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Resolved Question: I'm learning about Digital Camaeras.?
I take pictures of Indy races with a film camera & the cars look still. I also take pictures of Drag Races (NHRA). They also look still. I use a 1000 speed film & 800 speed film. The pictures turn our GREAT most (95%) of the time. But the future is Digital. I need help!
Resolved Question: New to drag racing - NHRA?
Hey everyone, I joined my HS drag team, and I'm trying to figure out how I can learn the most. I won't be racing until next season in Oregon(spring 09) but I want to learn more about the cars and how to work on them before getting behind the wheel. Any pro racers out there? How'd you first get started? Any info at all would be great; racing tips(how to do good burnouts, improving reaction time, etc), mechanical&electrical stuff(wiring, special fuels, whatever!) oh yeah, and any good websites you could tell me of would be great! Thanks!

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Ford Wants To Make Your Car as Emotionally Attentive as KITT

"Michael, I'm detecting elevated stress levels in your voice print. Is something going wrong?" is exactly the sort of line you'll hear spoken by the fictional KITT in Knight Rider from time to time. And with a patent it just filed for an in-car system, Ford plans to release an in-car system that will behave as intelligently as KITT.

The patent is titled "Emotive text to speech system and method" and it's designed to make an in-car system much smarter at understanding your voice commands--it sounds like an even smarter version of Mercedes' Attention Assist package that's due in cars soon. So when speaking a sentence like, "I feel like driving fast today" the in-car GPS will be prompted to ask you if it should route you along freeways by preference. In essence, the advanced system will enable you to interact with a car's automated systems in a more "natural" way.

Also included in the patent is the concept that the car will be able to detect your emotional state--to a limited extent--react accordingly, and even emote right back at you. The system will include sensors that look at the driver's body position, stress patterns in their voice, and other biometric markers, and if it concludes that the driver's angry, for example, it may display "sympathy" with a graphical avatar that recolors itself blue and puts on a "concerned facial expression." The ongoing conversation would be influenced by the perceived driver emotion, with the system perhaps understanding whether the driver is late for work and then offering to forward a message.

Alternatively there's location-based services: You can ask if there are good restaurants nearby, prompting the car to hunt for data, and then direct you to the one you choose. There's even an eco-friendly mode whereby the car detects "harsh" or fuel-guzzling driving. The car then becomes sad to attract the driver's attention, and when asked why, it could even respond with "Your driving is hurting my fuel efficiency. You might want to cut down on the frequent acceleration and deceleration."

The patent describes the whole system as being a fully integrated car electronics package, with sensors to check on driver head position, smile index, lip movements, and even an "occupant recognition" system that could (just possibly) negate the need for physical keys. It'll make use of in-car wireless and a common data bus that links the sensors to the computer and communications equipment, and includes a display and associated processing tech that's sophisticated enough to actually draw a 3D avatar that represents the car's personality.

All of this sounds extremely KITT-like, and represents a dramatic progression from existing car and navigation technology. My family has named our GPS Sophie Ellis (thanks to her posh English tones,) and she frequently gets shouted at due to her odd inability to correctly identify one-way streets where we live--I'm not entirely sure that society is ready for a smart car system that would listen and then actually shout back. It's a good job that it'll take many years of research before we start seeing Ford's smart car assistant glowing in our dashboard displays.

[via Autoblog] 

Greater Safety for Schoolchildren
(pressebox) Essen, 10.03.2009 - Those of us with children of elementary school age know how uneasy we are about sending our offspring unaccompanied to school on an autumn or winter morning-because it is often the little ones who are spotted too late, or not at all, by drivers and other motorists.In the first half of 2008, the number of accidents involving children on their way to school showed an increase over the same period of the previous year. In Germany, the number of notifiable accidents on the way to school in the first six months of 2008 was 61,666, and 31 of these were fatal. According to the Deutscher Gesetzlicher Unfallversicherung(German...