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NextFest 133

Posted by michael from the meet-george-jetson dept.
anzha writes "This Saturday and Sunday between 9 and 6 pm at the Fort Mason Center's Festival Pavilion in San Francisco, NextFest will be taking place. Organized by Wired and sponsored by HP, The SF Chronicle, General Electric, General Motors, and many others, this is an expo on 'almost there' technologies. Ranging from [in]famous Moller aircar to a 'transparent cloak' from the Tachi Lab at Tokyo University to antibacterial powders from Canada to many, many others. Read more here."
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  • This is what's next?
    I guess, if the nextfest.net website [nextfest.net] is anything to go by, that in the future all websites will be based solely on ultra-annoying Macromedia Flash! A page focused on this type of event should be slim and trim and have a large section devoted to easily viewable/editable/blownupable (to make bigger) pictures of every single device at this convention. Or at least has a large chunk of the site like that.

  • Games? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What about Half-Life2, TF2, Duke Nukem Forever, and SB's HL1 pit map?

  • Gargh (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rick Zeman ( 15628 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:43PM (#9156479)
    My first thought on what this was involved Steve Jobs and black boxes!
    • I, too, thought the title referred to some sort of retro-computer celebration.

    • My first thought on what this was involved Steve Jobs and black boxes!

      My second thought was that there's going to be a huge market for black turtlenecks that week.

      Jason.
    • I was thinking the same thing.

      I still have my NeXTStation Color...not that it's working at the moment, but I just can't part with it.

    • It's what WE make it. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MrChuck ( 14227 )
      I still have my NeXTSlab and ColorCube - both working thank you. And running NeXTStep 3.3 thanks to their Y2K free OS CD to keep my machine ticking into the new millenium.

      Yeah baby: 33 and 40Mhz of pure power . With that "mainframe on a chip" Digital Signal Processor.

      Ok, one of the NeXTs has booted open source [netbsd.org], but then I figured why run NeXT if not for the OS?

      So lets all show up with our NeXT slabs under our arms and start a commotion!

    • Same here. Now I'm disappointed. But I should have known by the capitalization.

  • Contradiction? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Black_Logic ( 79637 ) * <wintermute@@@gmail...com> on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:44PM (#9156488) Homepage Journal
    The raincoat-like cloak is made out of "retro-reflective'' material covered with tiny beads that reflect light back in the same direction it came.

    The cloak is designed to make whatever it is covering, a body or object, appear transparent by projecting video shot with a camera from behind the cloak onto the front of the cloak.

    Hold on a sec, these are two very different things. Are they talking about two different cloaks? If so, it's not very obvious from the article. Also, wouldn't the first cloak be a mirror, as opposed to transparent?
    • Oh, also, Isn't retro-reflective redundant? Doesn't reflection pretty much imply sending light back in the direction it came?

      (Sorry for responding to my own post. :) )

      • Re:Contradiction? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @04:03PM (#9156721) Homepage Journal
        Oh, also, Isn't retro-reflective redundant? Doesn't reflection pretty much imply sending light back in the direction it came?

        No. Classic reflection (the sort normal mirrors do) involves light heading off in a direction other than the one it was originally going in -- "angle of incidence equals angle of reflection". Retroreflection involves things like corner mirrors and sends light back in a direction exactly opposite the one it was originally headed in.

      • Re:Contradiction? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by nine-times ( 778537 )
        I'm guessing it means that it ultimately reflects light in a way that ultimately sends it along in the direction it was going anyway- so that, although technically it's reflecting, effectively it's transparent.
    • Nope, it's the same cloak. The way this cloak works is that an image is projected onto it. This projected light will bounce back from where it came. The image that is projected is off the background. It's not really transparent, just a fake of it....kinda like transparency in the current Xserver. You are just taking a picture of what should be behind the object and putting that picture onto the object.
      • It's not really transparent, just a fake of it....kinda like transparency in the current Xserver.

