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Comment not incompatible neither irrelevant (Score 1) 368

Lots of people seem to be getting tied up arguing that money doesn't make something non-free. I think we can all agree on that and move on: Move on to discussing the impact of the involvement of more paid developers. If you want to ensure the health of a project, you need to be aware of forces at work within it. There are paid developers who act like kernel-hackers and then there are paid developers who simply try to fix bug X in release Y for hardware Z which is being released next Tuesday. This isn't evil, but neither is it true to say it's irrelevant. Finally we should acknowledge that the financial self-interest of companies rarely aligns perfectly with the principals of freedom: That's OK different developers ideas rarely align completely, but it is a different sort of force, and growth of it does influence the nature of the community and the development process.
Biotech

Impressive Robot Hand From Shadow 101

kkleiner writes "The Shadow Dextrous Hand is a robotic arm that allows for fine motor control and precise movements. It's accurate enough to pick up an egg, screw in a light bulb, or thread a needle. Even cooler, researchers can control it with a 'Cyber glove,' allowing for 24 distinct human movements that mimic the user's own hand. A British based company, Shadow, has been displaying the hand for several years now, and recently demonstrated its latest model at IREX 2009. The hand, toted as the world's most advanced, is available for sale to researchers (pricing has not been made public)."

Comment WRONG (Score 2, Interesting) 712

The colour of a surface effects immision equally to absorption (this is a fundimental of physics, if it didn't it would violate time/parity symmetry), therefore when your building is net loosing energy (ie when you are trying to keep it warm by heating it) it looses less energy, and when it is net gaining energy ...OK the exact nature of the relationship in terms of net loss/gain is only true for a specific wavelengh but the general point stands: less absorbant surfaces are also less emissive.

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