Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science

Submission + - 25 Years inside the World's largest Wind Tunnel (cnet.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Cnet reports: 'Tests conducted inside the world's largest wind tunnel at the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., give researchers a unique opportunity to have a controlled look at the forces affecting flight. Originally built in 1944 at what was then the National Advisory Council for Aeronautics (NACA) Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, the wind tunnel was originally a 40-foot-by-80-foot facility, upgraded 25 years ago this week — on December 11, 1987 — by adding on a massive 80-foot-by-120-foot test section, and renamed the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC). The facility has tested Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft and rotorcraft at low speeds, F-35 Lightning prototypes, a full-scale UH-60A Black Hawk rotor with Individual Blade Control, scale models of space shuttles, space parachutes, a full-scale replica of the Wright brothers' first airplane, and even tractor trailer trucks.'

Submission + - How Amazon manages 35 Orders per Second (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The BBC has put up a video report that gives insights into how a popular online retailer like Amazon.co.uk copes with the daily order load it faces — an order load that peaks at up to 35 orders per second during the holiday buying season. The video shows a lot of the warehousing techniques and logistics behind a large scale online retail operation like Amazon. Most interesting perhaps is the "random storage" paradigm Amazon uses to store products in warehouse shelves. No product occupies a particular or permanent space on the Amazon shelves. Instead, Amazon's worker bees scan the barcode of any product that is delivered to the warehouse, and intelligent software finds a suitable nearby spot for it on the shelves. The BBC report describes the process as "Tetris-like". The software analyzes the size and weight of the product, and intelligently assigns it a slot on Amazon's warehouse shelves. The software also shows the Amazon workers in charge of fulfilling customer orders the shortest, most efficient route around the facility — which is the size of 6 football pitches — to get all the products a customer has ordered. Also shown in the report are automated conveyor belts that route product packages around the facility, and the machine that sticks the buyer's address on packaged goods before they are sent out. All in all, the video gives good insights into the complex, physical, real-world processes that kick in once you order something from Amazon with the click of a mouse button.

Comment Great Renderer, Lousy UI... (Score 0) 93

by dryriver (#42314451) Attached to: Blender 2.65 Released
The Cycles renderer in Blender 2.65 is coming along nicely. One can set it to render a viewport in realtime, which is cool. You make changes to your 3D scene, and Cycles will render them almost in realtime. That said, Blender still has a crappy, annoying, confusing UI that should be re-engineered from scratch. Blender has so much potential, but the commercial 3D apps trump it in terms of ease-of-use and good UI design. So Blender foundation... bite the bullet already and please give Blender a much needed UI redesign. I promise you that the number of Blender users will quadruple, or maybe octuple if the UI is redesigned to be more user friendly. My 2 Cents.
Politics

Submission + - Julian Assange to run for Australian Senate, start Wikileaks Political Party (rt.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Russia Today reports: 'Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says he intends to run for a seat in the Australian Senate in next year’s federal election and will announce the formation of a WikiLeaks party. He made the announcement from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Assange has been living in the embassy for the past six months, in an effort to avoid extradition to Sweden and possibly the US. The whistleblower told Fairfax Media that plans to register the political party were “significantly advanced” and added that “a number of very worthy people admired by the Australian public” have expressed their availability to run for election on the party ticket. However, there remains one small problem – Assange is still holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, with no signs of leaving anytime soon. But Assange says that’s only a minor obstacle, because it is “inevitable” that the US will eventually drop its investigation into WikiLeaks. “The building of political opposition to the persecution of a media organization” will lead the US Department of justice to drop its espionage investigation, he said. Assange says he is able to register as an overseas elector in New South Wales and Victoria. He added that a “strategic decision” will determine which state he chooses to represent. If he were elected but unable to return to Australia to take up his position, a nominee would occupy his seat. Meanwhile, Assange’s own father is backing his son’s plans back home in Australia, by coordinating preparations for the party’s formation. The goal of the party would be to further advance WikiLeaks’ founding principles of promoting openness in government and politics. He says the party will combat growing intrusions on individual privacy.'
Privacy

Submission + - Proposal Y.2770 at ITU - The End of All Internet Privacy? (rt.com)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Russia Today reports: 'Members of the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) have agreed to work towards implementing a standard for the Internet that would allow for eavesdropping on a worldwide scale. At a conference in Dubai this week, the ITU members decided to adopt the Y.2770 standard for deep packet inspection, a top-secret proposal by way of China that will allow telecom companies across the world to more easily dig through data passed across the Web. According to the UN, implementing deep-packet inspection, or DPI, on such a global scale will allow authorities to more easily detect the transferring and sharing of copyrighted materials and other protected files by finding a way for administrators to analyze the payload of online transmissions, not just the header data that is normally identified and interpreted. “It is standard procedure to route packets based on their headers, after all it is the part of the packet that contains information on the packet's intended destination,” writes The Inquirer’s Lawrence Lati, “but by inspecting the contents of each packet ISPs, governments and anyone else can look at sensitive data. While users can mitigate risks by encrypting data, given enough resources encryption can be foiled.” Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist widely regarded as the ‘Father of the Internet,’ spoke out against proposed DPI implementation on such a grandiose scale during an address earlier this year at the World Wide Web Consortium. "Somebody clamps a deep packet inspection thing on your cable which reads every packet and reassembles the web pages, catalogueing them against your name, address and telephone number either to be given to the government when they ask for it or to be sold to the highest bidder – that's a really serious breach of privacy,” he said.'
Cloud