        I hate to tell you, but all the images on your monitor are fake. X does "real" transparency as much as it can display a "real" duck. The API has been around for quite awhile, it's been in KDE for a long time (you can turn the extension on or off, if your X server does not support it). KDE falls back to software transparency (at the widget level, rather than the X level) if it's not available.

        There are no X

        • Maybe I should've said "translucency". All I meant was how in Gnome at least, the panel and the terminal windows can have transparency. The problem is that it's not "true" tranpsarency. If you put a window behind one of those objects, you won't see it. The way that the fake transparency works is that it takes a picture of your background and sets that as the background for that particular window. Thereby giving the illusion of transparency. The fd.o Xserver supports true transparency. Click here [freedesktop.org] for a
          • Yes. That's what I'm saying. Substitute translucency whereever I said transparency. For awhile now, various variants of X support have had a common API for transparency. Or the illusion of it, just as it supports the illusion of having things like "windows" and a "mouse pointer" on the screen.

            Plenty of X servers don't support 3D or a video overlay. That doesn't mean that X doesn't. X is an extendable protocol, and there's a generally recognized standard extension for transparency.

            The way that the

    • Isn't retro-reflective redundant? Doesn't reflection pretty much imply sending light back in the direction it came?

      No, 'reflection' means sending it onward after reversing the path-component that's orthogonal to the surface.

      'Retro-reflective', I guess, means like Scotch-Lite (or whatever it's called now), where the surface comprises tiny beads each containing the inside of a reflective cube-corner, which has the property of returning a beam (close and) parallel to its entry path... like a billiard ball

    • If there is a camera taking a picture from one side and putting it on another side, there are a number of problems. For one, the display can't be cheap - it is a life-sized monitor, to put it bluntly. Secondly, unless there are cameras coming from all sorts of angles in 3d, even if you can manage to have the light from different cameras go in different directions, you're going to have a huge "sprite" problem. To resolve it, you need many cameras and many times more, highly "directional" pixels. Third, u
      • Hmmm... For the most part, you will get an interference pattern at the point of interference with beat frequency 10GHz and carrier frequency 500.05 THz

        As the beams diverge they will pass through each other as if they had never interacted.

        If you look at what occurs on the quantum level, you will get a mixture of 500.0 and 500.1THz photons interacting with matter in a way that is spatially and temporally determined by the interference pattern caused by the two beams. You will NOT get 10GHz photons to any ap
        • I'm not quite seing what I was asking about in that response. What I am wondering is whether the 10GHz would pass through a solid object (in the way that the initial visible light beams would not). The same question goes with the beams that later diverge. I have never been able to track down any material which addresses this (including my physics texts from college).
    • Ahhhh, I get how this cloak works. The coat isn't anything special - it is just a screen with a camera on the back. From in front of the person, a projector broadcasts the image that the camera took, and the coat acts like a screen.

      However, with a normal screen, the ripples in the fabric would make the reflected projector light go off in different angles, depending on the direction that the fabric is rippling. What this does, by having tiny beads, makes there always be a part of the "screen", all acr

  • Was I the only one? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Serk ( 17156 ) * on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:44PM (#9156489) Homepage
    Was I the only one that saw the headline and immediately thought of a gathering of NeXT computer users?
  • wait for the next nextfest. The last nextfest didn't leave me looking forward to the next nextfest.

  • Is that "next" or NeXT"? (Score:4, Funny)

    by jstave ( 734089 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:46PM (#9156515)
    Actually, I think its pretty funny, given that NeXT Computer played such a pivotal role in making the word "vaporware" part of the common lexicon.

  • Flying cars, yippie (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:47PM (#9156530)
    In one vision of the future, the world will have flying cars, coats that make people "transparent,'' digital cameras that translate foreign signs and robots that can attend classes for sick children.

