Comment Re:Cue stupid comments from non-Australians (Score 1) 452
More like 95%
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+Australia+as+a+ratio+of+the+area+of+continental+USA
But yes, I get your point
Comment Re:Cue stupid comments from non-Australians (Score 2) 452
I just check, and apparently Darwin is closer to Singapore than it is to it's own capital (3350 km vs 3969 km). That's right, a city two *countries* away is closer.
Damn, Australia is big.
Comment Re:Early Lead (Score 1) 346
Shouldn't they be looking for the Road Runner? Since he is the one who actually owns Acme...
Submission + - Russian Scientists make a dry, egg-boiling, carton (dailymail.co.uk)
ryzvonusef writes: Made by Evgeny Morgalev, one of a team of inventors called KIAN, the invention is called the Gogol-Mogol (after a Russian egg recipe), it has won an award by the European Packaging Design Association.
Although single use only, it has been made out of recyclable materials to reduce waste, and provide an easy way for people to enjoy some nutritious food on the go.
The egg is placed in the carton which is covered by layers of chemicals on the inside, and closed. Upon pulling a tab, the Calcium hydroxide reacts with a "smart" layer of water, to create a exothermic reaction, which can fully boil an egg in two-to-three minutes, though you can open it earlier, if you like your eggs runny.
Although single use only, it has been made out of recyclable materials to reduce waste, and provide an easy way for people to enjoy some nutritious food on the go.
The egg is placed in the carton which is covered by layers of chemicals on the inside, and closed. Upon pulling a tab, the Calcium hydroxide reacts with a "smart" layer of water, to create a exothermic reaction, which can fully boil an egg in two-to-three minutes, though you can open it earlier, if you like your eggs runny.
Submission + - Big ad network that secretly sniffed users' online habits settles with FTC (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "The Federal Trade Commission today said it settled charges with a large online ad company the agency said secretly and illegally gathered data from millions of consumers who had looked up sensitive medical and financial issues ranging from fertility and incontinence to debt relief and personal bankruptcy. The FTC settlement is hardly harsh though as it only bars the company, Epic Marketplace Inc., from continuing to use history sniffing software..."
Submission + - A look back at Apple's most important Legal Battles (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: With more than $100 billion in the bank, it's no surprise that Apple finds itself a target of lawsuits. Of course, Apple is no slouch itself when it comes to initiating litigation. Here’s a sampling of some of the most important, influential, notable, and even downright silly legal battles that Apple has been involved in since first forming in 1976.
Submission + - World's Youngest Apple Mac Genius (youtube.com)
An anonymous reader writes: While most 6 year old boys are playing with Disney and Nintendo toys, this kid can rattle off the difference between vintage and newer processors, OS versions, RAM, virtualization (is that a custom Rainmaker desktop in Windows 7 running on a MacBook Pro?), video editing. Add the Herman Miller chair and a HDV deck, and I wonder what his parents do? Check out the video here: http://youtu.be/QXJP28I2NFg
Comment Re:They'll always be perceived as cranks ... (Score 2) 31
But you would be willing to vote for someone with less integrity, albeit one wearing a sharp suit?
Submission + - James Cameron spills the details from his deep dive (nature.com)
gbrumfiel writes: "James Cameron has released the first batch of scientific results from his historic dive in March to bottom of the Mariana trench and an earlier series of test dives in the New Britain Trench. The Mariana Trench dive was the deepest by a human since 1960. Some of the most interesting results came from trips to the seafloor made by robotic vehicles built by Cameron’s team. At the bottom of the trench, one of those robots found bizarre carpets of microbes coating rocks, that scientists say may have implications for the origins of life on Earth and other planets."
Submission + - Red Bull literally does give you wings (tumblr.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Red Bull’s collaboration with science sends social media world into space
Just last week on the 14th of October Feilx Baumgartner set a new world record for skydiving an approximate 24 miles, reaching speeds up to 834 mph in the process. An impressive achievement for science and mankind alike, but also a massive achievement for Red Bull.