Submission + - Patriot Act allows US to spy worldwide, Europeans outraged (youtube.com)

Submitted by overmoderated
overmoderated writes: Information that Europeans keep stored online could be accessed by US law enforcement agencies. That's according to a report issued by one university in Amsterdam, which revealed the anti-terrorism Patriot Act gives Washington legal grounds to bypass Europe's privacy laws. For more RT talks to one of the authors of the report Axel Arnbak

Submission + - Interactive Map shows Places where London was hit during WW2 "Blitz" (bombsight.org)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: During WW2, London was bombed from the air for 8 months, a period in London's history commonly know as "the Blitz". More than 20,000 people were killed and 1.4m people made homeless during the Blitz, which took place between 7 September 1940 and 11 May 1941. Now an interactive, zoomable map a la Google Maps visualizes, for the first time, all the spots in London that were reportedly hit during the Blitz. Browsing the interactive map is sobering experience. There are so many "hit sites" on display on the interactive map that one wonders how the Londoners of the day managed to survive this horrific onslaught, and somehow also get on with their jobs and their lives. The interactive map is a good example of how modern day data visualization techniques can shed light on the events of the past, and at the click of a mousebutton no less...
Privacy

Submission + - New DVRs will use Cameras, Microphones, Sensors to monitor their Owners (rt.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Russia Today reports: 'Think Google ad targeting is crossing the line? Verizon filed a patent for a cable television box that uses sensors to record what you’re doing and target you with specific advertisements that relate to your mood. The telecom giant Verizon wants to know you better. Much better. The company just registered a patent for its DVR of the future. The set-top box would use a depth sensor, an image sensor, an audio sensor and a thermal sensor to determine what those watching television are doing. If a couple is having an argument in front of the TV, a marriage counseling ad may come up. If two people are cozying up, Verizon may put up an ad for contraceptives or a romantic getaway. The sensors would also be able to detect where someone is looking. If the viewer is watching a certain ad, Verizon might use that as an indicator to play similar ads in the future. “If detection facility detects one or more words spoken by a user (e.g. while talking to another user within the same room or on the telephone), advertising facility may utilize the one or more words spoken by the user to search for and/or select an advertisement associated with the one or more words,” Verizon wrote in its Patent application. Even more intrusive might be the DVR’s ability to detect and communicate with mobile devices held by viewers. If Verizon senses a mobile phone being used, it may “communicate with the mobile device to limit the content accessible by the way of the mobile device”, as well as stream advertisements that correspond to what the viewer is looking at on his or her phone.'

Submission + - TV Manufacturers fined 1.92 Billion Dollars by EU for "Price Fixing" (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The BBC reports: 'The European Commission has imposed a record 1.47bn euro ($1.92bn; £1.19bn) fine on a number of TV makers for price-fixing. EU anti-trust regulators fined the companies for fixing prices of TV and computer monitor cathode-ray tubes over a decade. Dutch-based Philips faces the biggest penalty of 313.4m euros, followed by LG Electronics with 295.6m. Panasonic, Samsung, Toshiba and Technicolor were also fined 375m euros. Taiwanese firm Chunghwa Picture Tubes escaped any fine for blowing the whistle on the cartel. "These cartels for cathode ray tubes are 'textbook cartels': they feature all the worst kinds of anticompetitive behaviour that are strictly forbidden to companies doing business in Europe," said EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia.'

