Killer Military Robot Arms Race Underway?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 27, @04:21PM
from the skynet-unavailable-for-comment dept.

coondoggie writes to tell us NetworkWorld is reporting that one researcher seems to think that a military robot arms race may be imminent between both governments and terrorists. "We are beginning to see the first steps towards an international robot arms race and it may not be long before robots become a standard terrorist weapon to replace the suicide bomber, according to professor Noel Sharkey, from the Royal United Services Institute Department of Computer Science. [...] Currently there is always a human in the loop to decide on the use of lethal force. However, this is set to change with the US giving priority to autonomous weapons - robots that will decide on where, when and who to kill, according to the professor."

[+] military, robot, judgementday, skynet, whatcouldpossiblygowrong (tagging beta)

The ultimate time capsule: all the seeds in the world

by Rebecca Onion
Feb 27th 2008 @ 4:30PM

Filed under: Food, News

If a really scary thing ever happens to the entire biosphere, we'll be ready. Sort of. This week in Norway, the Norwegian government opens a vault everyone's calling the "doomsday" seed vault. They built their underground bunker way up in the really cold part of Norway, in the Svalbard islands. These islands must have been the inspiration for that polar bear kingdom in "The Golden Compass", though there are, unfortunately, no armored, talking bears guarding the vault - just regular, non-verbal polar bears, who are plenty scary on their own, thank you. The vault holds millions of seeds underground, packed in foil, at subzero temperatures, which means they could be dormant for hundreds or thousands of years without dying. It was constructed so that these seeds would be protected in the case of disaster (nuclear? asteroid hitting the planet? the Singularity? we've got the straight dope on end-of-the-world scenarios, here). More prosaically, however, the vault could also prove useful in the case of agricultural foul-ups that might render some seeds extinct in their original forms.

Related Link

Alaskan Village Sues Over Global Warming

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 27, @01:30PM
from the quit-pissin-in-our-pool dept.

hightower_40 writes to mention that a small Alaskan village has sued two dozen oil, power, and coal companies, blaming them for contributing to global warming. "Sea ice traditionally protected the community, whose economy is based in part on salmon fishing plus subsistence hunting of whale, seal, walrus, and caribou. But sea ice that forms later and melts sooner because of higher temperatures has left the community unprotected from fall and winter storm waves and surges that lash coastal"

Grand Canyon tsunami?

by Josh Loposer
Feb 27th 2008 @ 3:00PM

Filed under: News, Travel and Vacation

If you're planning on rafting through the Grand Canyon for spring break, you might want to check your travel dates with the Department of the Interior -- it could end up being a pretty wild ride. That's because river authorities are planning a man-made flood for sometime in March. The wall of water will be released from the Glen Canyon dam, raising the flow by 41,000 cubic feet per second -- that's 5 times the normal rate -- for 3 days.

The idea is to simulate a flood, flushing out non-native fish while reshaping beaches with the abundance of new silt flowing through. Native fish like the humpback chub rely on the beaches for breeding grounds, beaches that have been constantly eroding since the Glen Canyon Dam was built in 1963. It seems counter-intuitive, but the rush of water released from the dam will actually restore beaches, not wash them away.

Environmental groups argue that this kind of flooding exercise should be done regularly to help maintain the beaches. After all, the Grand Canyon was once a warm and muddy stretch of the Colorado River, prone to erratic flooding. Now it's more like a regulated pipeline -- a pipeline that you can raft down.

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Giant Sheets Of Dark Matter Detected

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 27, @12:48PM
from the universal-coffee-filter dept.

Wandering Wombat writes "The largest structures in the universe have been, if not directly found, then at least detected and pounced upon by scientists. 'The most colossal structures in the universe have been detected by astronomers who tuned into how the structures subtly bend galactic light. The newfound filaments and sheets of dark matter form gigantic features stretching across more than 270 million light-years of space — three times larger than any other known structure and 2,000 times the size of our own galaxy. Because the dark matter, by definition, is invisible to telescopes, the only way to detect it on such grand scales is by surveying huge numbers of distant galaxies and working out how their images, as seen from telescopes, are being weakly tweaked and distorted by any dark matter structures in intervening space.' By figuring how to spot the gigantic masses of dark matter, hopefully we can get a better understanding of it and find smaller and smaller structures."

