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Yes, even the discovery of an algorithm doesn't imply that it has an easy implementation. But I know of no realistic polytime examples where the provably best worst-case running time is worse than cubic, or where the algorithm commonly used is dramatically worse in practice than the best algorithm because no one can implement the good one.

The obvious example is LP, where everyone used Simplex for a long time because Kachian's method is such a pain to implement and has lousy constants. However, Simplex was used precisely because its expected running time in practice is small, whereas in practice naive Kachian's tends to achieve its worst-case bound. When improvements on Kachian's method made it more efficient for very large problems, a lot of folks implemented it and switched. You'll see both kinds out there now.

You can implement priority queues in a fairly complicated way to get insertion to be O(1): this constitutes a fairly dramatic improvement over O(log n) to some ways of thinking :-). When I ran into a situation where it mattered, I spent a long time doing this. You do what you've got to do.

Of course, you might correctly point out that the proof that P=NP might be non-constructive, in the sense that it might not come with an algorithm. But wait... Of course, this still doesn't give you a feasible answer.

Funny world.

More technical info here... http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/Candidates/SHGb 02+14a/SHGb02+14a.html

Named SHGb02+14a, the possible alien communication has a frequency of about 1420 megahertz - one of the main frequencies at which hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, readily absorbs and emits energy.

If the signal was some multiple of a prominent hydrogen line, I'd be more inclined to think it's ET. The hydrogen line would be a universally understood reference frequency, and a frequency that is a multiple of that frequency by a factor of 2, 3 or pi would be a frequency that wouldn't have a lot of naturally occurring interference. When the signal is the prominent hydrogen emission line, it seems a lot more likely that this is a previously unknown natural phenomenon. Some hydrogen out there is being excited by some form of naturally occurring energy. That's still not a bad discovery, and is a good example of the surrendipity that's always been at work in science, and it shows that SETI is doing *real* science, despite what SETI's detractors might argue.

The unexplained signal appears to be emanating from a point between the constellations of Pisces and Aries, where there is no obvious star or planetary system within 1,000 light years, and the transmission is also very faint.

That seems a bit suspicious too. It would require an enormous amount of power to broadcast a signal we could detect over that large distance. Wishing doesn't make these things true, but I'd certainly prefer a signal from a closer neighbor, so we could have a meaningful conversation.

So far, the telescope has managed to pick up the signal for only about a minute in total, which is not sufficient for astronomers to analyse it fully.

That's the problem with a fixed dish. It points where it points, and it moves as the Earth rotates. SETI gets "leftover" time on Arecibo, making it difficult to do the research they'd like to do. That should change soon when SETI has access to their new large array of dishes forming an interferometer that they can point where they want, and dwell on an area for a much longer period of time. Paul Allen may have been instrumental in creating the evil Microsoft empire (see how I worked in the mandatory /. anti-MS bias?), but he's provided adequate contrition for that sin by funding Scaled Composite's X-Prize hardware and the SETI interferometer. What a dude.

Other questions arise over the signal's frequency, which oscillates by between eight and 37 hertz a second. Paul Horowitz, a Harvard University astronomer who looks for alien signals using optical telescopes, believes that the drift in the signal makes it "fishy".

OK. He's an optical guy. But he's never heard of Frequency Modulation (FM radio)?

Assuming it's a natural phenomenon, this might be Doppler shift? I don't know how quickly the frequency drifts, but large planets have been observed close to stars with orbital periods of a couple of days. With weird objects like black holes and neutron stars, which definitely have the power to produce signals we could detect from that far away, who knows what type of weird celestial mechanics might be involved?

This unexplained phenomenon has now attracted the attention of radio astronomers. It'll get the instrument time required to collect a lot more data, and we'll probably learn what's causing this signal fairly soon. Man, ya' gotta' love science.

Thanks Messrs magenbrot and jafiwam! [mod them up plz!!]

BTW #1, why do I want to subscribe to Slashdot (grin)??? This SETI potential-find was first posted on Matt Drudge's website very early this morning with a link to the NewScientist article that was "Drudged" vice Slashdotted almost immediately.

BTW #2, there are actually a bunch of candidate signals

--
I believe the SwiftVets and also ...

