"We finally flew our first thermal camera flight yesterday afternoon. About 10 seconds after launch my co pilot looked at the screen and said something like, 'We now have our very own predator drone'" A rice farmer in Louisiana had a real problem, feral pigs were coming out of the woods at night, into the rice fields, tearing up his crops and causing
thousands of dollars worth of damage. The only solution is to bring in hunters to shoot the pigs.
Hunting feral pigs in waist high rice plants, in the dead of night, is very difficult. You have to be within 10 feet of them to shoot them and it can take hours to stalk them down. So the farmer calls his brother, an Electronic Warfare engineer who flies
RC airplanes as a hobby.
$5000 worth of electronics, including a
$4500 infrared camera, are installed on a $80 model airplane, and the
Dehogaflier is born!
posted by smoothvirus
on Oct 18, 2011 -
52 comments
World control panel Continuing a trend of modern parents that put the boring, lifeless drones that raised you and ruined your life to shame, is Steve Lodefink, a UI designer for the Walt Disney Internet Group in Seattle. His latest project, The World Control Panel, was designed at the request of his son, Harlan. Harlan wanted a light panel to use for secret missions when he and his friend play "agents." The resulting UI design, which took three weeks to build, displays a variety of light combinations and includes a voice recorder and the Larson Scanner (used in Knightrider and Battlestar Galactica).
posted by hincandenza
on Mar 24, 2011 -
33 comments
Open air sports stadiums often have issues with
birds,
insects, and other wildlife. Common preventative measures include
ultrasonic devices and bird
netting. But Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium - one of the venues for the 2010 World Cup - has taken an all-natural approach. It is working with the Urban Raptor Project to install
raptors, bats, and owls to
patrol the stadium for various pests, while a
trained peregrine falcon chases away crows. This is not a new technique -
Millennium Stadium in Wales has long used a
Harris Hawk for bird control. But according to the NMB stadium manager, it "is the only stadium with a programme like this in place as a pest deterrent".
posted by gemmy
on May 31, 2010 -
12 comments
Air traffic in much of
northern Europe halted – due to ash from a volcanic eruption under the
Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland. The volcano under the glacier erupted for the first time in 200 years last month and whilst Iceland is renowned for its volcanic and geologic activity the sheer ferocity of the latest eruption (thought to be 20 times more powerful than the initial eruption on the 20th March) and prevailing wind conditions have culminated in the current
traffic chaos.
Flightradar24.com shows the current impact on the skies. Whilst the particles will disperse at high altitude and pose no threat to those on the ground, the
volcanic ash is very
dangerous to aircraft . Not only is there the problem of it clouding pilot vision but the ash can cause engine malfunction and damage the delicate airframe skin. One silver lining in all this is the anticipated glorious red sunset that should follow.
posted by numberstation
on Apr 15, 2010 -
149 comments
Animata is an open source real-time animation software, designed to create animations, interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Dec 8, 2008 -
14 comments
Newsfilter: Murdoch Buys The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones After some protests from editors about what sort of control News Corp. would have over the paper, a deal has been reached with the Bancroft family that runs the paper to sell for $5 billion. Murdoch gave up some demands for editorial control but still has the ability to hire and fire editors at will, making this the same sort of
fig leaf agreement he made with the Times of London.
posted by destro
on Jul 6, 2007 -
53 comments
Neuroeconomics: "Eventually it could help economists design
incentives that gently guide people toward making decisions that are in their long-term best interests in everything from labor negotiations to diets to 401(k) plans." Note the ambiguous use of the pronoun "their"--are we talking about the long-term interests of people in general or of economists?
posted by all-seeing eye dog
on Mar 22, 2005 -
25 comments
"An autopoietic system is one organised to respond to the world. Prod it and it will react homeostatically, striving to reach a new accommodation that preserves its integrity. There is a global cohesion - a memory of what the system wants to be - that reaches down to organise the parts even while those parts may be adding up to produce the functioning whole."
posted by all-seeing eye dog
on Mar 17, 2005 -
29 comments
Can a Pharmacist Refuse To Dispense Birth Control? "Neil Noesen, a relief pharmacist at the Kmart in Menomonie, Wis., was the only person on duty one day in 2002 when a woman came in to refill her prescription for the contraceptive Loestrin FE. According to a complaint filed by the Wisconsin department of regulation and licensing, Noesen refused because of his religious opposition to birth control. He also declined to transfer the prescription to a nearby pharmacy and refused once again when the woman returned to the store with police...."
posted by Postroad
on Jun 1, 2004 -
102 comments
An attempt by developing countries to put management of the
Internet under United Nations auspices is likely to be shelved at next month's world information summit in Geneva -
but the issue is now firmly on the international agenda.
posted by Mick
on Nov 10, 2003 -
14 comments
Future of the Net: "Information wants to be free" vs. "truth costs extra" "...a coalition that included Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Disney and others....spoke of "tiered" service, where consumers would be charged according to "gold, silver and bronze" levels of bandwidth use. The days where lawmakers once spoke about eradicating the "Digital Divide" in America has come full circle. Under the scenario presented by the lobbyists, people on fixed incomes would have to accept a stripped-down Internet, full of personally targeted advertising. Other users could get a price break if they receive bundled content -- news, music, games -- from one telecom or media company.
Anybody interested in other "non-mainstream" news, software or higher-volume usage, could pay for the privilege. The panel's response was warm, suggesting that the industry should work this out with little federal intrusion. That approach has already been embraced by the industry-friendly Federal Communications Commission." For more, see
The Center For Digital Democracy
posted by troutfishing
on Aug 5, 2003 -
38 comments
Drive Me Insane! Want to send a man to the asylum? Paul Mathis's site allows you to control his lights, lava lamp, remote control car, and allows you to follow him around his Texan home camera by camera and microphone. I turned his lights on and off about ten times, so I've already had my fun. ;-)
posted by wackybrit
on Sep 22, 2002 -
8 comments
Is the Revolution really over? According to Wired it is, “…one day, the digital revolution was over. The big media companies wrested control of the Internet from the kids in the horned-rimmed glasses.”
Derek has his comments on this but to add my own, nothing new and exciting happens anymore.
The Internet has become synonymous for pink slips, mergers, and legal battles.
I know there was a previous link to this article but I was inspired by Derek to bring a different matter to the table.
posted by Brilliantcrank
on Oct 24, 2000 -
11 comments
Internet may need new cyber-borders-U.S. legal body By Richard Meares
The internet's only use is for commerce. That's it. The only reason anyone uses the internet is to purchase books and rugs. The internet can not be defined as anything else, thus, there are no users, they're
CONSUMERS. That's all they are.
Consumers.
Too bad, We
"Enthusiasts" "may love the Internet's scant regard for authority and borders?"
What? "Scant regard for authority"? What authority? This is just sick.
posted by tiaka
on Jul 18, 2000 -
3 comments
I'm a gadget freak and I've got lights in my house
controlled by my computer. But the folks at
misterhouse.net have taken it 10 steps further. There's a web interface to all sorts of things, inlcluding the lighting system, the vcr, and reminders of new mail. That's some pretty nifty geek stuff they have going on there.
posted by mathowie
on Nov 16, 1999 -
0 comments