    The exhibits include the Moller Skycar, a four-passenger vehicle from Moller International of Davis. The Jetsons-style craft is small enough to drive on the ground, but can take off vertically and fly as fast as 380 mph

    They're still promising me the flying car, spiffy.

    This thing is actually pretty cool:

    http://www.moller.com/ [moller.com]
    the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350+ MPH and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon. Awesome.
    http://www.moller.com/skycar/ [moller.com]

    • It's a Scam (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:54PM (#9156623) Homepage Journal

      Moller's been been taking investors' money for decades, and has exactly squat to show for it. Credible aerospace engineers say that, unless Moller's invented a radically new, ultra-compact engine, there's no way you can move enough air mass to actually lift the thing.

      The spiffy model on the showroom floor is nothing more than a stage prop. It doesn't fly, it never did, and it probably never will.

      Schwab

      • Moller's been been taking investors' money for decades, and has exactly squat to show for it. Credible aerospace engineers say that, unless Moller's invented a radically new, ultra-compact engine, there's no way you can move enough air mass to actually lift the thing.

        The spiffy model on the showroom floor is nothing more than a stage prop. It doesn't fly, it never did, and it probably never will.

        They've got some pictures of the thing supposedly doing tethered test flights [moller.com]. The first photo looks like it

      • Re:It's a Scam (Score:4, Insightful)

        by funny-jack ( 741994 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @04:31PM (#9156988) Homepage
        What's worse, is that there are still people who haven't heard of this thing, and learned long ago that it's all hot air. For goodness' sake, I read about these when I was 10. I'm 24 now. I gave up hope in these things years ago, and so should all of you.

      • Re:It's a Scam (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @04:59PM (#9157253) Homepage
        They've not only done tethered flight tests, they've done tethered flight tests out of ground effect. Not only do they have pictures, they have videos. They not only have Aerobots (similar tech), they've already sold some which are in use.

        Accept it. The thing is real. You can argue about stability, you can argue about fuel effiency, you can argue about a whole bunch of things (especially their overly optimistic scheduling!), but the fact remains that even with only partially-outputting engines, they got cleanly and smoothly out of ground effect. They're building a free flight range right now and fitting the skycar with its 8 full-power engines.

        Most of the tech seems solid. The engines for the skycar already exist, and they're quite powerful for their weight while still being efficient. If the segway can keep a person balanced and a rocket can keep itself oriented correctly through gimballing of thrust, there should be no problem keeping the skycar level even in turbulence through computer controlled thrust vectoring. Etc.

        While it is no easy task, and I doubt their mass production cost estimate will ever reach fruition (having it instead be both a "rich kid's toy" and an intra-regional taxi to get people from small airports to big hubs), the tech is solid, and they've made some serious progress.

        • Re:It's a Scam (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Accept it. The thing is real.

          Nothing is real until it appears on ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com].

      • It's not a scam (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 14, 2004 @05:01PM (#9157273)

        Moller's been been taking investors' money for decades, and has exactly squat to show for it.

        It's true that he has been taking money from investors for decades, but he's been pouring his own money [usatoday.com] into it as well. He made about $20 million from real estate investment and millions more from his invention of the SuperTrapp [supertrapp.com] muffler. He invested that in his company. So while it's true that he has been taking money from others, he hasn't been getting rich from it, as the word "scam" implies.

        Credible aerospace engineers say that, unless Moller's invented a radically new, ultra-compact engine, there's no way you can move enough air mass to actually lift the thing.

        Dr. Moller is a credible aerospace engineer. He is the started the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at UC Davis [ucdavis.edu]. And he has invented a new type of engine [freedom-motors.com] for the SkyCar.

        The spiffy model on the showroom floor is nothing more than a stage prop. It doesn't fly, it never did, and it probably never will.

        As someone else pointed out, there have been tethered tests [moller.com] that have shown that the thing can at least hover.

