jolieodell - Slashdot User

Solar-Powered Plane Makes First Successful Flight 118

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 07, 2010 @01:25PM from the finally-a-daytime-launch dept.

lilbridge writes "The Solar Impulse, a solar-powered plane covered in 12,000 solar cells, took its maiden flight today in Switzerland. The plane stayed aloft for 87 minutes, performing test maneuvers as well as completing a successful takeoff and landing. With the first test flight behind them, the developers can focus on gearing up for their around-the-world solar powered flight set for 2012."

iPad Review 750

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 05, 2010 @12:42PM from the can-i-expense-this-thing dept.

This weekend saw the delivery of iPads into hundreds of thousands of filthy hands. I managed to get my hands on a 32GB unit and put it through its paces for a battery charge and a half, and wanted to take a few minutes to share some notes with you. But if you don't care to read the whole review, let me give you a hint: I am typing this review on my laptop.

Android Copy of Young Woman Unveiled In Japan 264

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday April 04, 2010 @01:27PM from the but-can-she-serve-as-a-floatation-device dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to IEEE Spectrum, Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who had previously built a robot copy of himself, has now created a new android — and it's a 'she.' Geminoid F, a copy of a woman in her 20s with long dark hair, exhibits facial expressions more naturally than Ishiguro's previous android. 'Whereas the Geminoid HI-1 has some 50 actuators, the new Geminoid F has just 12. What's more, the HI-1 robot requires a large external box filled with compressors and valves. With Geminoid F, the researchers embedded air servo valves and an air servo control system into its body, so the android requires only a small external compressor.' It's also much better looking. Has the Japanese android master finally overcome the uncanny valley?"

Google Indexing In Near-Realtime 79

Posted by kdawson on Thursday March 04, 2010 @12:58PM from the faster-pussycat dept.

krou writes "ReadWriteWeb is covering Google's embrace of a system that would enable any Web publisher to 'automatically submit new content to Google for indexing within seconds of that content being published.' Google's Brett Slatkin is lead developer of PuSH, or PubSubHubbub, a real-time syndication protocol based on ATOM, where 'a publisher tells the world about a Hub that it will notify every time new content is published.' Subscribers then wait for the hub to notify them of the new content. Says RWW: 'If Google can implement an Indexing by PuSH program, it would ask every website to implement the technology and declare which Hub they push to at the top of each document, just like they declare where the RSS feeds they publish can be found. Then Google would subscribe to those PuSH feeds to discover new content when it's published. PuSH wouldn't likely replace crawling, in fact a crawl would be needed to discover PuSH feeds to subscribe to, but the real-time format would be used to augment Google's existing index.' PuSH is an open protocol, and Slatkin says that 'I am being told by my engineering bosses to openly promote this open approach even to our competitors.'"

Vulgar Comment On Newspaper Site Costs Man His Job 643

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 19, 2009 @08:57AM from the sticks-and-stones dept.

DeeFresh writes "ReadWriteWeb has an article up today discussing an incident in which a school employee lost his job after leaving a comment on the website of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. After the school employee responded to the newspaper's poll of 'the strangest thing you've ever eaten' with a feline-inspired vulgarity, Kurt Greenbaum, the site's director of social media, tracked down the commenter's identity through his IP address and reported him to school officials. When confronted, the school employee resigned from his job."

Spaceworms To Help Study Astronaut Muscle Loss 73

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 19, 2009 @05:50AM from the spacefish-ate-my-homework dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that 4,000 microscopic worms were onboard Space Shuttle Atlantis when it launched today. Their mission: to help experts in human physiology understand more about what triggers the body to build and lose muscle. The worms are bound for the Japanese Experiment Module 'Kibo' on the International Space Station, where they will experience the same weightless conditions which can cause dramatic muscle loss, one of the major health concerns for astronauts. 'If we can identify what causes the body to react in certain ways in space we establish new pathways for research back on earth,' says Dr. Nathaniel Szewczyk."

Comment It's Been Done. (Score 1) 405

by jolieodell on Thursday November 05, 2009 @06:57PM (#30001178) Attached to: Home Phone System That Syncs To Computer?

It's been done, at least to a certain extent. Buzzeromatic. From a post I wrote about them on ReadWriteWeb: http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/09/filter-your-front-door-buzzero.php Apartment-dwellers, rejoice. Seattle-based startup Buzzeromatic is letting you take control of your own front door in a way that's smart and flexible. The premise is simple: Using Twilio's VoIP API, Buzzeromatic allows subscribers to grant access to visitors, allow delivery folks to leave voice messages,and create passwords for frequent guests, all from a web interface with SMS commands for when users are on the go. And yes, there's an app for that: The team told us their fully functional iPhone application is in the hopper. Co-founder Andres Krogh told us that he and a friend bootstrapped their startup. "The only reason we're able to pull it off is because of the explosion of commodity VoIP APIs like Twilio lately that make it somewhat cost effective." Users can customize their building buzzers' behavior from the web interface at any time. Krogh explained, "You can set up passwords for folks to let themselves in with, or have it call a bunch of numbers until it finds you (similar to Google Voice), or both. You can also let people leave voicemails at the door, if all else fails." They feel the password function will be particularly useful for those who have party guests or others, such as family members or a cleaning service, who need to be granted regular access to a user's apartment. Access can also be narrowed to a particular time of day; for example, your maid's password would only work during the day, but your pizza delivery guy's password could grant him access any time between noon and midnight.

