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NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118

Posted by samzenpus from the drop-the-cloud-anchor dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."

Comment List Directory (Score 4, Funny) 641

by JewFish (#29476273) Attached to: Most Useful UNIX Tool?

I find ls to be the most useful. According to my command history, it's what I am using 25.6% of the time.

Listing files every 4th command illustrates some sort of memory deficiency on my part, you would think I would know my way around ~ by now.
Role Playing (Games)

Fable III Announced For 2010 52

Posted by Soulskill from the a-boy-and-his-dog-and-his-empire dept.
Flea of Pain writes "Fable III is finally in the works! 'Peter Molyneux revealed that his team is working on Fable III, which will arrive in late 2010, two years after the release of Fable II. The game will give you the primary task of becoming Albion's king and leading the people to happiness and the kingdom to glory. Fable III will be something bold and different, Molyneux promises, stating that story and drama will play a major part in it. New things will be done with the dog and the bread-crumb-trails mechanic, which were present in the second game, and you will be offered complete control of your actions and your people's actions, as you will be the king of Albion. ... [Y]ou will need to balance many things, including poverty and greed, tyranny and compassion or progress and tradition, all in order to keep your subjects happy. Furthermore, you will be able to set taxes and decide how you will rule your subjects. Your spouse, be it a king or a queen, will also point you into various directions over the course of the game. It seems that you will start as a son or daughter of the hero from Fable II and then progress until the halfway point of the game when you will be named king or queen of Albion. This means that you need to keep your save data from Fable II in order for a higher degree of customization.'"
Networking

Time To Cut the Ethernet Cable? 496

Posted by kdawson from the restructuring-the-edge dept.
coondoggie writes in with a Network World piece that begins "A range of companies with wireless LANs are discovering that 50% to 90% or more of Ethernet ports now go unused, because Wi-Fi has become so prevalent. They look at racks of unused switches, ports, Ethernet wall jacks, the cabling that connects them all, the yearly maintenance charges for unused switches, electrical charges, and cooling costs. So why not formally drop what many end users have already discarded — the Ethernet cable? 'There's definitely a right-sizing going on,' says Michael King, research director, mobile and wireless, for Gartner. 'By 2011, 70% of all net new ports will be wireless. People are saying, "we don't need to be spending so much on a wired infrastructure if no one is using it."' ... There is debate over whether WLANs, including the high-throughput 802.11n networks, will be able to deliver enough bandwidth." Cisco, which makes both wireless and wired gear, has a spokesman quoted calling this idea of right-sizing a "shortsighted message from a wireless-only provider. It's penny-wise and pound-foolish."

Comment Re:MKVs (Score 1) 294

by JewFish (#26433871) Attached to: DivX 7 Adds Support For Blu-ray Rips (H.264/MKV)

I had the same problem playing back 720p MKV on my Mac Mini as you. I have a Core Solo 1.5 GHz and nothing that I tried, VLC or MPlayer, would play them back smoothly. Recently, I stuck Ubuntu 8.10 on my mac mini and was very surprised to see that it played back 720p MKV flawlessly with VLC. I really don't understand why VLC played the files so terribly under OS X and was able to play them fine under Ubuntu 8.10, but I am happy with the results. Now if only I could figure out how to get my apple remote to work with VLC in Linux.

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