Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader shares a report:Playing first-person shooter video games causes some users to lose grey matter in a part of their brain associated with the memory of past events and experiences, a new study by two Montreal researchers concludes. Gregory West, an associate professor of psychology at the Universite de Montreal, says the neuroimaging study, published Tuesday in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, is the first to find conclusive evidence of grey matter loss in a key part of the brain as a direct result of computer interaction. "A few studies have been published that show video games could have a positive impact on the brain, namely positive associations between action video games, first-person shooter games, and visual attention and motor control skills," West told CBC News. To date, no one has shown that human-computer interactions could have negative impacts on the brain -- in this case the hippocampal memory system." The four-year study by West and Veronique Bohbot, an associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University, looked at the impact of action video games on the hippocampus, the part of the brain that plays a critical role in spatial memory and the ability to recollect past events and experiences.

An anonymous reader writes "Vancouver businessman Wayne Crookes is trying to reverse a decision by BC Supreme Court judge Stephen Kelleher that linking is not the same as publishing. He's been given permission to appeal it to the Supreme Court of Canada. If he wins, it could mean the end of the net in Canada and will reverberate around the world. 'The notion that someone might be considered a publisher merely by linking to someone else's content, I think could have a potentially huge chilling affect [sic] and, for that reason alone, is going to have a major impact on the shape of the Internet in Canada,' says Ottawa law professor Michael Geist. Hyperlinking is what the web is all about, says p2pnet founder Jon Newton. 'Without it, the Internet would become a drab and pale facsimile of the exciting news, data and information medium it is today. Instead, each item would be isolated from every other item, and online defamation lawsuits aimed at anyone and everyone with a Web site would instantly become commonplace.'"

m.ducharme writes "The CBC is reporting that the Supreme Court of Canada has handed down a decision quashing a search warrant used to obtain the computer of a man accused of possession of child porn. 'Urbain P. Morelli maintained his charter rights were violated when police searched his computer for child pornography after a technician who had visited his home to work on the machine expressed concerns to police.' What the Slashdot community may find notable about this decision is the distinction drawn between 'accessing' and 'possessing' digital images, most particularly the recognition that a user does not 'possess' cached data. From the decision: '[35] When accessing Web pages, most Internet browsers will store on the computer's own hard drive a temporary copy of all or most of the files that comprise the Web page. This is typically known as a "caching function" and the location of the temporary, automatic copies is known as the "cache." While the configuration of the caching function varies and can be modified by the user, cached files typically include images and are generally discarded automatically after a certain number of days, or after the cache grows to a certain size. [36] On my view of possession, the automatic caching of a file to the hard drive does not, without more, constitute possession. While the cached file might be in a "place" over which the computer user has control, in order to establish possession, it is necessary to satisfy mens rea or fault requirements as well. Thus, it must be shown that the file was knowingly stored and retained through the cache.'"

roju writes "The Globe and Mail reports that the Canadian Supreme Court has created a new defense against claims of defamation, allowing for reporting in the public interest. They specifically included bloggers as eligible, writing: '...the traditional media are rapidly being complemented by new ways of communicating on matters of public interest, many of them online, which do not involve journalists. These new disseminators of news and information should, absent good reasons for exclusion, be subject to the same laws as established media outlets.' and 'A review of recent defamation case law suggests that many actions now concern blog postings and other online media which are potentially both more ephemeral and more ubiquitous than traditional print media. ... [I]t is more accurate to refer to the new defense as responsible communication on matters of public interest.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist reports that the Supreme Court of Canada has just issued a new online contracting decision that removes the ability for consumers to challenge mandatory arbitration clauses found in e-commerce contracts. (Decision is here.) The case involved a lawsuit against Dell Computer, which refused to sell hundreds of mistakenly priced computers purchased on their website. Dell tried to sidetrack a class action by claiming that all consumers were required to enter arbitration due to a clause buried in its contract via a hyperlink. Geist explains why the ruling may not be as unfavorable for Canadian consumers as it seems at first, in part because some provinces have already passed laws banning e-commerce sites from blocking class-action suits."

Dumitru Erhan writes "The Economist has a special report on open-source. It analyzes the way open-source projects succeed and finds that a rigid, business-like organizational structure is of vital importance to the quality of the final product. It cites Firefox, MySQL and (more recently) Wikipedia as examples of projects that do not simply allow anarchy to rein in, but which have 'real checks and balances, and real leadership taking place'. There is also a discussion of open-source methods being applied to non-software projects." From the article: "Constant self-policing is required to ensure its quality. This lesson was brought home to Wikipedia last December, after a former American newspaper editor lambasted it for an entry about himself that had been written by a prankster. His denunciations spoke for many, who question how something built by the wisdom of crowds can become anything other than mob rule."

