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Comment Re:Nothing important has changed (Score 1) 63

EPIC is pretty cool and can shoot huge resolutions for a pretty small camera. The real cost is time and logistics. Real helicopters are fairly "crashy" and sensitive, smaller remote copters even more so. I've been on sets with remote copters that crashed twice and once where they scrapped the flight after several hours. Adding the word "copter" to any production day adds at least 6 hours. Regardless of rental price that time is very costly.

Comment Nothing important has changed (Score 1) 63

There have been remote coptercams for for at least 20 years. But a camera that can record 2k images with nice fast lenses is still around 10lbs bare minimum. A copter that can carry that with any stability is still kinda big and very loud. There have been some advances in drone tech but nothing that makes a real dent in noise, safety, logistics or cost. It's still a toy pulled out only when really necessary.
Security

Submission + - TSA's 'Behavior Detection' Less Than 1% Efffective (usatoday.com)

Anonymous Coward writes: "Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports for the much vaunted "suspicious behavior detection techniques are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show. The TSA program, launched in early 2006, looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method based on behavior detection and has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. That has resulted in only 1,266 arrests, often on charges of carrying drugs or fake IDs, the TSA said. The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program."
Software

Wayland, a New X Server For Linux 487

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has a new article out on Wayland: A New X Server For Linux. One of Red Hat's engineers has started writing a new X11 server around today's needs and to eliminate the cruft that has been in this critical piece of free software for more than a decade. This new server is called Wayland and it is designed with newer hardware features like kernel mode-setting and a kernel memory manager for graphics. Wayland is also dramatically simpler to target for in development. A compositing manager is embedded into the Wayland server and ensures 'every frame is perfect' according to the project's leader."
Supercomputing

Submission + - Cray introduces CX1 desktop supercomputer.

ocularb0b writes: "Cray has announced the CX1 desktop supercomputer. Cray teamed with Microsoft and Intel to build the new machine that supports up to 8 nodes, a total of 64 cores and 64Gb of memory per node. CX1 can be ordered online with starting prices of $25k, and a choice of Linux or Windows HPC. This should be a pretty big deal for smaller schools and scientists waiting in line for time on the worlds big computing centers, as well as 3d and VFX shops. Computerworld Blogs has an article."
Government

EFF Sues To Overturn Telecom Immunity 369

Mike writes "The title says it all — The EFF is suing to have the unconstitutional telecom immunity overturned. 'In a brief filed in the US District Court [PDF] in San Francisco, the EFF argues that the flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA) violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law. [...] "We have overwhelming record evidence that the domestic spying program is operating far outside the bounds of the law," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Intelligence agencies, telecoms, and the Administration want to sweep this case under the rug, but the Constitution won't permit it."'"
Image

Researchers Claim To Be Able To Determine Political Leaning By How Messy You Are 592

According to a study to be published in The Journal of Political Psychology, you can tell someone's political affiliation by looking at the condition of their offices and bedrooms. Conservatives tend to be neat and liberals love a mess. Researchers found that the bedrooms and offices of liberals tend to be colorful and full of books about travel, ethnicity, feminism and music, along with music CDs covering folk, classic and modern rock, as well as art supplies, movie tickets and travel memorabilia. Their conservative contemporaries, on the other hand, tend to surround themselves with calendars, postage stamps, laundry baskets, irons and sewing materials. Their bedrooms and offices are well lit and decorated with sports paraphernalia and flags — especially American ones. Sam Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, says these room cues are "behavioral residue." The findings are just the latest in a series of recent attempts to unearth politics in personality, the brain and DNA. I, for one, support a woman's right to clean.
The Internet

Google To Develop ISP Throttling Detector 198

bigwophh writes "Google has been very vocal on its stance for net neutrality. Now, Richard Whitt — Senior Policy Director for Google — announces that Google will take an even more active role in the debate by arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs."
Space

Genetic Building Blocks Found In Meteorite 165

FiReaNGeL writes to tell us scientists have confirmed that the components of genetic material could have originated in a place other than Earth. A recently published report explains how uracil and xanthine, two basic biological compounds, were found within a meteorite that landed in Australia. From Imperial College London: "They tested the meteorite material to determine whether the molecules came from the solar system or were a result of contamination when the meteorite landed on Earth. The analysis shows that the nucleobases contain a heavy form of carbon which could only have been formed in space. Materials formed on Earth consist of a lighter variety of carbon."
Patents

Submission + - A simple plan to defeat dumb patents (blogspot.com)

Steve Jones writes: "With the EU being rumoured to look at software patents again I thought I'd have a look at the root of the problem — the US Patent Office — and work out if there is a simple way to defeat dumb patents, and I think there is... The big thing, as everyone knows, that defeats a patent is prior art, at the Patent Office they have the definition of Prior Art which includes the phrase

"known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country"


Which made me think. If every time we have an idea that we think is "obvious" but not done before, or something we think would be interesting (e.g. Using a PVR for targeted ads) but don't have the money to create, then we should always blog about that idea, tag it as "prior art" via Technorati thus giving people an RSS feed.

My argument is that by doing this we can, rightly claim, that the ideas have been described in the 21st Century version of a printed publication, and even if that is challenged, it is undeniable that by using the RSS feed it can be proven that people in a given country could have "known" about it.

I'm fed up thinking "bloody hell I did that ten years ago" or "I thought about doing that, its a bit obvious" when companies with as little intention as I had in developing the idea up start putting the squeeze on businesses and developers. What I've always lacked is the visible proof to submit against a claim. This is a simple suggestion about using the power of the web to create a massive prior art database. IANAL, but surely it can't be this simple?"

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