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Comment Re:For the children (Score 1) 132

by Venzor (#35012814) Attached to: Aerospace Engineer Named Lego Czar
Heh, apparently that's what I get for reading only the first half of the article. Quoted later on:

Iain Scouller, general manager of the Grapevine Legoland Discovery Center, said Walsh's skill with the Lego blocks impressed him and the other judges, but it was his positive interaction with the children who came to see the competition that gave him the winning edge. "The master builder has to be able to interact with the children in a friendly and approachable manner," Scouller said.

Comment For the children (Score 1) 132

by Venzor (#35012784) Attached to: Aerospace Engineer Named Lego Czar
I have to imagine that a large part of his success in the event was due to his appeal to the spectating children, which is a huge part of what Legos is. FTFA:

He gave credit to the children spectators at the event, who offered suggestions on what pieces to add to make the designs more interesting.

Also, to those who scoff at the salary: If he's doing something he enjoys, and can afford to live on that, then so what?
Linux

Submission + - Cedega Being Replaced By GameTree Linux (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Transgaming Cedega, the software forked from Wine that allows running Windows games under Linux, is being discontinued and replaced by TreeGame Linux. This new software is also free. From the new website: "TransGaming is pleased to announce the continued development of Cedega Technology under the GameTree Developer Program. This repositioning of the technology that powered the Cedega Gaming Service will allow the entire Linux community to gain free access going forward. Cedega is a cross-platform enablement technology that allows for Windows-native games to be executed on both the Linux desktop and embedded Linux platforms."

Comment Re:So, the system works? (Score 1) 725

by Venzor (#34593174) Attached to: Retailers Dread Phone-Wielding Shoppers
Actually, I had a recent incident where my package was stolen. I spoke to UPS (whose fault it really was for leaving the package on the porch in a not-so-great neighborhood), and they blew me off and told me to talk to Amazon. I was aggravated because it was their fault, but when I contacted Amazon, they were polite, helpful, and sent me a duplicate of my order via Next Day Air. There was absolutely zero hassle dealing with Amazon.

Though I do hope they went after UPS.
NASA

'Pocket Airports' Would Link Neighborhoods By Air 257

Posted by timothy from the visibility-5-miles-no-problem dept.
cylonlover writes "NASA's light-aircraft partner, CAFE (Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency), is running a competition to design a low-cost, quiet, short take-off personal aircraft, that requires little, if any, fossil fuel. It envisions the resulting Suburban Air Vehicles taking off and landing at small neighborhood 'pocket airports.' At last week's Future of Electric Vehicles conference, CAFE president Dr. Brien Seeley outlined just how those airports would work."

Comment Re:Unobservable (Score 1) 307

by Venzor (#34577940) Attached to: String Theory Tested, Fails Black Hole Predictions

Does it matter if something inobservable exists? If you posit the existence of something that can't be observed, how do you verify that hypothesis? What are the applications for a theory that doesn't suggest effects we can detect and verify?

Does it matter if time exists? After all, we cannot observe it, we can only observe its effects. I think we can say, with almost certainty, that time does exist.
Robotics

Researchers Develop Self-Healing Plastic 71

Posted by kdawson from the you're-terminated dept.
schliz writes "Arizona State researchers have been working on a 'self-healing' polymer that uses a fibre optic 'nervous system' to detect and fix cracks. The system recovers up to 96 percent of an object's original strength in laboratory tests. It could find use in 'large-scale composite structures for which human intervention would be difficult,' such as wind turbines, satellites, aircraft, or the Mars Rover."
Google

Google Loses Street View Suit, Forced To Pay $1 225

Posted by timothy from the token-victory dept.
Translation Error writes "Two and a half years ago, the Borings sued Google for invading their privacy by driving onto their private driveway and taking pictures of their house to display on Google Street View. Now, the case has finally come to a close with the judge ruling in favor of the Borings and awarding them the princely sum of $1. While the judge found the Borings to be in the right, she awarded them only nominal damages, as the fact that they had already made images of their home available on a real estate site and didn't bother to seal the lawsuit to minimize publicity indicated the Borings neither valued their privacy nor had it been affected in any great way by Google's actions."

Comment As much as I'd love to... (Score 1) 309

by Venzor (#34406050) Attached to: The Pirate Bay Co-Founder Starting P2P-DNS

As much as I'd love to see a truly decentralized internetwork (p2p DNS and routing) idealogically, such a notion cannot replace the Internet as we have it today. In order to get anywhere reliably, you have to trust someone. You cannot have trust without an accountable authority. It's possible that you can get a modicum of trust via trusting a server that the people you trust have trusted (that was a mouthful), but in the end it will aggregate to a select few authorities at the root of it all. And then we have the same or similar issues to now.

I honestly cannot see how a true p2p domain name system can work and still be usable by someone who "just wants to surf the 'net".

Perhaps all we really need is a 'democratic' system - a select few members of the root DNS (geographically and politically separated of course) and a lookup system that queries each and selects the majority response as the correct response. At the very least, the domain name system should not be solely in the hands of one government.
Earth

Gold Nanoparticles Turn Trees Into Streetlights 348

Posted by samzenpus from the elf-approved dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Street lights are an important part of our urban infrastructure — they light our way home and make the roads safe at night. But what if we could create natural street lights that don't need electricity to power them? A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an ingenious one — not only would it save on electricity costs and cut CO2 emissions, but it could also greatly reduce light pollution in major cities."
Earth

Engineers Propose Lily Pad-Like Floating Cities 309

Posted by samzenpus from the city-of-frogs dept.
Zothecula writes "The idea of going offshore to satisfy our renewable energy needs isn't new, but the grand vision of Japan's Shimizu Corporation goes way beyond harnessing green energy at sea for use in cities on Terra firma — it takes the whole city along for the ride. The company, along with the Super Collaborative Graduate School and Nomura Securities, is researching the technical issues involved in constructing its Green Float concept — a self-sufficient, carbon-negative floating city that would reside in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean."

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