BTW #1, why do I want to subscribe to Slashdot (grin)??? This SETI potential-find was first posted on Matt Drudge's website very early this morning with a link to the NewScientist article that was "Drudged" vice Slashdotted almost immediately.

BTW #2, there are actually a bunch of candidate signals

--
I believe the SwiftVets and also ...

Someone else posted this: Signal Candidate SHGb02+14a

Yes... and there is also a seti@home page for the signal candidate.

You wish to test the hypothesis that blue stars are rich in helium. You take a sample of 10000 stars chosen at random and throw out all the non-blue ones, giving you 1000 blue stars. You take another sample of 10000 stars chosen at random in the same way as the first - they are the control group. You measure the helium abundances by observing the spectra of both groups of stars using identical procedures.

Congratulations, you have carried out a controlled experiment in astronomy.

Is there anything experimental in this? Randomization alone doesn't make an experiment, and
the study you describe seems exactly analogous to observational studies in the social sciences.

You wish to test the hypothesis that white Americans have received more formal education than
Americans in general. You take a random sample of Americans and calculate the mean level of
education of the whites. You take a second random sample and calculate overall mean
education of that second sample. You test for significant differences between your two means,
e.g., with a t-test.

Congratulations: you have an observational study. It's hardly an experiment: you've
manipulated nothing and controlled nothing. It may have descriptive validity -- it may let you
know that whites are better-educated -- but there's no manipulation here, and the study isn't
much use if you want to make causal claims about education levels.

You take another sample of 10000 stars chosen at random in the same way as the first -- they are the control group.

In what sense is this a control group? Nothing is manipulated in this study -- there is no
difference between your "control" and "treatment" samples, certainly none that you impose.
This doesn't even qualify as a "natural experiment."

--John

Heh, you are absolutely correct about framing in regards to a crime :) I should have used quotes or something... I've been thinking about the issue after reading an article on the topic of how political language frames issues. (Because of that, I should have been even more careful about the use of "framing"!!).

Mobilization for its own sake can be good sometimes, even if only to maintain the morale of the protesters. Kinberg's arrest changes the situation: where there wasn't any dilemma for the powers-that-be, they can now be created. I wonder how long he is kept in custody, and what people on the ground will do to increase the pressure. I'll be watching news closely! :)

I can think of two.

Fire has never caused a steel structure to spontainously collapse before this.

A couple did a few hours before.

And in 1923 in Tokyo, leading to Raymond Moss predicting that "steel structures would no longer be built following the 1923 disaster. This was quite a remarkable statement, considering that he was then the vice-president of a steel company. He noted that, while many steel buildings survived the earthquake intact, they were so damaged by the subsequent fire that they had to be razed."

Also more recently in Kobe on January 17th 1995, when the post earthquake fires caused steel buildings to collapse oddly: "Office blocks built in the 1960's of steel and concrete frequently collapsed in the middle so that a whole floor was crushed but the rooms above and below remained intact". Sound like something that would resemble WTC 7?

A shock to the structure followed by unrestrained fire seems to make steel buildings collapse nicely.

Look, I understand that it is more fun to think that everything has great machinations behind them. Fiction is full of great conspiracies and world (or even galaxy) wide cabals that secretly run everything. It is easy to see faces on Mars and shadow people behind the scenes, but it is also easy to ascribe the sun to a chariot of flaming horses driven by gods through the sky. I have friends who work in Congress. The congress-critters have enough problems trying to figure out how to do their jobs without adding sinister plots. Hell, Nixon tried to be sneaky by taping conversations, and not only was that found out, disclosed, led to a resignation, but now the equipment is in a museum.

Or, applying common sense - if politicians were doing all this secret stuff, don't you think they would use their skills at secrets and coverups to hide all the sex scandals with young interns and male employees?

--
Evan

Don't laugh -- some Berkeley researchers were claiming that last year. This is a potentially interesting line of study in psychology but it's handled by people with such outrageous bias (and worse, complete obliviousness to their biases) that almost everything they generate is garbage.

...and gCount too.

Both GmailStatus and GCount use the in-development Mac OS X Growl framework for cute little pop-up notifiers.

If you (understandably) don't want to compile Growl, here's a compiled version.

~jeff

A smart spammer would set the nice priority low, then the user would never notice unless he checked his background tasks. I always run Seti@Home http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.html (CLI version, not the famous screensaver) in the background and it doesn't slow me down a bit.