Comment The Big Players are following a Pattern... (Score 0) 147

by dryriver (#42184205) Attached to: The Rise of Feudal Computer Security
I don't know if anybody else has noticed, but all sorts of things these days are moving to, ahem, "the Cloud", without anybody asking for such functionality. Many PC games won't work without a "Cloud Client" anymore. Steam. Origin. UPlay. Take your pick. The gaming Cloud Clients even warns you that "your save games are out of sync with the cloud" because, um, you played the last 2 sessions without, er, actually going online to do it. ---- Then there is the creative software from Adobe, Autodesk and others. DCC software is the official term for these. Digital Content Creation software. These gentlemen, too, are trying to nudge their tens of thousands strong userbase into "the Cloud", and none to subtly. It is even rumored that future releases of Adobe, Autodesk and similar DCC software won't work without "connecting to the Cloud" to run these apps at all. This is even though nobody asked for this kind of functionality. What does all that mean in English? Somebody rather powerful somewhere is pressuring Adobe, Autodesk and similar big players to create "digital backdoors" into their DCC software. So the next time you want to create a viral video that is maybe protesting political some injustice somewhere, the "Cloud" knows in advance what kind of video you are working on. ------ To cut the crap, this is all about Top-Down Control. The powers that be don't want you to work offline anymore, without them being able to check what you are doing. This may be harmless when gaming is concerned - who really cares what you are doing in game space, right? But when it comes to working with professional DCC tools - CAD tools, CG tools, Video, Print, Web design tools - the Cloud actually knows who is working on what where and for what reason with great granularity. Whatever confidentially working OFFLINE once gave you - the big players now want to take that confidentiality away. They want to know what you are "cooking" on a computer somewhere. Whether you are designing a Sports Car, or creating a website for a political pressure group, or creating a Youtube Video decrying certain injustices. ----- In all these activities, the Cloud is one step ahead of you, potentially beaming your most confidential data to a Mothership somewhere (a little bird told me that the "Mothership" may be a 2 Billion Dollar custom-built data center in the Cornbelt of the United States of A.). ------- All this stuff is about a small, self-anointed Elite of MBAs trying to bend the common man to their will. They want to know what you are doing with the software they supply - which you pay for - and they don't want you to have any say in how or when this happens. That's what the Cloud is all about. Trust us with your data. Trust us with your digital designs. Trust us with intimate things you maybe wouldn't even tell your best friend or spouse about. -------- The whole Cloud Computing paradigm reeks of EVIL. Probably because the people pushing it are, well, a wee bit evil and exploitative in character.
AI

Submission + - OTON - A new Ubuntu-based "Autonomous Game Console" (kotaku.com.au)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Startup company EnGeniux has started advertising its new OTON console (http://www.otonx.com/), which will, if things go well, ship sometime in 2013. OTON is based on a quad-core Cortex A9 CPU, has 2 GB RAM, and 16GB Flash storage. It also has a small Laser Projector built into the back of the console unit, so you don't need a TV to play with OTON — it will happily project games onto any nearby flat surface, like a white wall. The most interesting aspect of OTON, however, apart from its OS being Ubuntu-based, is that developer EnGenieux claims that the console can "intelligently generate an unlimited number of new game levels, and game types". You have read that correctly; EnGenieux claim to have spent 3 years creating a quasi-intelligent AI game-generation system that can "throw dice" to create anything from simple 2D platform games to complex 3D FPS shooters games on demand. And each OTON owner will get completely unique games generated for his/her console. The grand idea here is that OTON will feature "unlimited procedurally generated game content", so you never have to buy new games if you don't want to. You can simply prompt your OTON to roll the virtual device and generate you a completely new game. While concrete details about OTON are somewhat sketchy — some people think that the whole thing is an elaborate internet hoax — it seems that OTON gamers will also moonlight as game-makers. The console will allow you to create your own game assets, design your own games, and share your work with the rest of the OTON community. Hoax or not, its going to be interesting what OTON looks like when it is finished and shipping...
Privacy

Submission + - Julian Assange: "Online Totalitarianism is Near, Entire Nations are Intercepted" (rt.com) 2

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Russia Today's correspondents have visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange has been holed up for nearly 6 months now. In the 12 minute long interview with RT, Assange has many interesting things to say about privacy, and government data interception in particular. A small excerpt: >> Russia Today — 'So you’ve written this book ‘Cypherpunks. Freedom and the Future of the Internet’ based on one of the programs that you’ve made for RT. In it, you say that the internet can enslave us. I don’t really get that, because the internet it’s a thing, it’s a soulless thing. Who are the actual enslavers behind it?' >> Julian Assange — 'The people who control the interception of the internet and, to some degree also, physically control the big data warehouses and the international fiber-optic lines. We all think of the internet as some kind of Platonic Realm where we can throw out ideas and communications and web pages and books and they exist somewhere out there. Actually, they exist on web servers in New York or Nairobi or Beijing, and information comes to us through satellite connections or through fiber-optic cables. So whoever physically controls this controls the realm of our ideas and communications. And whoever is able to sit on those communications channels, can intercept entire nations, and that’s the new game in town, as far as state spying is concerned – intercepting entire nations, not individuals. The US National Security Agency has been doing this for some 20-30 years. But it has now spread to mid-size nations, even Gaddafi’s Libya was employing the EAGLE system, which is produced by French company AMESYS, pushed there in 2009, advertised in its international documentation as a nationwide interception system. So what’s happened over the last 10 years is the ever-decreasing cost of intercepting each individual now to the degree where it is cheaper to intercept every individual rather that it is to pick particular people to spy upon.'

Comment Code that must "never crash", no? (Score 2, Insightful) 203

by dryriver (#42156273) Attached to: One Cool Day Job: Building Algorithms For Elevators
I'm guessing that the hardest part of the job is writing code that does not crash, possibly leaving elevator riders stranded between floors, or going up when they want to go down. Over the years Otis must have developed a pretty good elevator usage simulator that plays through millions of possible elevator use scenarios, and tries to find one that either crashes or confuses the system. If yes, the developers responsible for that "possibility simulator" should have been named in the article alongside "The Elevator Algorithm Lady". They should have gotten some credit where credit is due...

Slashdot Top Deals

The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst

Close