Seems mind control has finally come of age. This German company has produced a thought control system that has successfully controlled a car. Its uses up to that point were to control an iPod and an iPhone. I didn’t know Apple made cars though.
Maybe it is me but I look at this new device called an OnPlug. It is designed as a cut off aid for systems such as TVs to reduce their standby levels to zero.
It is claimed to be the simpliest such device which means there are more like that out there.
Personally, I would just use the off switch on the socket. Cuts power to zero every time. Doesn’t cost any more and, anything with a light on it must use some power, uses no power at all when not in use.
We seem to be going mad. We do not need a technological solution to everything. Somethings are best left as simple as they are. It does help explain though why we are all up to our armpits in debt and we all have a house full of tat.
With Google now looking at offering two factor authentication to its GMail Accounts it seems that online services are seriously looking at security. However, Google has also done the world a service here with the method they use.
Many applications in the real world use two factor authentication as a way to protect security. Two factor authentication is something you have and something you know. For example your bank may have sent you a smart card. This is something you have. Your password, mothers maiden name etc. is what you know. The something you have generates a code you enter when you need it and it changes every minute or so. This stops someone seeing it and later on using it without your knowledge. They have a minute or so to use it. This requires you to be sent a device that needs to be in sync with a master server. These services cost money to set up and maintain.
What Google has done has cheaply taken this into to the masses. Based on the fact that most of us, certainly who use the internet, have a mobile phone. When you try and log in using your username and password it sends a text to your registered phone and you have to enter that as well to log in. It can create that text randomly and only has to remember it for a few minutes.
Simplicity itself. You can expect to see that rolled out a lot more due to its simplicity and ease of use. Google have excelled themselves with this one. This is how innovation should be simple, easy to use and cheap to implement.
The first stage is to bring a portion of the third world on line, using the old Terrestar-1 satellite whose owner has just gone bankrupt. This coupled with a modem which is due to be developed by the company will provide a basic ISP service to the area covered by the satellites footprint. Once up and running they plan on expanding this to cover the entire world.
A very ambitious project which will bring a few funding questions on the actual computers themselves and what bandwidth will be available. Most of our sites now are very graphics intensive. I assume they will only be accessing specific sites with data such as The Soil and Health Library, Appropedia and Hesperian.
I wonder how this will fit in with the 2 tier internet we have been hearing about lately. Will this make a third tier? If not who will fund the infrastructure beyond the satellite?
Everywhere you go the answer seems to be Yes. But is it?
For one thing the sheer power of data processing has allowed governments to dictate a million and one new rules in every business which needs massive changes to processes and processing power for businesses to meet, for example in banking those changes costs millions for each bank just to implement. Who pays for that? Not the government who wants all this you can be sure. Now look at your shopping bill, VAT and tax added straight on by computers, Age checks, maximum amounts in a purchase, a million and one stupid legislative changes that are all being forced on the manufacturers and suppliers to meet everything from diversity quotas to enforced purchasing quotas. Most easily circumvented by the public. All this red tape is only made possible by computers.
I’m not so sure that computers are the boon we make them out to be for businesses. Of course, you now cannot do certain businesses without them and many businesses actual get real benefit from them with all the Just In Time delivery and stock control capabilities. Even the smallest business today needs computers to run but at that level it is a valued tool not a burden.
However, this is what made me ask the question. I’m an avid reader, not as much as some though (Ivan), and like to read all different types but exclude biographies, history and romance.
So, I’m online looking at some books and one of them has a Kindle option. To my surprise I find that the Kindle option is £1.10 more than the dead tree version. I was amazed. How can Amazon justify that?
If people are making profits all the way down the line in both versions then we have to think of the supply chain. There are a lot more people in the chain with dead tree books but it works out cheaper? Makes no sense. Someone not in the paper chain is making a killing. So who could it be? Rather than go into the details of what is in the paper chain, mainly because I can’t remember them all and do you count the lumberjacks?, let us instead have a look at who is in the Kindle download chain. Author, publisher, the Kindle production system and finally Amazon. Short and sweet. I would imagine Amazon is also the Kindle production System. The author will probably get the same pittance but the publisher and Amazon seem to be making a killing here. Seems to me they may very well kill the idea of the Ebooks right there.
Oh well. I prefer the dead tree version anyway. It also helps share out the take.
Years ago I worked exclusively on DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) mini computers. In my opinion the best systems out there on a price performance basis at the time. I installed about a hundred DEC systems, first PDP and then, its successor, VAX in my time. They were the real time competitor to the batch mainframe which was seen as the only real computer in those days.
The founder of DEC was Ken Olsen, an inventor and another strong business character. He wasn’t perfect as he made mistakes near the end when DEC was bought out by Compaq but he gave the world systems that allowed people like me to build business and development systems which were resilient, scalable and at minimal cost.
I still have several VAXStations and a MicroVAX in my store room, the CISC processors made obsolete when the RISC Alpha chips became the primary platform. They would still work if I plugged some SCSI disks in though I suspect the MicroVAX 3400 DSSI disks are next to impossible to get.
I salute Ken Olsen. Working with his inventions made me the person I am today. The world is again short of another badly needed innovator.
It made me wonder when we will finally build an undersea city and create a stepping stone to a new world. One that would be outside the influence of our existing governments and one that would be a step closer to a orbiting space station. At a significant cost reduction.
Much better than a bio dome, it won’t take up any arable land, cheaper than an underground bunker and significantly cheaper than an actual space station.
We should be looking at building a few underwater cities. It is going to be our new frontier. Space travel is just not available yet and space is too unforgiving for us wimps.
After the censorship in Egypt and the ongoing censorship in many countries our politicians have seen a way to shut up those pesky sites that keep questioning what they do and posting their failings.
Western governments are now looking at installing internet kill switches for themselves.
Well, no sooner than the government starts to move than people a lot smarter start to move and so we have, long before the government is beyond arranging the chairs for the meeting, some suggestions and ways around the internet kill switch.
The UK’s chief nutter prepares a sacrifice to the wind gods.
It seems China is starting to look at moving away from coal fired power stations to new cleaner energy using Thorium in a TMSR (Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor). Plans are in place for a reactor to be up and running in 20 years.
This technology has been in use for some time. It has advantages in scalability as well as the fact it produces very little Plutonium as a by product.
While we turn towards technology like wind turbines and praying for wind the Chinese are picking up the mantle of technology innovator. When we start to go dark and cold they will be lighting and powering areas for the first time in history.
It isn’t too late for us to embrace this technology yet ourselves and avoid this fate. The sacrifice of a few greens and politicians will be worth it.
A group of people are working on Open Source modular tools that can help communities build a modern village in the third world. It appears that making these tools is on average 8 times cheaper than buying the ready built tools from manufacturers and the group is making the plans for these tools available on the net as they are developed.
The Open Source Ecology site, Global Village Construction Set, contains the full set of plans and documentation developed so far.
The units encompass modern component making units like a 3D printer and Plastic Extrusion as well as basic hydroponics and industrial tools.
I think therefore I can drive
Seems mind control has finally come of age. This German company has produced a thought control system that has successfully controlled a car. Its uses up to that point were to control an iPod and an iPhone. I didn’t know Apple made cars though.
Anyway, this brain-machine gaming interface, the Emotiv EPOC, is now commercially available for everyone to use and develop further applications on.
I only hope that unlike the Russian thought controlled Firefox we don’t all have to think German to use it.