Someone even wrote a virus that would install Seti@Home on zombie computers that would run the CLI version in the background and upload workunits to be credited to whoever the hijacker designated. If the zombie owner never checked his background tasks, he probably just thought his ISP was slow, especially since seti runs with a low nice priority.

The first hacker to release a virus to run the POW generator in the background is going to get rich, but then the zombies will start dying in droves as the imitators join the fun.

I think that if Google's leadership were to try such a thing, they'd be more interested in positioning Google to create an entirely Web-based desktop that is platform agnostic, than a traditional OS.

During the dotcom era, there was a company out of Maryland (sorry, can't remember the name...WorldOS, maybe?) trying to do this very thing. And there was the Network of Workstations project, that was started at UC-Berkeley (1996 to 1998).

Why would Google write an OS specific to any one hardware architecture, when, as we all know, "The network is the computer"?

I know you're joking with POWer@home but does anyone know if BOINC has already been used by spammers or crackers to write tools?

Not sure, but here's a reference and here's some more information from the same source that looks to be useful.

This column from 2000 contains further information but I'm not sure how accurate it is in more recent, more tightened-bodice security years.

Not sure, but here's a reference and here's some more information from the same source that looks to be useful.

This column from 2000 contains further information but I'm not sure how accurate it is in more recent, more tightened-bodice security years.

In a similar exercise, a pair of business professors have predicteding the final Olympic medal count using socio-economic data rather than athletic performance. Andrew Bernard and Meghan Busse developed their methodology using four factors: population, per capita income, past performance, and a host effect.
They were 96% accurate in their predictions for the 2000 Games, including correctly guessing 97 total and 37 gold medals for the USA. Also discussed is why some countries, such as Australia, surpass expectations while others, particularly Canada and Japan, underperform relative to countries with similar populations/national income.
This year's predicted winners? The USA (93), Russia (83) and China (57). The full paper was published in the Feb 2004 Review of Economics and Statistics - summary here.

the human eye only has receptors for R, G, and B

Mantis shrimp have at least eleven different receptors, and lots of birds and fish have four or five. So I guess it's the logical direction to go once the human market for RGB monitors reaches saturation.

The French and Germans have loads of holidays compared to North Americans, and yet their productivity per capita is actually higher than in the USA.

No. Productivity per capita is actually just 72%.

Now, productivity per hour worked IS greater than that of the USA, but this actually makes sense when you consider the extent of the welfare state in Europe. Fewer workers supporting many people MUST produce more just so they have enough left for themselves after pulling the load of everyone else.

"thru" is a word http://www.onelook.com/?w=thru invented by the author of the Dewey decimal system.

http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/sfsla/bulletin/sepoct 00/history.html

The whitepaper says basically nothing. No real details of the system other than glib comments such as "designed to scale linearly" and their assumption that a 900TB centralized store will suffice. These people have some figures that say otherwise. Then throw in the indexing required to be able to find the data and things get nastier. The Bitmunk people probably know this and are making the usual big claims in a hope to get funding so they can really solve the problem but I wonder (I know something about the problem :). There's also no mention of storage technologies and how they think they'll provide reliability and availability. We'll wait and see I guess.

Dilbert

There is something sort of like this online now called the eigentaste algorithm which supports the Jester joke recommender.

A long discussion of many of the points raised in this thread can be found here.

At Purdue, there have been many people that don't understand what they get into. Each semister, you notice someone else drops out of the program.

This is exactly what I discovered this year: we were supposed to learn algorithms, C++ and Lisp, and we even had to write our own CPU with diglog, but more than half of the students could not (and didn't wanted to) understand why pritnf("%d") was not working. They lacked the basic skills you were expected to have learned, I even doubt they knew what a computer was.

Did they wanted to make cash out of their degree? Well, I doubt it considering most of them really thought they were supposed to learn how to move a mouse or write figures on a spread-sheet.

To follow up on what you wrote above, the entire administration of the journal is nearly free. The only place money goes is the salary of one secretary for the journal's managing editor and mailing costs for those journals that actually still mail out hardcopies to reviewers. The journal editor rarely gets any money from the journal, and the referees never do as far as I can tell. In principle, the only legitimate reason for high subscription prices is small circulation.