This 10 minute jump from the stratosphere over New Mexico was broadcasted to millions around the world resulting in arguably one of the biggest moments of 2012. It also made internet video history, as over 7 million people tuned in to watch the event live on YouTube.
And who was at the forefront of it all (except Felix Baumgartner of course)? The answer is Red Bull.
Diving from the edge of space in his Red Bull branded suit, Felix reached the speed of sound at 98,000 feet and then subsequently deployed his Red Bull parachute at 8,000 feet landing moments later sending the world into admiration.
Now if this mission had failed in any way i.e. the parachute didn’t open resulting in Felix’s death, or if the jump got delayed even more (the original scheduled launch was on the 9th of October, and then again on the 11th) then Red Bull really would have looked like idiots. But this was a risk they were willing to take. That is the key here: Risk, and it paid off big time.
In the days leading up to this event social media channels went into overdrive. The ‘Red Bull Stratos’ campaign — as the project was named — trended worldwide on Twitter. And the story was similar on Facebook as it surpassed 500,000 ‘likes’ before the event. At the time of writing it is currently on 730,605 ‘likes’ and reports that 1,367,366 people are talking about it on Facebook. Talk about embracing the power of social media with content worth talking about just like right now!
This is just an example in the long list of extreme sporting events that Red Bull have sponsored around the world. By creating these events Red Bull are able to create a spectacle worth talking about, and more importantly put themselves, and them alone on TV screens around the world. A strategy that is proving a massive success for the energy drink manufacturer.
What are the essentials here then? Build a story worth talking about; Capture the critical moments of the story on camera/video; Allow for free PR using social media for the story to be repeated.
It has been estimated that this space dive alone could be worth around £10m in the UK and a massive £100m worldwide for Red Bull.
Just last week on the 14th of October Feilx Baumgartner set a new world record for skydiving an approximate 24 miles, reaching speeds up to 834 mph in the process. An impressive achievement for science and mankind alike, but also a massive achievement for Red Bull.
This 10 minute jump from the stratosphere over New Mexico was broadcasted to millions around the world resulting in arguably one of the biggest moments of 2012. It also made internet video history, as over 7 million people tuned in to watch the event live on YouTube.
And who was at the forefront of it all (except Felix Baumgartner of course)? The answer is Red Bull.
Diving from the edge of space in his Red Bull branded suit, Felix reached the speed of sound at 98,000 feet and then subsequently deployed his Red Bull parachute at 8,000 feet landing moments later sending the world into admiration.
Now if this mission had failed in any way i.e. the parachute didn’t open resulting in Felix’s death, or if the jump got delayed even more (the original scheduled launch was on the 9th of October, and then again on the 11th) then Red Bull really would have looked like idiots. But this was a risk they were willing to take. That is the key here: Risk, and it paid off big time.
In the days leading up to this event social media channels went into overdrive. The ‘Red Bull Stratos’ campaign — as the project was named — trended worldwide on Twitter. And the story was similar on Facebook as it surpassed 500,000 ‘likes’ before the event. At the time of writing it is currently on 730,605 ‘likes’ and reports that 1,367,366 people are talking about it on Facebook. Talk about embracing the power of social media with content worth talking about just like right now!
This is just an example in the long list of extreme sporting events that Red Bull have sponsored around the world. By creating these events Red Bull are able to create a spectacle worth talking about, and more importantly put themselves, and them alone on TV screens around the world. A strategy that is proving a massive success for the energy drink manufacturer.
What are the essentials here then? Build a story worth talking about; Capture the critical moments of the story on camera/video; Allow for free PR using social media for the story to be repeated.
It has been estimated that this space dive alone could be worth around £10m in the UK and a massive £100m worldwide for Red Bull.
Submission + - Risk-Based Autonomous Terrain Flight with Black Hawk (al.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A specially equipped Black Hawk was recently used to demonstrate the helicopter's ability to operate on its own.
