This sounds pretty much like the US space program.

It is unfortunate people still have to learn from their mistakes when this has already been done at least twice (CCCP and the US). A person might figure they could afford to hire a couple of engineers who already went through this trial and error.

-Todd

Let us remember that Joby Energy also sponsors this excellent project!

I would also like to add my insight to the previous excellent comments, as this is what allowed me to understand how the car goes faster than the wind:

What is the wind hitting to drive the vehicle forward? Where is the flat spot on the back of the vehicle the wind is pushing against? It is the rear surface of the propeller. The wheels are not driving the propeller to make the car go, they are keeping the relative speed of the air hitting the rear surface of the propeller at the proper speed so the car acts like a sailboat sailing at an angle to the wind.

The fact that this seems counter-intuitive at first makes it a cool problem. With the above, I now feel this makes sense and I have no problem believing it.

I hope this helps other people.

-Todd

p.s. I am a systems architect/software developer available for employment.

Since Tux came into being in April-May of 1996, it is impossible for Mr. Zappa to have used a penguin reference to suggest anything about Linus in the "early '70s." See: http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_History_of_Tux_the_Linux_Penguin

-Todd

Some past scientists were in a position where they could speak about religion without fear. Unfortunately, I am not certain that is the case today. Examples from Einstein:

I think this one is of interest given our religious-values/anti-socialist Republican party:

-Todd

Recommended relative humidity in data centers is a range centered at about 50%. In California, this is going to mean adding moisture if anything.

-Todd

Several former office-space buildings are being converted to data centers.

In a regular commute from West San Jose to the Google-plex area in Mountain View I have seen these changes. An existing office building has its windows removed/covered and then a sign goes up showing data center space available or the name of a data warehousing company.

This conversion seems less wasteful as far as materials, but I am not sure how using an existing building compares to building a data-center-specific one for long-term energy efficiencies.

-Todd

It is disappointing to see Amazon finding out only now that engineers will want to scribble on pages, highlight items, need color, etc.

Amazon employs hundreds if not thousands of engineers, most if not all of which could have told senior executives this.

Unfortunately, many companies in Silicon Valley are being run by executives who have forgotten their companies were built by engineers, and consulting with them once in a while might be useful.

This is not meant to be flame-bait. It is from personal experience and the experiences of other engineers, e.g., Bob Colwell and the inability of Intel to acknowledge the failure of the Itanium processor line before it wasted billions of dollars and several years of engineering time (read Bob's book The Pentium Chronicles for more detail.)

-Todd

In the United States, you have to be 18 years old to decide whether or not to possibly damage your future life by smoking. Additionally, except for some serious cases, we have a juvenile court record which is sealed for life, because at one time people recognized a young person might make mistakes which should not affect them when they are adults.

But, as Chris Good points out, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Web sites, etc. might end up following people for the rest of their lives.

Is it reasonable for a judge being confirmed in 2050 to have this denied via public opinion because he/she had a Facebook video of themselves with a group of friends doing something stupid when they were 15? Or 12?

What about pictures taken via a Web-cam attached to a laptop which was lent to them by their public school?

What about archived video from one of the thousands of cameras placed in public places in most larger US cities?

-Todd

As a result of an earlier Slashdot article discussing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's support for eliminating diseases in developing countries, there was a discussion suggesting population control might be a better place to invest.

It looks like the Gates foundation is not ignoring this issue.

-Todd

I should have been more specific in my first post.

David Marr's vision book (published in 1982 after his early death in 1980) is considered a seminal work in understanding human visual processing.

Marr was trying to describe how humans see. The new work at MIT is trying to allow computers to see. David Marr would be glad to see the developments, whether at MIT or elsewhere.

-Todd

David Marr proposed the idea of a primal sketch as the first stage of converting the two-dimensional image on the retina to a full understanding of what is being looked at. This work culminated in a paper published in 1980 called "Theory of edge detection."

Marr was a faculty member at MIT, so it is appropriate for this work to have been done there.

For more information, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Marr_(neuroscientist)

and

http://www.amazon.com/Vision-Computational-Investigation-Representation-Information/dp/0716715678

-Todd

Maybe this was a cyber-terror attack and it is being covered up.

-Todd

When I was a Cub scout, I was programming my TI-57 calculator.

I think we often set the bar too low for our children. New math might have been the worst thing to happen to me academically. I did not find out how devastating it was until I took my first graduate-level mathematics course at the University of Wisconsin.

-Todd

How about a merit badge for creating Web pages or setting up a Web site.

Maybe one for completing a simple self-taught course in a simple language like Java?

-Todd

p.s. The discrimination thing is an unfortunate issue, but, hey, just "Don't tell."