shervinemami - Slashdot User

Comment Its just a hi-res Omnidirectional camera (Score 1) 96

by shervinemami on Saturday December 11, 2010 @06:38AM (#34522222) Attached to: Researchers Develop Genuine 3D Camera

From the article & video, all I can see is a higher-resolution version of an Omnidirectional camera, which is very common in mobile robots. Such as this list of about 50 different types! "http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~kostas/omni.html"

They keep referring to the notion of depth being used, but unless there is some big technology that they completely forgot to mention in the article & video, it just does the equivalent of pointing a camera into a bowl shaped mirror, allowing you to see in all 360 degrees at once. eg: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnidirectional_camera"

That is quite different to say it is truly 3D, since it is still a 2D image without depth, just that its wrapped around a circle shape instead of rectangle shape.

OpenLeaks — 'A New WikiLeaks' 538

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 09, 2010 @06:59PM from the one-way-valve dept.

Flixie writes "Swedish newspaper dagens Nyheter reports: '...[S]everal key figures behind the website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational or religious documents have resigned in protest against the controversial leader Julian Assange only to launch a new service for the so-called whistleblowers. The goal: to leak sensitive information to the public."

NASA Confirms Discovery of Organism With Phosphorus-Free DNA 380

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 02, 2010 @03:53PM from the well-it's-not-that-shaggy dept.

GNUALMAFUERTE writes "As we mentioned before, NASA's Department of Astrobiology had an important announcement to make today. It looks like Gizmodo was right. You can watch the presentation online right now. It looks like the bacteria in question uses arsenic as a phosphorus replacement in its DNA."

Like Democracy, the Web Needs To Be Defended 108

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 19, 2010 @04:46PM from the time-to-arm-the-internet dept.

climenole tips a great article by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in Scientific American. Quoting: "The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles. The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments — totalitarian and democratic alike — are monitoring people's online habits, endangering important human rights. If we, the Web's users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want."

The Placebo Effect Not Just On Drugs 824

Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 08, 2010 @02:01PM from the your-actions-are-futile dept.

dvdme writes "It seems the placebo effect isn't just valid on drugs. It's also a fact on elevators, offices and traffic lights. An article by Greg Ross says: 'In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003. Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat," said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. "Guess what? They quit calling you." In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 "walk" buttons in New York intersections do nothing. "The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on."'"

Chip Allows Blind People To See 231

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 04, 2010 @05:07AM from the bionic-eye dept.

crabel writes "3 blind people have been implanted with a retinal chip that allowed them to see shapes and objects within days of the procedure. From the article: 'One of the patients surprised researchers by identifying and locating objects on a table; he was also able to walk around a room unaided, approach specific people, tell the time from a clock face, and describe seven different shades of gray in front of him.'"

Firefighters Let House Burn Because Owner Didn't Pay Fee 2058

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 06, 2010 @11:17AM from the deadly-serious-homeowner's-association dept.

Dthief writes "From MSNBC: 'Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground last week because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee. Gene Cranick of Obion County and his family lost all of their possessions in the Sept. 29 fire, along with three dogs and a cat. "They could have been saved if they had put water on it, but they didn't do it," Cranick told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. The fire started when the Cranicks' grandson was burning trash near the family home. As it grew out of control, the Cranicks called 911, but the fire department from the nearby city of South Fulton would not respond.'"

Comment Re:Cracks Whip (Score 1) 267

by shervinemami on Tuesday August 10, 2010 @08:43AM (#33202880) Attached to: Inside the Mechanical Turk Sweatshop

You guys think it is ridiculous that these websites often only pay about $0.60/hr, but thats because you guys are all living in USA or the West, where $5/hr is low. But most people live in 3rd world countries, where $0.60/hr is considered a reasonable income. That's why nearly all outsourcing is done in India or other poor countries, because $0.60/hr through Internet (with a possibility of earning several dollars per hour) seems as good as working a typical fulltime job that may also pay just $0.60/hr.

So the crazy thing is not that these websites pay less than $1/hr, its that the same job in the West will pay 10 or 20 times higher than in the rest of the world!

PS: I currently live in a farming town in Philippines where the average fulltime income is about $0.50/hr, so the prospect of earning that much through Internet seems pretty good.

Possible Room Temperature Superconductor Achieved 264

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 27, 2010 @07:55PM from the beware-of-puppeteer-breeding-experiments dept.

TechkNighT_1337 sends news that surfaced on the Next Big Future blog, concerning research out of the University of Bengal, in India. The report is of a possible superconducting effect at ambient room temperatures. Here is the paper on the ArXiv. (Note that this research has not been peer-reviewed or published yet.) "We report the observation of an exceptionally large room-temperature electrical conductivity in silver and aluminum layers deposited on a lead zirconate titanate (PZT) substrate. The surface resistance of the silver-coated samples also shows a sharp change near 313 K. The results are strongly suggestive of a superconductive interfacial layer, and have been interpreted in the framework of Bose-Einstein condensation of bipolarons as the suggested mechanism for high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates. ... The fact that the results described above have been obtained from very simply-fabricated systems, without the use of any sophisticated set-up and any special attention being given to crystal purity, atomic perfection, lattice matching, etc. suggests that the physical process is a universal one, involving only an interface between a metal and an insulator with a large low-frequency dielectric constant. We note in passing that PZT and the cuprates have similar (perovskite or perovskite-based) crystal structures. This resemblance may provide an added insight into the basic mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity."