        Don't get me wrong. I think that Moller's claims are continually over-optimistic, even to the point that he got in trouble with the SEC for misleading investors. He's been over-promising and under-delivering for decades. But he has made slow, painful progress, and I've seen every indication that he really does believe in what he's doing.

        To call it a scam is completely unfair.

        • Re:It's not a scam (Score:3, Informative)

          by zeno_2 ( 518291 )
          And he has invented a new type of engine for the SkyCar.

          Ahh.. so, taking an existing engine type (Wankel rotary engine) and improving it a bit is now called, "inventing a new type of engine". I'm sorry but that type of engine has been around for 50 years..

          In any case I hope he succeeds, it sure looks like it would be fun to drive, or fly, or whatever..

      • Re:It's a Scam (Score:2, Interesting)

        by infowantsto ( 753660 )
        If you watch the 2003 video clips, you'll notice that while the aircar appears to have 'some' thrust, the tether reaching up to the crane not shown is taut the entire time, and the vehicle swings back and forth. It appears that they're getting the stabilization issue down, but have a bit of work to do on the thrust aspect of the project (still).

      • Re:It's a Scam - Is it really? (Score:4, Informative)

        by turgid ( 580780 ) on Saturday May 15, 2004 @04:01AM (#9160207) Journal
        Credible aerospace engineers say that, unless Moller's invented a radically new, ultra-compact engine, there's no way you can move enough air mass to actually lift the thing.

        It's called a Wankel engine [monito.com] and is conventiently ignored by the majority of engineers because they remember the engine sealing problems with the early NSU Ro80 in the late 60's that almost bankrupted them.

        Talk to most people about the Wankel engine and the chances are they've never heard of it. Many engineers laugh when you mention it, because they remember 1967 and haven't heard of all the developments since then. My old (1983) Mazda RX7 did 127000+ miles before the engine wore out.

        The spiffy model on the showroom floor is nothing more than a stage prop. It doesn't fly, it never did, and it probably never will.

        Unless the man is a bare-faced lier, you can find out all sorts of things about it at moller.com [moller.com].

        Need I remind you that VTOL aeroplanes [wikipedia.org] have been built before (albeit with jet engines).

    • I would drive this to my home aboard the Freedomship [freedomship.com]
    • Amazing! They're actually making progress! The test plan page lists them as actually doing tethered test flights -- something they've said they'll do "next year" for the past four years.

  • Brainball (Score:4, Funny)

    by jardin ( 778043 ) * on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:47PM (#9156533)
    "For fun and games, there's Brainball, which is best described as an anti- game, because the goal is to achieve nothing."

    Woohoo, I won I won! .. Ah screw it I'm going back to bed ..

  • ahah! (Score:2, Funny)

    by abscondment ( 672321 )
    Transparent cloaks? I knew Harry Potter was real.
    • I also thought this sounded waaay cool, so I quick-searched for Tachi Labs [u-tokyo.ac.jp] that is doing the research. Good links on that page to further info, images, videos. And such a cool reference 'section' (bottom of that page):

      "M. Shiro, Ghost in the Shell [aol.com], Kodansya, 1991" (link added by me)

      With earlier /. reports on the Nausicaa jet, the Akira bike, and now this Cloaking thing (ok, so it's not really matching Kusanagi & crew's wicked cloaking tech in GITS, but still...) ...I don't know what to make of it,

  • More info (Score:5, Informative)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:48PM (#9156556)
    A BBC Article [bbc.co.uk] on that invisibility cloak.

    Moller [moller.com] website.

    Links are good, people!

    • "The image from the camera is then projected onto the coat, so that the wearer appears virtually transparent when seen through a viewfinder"

      In other words, it looks invisible as long as the person stands where the image can be projected on them and they're viewed through a special viewfinder. Is anyone else underwhelmed by this?
    • Wasn't that shown to be a hoax, much like the supposed see-through skirts [snopes.com] in Japan?

