Feature: Vote Pirate! Notes from a Pirate Party conference
"If robots had a religion, I think this would be it," said Lauren
Pespisa, an official member of both the Pirate Party and the "church" of
Kopimism.
Using a projector propped up on top of a box of plastic cutlery, the
24-year-old Web developer described the one true faith of those who take file sharing seriously—very seriously. A crowd of several dozen had gathered on March 10 in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the first ever state-level Pirate Party conference in the US, and Pespisa was one of the speakers.
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Feature: First look: Qt 5 makes JavaScript a first-class citizen for app development
The Qt development toolkit is undergoing a major overhaul. The developers behind the project announced the availability of the Qt 5 alpha release this week. It's a key milestone on the path to the official launch of Qt 5, expected to occur later this year.
Qt is an open source toolkit designed to support cross-platform desktop and mobile application development. It provides libraries, user interface controls, and other components. Qt was originally created by Trolltech, a Norwegian software company that Nokia acquired in 2008. Nokia subsequently relicensed Qt under more permissive terms and transitioned the toolkit to a community-driven open governance model.
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HTML5 roundup: Mozilla demos standards-based video chat in Firefox
Mozilla recently published a demo of standards-based video chat in an experimental build of Firefox. The functionality is built with the Web Real Time Communication (WebRTC) standard, which aims to support streaming audio and video communication on the Web without relying on plugins.
The WebRTC standard is currently in the draft stage, but it has been endorsed by most of the major browser vendors. Some initial components are already available in several browsers. The underlying technology comes from Global IP Solutions, which Google acquired in 2010. Google opened the source code of the original implementation under a BSD license in order to facilitate its standardization.
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Look to the skies: Is it time to stop worrying and love the drone?
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere) have driven the rapid development over the past decade of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—robotic planes flown by some combination of remote “pilot” operators, software, and GPS navigation. Ranging in size from that of a flying model kit to full-sized aircraft, UAVs, also referred to as unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), have done everything from spotting roadside bombs to bombing alleged Al-Qaeda hideouts—and now they’re ready for civilian jobs. As war efforts wind down, the military is preparing to bring home the over 7,500 UAVs deployed overseas—and the companies that build them are looking to create a domestic market for the technology.
Federal Aviation Administration rules have so far tightly limited the use of UAVs to the same sets of rules applied to hobbyists flying radio-controlled model aircraft. But all that is set to change, thanks to legislation slipped into the FAA’s 2012 funding bill, signed on February 14. The law is pushing the FAA to stop worrying and love the drone by setting deadlines for starting UAVs' “integration into the national airspace.” The FAA is now soliciting public input on locations for six test sites where it will look at ways to integrate UAVs into the same airspace as human-piloted aircraft.
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New quantum controls use vibrations to control other vibrations
A major triumph in physics involved using photons to produce a quantum state in a mechanical oscillator that was visible to the naked eye. Mechanical oscillations are vibrations of atoms within a solid, which act as particles called phonons (since they are quantized sound waves). The control of phonons is more difficult than the control of photons; if we could control them, it would open up a whole new area of nanotechnology research, including the entanglement of mechanical systems.
While the manipulation of phonons using light has been achieved, researchers in Japan have now found a way to control mechanical vibrations using electrically induced oscillations: controlling phonons with other phonons. In a Nature Physics paper, I. Mahboob, K. Nishiguchi, H. Okomoto, and H. Yamaguchi describe the construction of an acoustic resonant cavity, where one set of vibrations sets up a second oscillation, much as certain musical notes can cause other objects to vibrate. The difference is that both sets of vibrations are in the same object (the acoustic cavity), and the secondary oscillations are tunable, so their properties can be controlled by the external electrical signal.
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New Philips monitor uses sensor to promote better posture
High-tech sensors are everywhere. They alert us to spoiled food. They monitor our stress levels. And they’re blowing up in the health and fitness space, too, helping us track our key sleep and activity metrics.
And now we have the Philips ErgoSensor Monitor, a desktop display that keeps an eye on one’s posture
The 24-inch LCD monitor uses a built-in CMOS sensor to determine your
distance from the screen and your neck angle while sitting. The monitor
works with software made by DigitalOptics Corporation, and, like a
worried mother, will remind you to straighten your back, keep your
distance from the display, and take breaks from sitting at the computer.
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