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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Speed limit for birds could mean better UAVs

Jacob Aron, technology reporter

(Image: Mark Hamblin/Oxford Scientific/Getty)

Fast-moving birds like goshawks can zip through dense forests by intuitively avoiding the trees, but researchers at MIT have discovered a theoretical speed limit over which they are guaranteed to crash. The findings could help build more efficient unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by designing them to mimic bird flight paths.

UAVs are currently designed to fly at relatively slow speeds, allowing them to come to a halt before reaching the edge of their field of view. You might think that adding more sensors would allow them to fly faster, but MIT aerospace engineer Emilio Frazzoli says otherwise.

Frazzoli and colleagues created a mathematical model that shows a bird or drone flying through a built-up environment of a given density will always crash once it reaches a certain speed, no matter how much it knows about its surroundings.

The team believe that birds avoid this fate by gauging the density of their environment and adjusting their speed accordingly, knowing that they can always find a gap to fly through. This allows a bird to fly much faster than if it just relied on the limits of its vision. Frazzoli says that skiers use a similar strategy.

"When you go skiing off the path, you don't ski in a way that you can always stop before the first tree you see," he says. "You ski and you see an opening, and then you trust that once you go there, you'll be able to see another opening and keep going."

Frazzoli is now working with biologists at Harvard University to confirm whether his model matches the behaviour of real birds. His team is also designing a flying video game to test how well humans can navigate a simulated forest at high speeds, to see how close players can get to the theoretical limit predicted by the model.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1c00512f/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A120C0A10Cspeed0Elimit0Efor0Ebirds0Ecould0Eme0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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'Managing One Million Animals Gives Me A Headache' - Business ...

As WantChinaTimes put it, Gou "could have chosen his words more carefully." But Gou had indeed invited the zoo director to speak to Hon Hai's top managers in the hope that the zoo-keeper's advice would help them do their jobs better:

As Chin lectured on the stage, sharing his experience with the audience on how to manage different animals according to their individual temperaments, Gou listened carefully and asked Chin to put himself in his place as the chairman of Hon Hai, to the amusement of the 12 general managers of the group present.

Recent publicity about the working conditions of Foxconn employees has put the question of how Apple and other electronics supply-chain employees are treated back in the limelight.

Everyone loves their iPhones and iPads. Everyone loves the prices of their iPhones and iPads. And everyone loves Apple's super-high profit margins. But the fact remains that these prices and product margins are only possible because iPhones and iPads are built using labor practices that would be illegal in the United States.

This is a complex issue, with no simple answers, and Apple obviously isn't the only company that takes advantage of it. But the head of Apple's biggest contract manufacturer describing his employees as animals won't help much.

SEE ALSO: Your iPhone Is Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working For ~70 Cents An Hour

(via Heidi Moore)

Source: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-19/tech/30641922_1_foxconn-iphones-terry-gou

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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Hooligans invade hospital looking for revenge

updated 4:12 p.m. ET Jan. 19, 2012

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A doctor says a dozen soccer hooligans invaded the delivery room of a Buenos Aires hospital, hoping to avenge the death of a gang member killed in a fight with a rival faction.

Marcelo Struminger, president of the doctor's association at Santojanni Hospital, said Thursday gang members associated with the Argentina club Nueva Chicago raced through the delivery room and other parts of the hospital on Wednesday. They were looking for a rival hooligan known as "Aldo The Paraguayan."

He is believed to have been involved in the death Wednesday of Agustin Rodriguez, who was killed in a fight between his faction, "Los Perales," and the rival faction "Las Antenas."

Soccer violence has plagued Argentina for years.

More news

Mourinho's 'woeful Barca loss

Another loss to Barcelona has piled pressure on Jose Mourinho, with support for the Real Madrid coach ebbing after another ill-tempered and ineffective display against its biggest rival.

