Links for 30-11-2006
Flooded London’s future, broken e-voting machines for sale, another holographic display prototype, scientists levitate small creatures with sound…
-
“Short of capping the Highlands in new glaciers of lead, or attaching gigantic hot air balloons to the spires of churches to pull the city skyward, London will eventually flood: its undersea fate is geologically inevitable.”
-
“…the 2007 Digital Future Project found that 43 percent of Internet users who are members of online communities say that they “feel as strongly” about their virtual community as they do about their real-world communities.”
-
“Sarasota County needs to talk trade-in because they are marketable machines. Just because there is some controversy over the touch-screen machines here, doesn’t mean places like Georgia, Alabama, Washington, D.C., or Michigan won’t want them.”
-
“…the Heliodisplay creates a particle cloud by passing the surrounding air through a heat pump, which in turn cools the air to a level below its dew point, where it condensates, and is then collected to create an artificial cloud.”
-
“The procedures were performed using DaVinci, a four-armed robot controlled by the surgeon via a joystick. DaVinci can provide better camera views and more precise surgical manipulations than are available in traditional laparoscopic surgeries.”
-
“…the problem is that this assumes bloggers are all just like journalists and that they’d all agree to some code — which is ridiculous. It would be like requiring everyone who uses paper to follow a specific code for what can be written on paper.”
-
“…a key factor in the Drake Equation [...] is the question of whether technological societies have an average lifetime. Do they invariably survive to reach the stars, or do they destroy themselves before this is possible?”
-
“…the day in history that the 800 pound gorilla of the CAD market brings its resources and user base to bear in its latest return to cyberspace, a term that reportedly it once attempted to trademark as its own.”
-
9 – Preacher To HBO?“HBO is developing a one-hour series based on the popular 1990s Vertigo comic series Preacher, according to The Hollywood Reporter.” Whoa; if Ennis is on the production team, that could be pretty awesome. Via Warren Ellis.
-
10 – The Transparent Man“In 2002, New Jersey-based artist Hassan Elahi got off a flight from Senegal to find immigration officials waiting…” If privacy is suspicious, why not go entirely the other way?
-
“Marine researchers at Southampton and Plymouth universities have found that the upper 1,500 metres of the ocean from western Europe to the eastern US have warmed by 0.015C in seven years.”
-
“Once in place, a system of cycling spacecraft, with its dependable schedule and low sustaining cost, would open the door for routine travel to Mars and a permanent human presence on the red planet.” Not as crazy as it initially sounds.
-
“…at least one Second Life virtual recreation of the New York City NBC headquarters is located next to a Gorean role play neighborhood – where the belief is that women are inferior to men and can only be happy as sex slaves.”
-
“The scientists found they could float ants, beetles, spiders, ladybugs, bees, tadpoles and fish up to a little more than a third of an inch long in midair…” I can’t think of a killer app … restaurant displays, maybe?
-
15 – Autonomy in the UK“Qinetiq has successfully completed the world’s first flight demonstration of a system capable of controlling and autonomously organising multiple unmanned aircraft.” Who needs pilots, anyway?
-
“On the Internet, not only does everybody know that you’re a dog. Everybody knows what kind of dog, how old, your taste in collars, your favorite dog food recipe, and so on.” Anonymity out, public living in. Go figure!
Tags: links
