foolsdragon - Slashdot User

Submission + - Google Maps Reverts to Pre-Katrina Gulf Coast

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Friday March 30, 2007 @08:32AM

eldavojohn writes: "For one reason or another, Google has reverted to using maps prior to the destruction by hurricane Katrina in gulf coast regions. From the article, "Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges are intact and parks are filled with healthy, full-bodied trees. "Come on," said an incredulous Ruston Henry, president of the economic development association in New Orleans' devastated Lower 9th Ward. "Just put in big bold this: 'Google, don't pull the wool over the world's eyes. Let the truth shine.'" Google is claiming that these images are just higher quality than post Katrina images taken later. Indeed, Louisiana Superdome looks pristine."

CD Music Sales Down 20% In Q1 2007 544

Posted by kdawson on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:17PM from the RIP-CD dept.

prostoalex writes "Music sales are not just falling, they're plummeting — by as much as 20% when you compare January-March 2007 with the 2006 numbers. The revenue numbers are actually worse, since CD prices are under pressure. The Wall Street Journal lists many factors contributing to the rapid decline: 800 fewer retail outlets (Tower Records' demise alone closed 89); increasingly negative attitude towards CD sales from big-box retailers (Best Buy now dedicates less floor space to CDs in favor of better-selling items); and file sharing, among others. Songs are being traded at a rate about 17 times the iTunes Store's recent rate of sales. Diminishing CD sales means that you don't have to sell as many to get on the charts. The 'Dreamgirls' movie soundtrack recently hit #1 by selling 60,000 CDs in a week, a number that wouldn't have made the top 30 in 2005."

Submission + - Choosing F/OSS distance education tools

Submitted by SgtChaireBourne on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:05PM

SgtChaireBourne writes: A lot of the all-in-one distance education systems are expensive, poorly done, or both. Distance education makes heavy use of text-based chat, shared whiteboards (including the ability to display PDF and OpenDocument), and conference calls with recording and playback. Many of these have been available for ages, individually, as Free or open source software.

Which F/OSS tools or components would be most suitable, either individually or combined, for distance education and why?

Submission + - Micro-Wind Turbines for use in the city

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday March 22, 2007 @12:52PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Engineers at the University of Hong Kong and a private renewable energy company have developed a new micro wind turbine that can generate electricity even if wind speeds are as low as two meters per second. Lucien Gambarota , the main inventor of the technology, says this is its advantage over conventional small wind turbines, which only work about 40 percent of the time because of low wind speed. "We never stop this machine and they never stop because there is always one meter per second wind — 365 days, 24 hours a day, they keep working," said Gambarota. "They deliver different levels of energy because the wind changes but these turbines they keep moving, they keep spinning." More: http://www.energyhack.com/"

Submission + - Another step towards the driverless car

Submitted by

jtogel

on Thursday March 22, 2007 @12:50PM

jtogel writes: "At Essex, we have for some time been working on automatically learning how to race cars in simulation. It turns out that a combination of evolutionary algorithms and neural networks can learn how to beat all humans in racing games, and also come up with some quite interesting, novel behaviours, which might one day make their way into commercial racing games. While this is simulation, the race is now on for the real thing — we are setting up a competition for AI developers, where the goal is to win a race between model cars on real tracks. As the cars will be around half a meter long, the cost of participating will be a fraction of that for the famous DARPA Grand Challenge, whereas the challenges will be similar in terms of computer vision and AI."

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