"Splatometer" Allows Distributed Bug Reports

Posted by timothy on Monday June 30, 2003 @07:21PM from the old-style-bugs dept.

Snags writes "The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the UK has invented a device they call a Splatometer. According to the BBC, the Independent, and others, they are planning to ask people all around the country to mount the device on their cars. Then, after a journey, it gets sealed and sent to a lab where the number and kind of bug splats are analyzed. This sounds like distributed data collection to me, taking advantage of the unused resources (bumper surface area) of a benevolent population, like SETI@Home does with CPU cycles. I wonder if they've considered some form of distributed analysis as well."

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Flat bugs by PunkeyFunky · 2003-06-30 20:30 · Score: 4, Funny

I'll be keen to know how they can identify the different types if bugs that adorn my window/bumper/etc, as they are usually reduced to a thin layer of slime. Maybe the 'splatometer' has a soft landing pad to have the bugs not quite so squished?
If anyones bug database should be called... by jcwren · 2003-06-30 23:27 · Score: 4, Funny

"bugzilla", it's these people.
cheating by chloroquine · 2003-07-01 08:17 · Score: 4, Funny

How many people would be tempted to send their sticky bug thing to a friend in another country just to screw around with the data?