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Comment Posting mugshots of those arrested (Score 1) 321

by Hawthorne01 (#33241678) Attached to: Drunk Driver Mugshots Featured On Facebook

... is possibly too much, after all, a person is still considered innocent until guilty.

But.

I see no problem with this if they're convicted. DUI doesn't have any social stigma associated with it anymore, and that's an outrage, considering the thousands of people killed each year by drunk drivers. If a little shame stops someone from getting behind the wheel after too much to drink, more power to this sheriff.
NASA

Robonaut To Escort On Space Shuttle Mission 74

Posted by CmdrTaco from the goodness-gracious-me dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The STS-133 crew will deliver robot Robonaut 2 (R2) to the International Space Station. Cocooned inside an aluminum frame and foam blocks cut out to its shape, R2 is heading to the station inside the Permanent Multipurpose Module in space shuttle Discovery's payload bay. R2, with its humanlike hands and arms and stereo vision, is expected to perform some of the repetitive or more mundane functions inside the orbiting laboratory to free astronauts for more complicated tasks and experiments."
Social Networks

Can Twitter and Facebook Deal With Their Dead? 284

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'll-get-my-cart dept.
Barence writes "One and a half million Facebook users die each year. Twitter faces a similar mortality rate. Yet the social networks have been relatively slow to deal with the uncomfortable business of death. Only this week has Twitter finally unveiled a policy for handling the accounts of dead members. Yet the process for closing the accounts of deceased relatives is complicated, while reminders to follow the accounts of people who have long since passed away continue to arrive, adding to the pain of grieving friends and relatives."
Social Networks

Cow Clicker Boils Down Facebook Games 237

Posted by timothy from the lo-to-their-gelatinous-end-stage dept.
mjn writes "Game designer and academic Ian Bogost announces Cow Clicker, a Facebook game implementing the mechanics of the Facebook-games genre stripped to their core. You get a cow, which you can click on every six hours. You earn additional clicks if your friends in your pasture also click. You can buy premium cows with 'mooney,' and also use your mooney to buy more clicks. You can buy mooney with real dollars, or earn some free bonus mooney if you spam up your feed with Cow Clicker activity. A satire of Facebook games, but actually as genuine a game as the non-satirical games are. And people actually play it, perhaps confirming Bogost's view that the genre of games is largely just 'brain hacks that exploit human psychology in order to make money,' which continue to work even when the users are openly told what's going on."
The Military

Warships May Get Lasers For Close-In Defense 482

Posted by kdawson from the hot-in-here-or-is-it-me dept.
King Louie writes "Raytheon and the US Navy have successfully tested a ship-borne laser capable of shooting down aircraft. Video at the link shows the 32-kilowatt solid-state laser shooting down an unmanned aerial vehicle. The technology is apparently mature enough to be deployed as part of ships' short-range missile defenses, a role currently filled by the Basic Point Defense Missile System (based on the Sea Sparrow missile) and the Close-In Weapons System (based on a 20mm Gatling gun)."
NASA

NASA Revamps Historic 4-Million-kg Mars Antenna 66

Posted by Soulskill from the we're-gonna-need-a-bigger-bumper dept.
coondoggie writes NASA is working on some difficult renovations to reinvigorate its 70-meter-wide 'Mars antenna.' The antenna, a key cog in NASA's Deep Space Network, needs about $1.25M worth of what NASA calls major, delicate surgery. The revamp calls for lifting the antenna — about 4 million kilograms of finely tuned scientific instruments — to a height of about 5 millimeters so workers can replace the steel runner, walls and supporting grout."
NASA

NASA Launches Moonbase Alpha 230

Posted by Soulskill from the to-boldly-grind dept.
Several readers have sent word that today NASA launched Moonbase Alpha, an online game with single- and multi-player capability that "allows participants to step into the role of an exploration team member in a futuristic 3-D lunar settlement." The game is available now through Steam for free. Moonbase Alpha was built as a precursor to an upcoming NASA MMO called Astronaut: Moon, Mars & Beyond, and they hope it will be "a proof of concept to show how NASA content can be combined with a cutting-edge game engine to inspire, engage and educate students about agency technologies, job opportunities and the future of space exploration."
Biotech

First Superbugs, Now Superweeds 435

Posted by Soulskill from the as-long-as-there-are-no-supersharks-we're-ok dept.
Finxray writes "Years of heavy use of the broad spectrum herbicide Roundup has led to the rapid growth of superweeds. They are spreading throughout North America, creating headaches for farmers and posing 'the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,' according to Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts. From the article: 'The first resistant species to pose a serious threat to agriculture was spotted in a Delaware soybean field in 2000. Since then, the problem has spread, with 10 resistant species in at least 22 states infesting millions of acres, predominantly soybeans, cotton and corn. The superweeds could temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for some genetically modified crops. Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn’t kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds."
Medicine

Robot With Knives Used In Robotics Injury Study 132

Posted by timothy from the just-crazy-enough-to-wound dept.
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that German researchers, seeking to find out what would happen if a robot handling a sharp tool accidentally struck a human, set out to perform a series of cutting, stabbing, and puncturing tests. They used a robotic manipulator arm, fitted with various sharp tools (kitchen knife, scalpel, screwdriver) and performed striking tests at a block of silicone, a pig leg, and at one point, even the arm of a human volunteer. Volunteer, really?! The story includes video of the tests."

Comment Re:How is it at handling silencers? (Score 1) 385

by Hawthorne01 (#31725396) Attached to: Chicago Debates Merits of ShotSpotter Technology

If you're a felon, you don't get one. RTF NFA. You need $200 for the tax stamp, a set of fingerprints on file, and then there's the reams and reams of Federal paperwork you have to fill out to get one.

A better response would be I give it about a year before all the gangs in chicago start using knives as standard equipment.

But what gets me is that this shouldn't be happening at all in the gun-free paradise that is Chicago. Firearms are against the law there, so there should be no shootings at all.
It's almost as if criminals intentionally break the law or something. If only there were some way to empower the law-abiding residents of Chicago to protect themselves...

Comment Re:2 big problems in that report (Score 1) 342

by Hawthorne01 (#31298712) Attached to: UN To Create Independent Panel To Review IPCC

If I were to write a 3000+ page paper and only had 2 significant mistakes in it, I would be freaking estatic!

So, using that standard, if I wrote a 3000+ page paper on gravity, and made only one error on it, say, that gravity has no effect on people who fall from heights of 250 meters or higher, would you, on that basis, be willing to take a swan dive off the Empire State Building ? I mean, it's only ONE error in a 3000+ page report, what could possibly go wrong?

In the same way, I'm not prepared to ruin the economy of the entire planet because of a few, very significant errors in a report that says we should shut down any industrial progress for the next 100 years just so the glaciers on K2 can stay where they are.

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