Technology leads to mind control

Emotiv Systems has unveiled a gaming headset that uses thoughts and movement to control on-screen character movements, says Technewsworld.

The San Francisco-based peripheral company demonstrated the Emotiv EPOC at the Wednesday kick-off of the Game Developers Conference, the annual confab where developers, designers and hardware companies showcase their wares.

The EPOC is a wireless device that uses sensors to detect such motions as horizontal eye moments, furrowed brows and winks along with actions such as pushing and pulling motions to control virtual characters.

British Airways passengers travelling from London Heathrow's Terminal Four to long-haul destinations experienced a major disruption yesterday caused by an ongoing software failure, reports Computing.co.uk.

Travellers in the economy and premium economy classes had their travel plans "seriously impacted" as they could not check in luggage, but airport operator BAA expects the situation to go back to normal soon.

"We are now confident that a full service will be able to be offered to all passengers tomorrow," said BAA in a statement.

All six major Hollywood studios are now in the Blu-ray DVD camp, a day after Toshiba pulled the plug on HD-DVD and Blu-ray became effectively the only next-generation game in town, says Reuters.

Paramount Home Entertainment quietly came onboard via a statement issued on Wednesday to The Hollywood Reporter. "We are pleased that the industry is moving to a single high-definition format, as we believe it is in the best interest of the consumer," the statement read.

"As we look to begin releasing our titles on Blu-ray, we will monitor consumer adoption and determine our release plans accordingly," it added.

While the IT world has been working for several years to reduce its carbon footprint and cut back greenhouse gas emissions, other business sectors, such as auto manufacturing, oil and gasoline, electrical power and many others, have had their own incentives to do likewise, reports eWeek.

Now it looks like these disparate sectors of the world economy are starting to come together to get serious about curtailing global warming and repairing the already damaged environment. And Cisco Systems is one of the leaders in this effort.

A group of about 150 international representatives, energy officials and IT executives met on 20 February at the new, environmentally-friendly federal building. The meeting was the first convocation of an 18-month-old coalition called the Connected Urban Development, spearheaded on the IT side by Cisco and its chairman, John Chambers.