€a then w then d then s….â€), or if you can press many buttons at the same time. It could even be a third case where you can press 3 buttons at a time — one from each detection suite (unlikely).
However, I can venture the guess that a feature of the EmoKey is to define a “virtual button†(if not, please spread the idea to Emotiv!). This could allow you to compose a series of virtual buttons. A specific thought could then be assigned to a series of them “ctrl+a, ctrl+w, …†instead of single physical buttons, thereby enabling you to press two buttons at the same time. Like enabling rotation of a something while smiling. This brings up the question of how many mappings there can be?
Regardless of questions and concerns, this is an incredible device that I would love to get my hands on. Granted, it is the first commercial edition, and we can expect that things may not run as smoothly as we hope. This video of someone trying the beta demo is actually the worst example I could find. I say actually because I don’t think that’s bad at all. The upload date & specific demo indicates this was at GDC’08, which means it’s probably a first time user.
Looking forward to seeing and hearing more about Epoc. In a recently featured article I talked about what great virtual reality gear could be; an important part being a non-invasive EEG device like Epoc for movement control.
Imagine making your avatar smile. Not via keystrokes. Simply by smiling yourself, walking towards that interesting monolith in the distance by seeing it happen in your mind.
Â
The company Vollee is creating a client that offers cellphone users full access to Second Life. The company is accepting registrations for their beta rollout that begins in May. In short (and they provide all in short): All heavy lifting (graphics rendering etc.) is done on their servers and then streamed to the user’s phone. They’ve published a video which is embedded below.
Â
The requirements of their system is 3G phone (for rapid streaming), is less than 100k and runs on “any platformâ€, and their service is free — at least during the beta. Martin Dunsby, CEO of Vollee, presented at GDC’08 which resulted in reports such as the following:
“The results are stunning. A PC-perfect version of Second Life runs on a phone that could barely handle some of the most elemental mobile games. Vollee also optimizes the controls and user interface for phones, so in Second Life’s case, instead of having pop-up windows for chatting or maps, a tabulated system lets you switch between each screen. It may not have keyboard-and-mouse support, but Vollee tries to make the keypad perform most of the same functions, so moving and flying around in Second Life felt quite natural and looked great to us.
[1UP on Vollee’s SL at GDC’08]â€
Being interested in the emerging world of mobile computing, and not being an owner of a 3G phone, I dropped Vollee an email and asked whether they didn’t support Wi-Fi access, as most major cities now have Wi-Fi covering large portions of urban areas.
Their answer was yes. And this lead to even more curiosity. I expected a no because there is no mention of Wi-Fi on their pages (you’d think that’d be mentioned, right? Even if 3G is the focus). So this raised more questions that are not explicitly answered in their FAQ; specifically the following three which I’m now waiting for an answer to:
I’m really pushing it with that last one, I know. It’s not too far fetched that they’re collaborating with Apple, but if they were they’d hardly reveal anything. The answers, when and if I get them, will be posted here. In the meantime enjoy this video of the system in action on a Motorola phone.
Eric Goldman has a fascinating post, pointing out that the era of sneaky adware seems to be pretty much over. For quite some time, one of the biggest annoyances online for many users were surreptitiously-installed client side adware programs that would pop up unwanted ads while you did other things. However, it appears that a combination of factors have pretty much wiped them out. Legal rulings found that the surreptitious installs (either with no notice or misleading notices) were fraud. Companies were sued, fined and went out of business. Security firms got better at catching and blocking these programs, and the few remaining firms in the space moved on to other projects (though, some are equally questionable). Either way, most folks probably didn’t notice, because they either learned to avoid the sneaky adware or they were already well enough protected from it. Yet, as Goldman points out, pretty much everyone (with the possible exception of Zango) is no longer in the business of tricking people into installing ad-spewing software.
Of course, Goldman points out that no one has let the politicians in on this news yet, as many are still pushing various anti-spyware legislation that probably doesn’t matter any more. He also points out that this doesn’t mean questionable ad activity isn’t still happening — it’s just moved on from sneakily installing an application on your harddrive. That’s why Phorm (a former client-side adware maker) is in so much hot water these days. Its behavioral ad targeting solution may not be the same as the surreptitious client side ad spewing software — but it’s still surreptitiously watching your behavior and displaying ads based on it.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
He’s certainly not the first such case, but spammer Eddie Davidson has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for both tax evasion and falsifying email headers. Some other sentences have been even longer. However, it makes you wonder how much of an impact these sentences are having on the spam community. Are spammers getting more cautious and going underground now that jail sentences are being handed out? Has the whole spam effort shifted offshore where it’s harder to track them down? One thing that doesn’t seem to be happening is any noticeable reduction in spam.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
