DGPS is all about using the fact that error in a normal satellite GPS signal is relatively constant in one location on Earth - the ground based transmitters just tell the DGPS receiver what that error is in your specific location. This sounds like they are using actual ground-based GPS transmitters, thereby removing the calculation of where the satellite is in the first place, to improve accuracy.

I agree with your point that the carbon offsets don't truly offset the damage, but having punched the child doesn't change the positive effect of donating to NSPCC - i.e. punching a child and donating to NSPCC is still slightly better than only punching a child, and having punched the child doesn't mean that then donating to the NSPCC is stupid. The carbon offsets presumably do some good, even if it isn't enough.

Using energy stored as momentum would only allow for a temporary hop off the ground, until that momentum is used up - if the pilot can't sustain the power required for flight, the rotor would quickly slow down.. It sounds like the requirement that it fly for at least 60 seconds means that the human pilot has to be able to maintain the momentum of the rotor by pedaling with the power required for actually flying.

I wonder if you could flip that around to say something like:

"When a young inexperienced scientist states that something far-fetched is possible, he is probably wrong. When he states that something is impossible, he is almost certainly right."

I admittedly have only tried it in rental cars - satellite radio is great for talk radio, so you can listen to the same program while driving cross country, but the music quality is pretty bad, the "sizzle" and reduction in dynamic range of the overly compressed audio is kind of grating.

A better way to word it would be to say people have the right to not have the internet taken away from them. Provided a person lives somewhere where a company can provide them access, they can pay for it, etc, then no government or other organization should be able to prevent someone from accessing it freely.

It probably uses a frequency splitting response, like a high pass filter on the shock response to block out "steady state" response, so that it only responds to changes in the road - in the driving over a curb example, the shock would probably respond quickly (at high frequency) to the immediate bump, but wash out with some time constant to the normal position. If you hit the beginning of a steep slope, the shocks only would respond immediately to soften the transition.

So, right, big enough bumps (below some cutoff frequency) would be felt so as to not saturate the actuator, but most ride discomfort probably comes from higher-frequency bumps.

Modern Ti graphing calc vs. Osborne 1...oh wait...

The point is that forcing students who wouldn't otherwise take Algebra II to take it might not provide as much benefit as the correlation seems to indicate if there is not a direct causation, but instead a third variable effecting both. There may be root factors that occur much earlier in life that determine whether a student ends up being the type that would take Algebra II, and benefit from it - it may be more worthwhile to continue investigating to figure out what that root factor is.

It's kind of an interesting game theory problem - from the perspective of an individual parent, the risk of not vaccinating only their child is relatively low, given that they are assuming everyone else will be vaccinated. if there is even a tiny perceived danger in getting the vaccine (real or not), than the rational choice may really be to not be vaccinated. Unfortunately, this can lead to a Nash equilibrium, in that the outcome for the entire population is worse if everyone were to make this choice, similar to the prisoner's dilemma problem. From the perspective of the entire population, for example a public health official, it obviously makes sense to vaccinate everyone, even if there is some very small risk from the vaccine, as long as that risk is smaller than the risk of getting a disease without the vaccine.

Creativity is often just finding a solution to an NP-hard problem, for example writing a song. Most people can tell if a song is enjoyable to listen to or not, but they can't necessarily write their own. They can listen to many songs and determine which are most pleasing. A songwriter has the special ability of assembling a song that meets the requirements of being pleasing by some method that is more efficient than simply testing each combination of random notes. Sudoko is similar, it is easy to verify that a given solution is correct. One solution method would be to keep testing different combinations of numbers until a solution is found, but there are more efficient methods using some heuristics based on the other numbers present, or experience from solving previous puzzles. The question might be whether there is something fundamentally more intelligent about things that humans create - songs, literature, etc, compared to a series a numbers in a Sudoko puzzle.

I think the reason is that on a small scale, it is possible to control a quadcopter or quadrotor by changing the relative speed of the rotors, which is much simpler because there is no cyclic pitch, or swashplate mechanism, but this technique doesn't scale well. On a man-sized quadrotor, it would be difficult to accelerate and decelerate the rotors fast enough to have agile control, and so the use of cyclic pitch becomes the better method to control thrust. If you are using cyclic pitch, then it becomes simpler to have one (or 2) rotors instead of 4. Also, when a rotor tilts, it generates large gyroscopic forces. On a small model, these are small compared to the strength of the rotors, but on a man-sized vehicle, the rotors need to be able to "flap" in order to reduce stress on the blades, which again is simpler if you only have to deal with one rotor.

I don't think this is even about whether it is hate speech or not. The majority of the people in the world have tough enough skin and don't care, but unfortunately there are a few crazy people in Pakistan, who will definitely do real things that harm everyone else in the world as a result of this, such as recruit more terrorists, and kill innocent people. If the only risk here was whether this offends some people, then go ahead and do it, but at some point, we have to look at the risk vs. benefit of each option. If burning the books results in more killing in the world, and does not help in any way, then it's not a wise choice. Others have argued that it is cowardice to not burn the books - this might be true if there was some identifiable benefit from burning them, but making a choice that only leads to bad things is typically referred to as "stupid". Of course, the identifiable benefit to this guy might just be publicity.

The question wasn't "why is he allowed to pack heat" the question was "why does he _need_ to pack heat." Of course people are allowed to carry guns if they feel it is necessary for protection, but many people would consider themselves more "free" if they can live a life that doesn't require a deadly weapon to stay safe.

The problem is that if there aren't enough disabled folks, then no businesses will have any motive to serve them, so the handicapped people will be severely limited in their options. Apparently when all things are considered, requiring businesses to be more accessible is viewed as being less of an infringement of freedom than completely preventing disabled people from functioning in society.