[+] science, space, thatsnomoon, darkmatterisnonsense, darkmatter (tagging beta)

Silicon womb" enters human testing in the UK

Posted Feb 27th 2008 2:18PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

In-vitro fertilization may soon become much more effective, if a new device dubbed the "silicon womb" comes out of testing successfully. Currently test-tube embryos are developed in an incubator, but the .2-inch long silicon womb, produced by Anecova, allows them to be implanted inside the mother for up to four days, during which time they're exposed to the uterus through 360 40-micron holes. The goal is to develop stronger, more resilient embryos for eventual pregnancy, but a small test in Belgium has so far proven inconclusive as to the device's effectiveness -- and some researchers doubt it'll work at all, since the embryos will be located in the uterus rather than the fallopian tubes where they would naturally develop. Still, there's hope that the environment inside the uterus will be an effective substitute -- to quote one researcher, "it's a lot closer to a fallopian tube than a plastic tray." 40 women are signed up for testing starting today, but results aren't expected for some time.

Tags: anecova, health, in vitro fertilization, InVitroFertilization, ivf, medicine, preganancy, silicon womb, SiliconWomb

Colder winter this year, with the most snow since '66

by Patricia Mayville-Cox
Feb 27th 2008 @ 2:08PM

Filed under: Climate Change

Well, guess what, many parts of the world are having a colder winter this year, with more snow. Lorne Gunter, in a column in Canada's National Post asks, does this mean global warming isn't real?

According to the U.S. National Climatic Data Center, many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. Snow cover over North America, Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966. The Arctic Sea ice has not only recovered, according to the Canadian Ice Service, but it's 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

Gunter makes this point, "If environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmists are being a tad premature."

Obviously, this is all much more complicated than isolated data points, and scientists agree that global warming is real and is happening. On the flip side, Gunter's collection of observations contrasts with what Nigel Taylor, one of the UK's most respected gardeners, concluded this year, "There is no winter anymore."

[Via PlanetSave]

Related Link

Asteroid Mission Competition Announces Winner

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday February 27, @07:58AM
from the too-close dept.

Riding with Robots writes "The Planetary Society invited participants to compete for $50,000 in prizes by designing a mission to rendezvous with and 'tag' a potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid. The asteroid Apophis was used as the target for the mission design because it will come closer to Earth in 2029 than the orbit of geostationary satellites. The winning mission design is called Foresight, and calls for the use of off-the-shelf parts to undercut the price of other proposals. Here's a PDF of the winning proposal."

Spray painting the glaciers before they're gone

by Jonathon Morgan
Feb 27th 2008 @ 8:03AM

Filed under: News

Quick! The glaciers are disappearing faster than ever before -- so before they're gone completely, don't miss your chance to spray paint them with graffiti!

At this point you may be asking yourself: "Huh? What kind of dumbass would want to tag an enormous chunk of disappearing ice?" This kind of dumbass, apparently.

Jan Philip Scharbert, a German tourist, was photographed adding his personal touch to the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand. Fortunately, those photographs led to his arrest.

The silver lining, however, is that after he was apprehended the little eco-tagger was sentenced to clean up his unfortunate art project. And what's even better, is that during the 1 1/2 days it took Scharbert to undue his handiwork, he was "severely dressed down" (which I can only assume means: "continually lambasted with expletives") by passing glacier guides and tourists. Take that!

So now the glacier is as good as new, and Scharbert is back in Germany. With any luck, his future artistic endeavors will be restricted to illegibly funky bubble-letters on train cars and amorous exclamations on highway overpasses.

[via BoingBoing]

Related Link

Homegrown security bot heckles vagrants, longs to be a real cop

Posted Feb 27th 2008 6:55AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Robots

Rufus Terrill's stocky handmade robot is more than your average drinking buddy -- in fact, the four-foot tall, 300-pound robotic security guard makes it his job to discourage vandals and vagabonds from marring the streets of Atlanta. The inventor is an engineer-turned-bar owner who got tired of drifters and thieves hanging around his business undeterred. Rather than calling in the professionals, he constructed a remote controlled robot that can flash a spotlight, blast out water and resist even the toughest of 40oz. cans that inevitably come its way. Best of all, he can even make the creature talk, and apparently, its array of scare tactics has been fairly effective thus far. Talk about protecting and serving.

[Via MetaFilter]

David passed me the Mom song. It is pretty funny, watch it here.

Reactor Shutdown Darkens South Florida

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 26, @06:49PM
from the glowing-in-the-dark dept.

grassy_knoll asks, "So how fragile is the electrical grid, and just what technical problems could shut down five reactors?" "Five reactors at a nuclear power plant in Florida had gone down on Tuesday and two were now back online amid a massive power outage in the southern state, CNN reported. The report on the Turkey Point nuclear plant came as four million people had lost electricity in Miami and elsewhere in Florida, with traffic signals out and major delays on roads, authorities and media said."

If IP Is Property, Where Is the Property Tax?

