I’ve recently been one of a large number of victims to a very unfortunate bug involving the iPhone 2.2.1 software update issued earlier this month.  Since I upgraded to 2.2.1, whenever I would attempt to sync anything with DRM to/from my phone (this includes ringtones, videos, movies, FairPlay music from the iTunes store and Apps(!)), iTunes would crash and the iPod app’s database would become slightly more corrupted (as in, some songs would not play, the current progress of my podcasts would be erased, etc).  Thus, I’m unable to sync my podcasts (99% of my use for my phone), can’t listen to music (the other 1%), and can’t fix this problem since, importantly, restoring the phone doesn’t do a single thing to solve the problem.

Plus, it looks like I’m not alone.  This thread on the Apple support forums details the struggles others have gone through in response to this bug.  Unfortunately, I didn’t find this until after I had restored my phone, so now I’m stuck with an App-less iPhone that only has a partial collection of my music.

And, as you can see from the support form, this is due entirely to some problem with protected music, movies, and applications.  This enfuriates me.  In general, I try and buy the music I like; same for TV shows and movies (which I usually rent, but nonetheless pay for).  Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part I try and support the artists, etc, that I like.

If I had stolen all my music and videos, I wouldn’t have a single problem right now (except maybe with Apps) – but since I was honest for at least some of my library, I’m screwed.  Thanks, Apple.  Really.  Thanks.

Have you run into this problem as well?  Does anyone have other stories of DRM causing unnecessary problems?  Leave a comment, or email me at neurotechnica at gmail dot com.

I apologize for the long stretch without updates, but I should be back to normal posting now.  I’ll try to work out a schedule to keep (e.g., Friday linkposts, Tuesday journal reviews, etc), and I’ll post it when I’ve come up with something I’m confident I can keep up with.  But, for today, I’ll just post a few interesting articles, podcasts, and blogs I’ve come across the past several weeks.

A New State of Mind – a very interesting and informative article on neuroeconomics research currently underway at Baylor College of Medicine‘s Human Neuroimaging Lab in Houston, TX.  It’s also a good profile of Read Montague, the director of the HNL.  He’s done some fascinating work on the role of reward in cognition.  For more, check out his book, Your Brain is (Almost) Perfect: How We Make Decisions.

On the technology side of things, Texas senator John Culberson is doing some interesting things with social media (such as Twitter and Qik) and government.  Check out this Houston Chronicle article about his new ideas – is this really the direction politics should be headed?  Barack Obama is one of the (if not the) most followed users on Twitter.  I  like the idea of governmental transparency, but I’m not sure if a 140-character message is the right way to  do it.  Anyway, I admire his innovation (if not his politics).

Teach the Controversy – these are some fantastic science t-shirts.  Can’t remember where I first saw them, though I’m sure either Digg or Reddit is to blame.

NeuroSpeculation – I finally found another undergraduate neuroscience blogger.  It looks like this is more of a research blog,  but still some very interesting and throrough discussions.  Hopefully we’ll be able to find some others and maybe create some kind of undergraduate science blogging community.

This Week In Science – a very entertaining and informative general science news podcast.  I find it especially helpful for keeping up-to-date with science policy news, an aspect of science I’m becoming more and more interested in.  If you know of any other good sources of science policy news, or any other comment/suggestsions/ideas, shoot me an email at neurotechnica shifttwo gmail dot com or drop a comment below.

Neurophilosophy (and Engadget) have some nice coverage of a cool new development – a robot with a purely-biological brain.  The team (the Cybernetics Intelligence Research Group at the University of Reading) took neural tissue from developing rat neocortex and placed it in a culture filled with tiny electrodes that could both receive and send signals from the neural tissue.  The coolest part about this, though, is that there is nothing in between the electrodes and the robot (except a bluetooth wireless transmitter/receiver).  The nerve cells are directly controlling the robot’s movements, and the sensors on the robot are giving direct feedback to the tissue.  This is awesome.  And scary.  But mostly, it’s very interesting.  Check out the video on Neurophilosophy for some footage of the robot in action, it’s really quite cool.

However, we have to be careful in our interpretation of what’s happening here.  The scientists/engineers interviewed in the video are throwing around the terms “learning” and “memory”, but there’s a chance that the robotic movements we’re seeing are just the noise in the system.  This is a simple brain slice grown in culture, it doesn’t necessarily include any of the more complex bits of the brain responsible for dopamine release in response to reward or in creating long-term memories by the same mechanism that an intact mammalian brain does.  However, if the researchers can show that even this ‘brain’ picks up statistical regularities in its input/output firings and reconfigures itself in significant, reproducable ways, they’re definitely on to something big.

To be clear, I think this work is awesome, and genuinely look forward to seeing what else comes out of this research.  It would be great if this group (or Jeff Hawkins’ Redwood Neuroscience Institute) created a similar system, but with very different inputs.  For example, as mentioned in Hawkins’ book On Intelligence (by far my favorite book on neuroscience), the inputs to the microelectrode array could be weather patterns or stock market data – the neural tissue won’t know the difference.  And if the tissue can pull out the statistical regularities from the few sensors on this robot, I’m sure it could do the same w/ weather or economic patterns.

Well I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.  Soon, they’ll be using their super-predictive meteorological and economic powers to creatively destroy the human race.  Bad disaster movie on the way?  One can only hope.

Check out this demo of the new Wii Motion Plus add-on, which Nintendo promises will add true one-to-one motion control to the Wii remote.  Upon first hearing about this at E3 this year, I was very skeptical – especially since the demos, and much of Nintendo’s press conference in general, were pretty lousy.  But this demo by AiLive does a great job at showing off what can be done with this new technology.  There’s even a not-quite-subtle lightsaber-like demo about halfway through the video.  Once can only hope that the Wii Motion Plus will be required for the upcoming Wii Lightsaber Duel game, set to be released later this year.

Also, this kind of technology could be very useful for physical rehabilitation – there’s no reason the Wii remote has to be held in your hand, it could be attached to a patient’s leg, foot, arm, etc.  This may even be a powerful tool for training amputees to effectively use their new prostheses (at least while we’re waiting for true brain-computer interfaces).