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Baby steps

Here is a system that is being called a Killer App because it give an intuitive interface to a Microwave over. In a similar way this portable Microwave is being called a Killer App because it is portable.

Similar to almost everything else nowadays basic English words are being corrupted and stolen. For example ‘The Right Honourable Gentleman’ is a phrase now corrupted beyond recognition as is Gay and Liberal. Killer App seems to be going the same way.

Now if they were to make a Microwave portable and you could drop anything into it which it then cooked to perfection regardless of the power rating or the item itself then that would be a useful device. Still not a Killer App though.

We are still taking baby steps, suppliers making as much profit out of each stage as possible yet making it soundlike it is a breakthrough. Hopefully this recession may force them to take bigger steps to prise the money from our careful and cost conscious hands.

December 30th, 2009 | Category: Comment, Progress | 7 comments

When environmental purposes is not helping the environment

This article is very interesting. It basically is saying that an elected official in the US has blocked a scheme that would help pull the US out of it’s hole on the Global Warming Swindle (GWS) and stopped the US putting solar panels in the Californian desert.

It doesn’t make any sense to me. I would say that the left hand doesn’t know what the right handis doing but it’s the left hand again. A democrat that is not in line with the whingy whiney socialist agenda of the democrats.

On the plus side it took several million in funds from environmental groups who bought the land to have it used for environmental purposes. Perhaps this was what they wanted, perhaps not but they made the big mistake of giving the land to the federal government so now have no say in the matter. You have just got to laugh. Maybe now they will realise that the government is not on their side, a very expensive, and hilarious, to me anyway, mistake.

What is going on over there? We must have renewable energy but not here where it is best placed. Somehow, I don’t see this being the end of it and with a bit of luck it will have a backlash on Feinstein and the democrats as a whole.

December 29th, 2009 | Category: Comment, Death Touch | 3 comments

Robot menials at work

It seems that we are creating little robotic helpers to go round helping shoppers shop.

This came as a bit of a surprise to me because I thought that was the designed output of our educational system. Simple drones that can understand basic instructions, follow simple programming instructions and perform basic tasks. Still a few bugs to workout, they keep stealing things and failing to perform basic tasks.

But seriously, now what are we going to do with all the graduates from 2010?

Of course I was only joking. :) These robots are in Japan and they actually have an educational system there so it will work out well.

Merry XMas to you all. Thank you for visiting. You both know who you are.

December 24th, 2009 | Category: Comment, Death Touch, Progress | 4 comments

IBM’s predictions

They look good, they sound good but I just don’t see them happening.

IBM forecasts the big ideas in the next 5 years.

Think about what has happened over the last 5 years. Then ask yourself do you really see such radical changes? I’m an optimist but I don’t see things changing at this point in time with Governments the way they are. I see the changes being smaller and more focused. It will include some of those ideas but not on a city wide scale. It will be more localised.

However,it is still good. It has to start somewhere.

December 23rd, 2009 | Category: Comment, Progress | 6 comments

25 Products That Might Just Change The World

The products listed here certainly wouldn’t be on my list of 25 products. Most of them are items that would be useful to third world countries and make their lives a little bit better. Won’t stop them being cut into little bits with machetes because their hair curls a different way though or save them from starvation with socialist economic policies.

Personally, I would go with items that would provide better medicines, sanitation and improved food production for these guys. Preferably away from Government Aid and the UN.

That and a couple of items for the First World while we are still classed as in it would be nice. I’m getting a bit fed up with money being taken from me and wasted in an attempt to improve the world when there are many things in our part of it that need improving. Our laughable Democracy and our collapsing social system are two big ones just to start.

December 22nd, 2009 | Category: Comment | 2 comments

Sometimes you can't win

Reading this article about insurgents hacking into the US drones in Iraq.

It had me all excited. I thought it would be just like the video games except you get to blow up real live insurgents. Or in the insurgents case they get to blow up our soldiers which is not so good.

Fortunately, for our side it’s not quite what it seems. All they have done, and it is available to anyone, is tapped into some video transmissions from the satellites. Nothing spectacular but instead of watching porn like everyone else does they get to watch their buddies being sent off to paradise. It must be difficult for them to take the feeds and line them up with ground targets to see what the pilots are seeing. Not impossible though.

So I would imagine some programme manager back in the US is explaining that to save some money they decided not to encrypt the video downloads but only the control interfaces. At the time it probably seemed a good idea. It wasn’t controlling the drone or giving out classified information, it was unlikely anyone would find the data and it costs money to put in encrypted links of that bandwidth. So risk low and cost high to mitigate. Only problem, for him, is that an easy solution came along to enable anyone to find the link. So now it is all over the news and making the US Air Force looking stupid.

