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Robotics

Submission + - Texas Student Attends School as a Robot (singularityhub.com)

kkleiner writes: Freshman Lyndon Baty’s immune system is so fragile he can’t risk being surrounded by people his own age, yet he attends classes at his high school in Knox City, Texas every day. All thanks to a robot. The Vgo telepresence platform is a four foot tall bot on wheels with a small screen, camera, speakers and microphone at the top. Baty logs into the robot remotely from his home, using his PC and a webcam to teleconference into his classes. Baty can drive Vgo around his school, switching between classes just like regular students. For a boy that has spent much of his life sick and isolated from his peers, Vgo not only represents a chance at a better education, it’s also an opportunity for freedom and comradery.

Submission + - News Corp & Apple launch The Daily for iPad (foxnews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: After delaying the release, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Apple's VP of Internet Services Eddy Cue announced that iPad-exclusive news app The Daily would be launched at noon today. The announcement came from the Guggenheim Museum in New York City an hour before the planned launch.
Idle

Submission + - 19 Year Old Teen Makes Homemade Solar Death Ray (inhabitat.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: Concentrated solar power has the potential to generate immense amounts of energy — but it can also be amazingly destructive. American student Eric Jacqmain has assembled over 5,800 mirrors into his own parabolic ‘solar Death Ray’, which can reportedly melt through metal and concrete.
Space

TheSpaceGame — Design Your Route To Jupiter 76

An anonymous reader writes "The Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency is celebrating World Space Week (4-10 October 2010) with the release of 'The Space Game,' an online game for interplanetary trajectory design. The Space Game is an online crowdsourcing experiment where you are given the role of a mission designer to seek the best path to travel through space. The interactive game, coded in HTML5, challenges the players to devise fuel-efficient trajectories to various bodies of the Solar System via a user-friendly interface. The aim of the experiment is get people from all ages and backgrounds to come up with better strategies that can help improve the effectiveness of the current computer algorithms. As part of the events organized worldwide for Space Week, the first problem of the game is to reach Jupiter with the lowest amount of propellant. The best scores by 10 October will be displayed on the Advanced Concepts Team website and the three best designs will also receive some ESA prizes."
Government

UK Man Prevented From Finding Chipped Pet Under Data Protection Act 340

Dave Moorhouse was elated when he was informed that a microchip provider had information on the whereabouts of his stolen dog. This joy soon faded when the company informed him that it could not divulge the Jack Russell terrier's location because it would breach the Data Protection Act. Last week a court agreed with the chip company and refused Mr Moorhouse's request for a court order compelling them to reveal the name and address of the new owners. Steven Wildridge, managing director of the chip company said: “This is not a choice, it’s an obligation under the Data Protection Act. If the individuals involved do not want us to pass on their details to the original owner then we cannot do so unless compelled to following a criminal or civil proceeding."
Medicine

Autism Diagnosed With a Fifteen Minute Brain Scan 190

kkleiner writes "A new technique developed at King's College London uses a fifteen minute MRI scan to diagnose autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The scan is used to analyze the structure of grey matter in the brain, and tests have shown that it can identify individuals already diagnosed with autism with 90% accuracy. The research could change the way that autism is diagnosed – including screening children for the disorder at a young age."
Open Source

Aquaria Goes Open Source 58

A post on the Wolfire blog yesterday announced that the source code for Aquaria has now been released. Aquaria, an action-adventure, underwater sidescroller from Bit Blot, was part of the Humble Indie Bundle, which was so successful that the developers of four games pledged to release them as open source. This marks the final release, following Lugaru, Gish, and Penumbra: Overture. The source code is available from a Mercurial repository.
Patents