Robert Cianflone / Getty Images

He's back

David Beckham has re-signed with the Los Angeles Galaxy, agreeing to a new two-year contract with the Major League Soccer club.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/46061311/ns/sports-soccer/

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Megaupload site wants assets back, to fight charges (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The Internet website Megaupload.com, shut down by authorities over allegations that it illegally peddled copyrighted material, is trying to recover its servers and get back online, a lawyer for the company said on Friday.

The company and seven of its executives were charged in a 5-count, 72-page indictment unsealed on Thursday accusing them of engaging in a wide-ranging and lucrative scheme to offer material online without compensating the copyright holders.

Authorities in New Zealand arrested four of those charged, including one of its founders, who legally changed his name to Kim Dotcom. Assets were also seized money, servers, domain names and other assets in the United States and several countries.

"The company is looking at its legal options for getting back its servers and its domain and getting its servers back up online," Megaupload's lawyer Ira Rothken told Reuters. "Megaupload will vigorously defend itself."

He said the company simply offered online storage. "It is really offensive to say that just because people can upload bad things, therefore Megaupload is automatically responsible," he said.

No decision has been made yet about whether they will fight extradition from New Zealand to the United States, Rothken said.

U.S. authorities have painted a much darker picture of the company's operations, saying that Megaupload readily made available copyrighted material including music, television shows, movies, pornography and even terrorism propaganda videos.

Users could upload material to the company's sites, which then would create a link that could be distributed so others could download it, according to the indictment. Some paid subscription fees for faster upload and download speeds.

Despite complaints from copyright holders, the Megaupload did not remove all of the material when requested to do so, prosecutors said. The company's executives earned more than $175 million from subscription fees and advertising, they said.

POSSIBLE NEW MEGAUPLOAD SITE

Less than a day after U.S. authorities shut down the Megaupload.com site and several of its sister sites, there appeared to be an attempt to resurrect the site.

Twitter was flooded with messages circulating a new Internet Protocol address, but the site offered no substantive content immediately and it did not appear that it was sanctioned by Megaupload.

The new website, which is being hosted in the Netherlands, looked similar to the original Megaupload.com website. The company's lawyer said that he was not directly familiar with the new site.

"We're not familiar with any official effort at this point to get the site back up in light of the fact that its major servers are in the possession of the United States government and other governments," Rothken said.

One of those arrested on Thursday was Bram van der Kolk, who has citizenship in the Netherlands and New Zealand. He oversaw programming and the network structure for Megaupload's websites, according to court papers.

U.S. officials were asked on Thursday about the risk of the site reappearing elsewhere in the future, a key issue that has confronted authorities in the past when they've tried to shut down Internet sites selling counterfeit goods.

"Right now we're in the process of executing search and seizure warrants and certainly it's not going to pop up again today. But I couldn't speculate as to what may or may not happen in the future," one Justice Department official said on Thursday.

Another official said "maintaining and running and assembling a site like this is very expensive. And obviously the seizure of financial assets is critical in this type of investigation and prosecution in preventing it from going forward."

The case, which started as an investigation in March 2010, emerged just as lawmakers in Congress have been battling over new legislation sought by the television, movie and music industries that was aimed at making it harder for such material to be so easily peddled over the Internet.

Some major technology companies, including Google and Facebook, have sought to derail the current versions of the legislation because they were concerned they would lead to censorship and lengthy litigation.

Earlier on Friday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid postponed a vote on one bill that was set for Tuesday until several issues are resolved.

(Additional reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by Howard Goller, Gary Hill)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enterprise/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120120/wr_nm/us_usa_crime_piracy

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Friday, January 20, 2012

Bob Ryan, Sheboygan Mayor, Escapes First Round Of Recall In Wisconsin

(Reuters) - The first-term mayor of a Wisconsin town, a self-described alcoholic who has come under pressure to step down, survived the first round of a recall election on Tuesday by getting more votes than any other candidate.
Sheboygan Mayor Bob Ryan, 48, took about 33 percent of the vote in the eight-way contest, the city's first mayoral recall election, and former state representative Terry Van Akkeren finished second with 26 percent, the city clerk's office said.

