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Technolotics #37 – Frogboy Grandkids
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Listen: Episode 37
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Notes
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
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]
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