Patent Markings May Spell Trouble For Activision 82

eldavojohn writes "If you pick up your copy of Guitar Hero and read the literature, you'll notice it says 'patent pending' and cites a number of patents. A group alleges no such patent pends nor are some of the patents applicable. If a judge finds Activision guilty of misleading the public in this manner, they could become liable for up to $500 per product sold under false patent marking. The patents in question seem to be legitimately Guitar Hero-oriented, and little is to be found about the mysterious group. The final piece of the puzzle puts the filing in Texas Northern District Court, which might be close enough to Texas Eastern District Court to write this off as a new kind of 'false patent marking troll' targeting big fish with deep coffers."
Games

Revisiting the "Holy Trinity" of MMORPG Classes 362

A feature at Gamasutra examines one of the foundations of many MMORPGs — the idea that class roles within such a game fall into three basic categories: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such an arrangement and takes a look at some alternatives. "Eliminating specialized roles means that we do away with boxing a class into a single role. Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat. Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate. This design isn't just about having each class able to fill any trinity role. MMO combat would feel more dynamic in this system. Every player would have to react to combat events and defend against attacks."

Comment Re:No hulu for boxee means... (Score 1) 375

I wouldn't say this is Hulu's fault, but I do think Hulu is using this as an excuse. I find it highly suspect that 100% of the content providers are saying pull me off of Boxee. I'm sure there are a few who are failing to grasp the implications, but all of them? All of them care? It seems that Hulu is getting pressure to target Boxee (what about the other apps? or embeds?) and Hulu (for whatever reason) is going along with this request. If Hulu can allow other apps and embeds to work, then there is no way this is just about distribution. Hulu has a vested interest in getting people to go to their site as a destination (future business model, part of their sell, etc), and apps like Boxee take that reason away (lord knows I don't visit hulu except through an un-named app, so no-one takes it away). There has to be more than just a request from content providers going on here.
Education

Cornell University FPGA Class Projects for 2008 112

Matt writes "The new crop of Cornell University ECE 5760 projects are now online. Some really cool projects, as well as the previous two years' worth of projects." Since it's mid-December, many other schools, too, have either just let out or are about to; can you point to any other online collections of cool technical projects?

Feed Techdirt: Free Energy Savings Available Right Now (techdirt.com)

There's obviously a lot of investment right now into alternative energy, some of which is already starting to pay off, though much of it is still quite speculative. But developing clean energy sources is only one way to protect the environment and and the economy. Finding ways to reduce consumption is equally useful in this regard. Tim Haab reprints a recent graph from The Economist, which nicely shows the costs of various methods of reducing carbon emissions. While things like solar power remain expensive, certain things, like improving indoor insulation and using different types of lightbulbs, save both energy and money. The question, then, is why aren't people already taking advantage of the low-hanging fruit of energy savings? A lot of it probably has to do with inertia or personal taste, which is why some politicians wants to mandate fluorescent lightbulbs. While that particular legislation may save people energy, the thinking behind it is the same as the subsidies of ethanol, which seem to be causing economic harm. It's better to let consumers learn about these options and have the best solutions emerge through the market.
Television

BBC Trust Will Hear iPlayer Openness Complaints 177

AnotherDaveB writes with a Register story reporting that the BBC Trust has asked to meet with open source advocates to discuss their complaints over the corporation's Windows-only on-demand broadband TV service, iPlayer. The development came less than 48 hours after a meeting between the Open Source Consortium and regulators at Ofcom on Tuesday. Officials agreed to press the Trust, the BBC's governing body, to meet the OSC. The consortium received an invitation on Wednesday afternoon.

Is Apple Trying to Take Over iPod Accessories? 193

An anonymous reader writes "With more and more iPod accessories being released by Apple all the time many users are speculating that Apple is trying to shoulder the after-market iPod companies aside. However, at least one user doesn't see it that way, and thinks that Apple's move may actually help the after-market companies. From the article: 'Even if it wanted to, Apple knows that it couldn't simply make the iPod accessory market participants magically go away. If Apple did try to steal their lunch, all it would succeed in doing would be to drive those companies straight into the arms of the iPod's competitors, most of whom are desperate to see any kind of an accessory market form around their players. And that's the last thing Apple wants to have happen.'"

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