"I feel great. We took first place," Ryan said in an interview from his post-election party.

The Sheboygan election came on the same day as opponents of another Wisconsin politician -- Republican Governor Scott Walker -- filed petitions containing more than a million signatures to try to force the governor into a special election only a year after he took office.

Since no candidate received a majority of the votes cast in the Sheboygan election, where the contenders also included a high school student, the top two vote-getters move on to a run-off on February 21.

That vote will be essentially a rematch of the last election, in which Ryan defeated Van Akkeren to win the office in 2009.

More than 4,000 Sheboygan voters had signed petitions to force the recall after Ryan was caught on tape making sordid jokes about a sister-in-law and was photographed passed out in a tavern during a drinking binge last summer.

Ryan, a married father of three, admits he was a binge drinker and considers himself an alcoholic but said he has not had a drink for months.

"But I know the only way to put the character issue to rest is over time. I hope that by the election it will be behind me."

LOOKING FORWARD TO REMATCH

Ryan said he was looking forward to the rematch with Van Akkeren and hoped the result of Tuesday's vote would let the campaign focus on issues such as drawing business to Sheboygan, which rests on the western shore of Lake Michigan about midway between Milwaukee and Green Bay.

He said in a pre-election interview that the scandal had forced him to come to grips with his drinking. "Everyone knew me as a fun guy. But lately it had changed. I was not a happy drunk. I became cynical."

Interest in the election was so strong that the Sheboygan city clerk's computer servers were overwhelmed. More than 9,800 votes were cast for a turnout of about 34.5 percent.

Ryan was a city councilman before winning election to his first term as mayor in 2009. He defeated Wisconsin's first Latino mayor, Juan Perez, in a primary, and Van Akkeren in the general election.

Van Akkeren, 57, who served as a Sheboygan alderman from 1986 to 2003 and as a state representative from 2003 to 2010, saw the results differently.

"The mayor got 33 percent of the vote," Van Akkeren said in a telephone interview. "That means 67 percent of the people aren't happy with him."

As for the high school student? Asher Heimermann, 18, a senior at South High School, finished last with a handful of votes, but ahead of write-ins.

The recall election was a first for Sheboygan, but not the first time residents have attempted to recall a city leader. Opponents tried to recall Perez six years ago, but failed to gather enough support among voters to force an election.

(Reporting By Geoff Davidian; Editing by David Bailey, Paul Thomasch and Cynthia Johnston)

Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/bob-ryan-wisconsin-recall_n_1212678.html

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Saturday, January 7, 2012

ChristWire: RT @blanchebeecham: GOP Warns Santorum on Contraception Views, Fears Michelle Obama Will Get Pregnant http://t.co/Z0Y4rsZC via @christwi ...

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GOP Warns Santorum on Contraception Views, Fears Michelle Obama Will Get Pregnant christwire.org/2012/01/gop-wa? via @christwire @Piratewench #tcot Il y a environ 3 heures via Tweet Button Retweeted by 2 people

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Source: http://twitter.com/ChristWire/statuses/155185254821404672

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Google Listen updated, seems Google hasn't forgotten it after all

Google has updated Google Listen, the once- (or still) popular Podcatcher application, proving that they haven't abandoned the application like a certain Android blogger and editor thinks. It's not the biggest update in the world -- the changelog only mentions that references to the now-defunct Google Labs have been removed, but it shows that Google isn't quite done with Listen. Now if they could update the UI, and fix some of the playback bugs we'd all be much happier. If you haven't moved on to another Podcatcher and are still using Listen, hit the Market for your update. If you want to give it a try, there's a handy link after the break.

Thanks, @GeekforGoogle!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/BOa9qti-JTI/story01.htm

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