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Robotics

Toward Autonomous Unmanned Aircraft Technology 137

Posted by kdawson from the fly-by-wire-only-there-is-no-wire dept.
coondoggie writes with a NetworkWorld piece that begins, "Researchers at Purdue will soon experiment with an unmanned aircraft that pretty much flies itself with little human intervention. The aircraft will use a combination of global-positioning system technology and a guidance system called AttoPilot ... to guide the aerial vehicle to predetermined points. Researchers can be stationed off-site to monitor the aircraft and control its movements remotely. AttoPilot was installed in the aircraft early this year, and testing will begin in the spring, researchers said."
Earth

Global Warming Irreversible, NOAA Scientist Finds 1061

Posted by kdawson from the is-it-hot-in-here dept.
Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."

Comment My memory may be a bit rusty, but... (Score 1, Informative) 545

by NeuroManson (#26569993) Attached to: Windows 7 Taskbar Not So Similar To OS X Dock After All

Haven't "docks" been in use since BEFORE Microsoft introduced theirs with Windows 98?

Cases in point, NeXT OS, and IBM's OS/2 4 Warp, both used docks (a dock launch bar in NeXT's case, and a task bar launch bar in the case of OS/2. The Mac OS only picked this up as an official feature with OSX, while before that, you had to run a 3rd party app to simulate NeXT OS' docks (at least back in 1992 with System 7 on).

If one was to claim copying was made, then didn't Apple swipe their docks from NeXT OS (yeah, that was also Jobs' baby), and for that matter, didn't Microsoft in fact swipe their quick launch bar from OS/2 4 Warp?

And before any Mac fans mod this down in an effort to try and rewrite history, remember that the original Mac interface itself was swiped from Xerox PARC. They admitted to it themselves, and after introducing it to the mainstream, the idea of moving an arrow back and forth between graphical icons pretty much became the defacto standard.

It's that, or spend the rest of your life using CLI for *everything*.
Television

Submission + - How to properly start a pirate TV network?

Submitted by NeuroManson
NeuroManson writes: Well, when the digital transition goes through, I've been led to the following conclusion: How does one get into pirate television, hardware and software wise? Sure, you could go to YouTube, but if you want to provide media that is still under (questionable) ownership, if you want to provide media that is also questionable (say the occasional odd show that *gasp8 makes people think), AND you want to provide said material to people who are holdouts, not willing to pay $50 just to watch even more FCC filtered media, what do you do? The massive gap that the loss of broadcast spectrum would represent means there will be a large opportunity (a'la Big Time Television) for pirate broadcasters to use the still unused frequencies available, AND lucrative for advertisers desperate to keep the remaining 100,000,000 roughly audience. So simply put, what equipment would be nessesary to provide broadcasts for the fleeting but still available market?

Comment Smug Mode on. (Score 1) 249

by NeuroManson (#26414555) Attached to: The Scope of US E-Waste

A few years ago, I breached the question of the digital transition for television and its inevitable environmental impact as hundreds of millions of TV sets go this route: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/21/2128220.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Actually, judging from this article, we've not only ignored the iceberg, but invited it in for a hot cup of tea, and asked how many people it would like to kill while ignoring the sinking ship entirely.

It's sad that seven years down the line, the obvious severity of the issue has not only gone ignored, but even condoned to date. Hell, even as I write this, I'm on a 5 year old Tablet PC that I also use for graphics (using an Intel graphics chipset, *gag*), most of my electronics are over 5 years old. What's the oldest electronic devices you use today, hmmmmm?

Comment Geothermal time, people! (Score 2, Funny) 877

by NeuroManson (#26289289) Attached to: Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow?

Seriously, dedicate a portion of the land towards geothermal power. Any good cook, and any good engineer will tell you that when you want to keep heat under control, you reroute it elsewhere. Build some geothermal plants on the spot, you know how deep the magma is, then building vent/transfer systems around the caldera will in fact cool it down to prevent an eruption, AND you can sell the electricity generated for, well, generations.

Sheiss, it's so simple, should I really be the one suggesting this? I'm a high school dropout (intellectual as I am), and it's really that obvious.

Comment Re:Bye bye Linux (Score 1) 898

by NeuroManson (#26251511) Attached to: First Look At Windows 7 Beta 1

Sure, all they need to do is show a slot machine, showing that if you use 3 7s, you win, if not, you're screwed and lose all your money. Apple would LOVE that "Windows is a Gamble" opening.

BTW Steve Jobs, you now owe me $5,000 for that idea, large bills please.

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