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 26, @08:36PM
from the making-the-world-safe-for-mickey dept.

nweaver writes "In a response to the LA Times editorial on copyright which we discussed a week ago, the paper published a response arguing: 'If Intellectual Property is actually property, why isn't it covered by a property tax?' If copyright maintenance involved paying a fee and registration, this would keep Mickey Mouse safely protected by copyright, while ensuring that works that are no longer economically relevant to the copyright holder pass into the public domain, where the residual social value can serve the real purpose of copyright: to enhance the progress of science and useful arts. Disclaimer: the author is my father."

[+] badidea, government, greatidea, goodidea, idea (tagging beta)

Gaffes That Keep IT Geeks From the Boardroom

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday February 27, @02:41AM
from the to-say-nothing-of-the-pocket-protector dept.

buzzardsbay writes "Yes, it's all in good fun to point out the mismatched belt and shoes and the atrocious hairstyles, but honestly, I'm committing three of these errors right now! Is that why I can't get a key to the executive washroom? Or is it my rebellious attitude and pungent man-scent that's keeping me down? The shocker in here was pigtails on women... I love pigtails on women!"

Astronomers Say Dying Sun Will Engulf Earth

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday February 27, @12:03AM
from the fire-next-time dept.

iamlucky13 writes "A minor academic debate among astronomers is the final fate of the earth. As the sun ages and enters the red giant stage of its life, it will heat up, making the earth inhospitable. It will also expand, driven by helium fusion so that its outer layers reach past the earth's current orbit. Previously it had been believed that the sun would lose enough mass to allow earth to escape to a more distant orbit, lifeless but intact. However, new calculations, which take into account tidal forces and drag from mass shed by the sun, suggest that the earth will have sufficiently slowed in that time to be dragged down to its utter destruction in 7.6 billion years. "

Encyclopedia of Life Launches First 30,000 Pages

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday February 27, @05:15AM
from the sure-is-loud-in-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that the Encyclopedia of Life opened up to the public today with its first 30,000 pages in place — and, according to the AP, promptly crumbled even before being Slashdotted. (The site seems fine now.) We discussed this project last year when it was announced. The Telegraph has an overview of the launch, and reports that only 25 "exemplar" pages on the site are fully fleshed out to the extent scientists hope eventually to attain for all species; the other few tens of thousands are expanded placeholders. The project hopes to begin taking input from citizen-scientists late this year.

[+] earth, science (tagging beta)

Buzzing, copter-inspired Blowfly alarm clock goes on sale

Posted Jan 26th 2007 1:10PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Household

We see far too many fabulous ideas that simply never make it to market for one reason or another, but after a lengthy stint in proverbial purgatory, the Blowfly alarm clock has hit production. The design looks a bit more mainstreamed that previous conceptions, but the functionality remains in tact and looks to be the perfect annoyance to force you to rise in the early AM. Sporting a shiny black base, blue backlit LCD, large-format numbers, and the obligatory mini-copter launcher, this alarm clocks purportedly blasts the chopper into the air whenever you're supposed to awake, and unless you get up, catch the flying object, and place it back into the clock, that awful screeching nose simply will not cease. So if you're the world's worse snooze abuser, and you don't mind stumbling around your room with eyes half closed, you can cure that late arrival syndrome for just DKK299 ($53).

Fire alarm bell repurposed for waking the dead

Posted Jan 16th 2008 8:23AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Household

For those who could easily sleep through a tornado (or similar), there are a plethora of alarm clocks out there designed to wake even you up. Still, there's nothing like crafting a suitable alternative yourself, and the folks over at Hacked Gadgets decided to exemplify overkill in their latest concoction. 'Course, a "fire alarm bell alarm clock" is pretty self-explanatory, and while it certainly doesn't come through as loud over YouTube as we're sure it is in person, there's still ample reason to click through and peek the video yourself.

[Thanks, Alan]

The DangerBomb alarm clock: wake or go boom!

Posted Feb 13th 2007 8:06AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household

Already loosed in Japan, the DangerBomb alarm clock from Banpresto is yet another oddball way of coaxing you into the morning grind. To disable the alarm, you must reconnect the red, yellow, and blue cables in the correct order. Fail your mission and suffer the annoyance -- and possible death -- of a mocked audible explosion. Genius. Just ￥2,366 in Japan or $19... if you can get it back through customs.

Warning: not for use in the Boston Area.

