Flibberdy - Slashdot User

Submission + - 11 Finalists in Pentagon's Robotic Rally (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01, 2007 @05:19PM

An anonymous reader writes: A mere 11 driverless vehicles — not the 20 originally planned — will compete in this weekend's $3.5 million all-robot street rally, hosted by the Pentagon. After a series of crashes, dangerous turns, and aimless wanderings off of the course, the rest of the robo-cars in the "Urban Challenge" were deemed unsafe to compete.

Submission + - Students assigned to write Wikipedia articles (physorg.com)

Submitted by openfrog on Thursday November 01, 2007 @05:16PM

openfrog writes: An inspired professor at University of Washington-Bothell, Martha Groom, made an interesting pedagogical experiment. Instead of vilifying Wikipedia as some academics are prone to do, she assigned the students enrolled in her environmental history course to contribute articles. The result has proven "transformative" to her students. They were no longer spending their time writing for one reader, says Groom, but were doing work of consequence in a "peer reviewed" environment, which enhanced the quality of their output. What do you fellow Slashdotters think of the idea that in our colleges and universities lies a potentially large and untapped resource for Wikipedia?

Submission + - HD TV using a coat hanger and wire (orato.com)

Submitted by

locdao

on Thursday November 01, 2007 @05:15PM

locdao writes: "The majority of the digital signals cable companies get are taken off air and then re-compressed to a lower quality (so they can dish out more of it). So essentially, like bottled water, you are being sold something that is already free. The free over the air signal is actually of a much higher quality because it's the first incoming transmission. Lu bought the best indoor antenna , eagerly got home and plugged it in. To his surprise, I didn't get any additional channels (analog or HD) ... in fact, it seemed worse, even with much fiddling of the antennas. So he returned the over-priced rabbit ears and made his own out of a coat hook and wire. Read his story on Orato."

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