ovoskeuiks - Slashdot User

NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @03:10PM 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."

Submission + - PC's are only 50% energy efficient

Submitted by

Matt

on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @05:20AM

Matt writes: "An awful 50 percent of the power delivered from a wall socket to a PC simply gets wasted says Urs Hölzle, Google fellow and senior vice president of operations. Half the energy gets converted to heat or is dissipated in some other manner in the AC-to-DC conversion. Around 30 percent of the power delivered to the average server gets lost, he added. The power in both cases is lost before any work is accomplished by a computer: later, even more energy is lost by PCs sitting idle, or as heat dissipated by other components."

Submission + - Linus on GPLv3 and ZFS

Submitted by slurpster on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @04:32AM

slurpster writes: Linus makes his views about GPLv3 and ZFS clear in his lastest posting to the Linux mailing list.

He writes

'So to Sun, a GPLv3-only release would actually let them look good, and still keep Linux from taking their interesting parts, and would allow them to take at least parts of Linux without giving anything back (ahh, the joys of license fragmentation). Of course, they know that. And yes, maybe ZFS is worthwhile enough that I'm willing to go to the effort of trying to relicense the kernel. But quite frankly, I can almost guarantee that Sun won't release ZFS under the GPLv3 even if they release other parts. Because if they did, they'd lose the patent protection.'

Submission + - Consequences of Closed Source Software in Linux (osweekly.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @04:03AM

An anonymous reader writes: What is wrong with closed source apps in Linux? That's the question that Matt Hartley attempts to answer. He writes, "I believe another simple fact of life is that people are going to have to get used to the issue of Windows migrants bringing their need for specific applications along with them. This would certainly explain the explosion is WINE popularity for sure. So, if we are so quick to allow proprietary applications in WINE, why the resistance and even downright resentment with proprietary applications then? Simple, the rules of the GPL disallow it. This may not seem fair, but regardless, this is simply how it is.

Feed Magnetic clothes hangers rearrange your closet (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @05:52AM

Filed under: Household

As with most things that have remained fairly constant over the years, it was just a matter of time before someone with a tick of free time and a bright idea gave a new face to the clothes hanger. Daniel To's simply-named magnetic clothes hangers maintain the same forked design to gingerly hold your favorite threads, but rather than sporting a rotating hook, a magnetic cube was attached in order to give design-conscience homeowners a new way to assemble their closets. Of course, you'll need a metallic rack / roof to take advantage of the attractive (ahem) design, but we sure hope these end up coming in a heavy duty flavor for the more weighted aspects of our wardrobe.

[Via Freshome]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Feed Chocolate the key to uncovering PC passwords (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @05:52AM

Sweet talk and sweets is all it takes

Three years since the last time they pulled this stunt, cheeky researchers can still wangle IT passwords with free chocolate and flirting.

Feed Mainframe now obsolete for data warehousing (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @05:12AM

Let Intel inherit the earth?

Reg Reader Workshop Many would have argued in the past that a data warehouse was not a "real" data warehouse unless it existed the in big iron mainframe number crunching environment.

Feed Nokia's 6120 Classic: thin HSDPA is (finally) in (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @04:32AM

Filed under: Cellphones

Great googlie mooglie, what's this? Can it really be a 15-millimeter thin candybar from Nokia, the makers of those chunky multimedia computers? Ok, it's not as thin as their N76 but let's give 'em some credit here for trying. Having fermented in the rumor mill for a few weeks, we now have ourselves a fully mature Nokia 6120 Classic running S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1 over quad-band GSM and WCDMA/HSDPA 850/2100. The handset packs a 2-inch QVGA display, A2DP stereo Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, a 2 megapixel camera with flash, and MicroSD slot to store your media. A pre-tax, pre-contract price of €260/$352 will get you up close and personal when these hit sometime before June lets out. Check all the pics in the gallery below. Sorry, only a tiny backside pic for now; Nokia's being a bit shy 'bout their junk.

Gallery: Nokia's 6120 Classic: thin HSDPA is (finally) in

[Via Ring Nokia]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Slashdot Top Deals