[Via Akihabara News]

Homegrown alarm clock tests your math to gauge alertness

Posted Feb 26th 2008 4:38PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We've seen some fairly sinister alarm clocks in our day -- ones that fly around, nearly make you go deaf and "explode" if you don't get up in time, for starters -- but this DIY creation is definitely lobbying for top honors. The Turing Alarm Clock, which has admittedly been making the rounds of late, starts making racket just as any other alarm clock when the time comes, but rather than letting you smash the snooze button, it forces you to answer math questions with varying levels of difficulty before quieting down. Evil? Sure. Effective? You betcha. Check the video after the jump.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

Retail stores suffering as people reduce their shopping

by Patricia Mayville-Cox
Feb 26th 2008 @ 3:30PM

Filed under: News

Retail is suffering these days, as chronicled by Daniel Gross in Newsweek. Just like there may be loads of empty McMansions sitting around soon, there is an ever-increasing amount of "McStrip" retail space going empty too.

According to Gross, extreme consumption has triggered a backlash. Judith Levin, author of Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, says, "There's a glut of stores, our physical, intellectual and emotional and psychological space is filled up with consumption." We're all buying less and of course, the Freegans take it to the extreme.

Even as the stores and portions of our economy suffer, there are real benefits to buying less stuff, for your wallet and for the earth. Less stuff, less junk that lands up in landfills, less resources that are consumed, less carbon emissions, the list goes on.

But don't get too excited. According to the column, frugality as a virtue only lasts as long as modern recessions do, about eight months and this "cultural anti-retail moment will likely pass." Darn.

Green by the Numbers: Encyclopedia of Life catalog of all living things

by Dalene Entenmann
Feb 26th 2008 @ 12:30PM

Filed under: Green by the Numbers

Did you know?

• On the planet, there are 1.8 million known species.
• 10 times more species are yet to be discovered.
  

If you owned a book cataloging every species known to date, it is estimated the book would be more than 300 feet wide. Not a realistic solution to publishing or owning a book of that size, scientists have come up with another option -- an interactive online version called the Encyclopedia of Life. A continual work in progress, each page will be written collaboratively by scientists and amateurs from around the world. The beauty of a web page, as opposed to a printed page in a book, is the web page can be updated whenever new information about a species is discovered.

The Encyclopedia of Life will launch on February 28, 2008 featuring 30,000 pages of information on different species. Scientists behind the project hope to add pages for the entire 1.8 million known species within the next decade.

The ambitious project is designed for both the scientific community and anyone interested in learning more about a specific species. Website designers to the project are working on ways to make it as useful as possible. As example, if you are going to visit a certain area, you could create a field guide of the area to take along with you.

The ultimate goal of the ever evolving Encyclopedia of Life that could only exist in a virtual world is to educate, inspire, and increase a collective understanding of life on Earth, while safeguarding the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity. And no one will need to build a new bookcase.

Related Link

Growing up today

'2 Million Minutes'

As soon as a student completes the 8th grade, the clock starts ticking. From that very moment the child has 'Two Million Minutes' to go from a teenager to an adult.

Check out the trailer. It looks a little slanted but interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS_QENuOYL8

Most carbon offsetters are on the lower end of performance, says group

by Patricia Mayville-Cox
Feb 26th 2008 @ 10:36AM

Filed under: Shopping Guide

Lots of folks aren't sold on carbon offsets. According to a recent poll here on Green Daily, 63% of respondents don't buy offsets, saying they don't believe the claims of the offsetters.

According to a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, there is good reason to be skeptical. Currently, there is no certification or monitoring system in place, no way to confirm that the offsetting companies are doing what they say they are. In a recent ranking of carbon offsetters, by Clean-Air-Cool planet, 30 offset companies were rated on a scale of 1 to 10 and three-quarters of them scored below a 5. Ouch.

But there is hope! According to the Clean-Air-Cool Planet report, here are the top performing retail carbon offsetters in the US:

• Climate Trust
• NativeEnergy
• Sustainable Travel/My Climate

Judge Rejects RIAA 'Making Available' Theory

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 25, @05:26PM
from the need-a-new-revenue-strategy dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A federal judge in Connecticut has rejected the RIAA's 'making available' theory, which is the basis of all of the RIAA's peer to peer file sharing cases. In Atlantic v. Brennan, in a 9-page opinion [PDF], Judge Janet Bond Arterton held that the RIAA needs to prove 'actual distribution of copies', and cannot rely — as it was permitted to do in Capitol v. Thomas — upon the mere fact that there are song files on the defendant's computer and that they were 'available'. This is the same issue that has been the subject of extensive briefing in two contested cases in New York, Elektra v. Barker and Warner v. Cassin. Judge Arterton also held that the defendant had other possible defenses, such as the unconstitutionality of the RIAA's damages theory and possible copyright misuse flowing from the record companies' anticompetitive behavior."