Doomie writes "The Economist has an interesting article about solar sails. It talks about the Russian ICBM that will launch Cosmos 1 (mentioned previously on /.) 'The first craft powered by solar-sail technology to orbit the Earth', and the link between this technology and interplanetary travel. Cosmos 1 will orbit Earth starting on June 21st and could, in theory, reach '200,000kph after three years of acceleration' due to the fact that 'particles of light, or photons, that strike a surface give it a tiny push'. The official homepage of the project has more details." Update: 06/18 18:57 GMT by Z : While space trains would be cool, that wasn't the intent of the story. Changed rails to sails.

In the first part of Slashdot's 'Making Music with Linux' series, we discussed the possibilities of using Linux as an audio production operating system. While we lamented the lack of a fully-functional audio suite for Linux, we saw the silver lining in the cloud of patience, and witnessed a great number of free sound tools that were well on their way to greatness. In this installment, we talk a little more about high-end audio mastering, low-end sound transport, and using Linux as a tool for sound synthesis. Part II of a series.

Burning a CD under Linux is super-easy, and there are quite a few programs that make it possible under Linux. X-CD-Roast is a popular tool, and is used constantly by Linux enthusiasts to burn their own multi-session content onto a compact disc. The problem is that there is still no Linux equivalent for the huge multi-track mixer you'll find at professional recording studios. If you're hoping to mix down tracks and perform studio-quality takes and 'bounces' of your work, you're going to need an expensive chunk of professional digital audio hardware. Once you've got your finished master, you'll have no problem making as many copies as you want using your Linux machine. Until we have a real-time mixdown utility, the waiting game wins again.

The world of low-bandwidth sound transport is wide open on the Linux platform, except for the glaring exception of not being able to play Windows Media Player sound files on your machine. Although the 'media darling' of sound transport is the mp3 file format, there's no denying the fact that mp3 provides solid sound quality and a small file footprint. Mp3 still isn't the answer to all of our prayers, however. No matter what anyone tells you, mp3 is not CD-quality sound, and tends to boost the mid-range in most tunes.

When you're living with a low-bandwidth target, the sound you're streaming is secondary in importance to stretching that stream over a maximum number of clients with the least amount of lag. RealPlayer suffers from the same mid-range band pass issues as mp3, but in the grand scheme of things, you're a lot more likely to encounter RealPlayer as an option when you're surfing. Producing RealPlayer content is easy to do and easy to host, but the downside is that it's not free. RealProducer will run you $149.95 from RealNetworks.

Joseph Ottinger, Linux-savvy musician, shares his thoughts on streaming audio. "I choose mp3 because of the high quality and decent compression. Real's stuff is nice because it's streaming, but even on a fast connection, that stuff sounds like it's ground up. Microsoft's streaming format is worse, lacking even more of the fundamental sound's depth and clarity. The problem with mp3 is Napster. Napster makes it easy to send and find mp3's. A lot of people trade though, so people rip stuff at low quality just to get their numbers up and their bandwidth down."

Csound is a wonderfully portable and versatile sound synthesis package written entirely in C. Csound uses two files to work its magic; a score file that basically acts as a timed-event trigger file, and an orchestra file to interpret what voices it should use to play the score. This is a classical approach to sound synthesis, and can be used to either generate a sound file or, if your system is fast enough, to send the output directly to a DAC on your system's soundcard. If you like, you can even use a standard MIDI file to act as the score file. Csound has about a bazillion extensions, and nifty gadgets that use it.

For those interested in using their Linux machine as a powerful tool for creating original instruments and sounds, they'll find a friend in Cecilia, a wonderful sound synthesis tool that sits right on top of Csound, without you having to get your hands dirty. Cecilia provides real-time signal processing on sound files, live input, or can work as a software synthesizer on its own. If you're in love with real-time resonance or envelope filters, Cecilia lets you configure the software synth to the limit.

Next time, we discuss Linux sound hardware and support, and we're going acronym-diving! Find out what OSS and ALSA are, and why they've got something to do with those big speakers you bought. We'll also navigate the treacherous waters of musical notation with Linux. If you know of any fantastic audio production programs, please let us know! See you next time...