Warping it up!

Fini Alring’s Glossy Tech Zine

Archive for August, 2004

Science@home

Monday, August 30th, 2004

The BOINC platform got some new projects in the lineup. These projects research topics like: time and space structure, climate prediction, protein folding, particle physics and search of electromagnetic pulses…

The Planetary Society: Scientists from Different Fields Line Up to Join the BOINC Family

The ‘Robotic Psychiatrist’ Answers

Thursday, August 26th, 2004

Roblimo @ slashdot writes “Joanne Pransky’s tongue is firmly in her cheek a fair amount of the time as she answers your questions, but much of what she says is thought-provoking, especially in light of speculations like Marshall Brain’s Robotic Nation essays about the inevitable spread of robotic devices in our society.

Slashdot | The ‘Robotic Psychiatrist’ Answers

4-inch Telescope Finds New Planet

Wednesday, August 25th, 2004

serutan writes “After a backyard astronomy size telescope first tracked the periodic dimming of a star 500 light-years away, the Keck I telescope in Hawaii later confirmed that a Jupiter-size planet orbits the star. A press release from Harvard gives details. This is the first result of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey, a project using small telescopes and
cheap equipment to search for extrasolar planets. “

Slashdot | 4-inch Telescope Finds New Planet

New Robots and the Ten Ethical Laws Of Robotics

Monday, August 23rd, 2004

Roland Piquepaille writes “The robotics actuality is pretty rich these days. Besides the fighting robots of Robo-One and the flying microrobots from Epson (the best picture is at Ananova), here are some the latest intriguing news in robotics. In Japan, Yoshiyuki Sankai has built a robot suit, called Hybrid Assistive Limb-3 (or HAL-3), designed to help disabled or elderly people. In the U.S., Ohio State University is developing a robotic tomato harvester for the J.F. Kennedy Space Center while Northrop Grumman received $1 billion from the Pentagon to build a new robotic fighter. I kept the best for the end. A Californian counselor has just patented the ten ethical laws of robotics. A good read for a Sunday, if you can understand what he means. This summary only focuses on HAL-3 and one of the most incredible patents I’ve ever seen, so please read the above articles for more information about the other subjects.”

Slashdot | New Robots and the Ten Ethical Laws Of Robotics

Linux Desktop Guide

Monday, August 23rd, 2004

codergeek42/slashdot writes “The International Open-Source Network has created a desktop manual aimed at end-users with little or no prior knowledge of PCs. This manual goes through using The Fedora Project to do things from file-management to using the internet (as in browsing the WWW and using email), how to use the OpenOffice.org office suite, and even a basic intro to using the shell. This is definitely a step in the right direction for GNU/Linux, and the Free Software and Open-Source Software movements. And the cool part is that the entire thing is under an attributions-required OSI-approved Creative Common license, and is available in .sxw (OpenOffice.org Writer) or PDF formats.”

Slashdot | Linux Desktop Guide