Rare Desert Walking Robot: Mojave or Bust

An anonymous reader writes "Robust walking robots are still surprisingly rare. The Astrobiology Magazine is reporting today on the German-American Scorpion Project to conquer 25 miles of targeted navigation into the Mojave Desert and back autonomously. The eight-legged robot is triple-jointed and must travel by day (solar-batteries) for two-weeks alone without human intervention. Because it's a scorpion, the camera is in the tail."

Comments

Off-topic, yet poignantly trollish

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there may be no future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share; red ink flows like a river of blood. Slackware Linux is perhaps the most in endangered. Let's look at the numbers.

1. MandrakeSoft's CEO Henri Poole states that there are 70000 users of Linux-Mandrake. How many users of Debian GNU/Linux are there? Let's see. The number of Linux-Mandrake versus GNU/Linux posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. The refore there are about 70000/5 = 14000 GNU/Linux users. Slackware posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of GNU/Linux posts. Therefore there are about 7000 users of Slackware. A recent article put RedHat Linux at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (70000+14000+7000)*4 = 364000 RedHat Linux users. This is consistent with the number of RedHat Linux Usenet posts.

2. 
   Now Linux companies are consolidating, overhauling their business plans, laying off staff, scaling back expansion plans and pushing back profitability schedules. "It would seem there are too many distributions for the market to bear," said Gartner analyst Tom Henkel. (http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,269 5638,00.html)

   
   Red Hat, Inc., the leader in developing deploying and managing open source linux solutions, announced on a reported basis, a net loss of $24.2 million. (http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-0 3-22-010-20-PS)

   
   Turbolinux, based in Brisbane, Calif., a Linux-based software provider has withdrawn a $60 million initial public offering "in light of current market conditions." (http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/010320/n20215287_2.html) (http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/03/20/deals/ipo/) Clayton-based Linuxgruven.com, a Linux training and service company with 106 employees, laid off 100 employees (http://stlouis.bcentral.com/stlouis/stories/2001/ 03/05/daily41.html)

   
   Lineo withdrew its initial public offering in January. Caldera Systems delayed the acquisition of Santa Cruz Operations' Unix software by a quarter. Linuxcare laid off dozens in February, with Linuxcare co-founders Dave Sifry and Dave LaDuke are among those departing. VA Linux Systems cut 114 people in February and delayed its expected profitability by nine months. (http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,269 5638,00.html)

   
   Due to the troubles of Corel, abysmal sales and so on, Corel Linux is going out of business and was nearly taken over by Microsoft who sell another troubled OS. Owing to the GPL, SuSE is laying off almost all of its US staff. Major marketing surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Even LinuxWorld.com shut down "because of the economy and everything else" (http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/03/13/ 1720254&mode=nocomment)

   
   TuxRacer going closed source and commerical shows how, when it comes down to money, Linux doesn't cut it.

   
   Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyists (i.e. those who dabble with Minix, Xinu, etc). Linux continues to falter. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.

Re:Correction: It's German-American-Canadian

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when to Canadians count?