Mechanical Engineering magazine has a couple of good introductory level articles on unmanned (combat) aerial vehicles. Here's a look at some of the early efforts, dating as far back as WWI. I had no idea that shot-up B-17s had been used as RC flying bombs against Germany. And here's an overview of future US programs, and the acronyms and weapons they may carry. It's a puzzlement why most of the CG renderings of future platforms include vestigial cockpit canopies.
3:25:08 PM    

An issue that's not going to go away: Attempts by trademark owners to control ads retrieved using those trademarks. One can see the rationale for a trademark owner to be able to regain control of a URL that is directly related, but this trend is rather more disturbing, and needs to end up in court. What, if any, right does the trademark owner have to control other's usage of meta-data mentioning that mark? What boundaries should be in place to make sure that any such control is not a cover for suppression of criticism or comment on the brand and company behind it? Should (in the cited instance) drug manufacturers be able to coerce Google or Yahoo to act as their enforcers against illict remarketers? If I was vehement enough about the post immediately below to go buy the word 'Belkin' on Google and link to it, is there a good reason the company should be able to enjoin or otherwise prevent that act?
2:47:17 PM    

Maybe this needs to be a regular feature. Last week Diebold. This week, we have Belkin, which has decided it would be a good thing if their wireless routers occasionally divert http requests to their own advertising. That's going to make them lots of friends, and really help gain trust in the market. These guys used to be a stolid but reliable cable vendor. Evidently they lost that reliable part along the way somewhere. If anyone's home in their executive suite, the product manager responsible for this idiocy will be eliminated in a public manner, and free replacements or patches for the affected equipment offered to the customers.

Update: Looks like Belkin may have realized the gaffe. A BU exec seems to have stepped in, the idiot PM is being quietly disowned, and firmware patches may be on the way.
12:54:54 PM    

He shares my misgivings. Pull quotes:

This example sets the pattern for descriptions of the Semantic Web. First, take some well-known problem. Next, misconstrue it so that the hard part is made to seem trivial and the trivial part hard. Finally, congratulate yourself for solving the trivial part.

The Semantic Web, with its neat ontologies and its syllogistic logic, is a nice vision. However, like many visions that project future benefits but ignore present costs, it requires too much coordination and too much energy to effect in the real world, where deductive logic is less effective and shared worldview is harder to create than we often want to admit. Much of the proposed value of the Semantic Web is coming, but it is not coming because of the Semantic Web. The amount of meta-data we generate is increasing dramatically, and it is being exposed for consumption by machines as well as, or instead of, people. But it is being designed a bit at a time, out of self-interest and without regard for global ontology. It is also being adopted piecemeal, and it will bring with it with all the incompatibilities and complexities that implies. There are significant disadvantages to this process relative to the shining vision of the Semantic Web, but the big advantage of this bottom-up design and adoption is that it is actually working now.

Read the whole thing

Update: Kevin Werbach also has cogent comments.
12:29:02 PM    

Rich Miller is following the RFID technology and business model saga, and has been putting up some informative posts. Start here and read downward.
12:14:11 PM