_Mustang - Slashdot User

Comment resolution for satellite like digital cams? (Score 1) 280

by _Mustang on Tuesday September 02, 2008 @06:15PM (#24851347) Attached to: "Google Satellite" To Be Launched This Week

...it will be able to gather imagery with details the size of 41 centimeters... Google, though, is permitted to use data only with a resolution of 50 cm...

I'm not really sure how this breaks down in terms of what I can actually SEE. Since current imagery lets us sorta see people, I'd like to know how much further along are we to seeing _a person_.

Can anyone provide a little more detail, maybe a good example.

And please - no examples using libraries of congress worth of hogsheads of dat tape traveling in the back of station wagons or any somesuch..! ;)

Feed Science Daily: Cheap And Easy Technique To Produce Hydrogen From Visible Light Is Almost Ready (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Friday August 17, 2007 @10:12PM

There is a revolution in solar hydrogen on the horizon. The prospect for the wide spread use of hydrogen as a portable energy carrier is dependent on finding a clean, renewable method of production. A research group headed by a professor of electrical engineering is "only a couple of problems away" from developing an inexpensive and easily scalable technique for water photoelectrolysis - the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen using light energy -- that could help power the proposed hydrogen economy.

Submission + - Crowther's Original Adventure Source Code Found!

Submitted by drxenos on Monday August 13, 2007 @05:05PM

drxenos writes: I don't know how many of you are fans of old-school text adventures (interactive fiction), but Will Crowther's original Fortran source code has been located in a backup of Don Wood's old student account. For fans like me, this is like finding the Holy Grail. link: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fictio n/browse_thread/thread/607acaf1a279d4dd/bd53b672a1 85d177#bd53b672a185d177

Submission + - Procedural Programming: The Secret behind Spore (bonafidereviews.com) 1

Submitted by

imashoe

on Saturday August 04, 2007 @05:08PM

imashoe writes: "Ever wonder how Spore works under the hood? The game seems to be insanely huge and how is it that there can be an infinite amount of different creates created in the game? The answer is Procedural Programming. Read on to learn what exactly it is and how it differs from the traditional way games are made."

Feed Science Daily: 'Smart' Traffic Sign Stops Collisions (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Friday July 27, 2007 @08:12PM

Researchers have developed a "smart" traffic sign that helps drivers make correct decisions and avoid collisions at traffic intersections that lack traffic signals. The device consists of two cameras mounted on a pole at the intersection - one facing the main road and the other the secondary road. A computer located below constantly processes data it receives from the cameras. When a collision risk is identified, flashing lights on two yield signs at the intersection are activated to alert approaching drivers.

Submission + - Are Mobile Phone Masts Responsible For Illness?

Submitted by drewmoney on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @08:55PM

drewmoney writes: According to a major UK study, symptoms of illness caused by mobile phone masts is "all in the mind".

Excerpts from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6914492.stm

Dozens of people who believed the masts triggered symptoms such as anxiety, nausea and tiredness could not detect if signals were on or off in trials.

However, the Environmental Health Perspectives study stressed people were nonetheless suffering "real symptoms".

Campaign group Mast Sanity "http://www.mastsanity.org/" said the results were skewed as 12 people in the trials dropped out because of illness.

Feed news.com: Cheap Hosting and Free Speech (com.com)

From feed by cnetfeed on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @08:52PM

Blog: Jimmy Atkinson at the Dedicated Hosting Guide has recently compiled a list of web host providers committed to free speech and allegedly will not drop clients over controversy.

Farscape (Kinda) Returns 140

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @10:42AM from the what-the-frell dept.

westlake writes "In a weekend press tour, Sci Fi announced that Farscape would be resurrected on-line in ten short webisodes to be produced by the Jim Henson Company. There are hints that Ben Browder and Claudia Black will both be both "available." Browder has another project to keep him occupied, at least part of the time: Sci Fi also announced that it had picked up Going Homer, a miniseries he developed with "Farscape" director Andrew Prowse. Greek and Roman deities walk among us, but only 12 year old Homer Ulysses Jones can see them for what they truly are. When Homer and his father are forced to flee a custody battle that would likely separate them, they journey from Los Angeles to the home of their ancestors — in Ithaca, N.Y."

Möbius Strip Riddle Solved 184

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @04:28PM from the that's-listing-strip-to-you dept.

BigLug writes with news that two experts in non-linear dynamics, Gert van der Heijden and Eugene Starostin of University College London, have developed an algebraic equation that describes the Möbius strip — something that, you may be surprised to learn, had never been done since the form's discovery in 1858. ABC.net.au has an accessible short summary: "What determines the strip's shape is its differing areas of 'energy density,' they say. 'Energy density' means the stored, elastic energy that is contained in the strip as a result of the folding. Places where the strip is most bent have the highest energy density; conversely, places that are flat and unstressed by a fold have the least energy density."

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