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:49PM (#9156558)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • On the transparent cloak... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Conesus ( 148179 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:49PM (#9156560) Homepage
    That transparent cloak is not just for wearing!

    The inventor, Professor Susumu Tachi from Tokyo University, believes that it has practical applications that range from surgery, where the surgeon could be wearing this cloak on his hands to be able to 'see through them', to pilots who wish to be able to see the ground underneath the cockpit, for when they are landing.

    Really, the possibilities are endless. Military, Medical, Transportation, Commericial products.

    Hell, even the napkin holder could use this, so you can have a huge frivolous artsy napkin holder in the center of the table (or a center-piece, something along those lines), and be able to talk to the other person across the table as if nothing were there.

    Of course the technology has to improve until the applications become a reality, but just think what this could enable us to do!

    Conesus.
    • Does anyone know how this thing works???

      LS
      • Yeah. It's really just a screen with a camera on the back. You have an external projector in front of the object which projects the image onto the screen. What's special about it is the fact that, since the screen is made out of tiny beads, some of the light will get to a user no matter where they're standing. If it were just a normal screen, the light would get bounced in different directions depending on how the fabric is rippling.
    • to pilots who wish to be able to see the ground underneath the cockpit, for when they are landing.

      How would that work in this setup? Where would the projector go in the airplane? This "invention" isn't an invention. It just some trick photography. Why this stupid thing gets so much press is beyond me.

      And how would that be any better than a video screen showing what a small camera on the bottom of the plane is picking up? How are you going to project something onto the bottom of the cockpit? Where would t
    • I am concerned about prior art, maybe even industrial espionage. Has anyone contacted the company that made Wonder Woman's invisible jet to see if they have had anyone break into their network recently.

      All joking aside, did anyone else see this and have Ghost in the Shell flashbacks?

    • God damn it, where are the napkins? Someone turn off the freaking projector so I can get a napkin!
  • "GE Medical Systems will demonstrate a prototype medical technology designed to give surgeons access to patients' data while operating, without having to touch a computer or other object that would require them to re- sterilize their hands. The technology, being developed with Microsoft..." I don't think my insurance covers BSOD.

  • It looks cool, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CatLord42 ( 657659 ) <<moc.oohay> <ta> <24droltac>> on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:52PM (#9156593) Journal
    They're trying to make it a future-tech world's fair event, but looking at the event website, it looks more like demos and marketing. Although it does look really cool, it's not cool enough for me to pay to see their advertisements!

    Sorry, but I'm not paying $15/person/day (even if there's really only one day's worth of stuff according to the schedule), to see a bunch of companies throw their future-tech marketing at me. It doesn't seem that cool (and yes, I live in the area, so I could go, and I'm employed, so I could afford to go).

    But then, maybe I'm just in a bad mood.
    • 'Sorry, but I'm not paying $15/person/day (even if there's really only one day's worth of stuff according to the schedule), to see a bunch of companies throw their future-tech marketing at me."

      But it could be fun to go just to have them pitch their ideas and then poke very logical holes in them, and ask them very simple questions and watch them be completely unable to answer them.

  • It will be awful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tarantolato ( 760537 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @03:52PM (#9156602) Journal
    First of all, the site has a Flash intro that's more epilepsy-inducing than the latest Japanese cartoon craze.

    Second of all, it's sponsored by Wired. I remember picking up one of the early issues and there was all this stuff about VR. If this were the early 90's, VR would be all over NextFest or whatever it's called.

    Anyways, it sounded like a cool idea and all until the inventor dude talked about the actual applications. He had had a party the last night, and everyone had to pretend they were lobsters. They wore the low-res headsets and had to use the special gloves to make pincer movements with their hands.

    It was then that I concluded that VR wasn't what it promised to be. Also that Wired was basically a newer Omni, but without the virtue of being published by a pr0n baron.
    • Wired seemed to be kind of a trash magazine. I certainly haven't done ad counts and such, but it seems to have more ad pages per article page than any other magazine I've seen. The designers of the ads and the magazine as a whole seem to be of the school of thought that tacky == high tech & cool.

