I went the UofT aerospace institute, and occasionally would lead tours through the various labs. That one was always the most popular. They'd fire up one of the micro air vehicles (restrained on a metal rod), turn off the lights and put a strobe light on it, so it 'froze' the motion. It's pretty cool to see what is happening with clap and peel they talked about in the article. It was hard work for the grad students on the project, though. They would have to make the little carbon fibre ribs and glue the little bastards to the mylar. Over and over. They must have been high as a kite half the time! Excuse the expression.
That group is also working on full-scale ornithopter (pilot only). Totally different approach from the MAV, over course. This one looked like an airplane instead of a butterfly. The footage of the taxi testruns was impressive...and scary. 40' (IIRC) wings flapping at a few Hz. I'm not sure if they have it off the ground yet, funding is pretty tight for the big version.
I think that you are getting things a bit backwards. It's hard to develop a 'free thinking society' when it's all you can do to scrabble a life out of hunting and gathering. Until you develop things like agriculture, which G,G, and S declares more likely in Europe, you can't really spend much time on philosophy.
Funny, until a couple of years ago, I TA'ed that course. I saw some wacky projects being built. A few good fires, too. That course probably doubled Active's revenue.
The downside is that, instead of paying a few bucks more and getting the right [motor|gear|component] for the job, the students would bring back the closest thing they could find from Active and try to press it into service. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Usually it broke during evaluations. I hated seeing that, especially if I'd seen it work before.
I agree that there may be a regulation about using radios in flammable areas. However, I strongly doubt that it's valid at gas stations. The risks involved in cell phones have to be orders of magnitude less than those caused by the cars themselves. The point being that is a car is safe, a cell phone sure is.
I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but in Canada, we are told not to use cell phones near gas stations. My bs detector is going off. You are telling me that a tiny cell phone is more likely to start a fire than a car starter motor?
I'm always suspicious of these claims of dangerous interference.
I was following the development of giFT for a long time. There was a change of leadership recently, and quite a bit of turmoil. The new leaders are a little, er, touchy (check the sourceforge messages - some of them are pretty funny) However, there is now a totally usable (if not feature-rich) front end for giFT.I'm still using gnutella because of the bigger base, but I'm going to make a point of leaving a giFT daemon running.
Give it a try - it looks like a good protocol, and it's dead easy to install (use the CVS, follow the instructions) and let run in the background.
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I went the UofT aerospace institute, and occasionally would lead tours through the various labs. That one was always the most popular. They'd fire up one of the micro air vehicles (restrained on a metal rod), turn off the lights and put a strobe light on it, so it 'froze' the motion. It's pretty cool to see what is happening with clap and peel they talked about in the article. It was hard work for the grad students on the project, though. They would have to make the little carbon fibre ribs and glue the little bastards to the mylar. Over and over. They must have been high as a kite half the time! Excuse the expression. That group is also working on full-scale ornithopter (pilot only). Totally different approach from the MAV, over course. This one looked like an airplane instead of a butterfly. The footage of the taxi testruns was impressive...and scary. 40' (IIRC) wings flapping at a few Hz. I'm not sure if they have it off the ground yet, funding is pretty tight for the big version.
I think that you are getting things a bit backwards. It's hard to develop a 'free thinking society' when it's all you can do to scrabble a life out of hunting and gathering. Until you develop things like agriculture, which G,G, and S declares more likely in Europe, you can't really spend much time on philosophy.
Funny, until a couple of years ago, I TA'ed that course. I saw some wacky projects being built. A few good fires, too. That course probably doubled Active's revenue. The downside is that, instead of paying a few bucks more and getting the right [motor|gear|component] for the job, the students would bring back the closest thing they could find from Active and try to press it into service. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Usually it broke during evaluations. I hated seeing that, especially if I'd seen it work before.
I agree that there may be a regulation about using radios in flammable areas. However, I strongly doubt that it's valid at gas stations. The risks involved in cell phones have to be orders of magnitude less than those caused by the cars themselves. The point being that is a car is safe, a cell phone sure is.
I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but in Canada, we are told not to use cell phones near gas stations. My bs detector is going off. You are telling me that a tiny cell phone is more likely to start a fire than a car starter motor? I'm always suspicious of these claims of dangerous interference.
I was following the development of giFT for a long time. There was a change of leadership recently, and quite a bit of turmoil. The new leaders are a little, er, touchy (check the sourceforge messages - some of them are pretty funny) However, there is now a totally usable (if not feature-rich) front end for giFT.I'm still using gnutella because of the bigger base, but I'm going to make a point of leaving a giFT daemon running. Give it a try - it looks like a good protocol, and it's dead easy to install (use the CVS, follow the instructions) and let run in the background.