I like to think of my grandmother as the first member of my family to have programmed a computer. My grandmother worked with a team of women on an electro-mechanical computer during WWII as part of an anti-aircraft battery. She mentioned that there were six input stations and that her job was to ensure that the information received from a form of radar (and other inputs?) was fed into the system and to perform a quick calculation to help validate the output. After turning some dials, numbers were relayed to the gunners (verbally, I believe). Before D-Day her AA unit was stationed in England and a few months later moved into Belgium. Her unit was there until near the very end of the war in Europe.

She was 19 when she joined. Apparently she was assigned the job due to her scores on aptitude tests. She met my grandfather in that artillery unit; he was her sergeant.

I read the articles, and I thought his point was that you can't control the buffering on the routers, cable-modems, etc....or all the systems on your own network for that matter. And that it is the buffering on these (and potentially other) downstream devices which help to invalidate the TCP algorithms for determining appropriate bandwidth usage between devices. These two items in conjunction increase latency and jitter in individual transfers (what each application may see on the network). He makes a big deal about recognizing and considering bandwidth and latency together and he contends that it is these device buffer sizes making the latency problem worse.

Ultimately, it is not about bandwidth, but about latency and bandwidth.

When I first read the subject, I thought this was a flotation device that doubled as a bazooka. You know...for all those times you've been floating in the water wishing you could blow someone else up....

I think one of the main problems with flapping wing take off is the initial oscillations. I think that the vehicle (made of very light materials) has to oscillate (crash) into the ground a few times before getting enough speed generated by the flapping wings...getting a tough enough machine to withstand those initial crashes is likely the reason some form of powered assist is required. For now. Big kudos to these researchers!

I'm outraged that slashdot.org monitoring is being left out of this! We must petition this company to include /. in the monitoring! That way we can feel safe in the knowledge that we must all bow down to our-Facebook-Myspace-LinkedIn-Twitter-/.-monitoring Overlords

I feel a little bad about myself right now...this person's name makes me giggle. (Also, is this a little too close to April 1st to be true?)

As you read this, did you expect to see the word "concordantly"? I sure did.

Metallica's yodelling compilation is a little known and highly sought-after box-set. It would have been great for this game. :(