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Similar research was already conducted in 1999 by Larry Hodges.
Here's an overview. And for a relaxed Sunday afternoon read: check out the related research paper (PDF).

I saw Larry and fellow Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy researchers at a talk in 2000. Larry showed a video of a Vietnam Vet suffering from PTSD who was exposed to a virtual Vietnam war scenario. Within a short time the Vet totally forgot that he was in a simulation and started to yell out to his virtual comrades, trying to warn them of an imminent attack. Watching this video was both fascinating and appalling at the same time. On the one hand I was proud to see how far VR research has come. On the other hand I realized how horrible the Nam war experience must really have been for the Vet.

Neglecting uranium mining, etc., the footprint that a reactor requires can be quite small. We used to have one on the Georgia Tech campus. At the time, the campus itself wasn't even 7 square miles. (They've made a lot of additions recently, but they're probably still not even close to 7 square miles.)

In a question and answer session, Toffler addressed the crises in education. "What is the model: school systems should follow?

"The easy thing is to say what not to do," he answered. "We did that in Future Shock. We said that basically what we have is schools that operate like a factory. They take kids, measure them going in, subject them to routine processing. You ask the kids to go through rote and repetitive work, like they would do in a factory. And you measure them coming out and dump them into the economy. That made perfectly good sense during the industrial age. But now we're preparing kids to be good factory workers in an economy that is not going to have any factory jobs."

The school system simulated a future in which those students were going to participate. "We are, by continuing this system, simulating a future they will not have. We are preparing them to be good factory workers for an economy that is not going to have any factory jobs. We are cheating them. We're spending a quarter-to-half-a-trillion dollars to do it."

The root of the problem is that it cannot be solved in the classroom, Toffler says. "Kids do not learn in school alone. They learn from the street; they learn from television; they learn from other students; they learn from computers; they learn from all kinds of places, not just the classrooms."

[Emphasis mine]

Source

Too bad nothing ever became of it commercially. Maybe you could license the patents and charge a few k for one... big advantage would be being able to run it off an open fire or concentrated sunlight instead of just electricty.

It's cases like this where I go back and rethink capitalism vs. communism vs. etc. Take Kary Mullis as another example (already mentioned in comments). His polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was patented by his employer, Cetus, who gave him a $10,000 bonus and then sold the IP for $300 million. His salary & bonus are a pittance for PCR.

Makes me wonder if this is the type of stuff Marxists think will bring about communism...and how long capitalism can survive when the creator of extremely meaningful creations gets 0.00333% of the profits.

As usual, the New York Times errs in claiming that US industry is markedly better than Japanese industry. US industry has a bad habit of treating outstanding contributors rather poorely. Look at what they did to Kary Mullis creator of the most valuable patent of the 20th century. Japan has had some problems here-but at least their businesses try seriously to provide for all their employees--and Japanese upper managers rarely get the extremely high salaries common in the US. In the US, even extremely productive contributors can easily find themselves homeless in their old age-and US management is so dominated by MBA's and lawyers that management has real trouble figuring out who the real contributors are in highly technical businesses. I think this case is important because it shows Japan is moving in a positive direction-basically containing their executive compensation and providing some additional options for their star engineers to gain early retirement/recognition.

If you Google "Ditto Chaos Computer", you find (among others) this link.

Apparently, Dr. Ditto is something of an expert in chaos theory, and has/is applying it to more that the field of computing.

BTW, how come no knee-jerk commentary from the peanut gallery on how Dr Ditto is "outsourcing" to India? Or did the reference to his collaborator from Chennai, Sudeshna Sinha, completely escape everyone.

---anactofgod---

Einstein fridge

quick quote: It's basically an absorption-type refrigerator that uses ammonia, water and butane to create a chemical phenomenon that allows you to run the whole thing at a constant pressure, so you don't need moving parts like a pump or a compressor

Apple is Steve's persona.... and it tends to be a lot of controlled show... once you talk with people who have worked with companies that deal with apple you start to see a not soo nice picture of what the company really is...

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide,methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."