Still, Slashdot doesn't have to play along with their weasel wording. For example, "ergonomic collars that deliver an electric pulse" - just say "shock collar". Don't help them whitewash what they're talking about.

They survived by manually moving the cattle frequently, using fences and gates. This worked pretty well when you've got lots of cheap labor. Heck people used to live amongst the flocks, keeping an eye on them, and driving them to the better pastures.

I'm not sure you've actually ever seen cattle grazing. They will graze the good grass right to the ground, leaving the other grasses they don't like as much, and then they'll follow each other to some other area. It's not random; you can't just expect that over time cattle will graze equally every square foot. It's far better to move them on before the grass gets that short and essentially removed in favor of the poorer grasses. This is part of what these collars do. They really do work. My family's been using collars like these on some cattle for a couple of years now. It's really been a boon. You can graze more cattle on less land with healthier pasture.

Great points. I forgot about those other aspects. E-sheperd sends a warning to the phone if an animal doesn't move for a while.

That said, herding definitely is a part of it. These systems can actually move cattle around a pasture. The cattle learn pretty quickly what the collar is trying to get them to do.

It really does work. My family's ranch has been using a similar product called e-shepherd for a couple of years now. Doesn't take the cattle very long to learn what they collars want them to do.

I can tell you are not a rancher.

There's a Canadian company doing something similar called e-shepherd. It's more than a virtual fence. It's part of an integrated grazing plan. Currently there's a certain number of acres required for a certain number of cattle. The cattle don't graze randomly, so you end up getting areas that are overgrazed and the grass damaged. With e-shepherd or a system like this one, the cattle can be slowly moved around the pasture. This basically allows you to keep the same amount of cattle in a much smaller area, as you can move them more frequently without a lot of gates and fences. It doesn't take long for the cattle to figure it out, and it's quite remarkable how the collars can train them to move when you (or the AI!) want them too. It really does work.

Who's dumb?

It runs MacOS and it's pretty fast, unlike any netbook ever.

Yeah it's got gimped specs but they will be fine for most users, unlike netbooks.

[learn to internet]

Everyone who cares about this already knows this

You don't actually care

So fuck off

Right, that's why my karma is maxed and you have to post anonymously because it actually makes your posts more visible.

Artemis II is breaking Apollo 13's record by about 4100 miles. The primary reason they're going further is because they're passing much farther from the moon, about 4000 miles, compared to 158 miles for Apollo 13. The moon is also a little further from Earth, accounting for the other 250 miles.

Copilot becomes an evening contributor on a self-proclaimed "for entertainment purposes only" network, bringing "fair and balanced" news, opinions and information ...

... or, whatever.

Bison don't produce as much methane as cows

You talk as if NASA just up and went to the moon in a matter of months in the late 1960s. Despite JFK's speech, the preparation to go to the moon began a long time before, and involved three separate families of rockets. Mercury, Gemini, and finally Apollo. It was really Gemini that that developed the technologies that eventually made the moon landing possible. There were a lot of test flights. Granted back then there was more political will than there is now. But it was always a battle with Congress and the president. If you think we can just skip all that development and testing phase now just because we once did it years ago, you are mistaken.

It's hard to talk about goals when the folks controlling the purse keep changing their mind.

Agreed. I live in the mountain west, and our forest and mountain landscapes are just covered with fencing, even though most of it is public land, because it's BLM "multi-use" land -- a lot of cattle graze on it. Fences are expensive to build and expensive to maintain. If you think a fence is something you build once and then ignore, you've never dealt with cattle.

Cowboys (and sheep herders) have a term "ride fence" as in "Bob, you're gonna ride fence today", and it's a regular and tedious task that means "get on your horse (or ATV) and ride past miles and miles of fenceline, looking for places where the fence is broken or going to break, and fixing them". It's necessary and expensive drudgery and having all of those fencelines is bad for other uses, and bad for wildlife. I've put down a few deer that jumped a barbed wire fence and didn't quite clear it, slicing their guts open and leaving them in agony as they slowly die.

In addition, there's an obvious tension between the cost of building and maintaining fences and the cost of rounding up cattle when it's time to move them. Obviously if you slice the land up into lots of small fenced areas, the cattle will be easy to find -- but they're also going to graze it out fast, so you're going to have to move them more often. If you use very large enclosures (common on BLM land), then your cows may have hundreds of square miles to roam and feed... but when it's time to move them you have to find them. Luckily they're herd animals so when you find a few you've found them all, but still. And occasionally, singles get separated from the herd and you just lose them, which isn't great since a cow is worth about $2k.

So... if we can replace those miles of expensive and constantly-breaking fences with virtual fences, that's good news for everyone. Wildlife and outdoorsmen can roam unimpeded, cattle can be far more tightly controlled, strays quickly identified, located and reunited with the herd -- via remote control!. This is an innovative idea that is worth quite a lot.

Half the world runs on VBA for Office applications (or used to, it's probably less now), and VBA for Office has never been officially supported by Microsoft. You're on your own if you choose to use it.

OK bot. There isn't even a "you".