Computers Can 'See' People's Dreams

Computers Can 'See' People's Dreams - A computer can predict what you're dreaming about based on brain wave activity, new research suggests. 

By measuring people's brain activity during waking moments, researchers were able to pick out the signatures of specific dream imagery — such as keys or a bed — while the dreamer was asleep. 

"We know almost nothing about the function of dreaming," said study co-author Masako Tamaki, a neuroscientist at Brown University. "Using this method, we might be able to know more about the function of dreaming." 

The findings, which were published today (April 4) in the journal Science, could also help scientists understand what goes on in the brain when people have nightmares. 

Sleepy mystery 

Exactly why people dream is a mystery. Whereas the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud may have thought dreams were about wish fulfillment, others believe dreams are irrelevant byproducts of the sleep cycle. And yet another theory holds that dreams allow the mind to continue working on puzzles faced during the day. In general, most people believe their dreams have meaning. 

Scientists have dreamt of being able to look inside the brain's sleepy wonderland. Past studies had suggested that people's brain activity can be decoded to reveal what they are thinking about: For instance, scientists have decoded movie clips from brain waves. 

Dream reading 

So why not try to read dreams? 

Tamaki and her colleagues tracked brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of three people as they were sleeping; the researchers woke up the trio every few minutes to have them describe their dreams. In total, the scientists collected about 200 visual images. 

The researchers then tied the dream content that participants described in their waking moments to specific patterns in brain activity (as seen in the blood flow in fMRI scans) and had a computer model learn those signatures. 

The computer model then analyzed each person's dreams. The model was able to pick out the time when each person dreamed of specific objects based on their brain activity when they were awake. 

Those findings showed the same brain regions are activated when people are awake as when they are actually having the associated dream. 

"We were amazed," Tamaki said. 

Even though the team just tried to read dream imagery from one person's waking brain activity, they found some common patterns for broad classes of imagery, such as scenery versus people, Tamaki told LiveScience. 

"There is a similarity amongst the subjects, so from that result, we could pick up some basic dream content and then we can build a model from those base contents, and they may apply to other people," Tamaki said. ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : The Sensitivities | Computers Can 'See' People's Dreams

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Google Street View

Google Street View. Google faces court action in Switzerland over Street View. Switzerland yesterday called a halt to Google's seemingly unstoppable drive to map and photograph the whole world.

The country's privacy watchdog is taking the search engine company to court over its free service that shows panoramic street-level pictures of 100 global cities.

Making a stand: Switzerland is taking Google to court over its controversial Street View service

Data protection commissioner Hanspeter Thuer wants Google to ensure that all faces and car plates are blurred and that enclosed areas such as walled gardens and private roads are removed.

He also wants the California firm to declare at least one week in advance which Swiss town and cities it plans to photograph and show online.

He lodged a request in August that Google take 'various measures to protect personal privacy in its Street View online service'.

And Mr Thuer said Google had declined to comply, forcing him to take the matter to Switzerland's federal administrative tribunal.

Street View has been criticised in Britain, Germany, Japan and elsewhere for allowing individuals to be identified without their knowledge or consent.

A spokesman for Google said yesterday: 'We believe that Google Street View is absolutely legal, also in Switzerland.'

He said the service was extremely popular in the country and that new software which can obscure details such as car plates would allay Mr Thuer's concerns.

Not in our back garden: The Swiss privacy watchdog wants Google to ensure that all faces and car plates are blurred and that enclosed areas such as walled gardens and private roads are removed

( dailymail.co.uk )

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Things You Must Know About Malware Infections

Things You Must Know About Malware Infections. The latest semi-annual Security Information Report (SIR) from Microsoft has been released, and its 232 pages carry reminders of some important facts about personal computer security.

Infections happen

According to the report, of all the computers that visited the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) in the first half of 2009, 8.7 out of 1,000 (that is, not quite one percent) had some kind of malware infection identifiable by the tool.

The hot spots were Serbia and Montenegro, where the rate was 97.2 per thousand, Turkey with 32.3, Brazil with 25.4, Spain with 21.6, South Korea with 21.3, Saudi Arabia with 20.8, and Taiwan with 20.4.

The cleanest were computers in Finland with a rate of 1.9. The U.S. rate of 8.6 was nearly the same as the global average. (Other sources--typically malware protection vendors who see no reason to be coy--quote much higher infection rates.) Not mentioned by the Microsoft report is that Apple Macintosh infections remain rare.

Malware amounts to an ecosystem

There's viruses that replicate themselves and spread to other computers, sometimes just for its own sake.

They're called worms if they do it through e-mail or instant messaging. Trojans follow the metaphor of Homer's Trojan Horse, whose occupants emerged in the night to open the Troy's gates to a devastating attack. Spyware watches your actions for marketing purposes. Adware produces annoying popup ads. Malware, incidentally, is any software you didn't ask for, especially software that has malicious intent. A bug, meanwhile, is any software that doesn't work right--and may be preferable to malware.

Malware has many sources.

You can get an infection by visiting a malicious Web site, or by clicking a file attached to spam e-mail, through a p2p file-sharing network, by downloading what you thought was free software, or by using an infected removable device like a USB memory stick. Intrusion attacks can come in over the Internet.

Malware can bite.

Many trojans will download other malware that take root in our computer and start doing nasty things. These include password stealers and keyloggers that will try to swipe your account information so that someone else can swipe your money. Or they may turn your computer in to botnet node, under the remote control of a bot herder, who will typically use it to spew spam.

Trojans rule (in the U.S.)

If you're going to get an infection, at least in the U.S. it's likely to be some kind of Trojan. According to the SIR, 42 percent of the infections that the MSRT discovered were Trojans. Adware was also big at 16.3 percent. Nasty password stealers amounted to 4.1 percent. Elsewhere, infections are a toss-up. In Brazil, for instance, password stealers aimed at on-line banking predominate. Spain and South Korea have little in common, but both are afflicted by worms that target on-line gamers.

Vulnerabilities vary.

Not all operating systems are equally vulnerable. Microsoft's figures show that unpatched Windows XP has an infection rate of about 32.5 per thousand--about four times the global average. The rate falls to a sub-average 8 for thousand for Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (i.e., fully updated.) The rate for updated Vista machines was 3.1 per thousand for the 32-bit version, and 2 per thousand for the 64-bit version.

Patching works.

Hackers have a reputation of being ahead of the software vendors, but in reality they often use vulnerabilities for which patches has already been issued. Even when the bad guys get the upper hand, it may not be for long. Microsoft likes to use the example of the "Reno" Trojan that was attacking Vista, causing Windows Explorer to generate trackable error reports. After Microsoft issued a patch, the reports fell from 1.2 million error reports daily to less than 100,000--in three days. Within a month it was off the chart.

Updating works.

The rate of infection of 64-bit versions of software was usually a third lower than the rate of infection of the 32-bit version.

Malware is not the only danger.

The big news is the rise in phishing--e-mail that tries to trick you into revealing information that could be used for ID theft or other fraud. The phishers have been going after denizens of social networking sites and even large corporations.

The upshot: update your gray matter.

Software can't protect you against the phishing plague--only common sense can do that. If some random e-mail asks for your personal information because somehow otherwise your bank account, or our game subscription, or your corporate computer privileges will be suspended, delete it. ( livescience.com )

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