Looking at actual subscription prices, journals published by research societies (like the American Mathematical Society, Documenta Mathematica), university consortia (Pacific Journal of Mathematics, Annals of Math), etc. (Mathematical Research Letters), are much cheaper than those published by commercial publishers like Elsevier and Springer (Inventiones Mathematicae). The journals seem to be run the same way, so traditional publishers must be skimming profits.

You can find data and the prices of math journal subscriptions at Rob Kirby at UC Berkeley and Ulf Rehmann at Bielefeld and John Baez at UC Riverside

From the Article:
The uniform from the waist down will have a robotic-powered system that is connected directly to the soldier. This system could use pistons to actually replicate the lower body, giving the soldier "upwards of about 300 percent greater lifting and load-carriage capability," DeGay said. "We are looking at potentially mounting a weapon directly to the uniform system and now the soldier becomes a walking gun platform."

I suspect that they may be calling on Berkeley for their Bleex project on this one. The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton exists now, and I'd imagine with 10 or 15 years to work on it they could easily meet the 300% lifting and load carrying requirements. Of course the Japanese have envisioned soldiers as walking gun platforms for years. I wonder how long it'll be before we see Mecha Warriors in real life...

There are a lot of people who would argue otherwise.

The truth is, mayors and governors win and lose elections based on whether they're able to bring in and/or retain a NFL/MLB/NBA franchise. The economic argument is nothing but a smokescreen of legitimacy over the whole stinking process.

Ka-Ping Yee from Berkeley write some papers about Secure Interaction Design. Worth reading, especially for UI/Security developers.

From the page:
"Criticizing bad user interfaces is easy. Designing good ones is tough. The paper tries to give some new ideas on how to think about secure interaction design and some positive design suggestions, not just criticism."

http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~ping/sid/

The "Planetron" New York to Los Angeles subway system shown on the site reminded me of an old science fiction story that featured an even more fanciful long-distance subway system. In the story the tunnels were straight lines through the Earth's molten magma layer, held open by force fields. The cars needed no power, they used gravity to accelerate downhill to the halfway point and decelerate up to the destination. I wish I could remember more about this story. Does it ring any bells?

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

There are loads and loads of pictures - all worth looking at, but I thought I'd give my favourites (with best at top). If you like, go from the last pic (no. 12) to the first for a buildup:

1: Tomorrow's railroads in the sky -
My favourite - this one's just bizarre. A flying bullet rollercoaster. 'nuff said.

2: The traffic light parade -
The funniest. A perfect candidate for the old "False or True" TV show.

3: The TransDrive system - So that's what cars were designed for... A great way to travel I'm sure you'll agree!

4: Flying saucer bus -
Great artwork and design this - look at the transparent rim! I would love to travel on this thing.

5: The Interregional Highway System -
Archaically massive, and dream-like. Think 'metal slug' (the Neo-Geo game).

6: Interior design for Lake Meritt BART -
I just like the unusual architecture of the surroundings in this one more than anything else - the way it's multi-tiered and stuff.

7: The Freedomship -
One day, we'll all live on massive ships like this!

8: A horseless sulky -
Haha. Something right out of the wacky races. I like the way it can go at 116mph :)

9: Here's your helicopter coupe -
There's something you don't see everyday.

10: Louis Brennan's mono-rail car -
Pure Metal Slug again. Elaborate, clunky and above all - some big machinery.

11: Here comes the flying bus -
Nice chopper.

12: Automotive engineers forsee radical changes -
Okay, this one comes straight from the wacky races. Dick Dastardly's car no less.

I laughed when I saw the 730-passenger Airbus concept. I laughed even harder when I saw that it was made in March of 2004.

(This little bit irritated me though:

Pilot applications of a full-scale version of this driverless taxi system are soon to begin in the Soutwest of England. According to a May 6, 2004 press release by the SWRDA, "Prototype tests of ULTra have already been completed on a 1km track in Cardiff.

I don't know what the latest is on that but Cardiff Council got into a lot of bother for gambling with taxpayers' money on such a futuristic system. I say good luck to them, it's worth a try.

Retro-future isn't what it used to be.

Very interesting stuff...

Would any of you nice folks out there post a message for me to a listserver forum that some participants got the moderator to kick me out because they did not agree with my contrarian point of view?...

I have been kicked out of a number of listserver forums, for example
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/publib
and
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html