Episode37
From Technolotics
Contents |
LA Police to watch from the air
- Police in LA have announced plans to launch UAV's 'The SkySeer'
- Am I the only one who thinks Farenheit 451 has come to pass?
- The drones - autonomously controlled via GPS - will observe the ground for signs of dissent, bright colours or dark skin (sic)
- They are intended to fight crime
- "This technology could be used to find missing children, search for lost hikers, or survey a fire zone," - Commander Sid Heal, of LAPD
- "Unmanned surveillance crafts may become the norm in urban policing"
- Em..so the technology can see into basements, people hike in the city, and city fires now grow so big they need a survey?
- Currently they lack zoom - but are silent, and can pan and tilt their video cameras - sending visual feeds back to base - future versions could see into your living room
- LAPD current have 18 helecopters - the UAVs are much cheaper 25 - 30k and are likely to quickly become ubiquitous
- "Do we really want to live in a society where our backyard barbeques will be open to police scrutiny?" - Beth Givens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
- "You shouldn't be worried about being spied on by your government," said Heal. "These days you can't go anywhere without a camera watching you whether you're in a grocery store or walking down the street."
Links:
Earth Temp at 400 year high
- National Academy of Sciences concludes Earth is the hottest it has been in 400 years.
- Scientists explained human activities as being responsible.
- The panel agreed that the warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the last 1,000 years
- Reviewed the scientific work of other scientists
- Panel looked at how other scientists reconstructed the Earth's temperature over thousands of years.
- Reconstruction carried out based on tree rings, corals, glaciers, cave deposits, ocean and lake sediments.
- One study compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick of temperatures and the stick's long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.
- Bush administration has maintained that threat is not severe.
- White House says new pollution controls would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.
- Last year House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton launched an investigation of three climate scientists.
- House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert said Barton should learn from scientists not intimidate them.
- National Academy of Sciences is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.
Links:
Kyoto promices nothing but hot air
- Countries that signed up to Kyoto are emitting more greenhouse gases than they say they are.
- Under Kyoto, each government calculates its gas emissions by adding up estimates from individual sources.
- Emission calculation system accepted by atmospheric scientists but not independently audited.
- Peter Bergamaschi of the European Commission Joint Research Centre at Ispra, Italy has come up with an alternative "top-down method of estimation"
- Claims he has convincing evidence that the figures for many countries are wrong, UK and France worst offenders.
- Measured in detail how concentrations of greenhouse gases vary across the globe.
- Concentrations are higher near sources and dependent on weather conditions.
- Scientists claim they can now calculate a country's emissions independently of government estimates.
- Bergamaschi admits system not perfect but is based on real atmospheric measurements.
- National figures often based on uncertain extrapolations from sites such as landfills whose emissions are highly variable.
- Countries now have incentive to underestimate as carbon-trading occurs.
Links
Short Story
Digg 3.0 screenshots
- Techcrunch have exclusive screenshots of the new Digg
- New Features include..
- Collapsable Groups of topics bundled together
- Science, World, Business, Entertainment, Gaming, Online Video - youtube, yahoo video
- New sections include - technology, entertainment, gaming, science, world & business, and online video.
- Digg is now one of the post popular news sites in the world - 800,000 visitors a day
Links
Microsofties search with google
- Overwhelming majority of MS workers use google
- 80 / 20 %
- Google and Yahoo workers apparently do
- 100% at google & 64% at yahoo
- Techweb Article
Royle Society to try open publishing
- UK royal society cream of UK academia
- to publish some journals under open licensing
- will be available for free online
- contributers will cover costs
- Comes in wake of RS publishing a paper attacking Open publishing
- subsequent open letter from members reversed policy
- Welcome Trust have recently decided to publish all articles supported by its research grands through open access
- European commission have recommended the same for state funded research in the EU
- [2]
Opera 9 Launches
- Includes primative built in torrent support
- A must in future browsers if citizen media is to survive
- The worst website in history has been launched to advertise it
- It's ment to be amusing we think
- New features include
- Skins
- Pop Up Blocker
- Password Manager
- Source code editor, WC3 validator
- Widgets
- My Opera Community - a user community with photo upload and 300meg free space
- Opera 9 launches