So end result is that a few bad guys may have escaped because they were warned drones were in the area. The US has an emergency upgrade on it’s comms links to make and some poor programme manager is even now trawling minutes to see if it was security that made the decision or just accepted his risk assessment. If you are reading this I can tell you from experience no matter what is in the minutes you are on your own. Just ensure you err on the side of caution in the future and don’t try and save money where security is involved.

Hindsight, it’s a wonderful tool for analysing problems.

December 21st, 2009 | Category: Comment | 2 comments

Technology for technologies sake

As we all know with the Health and Safety Nazis taking over the, well everything, in a futile attempt to make sure nobody ever gets a skinned knee or a bloddy nose it seems that technology is coming out with replacements for play time toys.

Read here about a collaboration between Nintendo and schools to work on kids games being ported to the Wii.

Now, I have a Wii, and very nice it is too but for the life of me I fail to see the point of replacing a bit of rope, or string, you can pick up at home or for £5 in a very expensive shop with a bit of kit that costs over £150, doesn’t handle being wet very well, breaks easily, is easily stolen and is usually not taken to school. In my day we had chalk, a ball for the boys, skipping rope for the girls and a concrete playground. If we were lucky. Yet we all ran about like maniacs playing and having fun. Playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians and a good time was had by all. Nowadays we can’t play cowboys and indians because that is racist. Can’t play cops and robbers because nobody wants to be a copper any more unless they have a personality disorder and woe betide anyone who makes a gun shape with their hand and points it at anyone. SWAT will be on you before you have time to put your hand back into it’s normal shape.

So skipping, football, baseball etc. will all now be performedby Wii. Sports teachers will have to become IT experts and kids will just have to wait until they are 18 to learn that gravity and inertia are bitches. Just hope they don’t take too many people with them while they learn from experience much, much later than we did.

If this is the future then maybe we should start buying shares in technology companies.

December 20th, 2009 | Category: Comment, Death Touch, Progress | 3 comments

Design your own sexual organs

In the future there will be no requirement for any of us to feel inferior.

Read this article where scientists have created a printer that can print human tissue. Although at the moment it is capable of printing arteries that can be used in surgery with future plans for printing hearts, teeth and bone.

Why stop there though? Using this we could print designed body parts. Live up amountain, try our new four valve heart. Instead of spending billions to stop people living underwater why don’t we print off designer gills for them. Need extra fingers, why wait for evolution to help you? Not forgetting the replacement parts for anything damaged or diseased.

These are the sort of inventions we want and 5 to 10 years is the timescales we want it in as well. Short enough for most of us to benefit but long enough to get it tested and debugged.

December 19th, 2009 | Category: Comment, Progress | 9 comments

Facts, Figures and Faith

I like reading New Scientist because it has so many interesting articles in fields I am interested in. They range from the amusing to leading edge technology and have always been interesting to read.

Lately though I noticed that they are fully behind the Global Warming/Cooling or whatever scam and push the idea that people, like me, that are not true believers are plain nutters. Of course it’s not put like that but the facts when they are negative are brushed over and where they support the scam they are put in full view.

Of course I’m biased. Anyone can tell that just by the use of the word scam but I’m not a real scientist. I have my opinions which sadly I can’t force on anyone nor do I want to (Had my fingers crossed there) However, you would think a Scientific Journal would be searching for the truth and would follow scientific principles to do so. Not jumping on a bandwagon and only showing articles that support one point of view.

It must have been like this back in the late 1400 when Copernicus said the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. At least then they had a history of knowing, just knowing, that it was the other way around. Scientific principles allowed the facts to be examined until this theory was proved. Yet again it was politicians and religious leaders that pushed their views and forced the facts to be discarded and replaced, destroyed or simply ignored. People were put to death then for daring to speak out. At the moment we have not gotten there yet, we just destroy their careers and lifes. Give it time though.

Now you may wonder why I’m mentioning this. Fear not because I’m going to tell you now. I’m always awkward to buy for at XMas because I don’t really want anything.I have most of what I want and the rest is not important to me. So for most of my life I am asked what do I want for XMas. I usually can come up with something eventually. Today though another subscription to New Scientist was suggested. Normally, I would have said OK but over the last few months I’ve noticed this bias so I said ‘No’. I don’t feel I can support them now with the bias. I’m going to let my subscription lapse and go with something different this time. Something I feel I can support. In the meantime I’ll just use the web site when I can and let their buddies support them. The benefits of capitalism.

If anyone elseis wondering what to get me I’ve still got space for an Aston Martin in the garage. Just a thought.

December 18th, 2009 | Category: Comment, Wasted | 2 comments

Human Nature

An interesting article about Human nature most of which I have seen before and understand. The last one, Maes-Garreau law where predictions are due at the end of a subjects expected life span, is new to me although I can see how it works out I must be an exception because I think all these new inventions will be here in 5 to 10 years. Every time I’m asked. So eventually the law will come true for me but not just yet. I still blame those damn politicians though for interfering and screwing things up.

December 17th, 2009 | Category: Comment | Leave a comment
 
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