This research project is repackaged swarm robotics. Swarm robots have been around for years. The main problem with swarms is getting the power and leverage to manipulate large objects as the swarm is only as strong as it's weakest link. The main benefit is that they tend to be more fault tolerant than monolithic robots.
With a world population of 6000000000+ people the question is why aren't more people writing open source software?
All it takes is the most statistically insignificant fraction of the population with the weirdest and most obscure of reasons to write the software once and then it can be copied millions of times.
The commercial world is still coming to terms with the fact that if copying is made cheap (ie. no per-copy licensing) then massive efficiencies happen.
That's the beautiful thing about so-called "intellectual property" and it's time the law recognised that fact. Everybody wins.
i'm sorry, but brazil is clearly in the wrong here.
Not clear at all
What happened to the drug companies' rights?
Rights created and conferred by elected governments. The elected Brazilian government justifiably thinks that the tradeoff between corporate and people's rights is different in their country.
If they don't receive royalties on their drugs, how are they going to support ongoing research??
Drug companies do not have a right to the public's money to subsidise extraordinarily inefficient research programs. Most drug company income lines the pockets of executives and shareholders anyway.
What is Brazil doing to cure AIDS??
Probably alot more than most drug companies. The large drug companies have a consistent record of ignoring the third world because there's no monopoly profits to be made.
It looks like they just want to get something for nothing to me.
I'd say it's the companies who want something for nothing.
It's unreasonable that an intellectual property creator should not be paid for their work. It is equally unreasonable, and for the same reasons, that an intellectual property creator should be paid an indefinitely large number of times for the one intellectual property.
Too right. It's amazing how many Microsoft drones turn up here whenever there's a public controversy that might cost Microsoft 0.01% of their cashflow. A few other companies do it here also but Microsoft is the most consistent and blatant.
I've got news for you, you arseholes. Astroturfing is fraud, pure and simple. The legal system hasn't caught up with you yet but people like you always get caught in the end because you can't resist just one more scam. Ever thought of doing something positive with your life rather than being a parasite?
I'm from Australia. There's a federal election coming up and the incumbents (the "Liberals"; similar to the US Republicans but more socially conservative) are worried they might lose due to a botched introduction of a goods and services tax. They've been clutching at straws and more Internet legislation looks like just the ticket to distract the population and also make the Liberals look forward thinking and progressive.
I wish. I'm going to take great pleasure in putting Senator Alston last on my ballot paper.
GPL is no more or less parasitic than the average commercial license.
Your whole argument is based on the idea that software is necessarily a scarce commodity and that it must be sold by a commercial company. Wrong. Think statistics.
All it takes is one programmer out of millions with both the means and motivation to write some piece of Free software and suddenly many millions have a new piece of software. It might be a teenager showing how hot they are, young programmer wanting some experience in a new area, an experienced programmer looking for an interesting project to work on, a university research project, a company loss leader and who knows what else. No "business model" needed.
One in a million. And as the world's population gets bigger those odds only get better.
Slashdot Mirror
This research project is repackaged swarm robotics. Swarm robots have been around for years. The main problem with swarms is getting the power and leverage to manipulate large objects as the swarm is only as strong as it's weakest link. The main benefit is that they tend to be more fault tolerant than monolithic robots.
See:
Robotics portal
Swarm robotics google search
CMU Robotics Institute
With a world population of 6000000000+ people the question is why aren't more people writing open source software?
All it takes is the most statistically insignificant fraction of the population with the weirdest and most obscure of reasons to write the software once and then it can be copied millions of times.
The commercial world is still coming to terms with the fact that if copying is made cheap (ie. no per-copy licensing) then massive efficiencies happen.
That's the beautiful thing about so-called "intellectual property" and it's time the law recognised that fact. Everybody wins.
I'll bite.
i'm sorry, but brazil is clearly in the wrong here.
Not clear at all
What happened to the drug companies' rights?
Rights created and conferred by elected governments. The elected Brazilian government justifiably thinks that the tradeoff between corporate and people's rights is different in their country.
If they don't receive royalties on their drugs, how are they going to support ongoing research??
Drug companies do not have a right to the public's money to subsidise extraordinarily inefficient research programs. Most drug company income lines the pockets of executives and shareholders anyway.
What is Brazil doing to cure AIDS??
Probably alot more than most drug companies. The large drug companies have a consistent record of ignoring the third world because there's no monopoly profits to be made.
It looks like they just want to get something for nothing to me.
I'd say it's the companies who want something for nothing.
It's unreasonable that an intellectual property creator should not be paid for their work. It is equally unreasonable, and for the same reasons, that an intellectual property creator should be paid an indefinitely large number of times for the one intellectual property.
Too right. It's amazing how many Microsoft drones turn up here whenever there's a public controversy that might cost Microsoft 0.01% of their cashflow. A few other companies do it here also but Microsoft is the most consistent and blatant.
I've got news for you, you arseholes. Astroturfing is fraud, pure and simple. The legal system hasn't caught up with you yet but people like you always get caught in the end because you can't resist just one more scam. Ever thought of doing something positive with your life rather than being a parasite?
I'm from Australia. There's a federal election coming up and the incumbents (the "Liberals"; similar to the US Republicans but more socially conservative) are worried they might lose due to a botched introduction of a goods and services tax. They've been clutching at straws and more Internet legislation looks like just the ticket to distract the population and also make the Liberals look forward thinking and progressive.
I wish. I'm going to take great pleasure in putting Senator Alston last on my ballot paper.
GPL is no more or less parasitic than the average commercial license.
Your whole argument is based on the idea that software is necessarily a scarce commodity and that it must be sold by a commercial company. Wrong. Think statistics.
All it takes is one programmer out of millions with both the means and motivation to write some piece of Free software and suddenly many millions have a new piece of software. It might be a teenager showing how hot they are, young programmer wanting some experience in a new area, an experienced programmer looking for an interesting project to work on, a university research project, a company loss leader and who knows what else. No "business model" needed.
One in a million. And as the world's population gets bigger those odds only get better.