      I still remember an article that suggested that computer users should be willing to give up their right for computer DVD drives under the illusion that George Lucas would suddenly feel comfortable in releasin
  • So, I shouldn't bring my cube?
  • the implementation [moller.com] of the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) AND an operational virtual highway system to automate piloting the devices, will I be able to play Duke Nukem Forever with my skycar-mates while we're on our way to work? The four of us can surely put together the $995,000 ($100,000 down now) [moller.com] necessary for one of the first positions once they're ready.
  • Each day. Around the world. The future is born.

    While NextFest seems to showcase some cool stuff, it does not seem to highlight the innovative underpinnings to these gadgets, which are often created/discovered by individuals, independent groups and academics. The science behind the gadgetry (i.e. The Robotics Institute [cmu.edu]) is often more interesting, IMHO.

    While I know that's not the purpose of NextFest, it's just interesting to me to think that "the future is born" of smart individuals collaborating (obvio
  • would have been nice to get this a little earlier to take advantage of the free student passes that go down today. I have the day off too, i have to work all weekend.

  • Optical Camouflage (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shish ( 588640 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @04:01PM (#9156691) Homepage
    So. Fscking. Cool. [u-tokyo.ac.jp]

  • Ummm (Score:5, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @04:03PM (#9156713) Homepage Journal
    Other health-related technology on display will include an antibacterial powder developed at the University of Alberta that, when sprinkled on food, can block the harmful effects of bacteria.

    Like digestion for example???

    • Yeah. But it will also block the harmful effects of bacterias that cause indigestion, the opposite of digestion. This causes a logical paradox that makes the antibacterial powder cease to exist, so the real use of the powder is storage. You can now store infinite amounts of antibacterial powder on food.
  • That site has a terrible design. I couldn't find any "nano" technologies though. It seems like it should be there somewhere.

  • Brainball (Score:3, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @04:05PM (#9156748) Homepage Journal
    The object of the game is to move the ball into an opponent's goal area, but the more relaxed a player is, the more he or she controls the ball.

    The only game known to mankind that you play better after you die.

  • BlehFest (Score:4, Informative)

    by ddtstudio ( 61065 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @04:16PM (#9156846)
    Took a quick swing by Fort Mason (the location) and saw some vendor trucks, but also saw the floor space being curtained off -- not a good sign for attendance, either by exhibitors or by teh curious. Of course, this is sponsored by Wired, the magazine for people who think they're cool because they read Wired.

    Not bitter, just tired of it.
    • Wired, the magazine for people who think they're cool because they read Wired

      I subscribe to Wired, but rarely actually read it. I'm not sure if that makes me cool, dumb, or just broke.
    • I still check out wired once or twice a year, just to see if they've moved themselves to the "Tired" column.
  • [...] The technology, being developed with Microsoft, uses simple hand gestures and voice commands to allow a surgeon to select data displayed on a flat-panel monitor.

    Microsoft always make people to do hand gestures at it, even when that gestures are usually like raising a finger.

  • For fun and games, there's Brainball, which is best described as an anti- game, because the goal is to achieve nothing.

    So, has Brainball been "almost there" for over four years now? [slashdot.org]

  • It's meant to be "out there" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LeiGong ( 621856 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @04:29PM (#9156970) Homepage
    To all of the posters that are critisizing the expo as a vapor-fest, I say to you, why not let your imagination run wild? Decades ago we had Worlds Fair and the famous Futurama in New York. People were left in awe of possible future technologies that improve quality of life. People came back wide eyed and filled with imagination. The closest thing I experienced to something like this today was a showcase at Disney Expo 12 years ago when I was 10... It had on display futuristic cars and possible technologies that openned my youthful imagination. It made a big impact on me and got me interested in technology. I hear people complain about the lack of innovation today and I'm personally disappointed at the lack of creativity in a lot of industries. In the 40s and 50s people got to see glimpses of the future presented by GE and Ford where everything is automated. People were happy and it gave them something worthwhile to look forward to. It gave us faith in technology. We have nothing like this today. I for one welcome conventions that inspire us, especially at a time when the future looks so bleak. Sure, it's funded by big corporations but so were the World Fairs in the past and they turned out great!

