A team led by Yale University researchers has created the first rudimentary solid-state quantum processor, taking another step toward the ultimate dream of building a quantum computer.

They also used the two-qubit superconducting chip to successfully run elementary algorithms, such as a simple search, demonstrating quantum information processing with a solid-state device for the first time. Their findings will appear in Nature’s advanced online publication June 28.

“Our processor can perform only a few very simple quantum tasks, which have been demonstrated before with single nuclei, atoms and photons,” said Robert Schoelkopf, the William A. Norton Professor of Applied Physics & Physics at Yale. “But this is the first time they’ve been possible in an all-electronic device that looks and feels much more like a regular microprocessor.”

Toyota (NYSE: TM) researchers in Japan have built a brain/machine interface (BMI) that has been demonstrated to control a wheelchair using a person’s thoughts.

The system enables a person to make a wheelchair turn left or right to move forward simply by thinking the commands. The response time is in 125 milliseconds. One millisecond is equal to 1/1000 of a second.

The BMI was developed at the BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center (BTCC), a 2-year-old research center established by Japan’s government research unit RIKEN and Toyota Motor, Toyota Central R&D Labs, and Genesis Research Institute. Japan has focused on the control of devices through brain waves as a way to deal with the projected shortage of healthcare workers to tend to Japan’s large aging population.

The BTCC’s system uses several sensors placed over the areas of the brain that control motion to measure electrical activity in the region. The electical impulses triggered by the rider thinking of turning or moving the wheelchair are picked up and analyzed by an onboard laptop that passes the commands on to the wheelchair.

The system has an emergency stop that can be activated by the user puffing his cheeks.

Cable TV operators won a key legal battle against Hollywood studios and television networks on Monday as the Supreme Court declined to block a new digital video recording system that could make it even easier for viewers to bypass commercials.

The justices declined to hear arguments on whether Cablevision Systems Corp.’s remote-storage DVR system would violate copyright laws. That allows the Bethpage, N.Y.-based company to proceed with plans to start deploying the technology this summer.

With remote storage, TV shows are kept on the cable operator’s servers instead of the DVR inside the customer’s home, as systems offered by TiVo Inc. and cable operators currently do.

The distinction is important because a remote system essentially transforms every digital set-top box in the home into a DVR, allowing customers to sign up instantly, without the need to pick up a DVR from the nearest cable office or wait for a technician to visit.

Movie studios, TV networks and cable TV channels had argued that the service is more akin to video-on-demand, for which they negotiate licensing fees with cable providers.

They claimed a remote-storage DVR service amounts to an unauthorized rebroadcast of their programs.

In a statement, the Copyright Alliance, whose members include Hollywood studios and television broadcasters, called the Supreme Court action “unfortunate and potentially harmful to creators and creative enterprises across the spectrum of copyright industries.”

Cablevision argued its service was permissible because the control of the recording and playback was in the hands of the consumer.

Industry experts say the new technology could put digital recording service in nearly half of all American homes, about twice the current number.

Comcast Corp. will become the first major cable TV operator to roll out wireless broadband outside of Wi-Fi hotspots as it launches the service in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday, with at least three other cities to follow this year.

Comcast will offer speeds of up to 4 Megabits per second, faster than any other comparable, non-Wi-Fi service currently being marketed. The service is for use with laptops, but not other mobile devices.

Comcast’s wireless broadband, which lets users surf the Web on the go with their computers, pits it squarely against the mobile data offerings of phone companies.

But the cable operator is coming out first with the market’s fastest wireless broadband, using WiMax technology. Phone companies have lined up behind a competing technology called LTE, with Verizon Communications Inc. planning to deploy it next year.

The judge in the Pirate Bay case, Tomas Norström, was not biased. That’s the decision of the Swedish High Court of Justice, which investigated accusations made by the four defendants in the high-profile file-sharing case.

The accusations were based on Norström’s membership in organizations such as the Swedish Copyright Association, which counts among its members lawyers who represented the plaintiffs during The Pirate Bay trial.

