atherton2 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Robots team up for tricky tasks

Submitted by

Matthew Sparkes

on Monday March 05, 2007 @08:44AM

Matthew Sparkes writes: "A team of search-and-rescue robots have been developed, that are capable of collaborating to form a single larger robot when faced with certain challenges. Each of the robot's three detachable modules can function independently, but when combined the modules function as a single larger and more complex robot. It is possible to cover a search area much more quickly by dividing it between several independent units. Conversely, there are also benefits to working together. A larger robot can, for instance, span larger gaps and move larger objects."

Will Wright and Spore Profiled in Popular Science 28

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @12:47PM from the if-you-could-release-this-year-it'd-be-tremendous-will dept.

Via Joystiq, an enthusiastic interview in Popular Science with Will Wright. He talks about his much anticipated PC title Spore (still slated to ship later this year), the educational qualities of games, socializing via games, and the future of gaming. One of his closing comments: "Getting people more connected to the real world through gaming. Because I think we all live in our own little bubbles, we have our own little lives and there's this whole world out there of things happening that we're kind of dimly aware of. We might pick up the paper or watch the news. And it's a complex world. A lot of very strange twisted dynamics, interesting things, very important things that are going to shape the future that our children live in. And that if you could just get everybody to be a little bit more aware of the world around them, and how it works, and have that feedback in to the course the world is taking, gaming could be an incredibly powerful mechanism for steering the system."

Submission + - Practical Applications of Fast NP Solving?

Submitted by CoolGuySteve on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @12:41PM

CoolGuySteve writes: Recently there has been news of quantum computers supposedly making certain NP algorithms much faster. Many of us have learned about NP in class or on our own with problems like Subset-Sum and Travelling Salesmen, but how would being able to quickly solve these types of problems improve everyday life?

If everyone had some kind of computing device in the far-off future, similar to a video or physics acceleration card, that could solve NP-complete problems in less than 1 ms, what new applications would we see? How would existing applications be made better?

Submission + - Rhapsody: A Music Service for Linux Users

Submitted by

nithinraju

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @12:27PM

nithinraju writes: "Linux users have to enjoy! Because the music service"Rhapsody "is mainly meant for linux users.
The idea of Rhapsody offering a Linux music service is fantastic, except for the fact that they have opted not to allow the full functionality offer to those in the Windows world. It really is a let down for Linux users, but is this something that we can blame Rhapsody for?
Should Rhapsody find itself in a position to allow for DRM music on the Linux platform, those of us who couldnotcare less about DRM related concerns would make Rhapsody a lot of money overnight."

Comment Re:Meh... (Score 3, Informative) 83

by atherton2 on Monday January 23, 2006 @01:20PM (#14540491) Attached to: Brits Ready Crops For Global Warming

Selection and plant breeding do allow for plants to be tailored to thierenviroments, but this can and has for most crop varieties taken hudreds if not thousands of years of farmers and breeders selceting and crossing promising lines. The advantages of GM are many and varied: 1. as mentioned earlier you can take a gene from any spiceis and place it into the host, 2. you can break linkage between genes 3. you can alter promation of genes 4. other stuff...I won't go on and on. 5. you can do all off this a hell of alot fatser But as asked above it is mainly the speed factor that makes GM so very appealing.

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