| Islands at war over ferry subsidies
Well, thats what you get when you build three boats that don't have proper hulls which cannot weather the high seas and cost 19 Million pounds sterling a pop. Besides prices dropped two thirds from Shetland to Orkney to Aberdeen 6 years ago.Northlink boats are so unfriendly they should pay you to use them. .
Say Hello to Stanley
While Thrun was settling in at CMU, the hot topic in robotics was self-driving cars. The field was led by Ernst Dickmanns, a professor of aerospace technology at the University of the Bundeswehr. He liked to point out that planes had been flying themselves since the 1970s. The public was clearly willing to accept being flown by autopilot, but nobody had tried the same on the ground. Dickmanns decided to do something about that. With help from the German military and Daimler-Benz, he spent seven years retrofitting a boxy Mercedes van, equipping it with video cameras and a bunch of early Intel processors. On a Daimler-Benz test track in December 1986, the driverless van accelerated to 20 miles per hour and, using data supplied by the videocams, successfully stayed on a curving road.
Suspects, 18 and 15, charged in carjacking
Two suspected Seattle gang members have been charged in connection with a drug-related carjacking on Mercer Island, according to court documents. One defendant, Edmond Cummings, 18, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in King County Superior Court to second-degree robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm. He was being held in the King County Jail with bail set at $100,000. The second defendant, a 15-year-old boy, pleaded not guilty last week in Juvenile Court to first-degree robbery and malicious mischief. The second charge pertains to an alleged tirade in an interrogation room at the Mercer Island Police Department, court documents say. Mercer Island police started investigating Feb. 1 when a resident called 911 to report that several associates had threatened him with a gun and had stolen his 1999 Ford Explorer outside his apartment in the 3200 block of West Concord Way.
MPs fear Terror Bill switches power from Scots to English courts
A constitutional row was brewing last night over the UK Government's planned Counter-Terrorism Bill, which, it is claimed, will drive a "coach and horses" through 300 years of Scotland's independent legal system if passed unchanged. The bill, which among other things includes the controversial plan to increase pre-detention without charge and toughen up sentencing, states that proceedings for an alleged offence "may be taken at any place in the United Kingdom", raising worries that cases, which should be heard in Scotland, will be heard in England under a different legal system. Concerned parties, including the Law Society of Scotland, fear, if unamended, the proposal will undermine the position of the Lord Advocate, whose prosecutorial independence is guaranteed by the 1998 Scotland Act, and the position of the High Court, which is protected by the 1707 Act of Union.
Cougar in photos hails from West
About 160 scoutmasters within the Derby-based Housatonic Council of the Boy Scouts of America recently received e-mail copies of photos of the mountain lion, which was apparently photographed five years ago outside someone's home in Wyoming. State Department of Environmental Protection officials and staff members of the Connecticut Audubon Society also received copies. "I'm not sure what the distribution net was, but it's way out there," said Dale May, director of the DEP's wildlife division. "I've had people from the DEP who called me who got it at home and they wanted to know if it's true." May said it's the third mountain-lion fraud in recent months. The last trick featured a photo of a hunter holding up a dead cougar in New York state, but it was actually snapped five years earlier in Washington state, May said.
Under the Hood With Knight Rider 2.0: Trans Am vs. Ford Mustang ...
In fact, the car's AI was so advanced that KITT formed a kind of personality, which is what has endeared the "car" to millions of auto geeks in a way the Batmobile never could be. But when the show was shelved in 1986, so was KITT. Last week, NBC unveiled an all-new, controversial KITT, which is set to star in the made-for-TV Knight Rider movie in February. Based on the still-to-be-released Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR (click here for engine-revving video), this virtual Stang comes tricked out with a supercomputer that can hack almost any system; a very capable weapons system; and a body—thanks to nanotechnology—that's able to shape-shift and change color at will. Like its predecessor, the 21st century KITT gets AI from digital effects wizards that makes it an ideal crime-fighting partner: logical, precise and infinitely smart.
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