Home Phone System That Syncs To Computer? 405

Posted by timothy on Thursday November 05, 2009 @04:40PM from the not-where-the-action-is dept.

An anonymous reader writes 'In comparison to the advanced technology in today's smart phones, the standard home phone is painfully backwards. My current setup is a Panasonic system that has 4 cordless phones over one base station. Setting the time on one phone changes the time on all the phones; however, this is not the case for the phone book. Each entry must be manually copied (pushed) to each handset. Is this as far as home phone technology has come? What I would like is a phone system that I could sync to my computer so I could update the phone book over all the units (if not sync with Address Book or Outlook), keep a log of caller IDs, or even forward me new voicemail notifications. Does anyone know if such a system exists?'

Plug vs. Plug — Which Nation's Socket Is Best? 1174

Posted by timothy on Wednesday November 04, 2009 @03:04PM from the one-vote-for-three-prong-american dept.

CNETNate writes "Is the American mains socket really so much worse than the Italian design? And does the Italian socket fail at rivaling the sockets in British homes? This feature explores, in a not-at-all-parodic-and-anecdotal fashion, the designs, strengths and weaknesses of Earth's mains adapters. There is only one conclusion, and you're likely not to agree if you live in France. Or Italy. Or in fact most places." (For more plug pics and details, check out Wikipedia's list of the ones in current use.)

The Story Behind a Failed HPC Startup 109

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday November 03, 2009 @07:25PM from the build-it-and-they-will-come-if-you-don't-run-out-of-money-first dept.

jbrodkin writes "SiCortex had an idea that it thought would take the supercomputing world by storm — build the most energy-efficient HPC clusters on the planet. But the recession, and the difficulties of penetrating a market dominated by Intel-based machines, proved to be too much for the company to handle. SiCortex ended up folding earlier this year, and its story may be a cautionary tale for startups trying to bring innovation to the supercomputing industry."

Leaked Modern Warfare 2 Footage Causes Outrage 543

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday October 28, 2009 @01:42PM from the if-this-bothers-you-avoid-the-dexter-game dept.

eldavojohn writes "Game Politics makes note of criticism over leaked footage from the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 release. (Spoiler warning.) Footage shows the player engaged in killing civilians with terrorists (relevant video begins at about 1:50, second source in case of DMCA). Several game sites are asking if this is taking things too far. Probably just advertising at work, but the footage is indeed controversial — the question remains whether or not it is out of context."

Swiss Experimenter Breeds Swarm Intelligence 144

Posted by kdawson on Monday October 26, 2009 @01:38PM from the what-hath-ai-wroght dept.

destinyland writes "Researchers simulated evolution with multiple generations of food-seeking robots in a new study of artificial swarm intelligence. 'Under some conditions, sophisticated communication evolved,' says one researcher. And in a more recent study, the swarms of bots didn't just evolve cooperative strategies — they also evolved the ability to deceive. ('Forget zombies,' joked one commenter. 'This is the real threat.') 'The study of artificial swarm intelligence provides insight into the nature of intelligence in general, and offers an interesting perspective on the nature of Darwinian selection, competition, and cooperation.' And there's also some cool video of the bots in action."

Court Orders the Pirate Bay To Delete Torrents 455

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 22, 2009 @02:50PM from the what-about-the-names-of-the-torrents dept.

lbalbalba writes "A Dutch court ruled today that The Pirate Bay has to remove a list of torrents linking to copyrighted works. The list is to be provided by BREIN (similair to the RIAA, in Holland), and is similar to the earlier ruling against Mininova. The defendants are given three months to comply, if not, they will face penalties of 5,000 euros ($7,500) per person, per day."

Amazon Hobbles Features For International Kindle 166

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 22, 2009 @02:01PM from the someone-call-me-when-the-sinister-starts dept.

Barence writes "Amazon has stripped several key features out of the international edition of the Kindle, PC Pro has discovered. Newspapers and magazines are delivered without any photos, and the web browser has been disabled, presumably because Amazon doesn't want to foot the data bill. There's also a 40% premium on books bought via the Amazon store. 'International customers do pay a higher price for their books than US customers due to higher operating costs outside of the US,' an Amazon spokesperson confessed."

EU Paves the Way For Three-Strikes Cut-Off Policy 272

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 22, 2009 @12:25PM from the no-internet-for-you dept.

Mark.JUK writes "The European Parliament has surrendered to pressure from Member States (especially France) by abandoning amendment 138, a provision adopted on two occasions by an 88% majority of the plenary assembly, and which aimed to protect citizens' right to Internet access. The move paves the way for an EU wide policy supporting arbitrary restrictions of Internet access. Under the original text any restriction of an individual could only be taken following a prior judicial ruling. The new update has completely removed this, meaning that governments now have legal grounds to force Internet providers (ISPs) into disconnecting their customers from the Internet (i.e. such as when 'suspected' of illegal p2p file sharing)."

Slashdot Top Deals