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Comment: More Arizona Sites. (Score 1) 363

by Ken McE (#38159718) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Science Sights To See?
Biosphere II, north of Tuson Arizona. considered by the press to be kind of a giant sad failure, considered by myself to be a radical experiment in ecological engineering. The result of the test run was not what they expected, but science is not about what you were expecting. Arcosanti, outside Mayer, Arizona. Experiment by Paolo Soleri in urban engineering, arcologies.

Comment: Heavyweight Boxer With a Glass Jaw. (Score 1) 440

by Ken McE (#34523206) Attached to: Navy Tests Mach 8 Electromagnetic Railgun
A warship is basically a large steel box filled with things that are radioactive, flammable, explosive, or covered with sharp metal edges. They can deal out a hell of a pounding, but can't take that much of a shot, kind of like a heavyweight boxer with a glass jaw. Ammunition storage and handling is is inherently dangerous. If you can remove the gunpowder from your projectiles you now have a much less explosive ship.

As regards civilian uses, this is a potential way to put bulk materials in orbit in a hurry. Nothing living or delicate could take that 100 Gs, (or whatever) but you could send up a lot of air/food/water/clothes/tools/ etc, and they would arrive in orbit in perfectly good shape.

Transportation

OLED Film Could Provide Cheap Night Vision For Cars 120

Posted by timothy
from the want-sunglasses-like-this dept.
thecarchik writes "Night vision systems are already available in the higher-end luxury sedans from companies like Toyota, Volvo, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. It's expensive technology that few drivers can afford, and at $4,000 for the system without a display, it's a pricey upgrade. That may all change soon, as DARPA-funded scientists have developed a cheap way to turn any infrared light into visible light with a thin film."
Privacy

ACLU Sues DHS Over Unlawful Searches and Detention 460

Posted by kdawson
from the single-file-please dept.
gavron writes "The ACLU has filed suit against DHS to stop the TSA from conducting illegal searches and detention. In the case at hand, TSA detained a Ron Paul staffer who was carrying $4,300 in cash in a metal box. The suit seeks to focus TSA searches on things having to do with increasing security on aircraft, instead of their current practice of 4th-amendment-violating searches, such as those of laptops, iPods, etc."

Comment: What if They Don't Consider it Hostility? (Score 3, Insightful) 803

by Ken McE (#28245805) Attached to: How Do You Greet an Extraterrestrial?
If a civilization is advanced enough to travel here, they're probably advanced enough to not have any good reason to be hostile.

If I decide to build a vacation house in the Everglades it might get a little rough for any alligators that happen to live on "my" lot. I'm not going to care if they've been there since sometime in the Mesozoic. I'm aware that alligators have some kind of intelligence, however I'm not that interested in it. They will never understand where I came from or how I got there, or what the hell I'm doing inside that big glass box my contractor put up on their best feeding ground. Any that get in my way will be dealt with, it doesn't matter how well they plan their defense. About all they can do is hope that I'm not a predator...

Comment: Re:Driver Cameras for Cars ideas (Score 1) 719

by Ken McE (#24425711) Attached to: Citizens Spy On Big Brother
An ideal car system would have four fixed cameras and a mike. You would have a fixed forwards pointing camera that could see the dash and something of the road. Speedometer and turn signals would be visible, along with enough view of the road to judge your driving. Traffic lights and road control signs would be nice. You would have wide angle left and right facing cameras mounted in the "B" pillars, just a little glass dot on the outside of the pillar. The rear facing one I am undecided about. Cops like to shine as much light as possible at the back of your car, this would tend to blow out most images. You might be able to get around this by mounting the camera very high or low and aiming it at a sharp angle. The mike gets clipped into your collar if you see an encounter coming. It is designed to record you but not the officer. This may keep you out of wiretap charges, since you are only recording yourself. You can of course echo much of what he says to get it in the record, so long as you don't annoy him. Recording an officer without permission can be made into a crime. Recording yourself, not so much. Around the tops of the windows you have "you are subject to surveillance" warnings.
The system is designed to come on with the car. If you hit the unmarked button on the dash it starts saving what it sees. It is always running a five minute buffer, saves the buffer when you hit the button.

