Citing a German news report, Techeye.net reports that Google has purchased small UAV "microdrone" aircraft manufactured by Germany's microdrone GmbH, perhaps for use to augment the company's Street View mapping data. Techeye says:
The UAVs being flogged are mini helicopters with cameras attached that can be flown about all over the place. They're quiet and resemble sci-fi UFOs for the vertically challenged alien.
They can fly up to 80km per hour, so Microdrone CEO Sven Juerss suggests they'll be brilliant for mapping entire neighbourhoods really quickly and relatively cheaply.
Even before Google started data mining on open web networks its Street View operations were controversial, with Google Maps picking up on people who didn't exactly want their faces plastered all over the internet. With the kind of high-angle aerial shots this sort of kit can achieve, it boggles the mind as to the sort of images that may be accidentally captured.
Our take: Skepticism is warranted, and outrage is probably premature.
Our understanding is that FAA certification procedures for civilian UAVs operating in domestic airspace are not yet in place, so it is not clear that the regular operation of such UAVs would be legal -- never mind prudent from a privacy or public-relations point of view.
the train that ate ICE and Eurostar (but not TGV)....watch this complete video presentation of Shanghai trasrapid super speed magnetic levitation train as it defines to you the meaning of haste....bringing the passengers from long-yang road downtown to pu-dong international in 7 minutes....swooooosh!
FYI... the last time i was there...one way ticket costs 50 yuan or 80 yuan for executive class (the yellow leather seat as seen on the video)
JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. - Tiny Town remains closed Thursday as authorities investigate what caused its small train to jump the tracks and tip over onto its side.
The miniature train at Tiny Town, a popular children's theme park in Jefferson County, derailed Wednesday morning injuring 21 people, authorities said.
The accident happened at about 10:40 a.m. as the train was rounding a turn.
Jefferson County Sheriff's Office spokesman Mark Techmeyer said 16 patients, both adults and children, were transported to area hospitals with injuries ranging from bumps and bruises to broken bones.
None of the injuries were life-threatening.
"The train that derailed had the engine followed by 6 open passenger compartments that did derail," Techmeyer said. "The caboose on the end stayed on the tracks."
Helicopter footage showed the miniature train rolled over on its side next to a fence that separates the tracks from a children's playground.
Swedish Hospital spokeswoman Deborah Gosling says nine of the 12 people transported there were released. Three patients -two adults and one child- were in serious condition.
Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who probably found one of the most dramatic ways to quit a job ever, walked out of jail this evening after his $2,500 bail was posted.
After he was released, Slater was picked up by a minivan and driven away, New York City Department of Correction spokesman Stephen Morello said. He did not have details on who posted bail for Slater.
Meanwhile, JetBlue said Slater had been removed from duty pending an investigation.
The 38-year-old flight attendant, who on Monday allegedly cursed out an entire aircraft, grabbed a beer and then exited the plane by deploying the emergency slide, appeared in court this morning with a grin on his face.
As JetBlue Flight 1052 from Pittsburgh was taxiing to a gate at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, Slater tired to assist a woman who was struggling with her carry-on luggage, his lawyer Howard Turman told a judge in Queens today.
Documentary revealing the full story of two Swedish sisters, filmed by the BBC running into oncoming traffic on the M6 in 2008, and the chilling events that unfolded over the next 72 hours during which a man was stabbed to death
Those who were at the centre of this fascinating legal case, including the police and Crown prosecution service, reveal the complex issues involved in both bringing charges and taking this disturbing case to trial.
A leading criminal psychiatrist, Dr. Nigel Eastman, explains the difficulties the judicial system has in achieving justice and deciding punishment when dealing with mental illness. He explains the possible causes of the womens’ behaviour, and why, in his view, it could happen again.
No matter what happens, even surrounding his personal life or his pet cause global warming, former Vice President Al Gore just isn't going away.
During an Aug. 10 conference call, Gore launched into a critique of the media's recent coverage of ClimateGate, specifically blogs, talk radio and "biased right-wing media."
"Well I believe Mark Twain often gets the credit for the saying ... that a lie runs around the world before the truth gets its boots on," Gore said. "Now I'm not sure that's the real reason for it, but there is a sad but undeniable truth that those who wanted to try sowing confusion used an echo chamber from blogs and talk show hosts and biased right-wing media to promulgate the distortions of the paid skeptics and professional deniers who tried to undermine the evidence."
Gore, who earlier during the call said he all but given up on cap-and-trade legislation being passed this Congress (audio here), alluded to a handful of "formal inquiries" that he argued cleared the science of any doubt that may have been caused by the leaked e-mails from ClimateGate, despite the questionable circumstances surrounding these inquiries
Air Force intelligence officer & Vietnam War Hero Terry Reed is recruited by Oliver North to assist in the training of Contra pilots in Mena, Arkansas. Plenty of revealing information about Clinton, Bush, covert CIA operations, CIA super-agent Barry Seal, money laundering, international narcotics trafficking, and US Govt. Corruption in it's fake war on drugs.
BBC News has shown how straightforward it is to create a malicious application for a smartphone.
Over a few weeks, the BBC put together a crude game for a smartphone that also spied on the owner of the handset.
The application was built using standard parts from the software toolkits that developers use to create programs for handsets.
This makes malicious applications hard to spot, say experts, because useful programs will use the same functions.
While the vast majority of malicious programs are designed to attack Windows PCs, there is evidence that some hi-tech criminals are starting to turn their attention to smartphones.
John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US.
On last night's 'O'Reilly Factor,' Fox Business Network reporter Charlie Gasparino claimed that during his time at CNBC, General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt suggested to senior CNBC staff that they were being too hard on President Obama.
Gasparino did not say that it became official CNBC policy to tone down criticism of the president. But he claimed that "the question of whether they were being fair to the president was brought up" and that he had "never heard that before." Keep in mind that at the time GE stood to make a whole lot of money from some of Obama's key policies. NBC and its affiliates have conspicuously shilled for such policies before.
Even absent an official NBC or CNBC policy on criticizing the president, the incident demonstrates a profound lack of journalistic neutrality. There has always been a looming conflict of interest at GE's television arm. The possibility that higher-ups suggested reporters go easy on the president raises all sorts of questions about the abilities of NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC to fairly and accurately report the news
The only real reason I thought Robert Gibbs' comments yesterday merited a response is not because of the ephemeral melodrama it created -- the White House said Fox-copying, mean things about the Left -- but because of the "substantive" claim he made that comparisons of Bush and Obama were so blatantly insane that they merited "drug testing." That Obama has vigorously embraced and at times even exceeded some of Bush's most controversial and radical policies is simply indisputable. I'd request that anyone doubting that just review the very partial list I compiled in Update II yesterday. In that list, I neglected to mention numerous other compelling examples (recall Tim Dickinson's recent revelation that Interior employees call their Department under Ken Salazar's corporate-serving rule "the third Bush term"). Among my most prominent omissions was the Obama administration's Bush-copying use of military commissions rather than real courts to try "War on Terror" detainees.
