Sounds like a opportunity to reverse engineer it and make it available more generally for those in a similar situation.

The interesting thing for me was that the description in the article was an excellent CV. We have had many discussions here about whether a Computer Science Degree really prepares you for the IT industry, and in my opinion they are at best a primer. I am also "unqualified", but have made a successful career in IT. I have also been making hiring decisions for several years in several organisations.

When you get past the skill set required what I am looking for is independence in terms of being able to take a task or feature and deliver it without overt oversight. Are you able to analyze a requirement, come up with a solution, and deliver it? Do you have professional disiplines? I'm talking about use of version control, working inside a team environment.

One way of getting exactly these kinds of skills is through open source teams. Open source provides a low barrier to entry for those looking to make their mark. It will give you excellent practical experience, that in my book is approximately double the value of commercial experience because it shows commitment and passion for software development.

In short the original description above reads better than most CV's I get across my desk. University qualifications do play a part, but not as much as you might think.

"He'll be our President because we put him there"... I think maybe Democracy is broken. If regardless of who you vote for the result is the same you are living in a Dictatorship. It's not just patents either - Gitmo, Iraq, Patriot Act, Health Care, seems that even when the Republicans aren't in office they are. No wonder the focus has been on security - they are gonna need it when the people find out they have been duped by the DemoRepublican Party for so long.

And what about the countries unlucky enough to be situated below the equator?

This is an interesting question because it brings up a serious problem with how poor the common domain has become. Maori have a culture and cultural artifacts which they own collectively. It is their culture. No single Maori can claim it for themselves, but they together own it. Today virtually all the cultural artifacts of our period are owned by someone else. Try and use the artifacts of your own culture in a new work and just see how fast you will find yourself in court for copyright violation.

Sing a popular song, draw a picture of a Coke can, or copy a tattoo from someone who is famous, and suddenly it's a huge problem. But it is clearly a double standard. They can copy cultural artifacts, but we cannot copy them.

I'm not really standing up for pirates - outright duplication of works for profit - but I do think that there should be a liberal ability for individuals to copy segments in order to create new works.

In other news coming to hand, "Free Software" doesn't mean the software is free of cost.

And exactly are they going to control a robotic vessel with it's rudder and propulsion at the bottom of the ship covered in tons and tons of cargo? Hell - they will need gear to cut into the hold just to get access to cargo, and then they need some way to carry it away. The ship won't stop, and if you do manage to disable the control systems you won't have any easy means to actually control the ship. It would be much more difficult to pirate such a ship.

Right now this is a "fun" project - I'm not trying to get too worried about the applications. The real issue with autonomous boats is the ability to visually detect and avoid other craft. While not important with small models like I've got now, once we start to get to a reasonable size it will need to be able to process visual information to identify and avoid collisions.

I think it is a mistake to try and build a boat like this around a specific application - especially cleaning oil. Energy would be better directed into developing systems to carry cargo. Think about cargo ships sailing into dangerous areas - such as those with pirates. If you have a ship that is autonomous there are no lives to risk, and if boarded the control systems could be buried under tons of cargo; impossible to reach, and with ability to control from on board.

Such vessels would be controlled by satellite. They would of course need the software to run autonomously, including interfacing with radar, GPS, visual etc. Another advantage with this approach would be that you could make them smaller, and make them sailing ships; or perhaps wind turbine or kite assisted. Plenty of possibilities to reduce the carbon emissions of international trade.

They want tens of thousands of dollars to make a prototype that will be "low cost"? This isn't a story about something that has been actually made. How much is actually required to make a autonomous boat? Well, I guess I know a little more than most, since I've actually built a prototype - the budget needed for all the parts easily comes in under $3000.

My latest efforts are here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zvC-CpljCc

The "Open Boat" project is intended as a research platform; eventually to permit long term sea going boats to perform research such as weather monitoring. It is also the first step towards investigating autonomous cargo vessels. All the software is open source, and currently running on a Linux based ARM.