This gives you the ability to record any encounter near your car beginning five minutes before you get pulled over. He won't like you recording yourself and will probably confiscate the mike, but there's no help for that. If you have mad skillz you can also try to pipe the results off site. If a LEO realizes that he's recorded in the vehicle somewhere he can always confiscate it and have the car stripped right down to the frame looking for the data.

Hardware Hacking

A Space Junkyard 94

Posted by kdawson
from the one-giant-heap-for-mankind dept.
Today's Los Angeles Times has an article about a North Hollywood junkyard that stocks a huge quantity of used aerospace parts, from valves to rocket engines. Norton Sales Inc. got started in the early 1960s. The junkyard had fallen on hard times, with the collapse of the Los Angeles-area aerospace economy in the 1980s, but it's making something of a comeback now with NASA's new plans for moon and Mars missions. The customers used to be rich Hollywood types; nowadays they are as likely to be private space entrepreneurs. "It's dangerous coming to a place like this," said Dave Masten of Masten Space. "It's like shopping on an empty stomach."
Biotech

Single Gene Gives Mice Three-Color Vision 184

Posted by kdawson
from the colors-you-can't-see dept.
maynard writes "A study in the peer-reviewed journal Science shows that mice transgenetically altered with a single human gene are then able to see in full tri-color vision. Mice without this alteration are normally colorblind. The scientists speculate that mammalian brains even from animals that have never evolved color vision are flexible enough to interpret new color-sense information with just the simple addition of new photoreceptors. Such a result is also indicated by a dominant X chromosome mutation that allows for quad-color vision in some women." A sidebar in the article includes a nice illustration of what two-color vs. three-color mice might perceive.
Power

Hummer Greener Than Prius? 920

Posted by kdawson
from the buy-a-Scion-xB dept.
An anonymous reader sends in a story from Central Connecticut State University, claiming that a Prius takes more energy to manufacture than a Hummer — 50% more. In addition, the article claims that the Prius costs $3.25 per mile over its expected lifespan of 100,000 miles compared to $1.95 per mile for the Hummer. The article gets its data from a study by CNW Marketing called Dust to Dust, which is an attempt to account for all the costs of vehicles, from manufacture through operation through repair and disposal. The $3.25/mile cost quoted for the Prius is the 2005 number; for 2006 it is $2.87. This improvement pulled the Prius below the straight industry average — all the other hybrids are still above that average. And the Hummer is not listed at all for 2006. Update: 03/21 00:44 GMT by J : You might want to take those figures with a grain of salt; I don't think anyone's seen the supporting data. Read on for details.
Privacy

DHS's 'Secure Flight' Program Proven Insecure 131

Posted by Zonk
from the i-trust-the-government-as-far-as-i-can-throw-it dept.
News.com is reporting the somewhat unsurprising news that a government program we were assured was 'perfectly safe', has actually been proven to be a privacy nightmare. The 'Secure Flight' program matched air traveler information with commercial databases in the interests of national security. The charter for the program specifically forbade the TSA from accessing this information; the organization got their hands on it anyway. The Department of Homeland Security has released a report, detailing these findings and analyzing the situation. The News.com piece makes it clear the report was released on Friday in an attempt to obscure it from public notice; it was only linked to from a DHS subsite, and has not shown up on the DHS or TSA main pages. From the article: "The report from the Homeland Security privacy office takes pains to say that the privacy compromises over Secure Flight were 'not intentional,' and includes a list of seven recommendations to avoid similar mishaps in the future. Those include explaining to the public exactly what's going on and creating a 'data flow map' to ensure information is handled in compliance with the 1974 Privacy Act. This isn't the first report to take issue with Secure Flight. Last year, auditors at the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that the program violated the Privacy Act."

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