Tiny Flyer Navigates Like Fly

Assassin bug writes to tell us the Discovery Channel is reporting on a new ultralight autonomous aircraft that could be the next 'fly on the wall'. From the article: "The 10-gram microflyer, being developed by a team of researchers lead by Dario Floreano at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, has a 36-centimeter (14-inch) wingspan. But it could one day be shrunk to insect size and used for search and rescue."

Comments

oh, the glorious misleading headlines

[Horatio_Hellpop]

"Tiny" Flyer ?? // 36-centimeter (14-inch) wingspan//

Sorry, but even most drunken sots would notice a fly with a *14-inch* wingspan.

Post this when the wingspan is 1/16th inch.

Re:They'll Just Accept It

[aminorex]

That seems a fair description of the future, as far as it goes. But you left out Orwells "boot stamping on a human face".

Through the 20th century, power tended to centralize, inevitably. Technology is changing that. Now there is one fundamental struggle that underlies all human activity. It is not the struggle between Islam and Materialism, or the struggle between Marxism and Captialism, or the struggle between Rich and Poor, or the struggle between Democracy and Fascism. It is the technological race to develop effective weapons to support or to destroy the continuing centralization of power and control over the population. Obviously the vested interests of centralization are largely in control of the means of discovery and production, but the numbers of those devoted to opposing them are vast, and the need for organization is minimal. As long as the advocates of personal freedom are able to promulgate their ideas, their eventual success is therefore assured. Insuring that capability is therefore critical to the survival of value itself.