Study Claims Cellphones Implicated In Bee Loss 542

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 31, 2010 @07:56PM from the can-you-hear-me-now-wait-where-am-i dept.

krou passes along word from Telegraph.co.uk that researchers from Chandigarh's Punjab University claim that they have proven mobile phones could explain Colony Collapse Disorder. "They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behavior and productivity of bees in two hives — one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two 15-minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed. After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phone, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey. The queen bee in the 'mobile' hive produced fewer than half of those created by her counterpart in the normal hive. They also found a dramatic decline in the number of worker bees returning to the hive after collecting pollen." We've talked about the honeybee problem before. Today's article quotes a British bee specialist who dismisses talk of cellphone radiation having anything to do with the problem.

Comment Was already free for non-commercial use! (Score 1) 225

by shervinemami on Friday May 21, 2010 @07:08AM (#32291248) Attached to: Microsoft's New Attempt To Dominate Robotics

It was already free for non-commercial use, so I guess Microsoft finally realised that not many companies are making money from robots (besides military robots & industrial robots), so it wasn't really earning them much money anyway.

Personally, I hated learning Microsoft Robotics Studio, it is great for doing a few basic things, but doing anything different than that requires a lot of things that must be learnt that have very little to do with your robotics project. The whole purpose of a robotics environment like this is so that robotics builders can concentrate on actual robot stuff, whereas MSRDS makes you waste so much time learning their proprietary formats & techniques that you could easily loose the fun in learning robots!

Thats my opinion anyway, as a someone with a Masters degree in Robotics Engineering that still has trouble using MS Robotics Design Studio!

Comment Re:Kind Of Vague (Score 1) 547

by shervinemami on Wednesday April 14, 2010 @10:13PM (#31853028) Attached to: How Many Hours a Week Can You Program?

Yeah for example in Dubai & UAE where about 80% of the people in the country are temporary hired workers from overseas, its common that even for the "blue-collar" jobs, your employer keeps your passport during your 1 or 2 yr contract to make sure you can't leave the job or country!

South Australia Outlaws Anonymous Political Speech 352

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @09:53AM from the best-of-luck-enforcing-that dept.

Sabriel writes "If you're online in South Australia and want to comment about the upcoming state election, be prepared to hand over your real name and postcode first — because this month it becomes illegal to do so anonymously (even under a pseudonym). Media organizations must keep your details on file for six months and face 'fines of $5000 if they do not hand over this information to the Electoral Commissioner.' This abomination was passed with the support of both major parties (Labour and Liberal), and to quote its sponsor, Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, 'There is no impinging on freedom of speech, people are free to say what they wish as themselves, not as somebody else.' Apparently incapable of targeting a few impostors without resorting to 'nuke it from orbit' legislative tactics, Atkinson has forgotten that protecting anonymity is important to the democratic process; hopefully both major parties will get a reminder come the polls on March 20."

Comment Re:Hardware Specs (Score 1) 44

by shervinemami on Tuesday January 19, 2010 @04:18PM (#30823896) Attached to: Willow Garage To Give Away 10 Open Source Robots

The PR2 robot has two eight-core i7 Xeon system servers on-board, each with 24 GB of RAM ..... over a 16-port gigabit Ethernet hub

Thats what happens when Google funds a robot: it becomes a mobile server rack!

But I must admit that its pretty impressive computing power to have on a mobile robot! Most research robots have relatively outdated embedded computing hardware compared to consumer laptops, so this will allow much more detailed algorithms to run.

Offline Book "Lending" Costs US Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion 494

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 19, 2010 @02:07PM from the oh-the-humanity dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a tongue-in-cheek blog post which puts publisher worries about ebook piracy into perspective: "Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher's Weekly that 'publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy' comes a sudden realization of a much larger threat to the viability of the book industry. Apparently, over 2 billion books were 'loaned' last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. ... From what we've been able to piece together, the book 'lending' takes place in 'libraries.' On entering one of these dens, patrons may view a dazzling array of books, periodicals, even CDs and DVDs, all available to anyone willing to disclose valuable personal information in exchange for a 'card.' But there is an ominous silence pervading these ersatz sanctuaries, enforced by the stern demeanor of staff and the glares of other patrons. Although there's no admission charge and it doesn't cost anything to borrow a book, there's always the threat of an onerous overdue bill for the hapless borrower who forgets to continue the cycle of not paying for copyrighted material."

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