Comment Goodbye Postdata warning! (Score 1) 604
The end of the Soviet browser era is coming. May all the cool plugins be portable to Chrome.
Submission + - RMS Talks about Binary Drivers and Open Source
An anonymous reader writes: Newsforge has an article about a talk RMS recently gave to students at UCSD. RMS fielded a number of interesting questions relevant to the future of the free software movement including, "Do you support the Creative Commons license?" and "Can I use ATI and NVIDIA drivers because Mesa isn't nearly as complete?". Can we expect Linux ever to see main stream adoption with these persistent driver and licensing issues still hanging around?
Submission + - A Change in the Martian Weather is Blowing Through
nlhouser writes: "The indicators of the Martian climate — global dust storm occurrences, annual global-mean temperatures, and polar energy balance — seem to be dependent on many poorly understood processes that seem somehow to be interrelated."
Submission + - USPTO Issues Bigger and Better 1-Click Patent
theodp writes: "With many of Amazon's 1-Click patent claims dismissed as old and well known and a separate reexam underway, it seemed unlikely that the 1-Click patent claims would be broadened anytime soon. But the USPTO did just that last week, issuing U.S. patent no. 7,222,087 after Amazon's thrice-rejected continuation application worked its way into the hands of a more sympathetic (and impatient) Examiner, who earlier defended his friends for approving 1-Click in the first place and referred 1-Click naysayers to a WSJ letter written by his 'boss's boss's boss's boss'. BTW, the decision not to award a 1-Click prior art bounty that so impressed the ex-Commissioner for Patents came from a company funded by 1-Click patent holder and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos."
Submission + - Ants form living pothole plugs
mikesd81 writes: "Bristol University has an article about army ants ( Eciton burchellii ) lead the way in highway maintenance. From the article: "Certain army ants in the rainforests of Central and South America conduct spectacular predatory raids containing up to 200,000 foraging ants. Remarkably, some ants use their bodies to plug potholes in the trail leading back to the nest, making a flatter surface so that prey can be delivered to the developing young at maximum speed."
The raid always remains connected to the nest by a trail of forager traffic, along which prey-laden foragers run back to the nest which the path can be full of "pot holes". The study, by Dr Scott Powell and Professor Nigel Franks at the University of Bristol, and reported in the June issue of Animal Behaviour, shows that these living 'plugs' improve the quality of the surface. Their experiments showed that individuals size-match to the hole they plug and cooperate to plug larger holes. "We did this by getting the ants to literally 'walk the plank', said Powell. "We inserted planks drilled with different sizes of hole into the army ants' trails to see how well different sizes of ant matched different sizes of pot hole. Indeed, they fit beautifully", explained Franks. This study provides rare quantitative evidence from animal societies that extreme specialisation by a minority can significantly improve the performance of a majority to benefit the group as a whole."
The raid always remains connected to the nest by a trail of forager traffic, along which prey-laden foragers run back to the nest which the path can be full of "pot holes". The study, by Dr Scott Powell and Professor Nigel Franks at the University of Bristol, and reported in the June issue of Animal Behaviour, shows that these living 'plugs' improve the quality of the surface. Their experiments showed that individuals size-match to the hole they plug and cooperate to plug larger holes. "We did this by getting the ants to literally 'walk the plank', said Powell. "We inserted planks drilled with different sizes of hole into the army ants' trails to see how well different sizes of ant matched different sizes of pot hole. Indeed, they fit beautifully", explained Franks. This study provides rare quantitative evidence from animal societies that extreme specialisation by a minority can significantly improve the performance of a majority to benefit the group as a whole."