The court ascertained that such memberships do demonstrate a commitment to intellectual property issues, which could be considered by some to be in the interest of the plaintiffs. But it also pointed out that rights-holders’ rights are protected by the Constitution, and so cannot be considered a conflict of interest if a judge endorses the principles behind copyright laws.

The court did say it would have been appropriate for the judge to disclose these memberships, which could have led to an investigation of potential conflicts of interest at an earlier stage in the process.

But as a whole, none of these circumstances are enough for sending the case back to the district court, according to the High Court, which now will look at the main appeal of the verdict.

The long-running $1,000,000 competition to improve on the Netflix Cinematch recommendation system by 10% (in terms of the RMSE) may have finally been won. Recent results show a 10.05% improvement from the team called BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos, a merger between some of the teams who were getting close to the contest’s goal.

Microsoft is reportedly considering offering Windows 7 on USB thumb drives to allow netbook owners to upgrade their machines.

Windows has, until now, only been distributed on DVDs or via download. However, netbooks don’t come with optical drives and downloading an operating system is a frankly painful experience.

The Windows 7 ISO weighs in at 2.3GB, which would take several hours to download on an average broadband connection and potentially do serious damage to a customer’s broadband data cap.

Consequently, the company is exploring alternative means of distributing the OS, including USB flash drives

Software developed by a Canadian lab to circumvent online censorship has been downloaded by more than 18,000 Iranians in the last 10 days, says its developer Rafal Rohozinski.

A thirst for online freedom in Iran, as well as in China, Myanmar and other authoritarian hotspots, has led to a sudden proliferation of all technologies designed to overcome curbs on news and social networking Internet sites.

“This speaks to the hunger for access to information when it’s being denied,” Rohozinski told AFP.

Iranians angered by the results of the country’s presidential election that returned hardline incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power have been using social and media sites such as Facebook, Flickr and Twitter to communicate and organize.

They have also been posting videos of violent post-election protests and clashes to video-sharing sites such as YouTube.

The Filipino inmates who shot to global fame with a YouTube video of their “Thriller” dance swayed and stomped again Saturday in a behind-bars tribute to their idol, Michael Jackson.

After being told of Jackson’s death Thursday in Los Angeles, the 1,500 inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center hit the exercise yard, practicing for nine hours Friday night — and into the wee hours of Saturday morning — for the show. They took breaks only to eat or when it rained, said professional choreographer Gwendolyn Lador, hired by the prison to teach the inmates the dance.

More than a quarter million people are wondering what will happen to their fingerprints, Social Security numbers, home addresses and other personal information now that a company that sped them through airport security is out of business.

Government officials are wondering too.

The sudden shutdown of the Clear program, run by Verified Identity Pass Inc., this week has raised more concerns about who keeps our personal information, how well it’s protected from theft and whether it could be sold to the highest bidder.

If Verified files for bankruptcy protection or is taken over by another company, security experts say it’s unlikely customers’ private data would be handed over to creditors or new owners. But they - as well as some members of Congress - are starting to trace the data trail.

Hackers defaced the home page of the Oregon University System, posting a caustic message telling President Barack Obama to mind his own business and stop talking about the disputed Iranian election.

Attempts to access the university system’s Web site were automatically redirected to another page, where readers viewed a message said to be from Iran that asserted there was no cheating in the election. That message was up for 90 minutes before university system technicians intervened Wednesday morning.

The hackers apparently took advantage of third-party software that had not been properly updated, university system spokeswoman Diane Saunders said. Hackers frequently attack the system’s computers, but technicians usually beat back their efforts, she said.

Guy Kawasaki — a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who was partially responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984 — has almost 140,000 Twitter followers. Many of those followers likely thought it was strange that Kawasaki was suddenly into shilling porn, when a link purporting to host a pornographic video of “Gossip Girl” star Leighton Meester appeared on June 23. Anyone who downloaded the video discovered a virus that ravaged both PCs and Macs.

Antivirus organization Sophos posted a YouTube video explaining how the attack worked. As the Sophos video shows, the attack affected Macs. It can be taken for granted that the malware also infected PCs, because, well, everything infects PCs.

The malicious link has been disabled and no longer prompts visitors to download viruses.