This is an awesome article. I found the link from the Semantic Web group on LinkedIn. I haven’t spot-checked it for accuracy, but there’s a fair amount of dispute over the history of computers and the Internet anyway. But this article is very enjoyable, and includes many related historical points, like when certain companies formed, and the history of tangential technologies that made the Internet possible. It’s a good read for geeks, and a great primer for geeks-in-training.
No, alcohol isn’t involved this time. These are military robots. Lots of ‘em. All different kinds. According to this article on Network World, the Marines are looking for, among other things, robots that weigh 10 pounds or less and can be litterally tossed into battle for reconnaissance or other support operations. They’re looking to other types of robots (some of which already exist as prototypes) to carry gear, assist with communications, and actually fight.
Read on…
Why is it that answering machines, no matter how fancy, don’t have a feature to mark a message as unread? I mean, most households have more than one person in them, and the odds are good if a message is for one person, another person in the house might play the message. Being human, odds are good they will forget to tell the intended recipient there is a message for them. And if one of the cats answers the phone, well they don’t care about anyone but themselves anyway (except at mealtime).
Almost all answering machines are digital these days, so there’s no technological reason. There isn’t even extra information to store. All it has to do is not clear the NewMessage bit if the listener presses that button. What do you think? Will you invest in my company? Or should I just sell the idea to VTech or Panasonic then move to Bermuda with the million dollars?
P.S. Just to make it clear to those who will read this and be tempted to rob my house, my next million dollars will be my first million dollars.
From Slashdot: Sticky Tape Found To Emit Terahertz Radiation. Reading through the comments, this is more of an interesting curiosity than a practical discovery, but I find the explanation fascinating. Terahertz-range radiation can be used for imaging, like C-rays. Denser objects absorb more of the energy, so looking at the “shadow” from the other side of the object can show hidden weapons, etc. Unlike C-rays, though, terahertz-range radiation does not harm the body.
Read on…
From Wired: 100 Essential Skills for Geeks.
I found this list fun, but a lot of the skills on their list are either too esoteric for even a mid-level geek (lock picking, bypassing passwords), or to specific to be be general geek knowledge (steganographics, robotics). But it is fun.
I’ll update this post tonight with my score. I welcome comments with yours.
From Slashdot: Chicken Feathers May Hold Key To Hydrogen Storage. While what they say is plausible (in the MythBusters sense of the word), the original article is from Oregon Live.com, a source I know nothing about.A practical hydrogen car has been elusive for decades. Before the announcement this week by University of Delaware engineers, a nonstop trip from Portland to Eugene in a hydrogen car would need a tank bigger than 100 gallons to store liquid or gaseous fuel, even under high pressure.
Treated chicken feathers work like a sponge. They soak up large amounts of hydrogen and hold it in a small space so the tank can be a conventional size and the fuel won’t need to held under dangerously high pressures….
“It’s the most energy-rich material we have,” says Roger Ely, an Oregon State University professor who specializes in hydrogen, “It’s three times the energy content of gasoline on a pound-for-pound basis.”
This is not a new issue, but I just found out about it from this article on TechRepublic.com (yes, their URL is technrepublic.com.com). They state that Firewire (IEEE 1394), unlike USB, was designed more as an external system bus connection, not just for external storage. That allows Firewire devices to sneak in under the covers and do pretty much whatever they want, waving the “I’m with the band!” badge at any secuirty, including logging into the system.
Since this is part of the design of Firewire, it’s not a bug that can be fixed. You cannot protect against security breach by firewire device and still adhere to the standard. This isn’t to say it’s time to weld a metal plate over your laptop’s Firewire port and a tin foil hat on your head, because this isn’t something that you hear about happening in the wild, even though there’s a program out there to do it.
The Robot Hall Of Fame is a Carnegie Mellon University project.
The School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University established the Robot Hall of Fame to honor landmark achievements in robotics technology and the increasing contributions of robots to human endeavors. Two categories of robots are honored in the Robot Hall of Fame: Robots from Science and Robots from Science Fiction
They are currently accepting nominations for new inductee robots. At the head of the pack right now is my personal favorite, Bender Bending Rodriguez from Futurama (yes, I voted for him. Bite my shiny mettal a**.) However, I found this entry quite intriguing. This is an actual mechanical robot automaton from the 18th century that looks like a man, but can draw several complicated drawings and reproduce a few poems. All mechanically. Fascinating! The website at The Franklin Institute has videos of it working and its output, as well as its complex history.
Driving to work today, I passed this one-floor house that was pretty wide. I saw an ethernet cable running out the window at the end of one side of the house, tacked along the wall, going up over the front door, then all the way into a window on the other end of the house.
I needed the chuckle. I’ll try to get a picture.
Anyone who follows long-term technology progress will tell you that one of the biggest obstacles is power generation and storage. It affects everything from medical devices, to cars, to embedded hardware to space exploration. Generating electricity is often very inefficient, transmitting power over long distances is often very lossy (and that includes light and heat, as well as electricity). For vehicles, the problem is exponential, as the heavier your power store, the more power it takes to move it.
I was pleased to discover this post on Slashdot saying part of the stimulus money is going to this issue.
“Provisions in the Congressional stimulus bill could help jump-start a new, multibillion-dollar industry in the US for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrids and electric vehicles and for storing energy from the electrical grid to enable the widespread use of renewable energy. The nearly $790 billion economic stimulus legislation contains tens of billions of dollars in loans, grants, and tax incentives for advanced battery research and manufacturing, as well as incentives for plug-in hybrids and improvements to the electrical grid, which could help create a market for these batteries. Significant advances in battery materials, including the development of new lithium-ion batteries, have been made in the US in the past few years; but advanced battery manufacturing is almost entirely overseas, particularly in Asia.”
While I’m excited about this from a technology point of view, I fear it won’t do what the stimulus money’s primary job is; getting money and products happening now.