    • Keep Time in Mind-The Future Sucks (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chagatai ( 524580 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @05:03PM (#9157291) Homepage
      While I agree with the parent poster's statement that seeing such stuff inspires the imagination, keep in mind the world in which Disney presented things.

      People who were living during the 1950s and 1960s saw advances that would have been considered acts of magic fifty years before; if someone from the 1890s or 1900s were transported into the 60s, they would have been totally caught off-guard. Vehicles that could allow you to travel on any road at 55 mph? Devices that allow you to see and hear images of people thousands of miles away? A large tower that could put someone on the moon? It would be a fantasy world.

      Now, take someone from the 1950s or 1960s and put them into the current 21st century. Imagine this conversation:

      "So, do you have your hovercar now?"
      No, but now we have cars that can run on electricity, some of the time!
      "Well, how about the Moon or Mars? Do you have friends who live on bases up there?"
      No, we went to the moon a few times with a couple dozen people, and that was it. We have had a couple of space stations, but only one is left because the others crashed after funding was cut.
      "What about diseases? Have you cured cancer?"
      No, we have had some progress, but there are some even worse diseases now.
      "Is there any new technology that is actually good, then?! Jetpacks? Super-buildings? Contact with aliens?"
      Well, we did shrink the size of computers and made them hundreds of times faster, and anyone can communicate with anyone else in the world real-time. We can store large quantities of data on small disks. Here, check this out...
      (The computer accidentally gets rerouted to Goatse.)
      "AAUAAUAGGHHH! My word, what is wrong with that man's bottom?"

      Face it, the future largely sucks. I want my hovcercraft.

  • From caption of image with guy kneeling (emphasis is mine):

    "Tom Ryden of iRobot with a emote-controlled PackBot being used in Iraq..."

    I suspect this is so that it can be easily controlled through AIM over a cell phone.

  • Not Moller again.

    I have a copy of Moller's 1974 brochure, Yes, 1974. Back then, he was going to have a test flight Real Soon Now, and commercial sales were a year or two away. Thirty years later, he's going to have a test flight Real Soon Now, and commercial sales are a year or two away.

    There's no reason this can't be done. After all, the Hiller Flying Platform [hiller.org] did it fifty years ago. But Moller has no credibility left.

  • What is this, bash Moller day? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gldm ( 600518 ) on Saturday May 15, 2004 @01:02AM (#9159738)
    Yeah ok Moller has been promising the moon for ages and hasn't delivered yet. But at least he's Doing Something (TM). You can see prototypes, I've seen the video of the tethered flight. How many of you people bitching about his lack of progress have a flying car doing test flights in your back yard? Anyone? Until someone else shows me at least the same amount of progress he has you can shut up.

    As for the transparent cloak... it's spiffy yes. All you need is a visible camera behind you and a visible projector in front of you and you can be invisible to people who can't spot cameras or projectors and come at you from one direction. Yay.

    You know what I want to see? I want to see a PDA that doesn't suck i.e. lack a HD, or wireles connection, or ability to run mainstream software. I want to see an OS that can be both stable and play the latest games without screwing around with drivers and compiling shit all day or getting "Well it plays MOST games under emulation, except the ones YOU want." I want to see a broadband connection at a reasonable price that doesn't have shitty upstream or fulltime forced NAT or get capped as soon as you actually use the damn thing. Why doesn't anyone invent any of that stuff?

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