In the first such test of its type, the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research's Development and Engineering Center, based at Redstone Arsenal, flew the Black Hawk over Diablo Mountain Range in San Jose, Calif. Pilots were aboard the aircraft for the tests, but all flight maneuvers were conducted autonomously: obstacle field navigation, safe landing area determination, terrain sensing, statistical processing, risk assessment, threat avoidance, trajectory generation and autonomous flight control were performed in realtime.
"This was the first time terrain-aware autonomy has been achieved on a Black Hawk," said Lt. Col. Carl Ott, chief of the Flight Projects Office at AMRDEC's Aeroflightdynamics Directorate and one of the tests pilots.
In the first such test of its type, the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research's Development and Engineering Center, based at Redstone Arsenal, flew the Black Hawk over Diablo Mountain Range in San Jose, Calif. Pilots were aboard the aircraft for the tests, but all flight maneuvers were conducted autonomously: obstacle field navigation, safe landing area determination, terrain sensing, statistical processing, risk assessment, threat avoidance, trajectory generation and autonomous flight control were performed in realtime.
"This was the first time terrain-aware autonomy has been achieved on a Black Hawk," said Lt. Col. Carl Ott, chief of the Flight Projects Office at AMRDEC's Aeroflightdynamics Directorate and one of the tests pilots.
Submission + - Left to fail? How open source was driven out of Freiburg (computerworlduk.com)
Qedward writes: We recently saw the news that the German city of Freiburg had decided to end its open source migration and instead switch to using Microsoft products again. The rationale provided seemed curious to me — after all, at the same time the German city of Munich announced total savings amounting to €10 million from its own successful and ongoing migration.
What seemed odd was there was no account of how they changed course to make the migration succeed. Munich learned lessons from early challenges and updated its strategy in order to succeed. But not Freiburg.
My (guided) reading shows three points of concern in the situation over the last four years. First, the only ongoing expenditure in support of the migration is running costs of less than €15 per seat per annum, all associated with licensing supposedly superceded proprietary software. Second, substantial one-off costs of around €231/seat associated with interoperability — a topic that is always an indicator that proprietary software is controlling people’s thinking. Third, no obvious investment in ongoing community engagement or equivalent commercial subscriptions for open source.
It seems Freiburg has not invested in its open source solution in any way likely to make it succeed, but has rather left it to fail “to save money” and then when it has, blamed the open source software instead of the flawed strategy. The structure of the report makes this look a conscious frame.
What seemed odd was there was no account of how they changed course to make the migration succeed. Munich learned lessons from early challenges and updated its strategy in order to succeed. But not Freiburg.
My (guided) reading shows three points of concern in the situation over the last four years. First, the only ongoing expenditure in support of the migration is running costs of less than €15 per seat per annum, all associated with licensing supposedly superceded proprietary software. Second, substantial one-off costs of around €231/seat associated with interoperability — a topic that is always an indicator that proprietary software is controlling people’s thinking. Third, no obvious investment in ongoing community engagement or equivalent commercial subscriptions for open source.
It seems Freiburg has not invested in its open source solution in any way likely to make it succeed, but has rather left it to fail “to save money” and then when it has, blamed the open source software instead of the flawed strategy. The structure of the report makes this look a conscious frame.
Comment But But... (Score 1) 161
How will scientists detect microwaves now?
Comment Re:reason and common sense (Score 1) 208
Non, Désolé. S'il vous plaît obtenir votre propre motif. Hein !
(on a separate note, what's with the Opera-Bing love? Opera offers right click Bing translation...But not Google Translate)
Comment Isn't this old? (Score 1) 116
I remember reading a tech article long ago, where they showcased an LG Android phone where it was running an a visualised Android instance within the actual phone, which you could switch at the swipe of a button.
Here:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/15/vmware-android-handset-virtualization-hands-on/
