Science Fact From Fiction

Embedded Geek writes "The European Space Agency maintains an ongoing project called Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications (ITSF) (Cliquetez ici pour la version française). Its goal is "to review past and present SF literature, artwork and films in order to identify and assess innovative technologies and concepts described which could be possibly developed further for space applications." While I had known about Clarke first envisioning the geostationary satellite, the site also lists some other interesting ideas first pitched in SF: planetary landers, rocket fins, and space stations assembled in orbit. Visitors to the site are encouraged to submit technologies from SF works, although they should look at the master keyword list to avoid duplication first. Also of interest is a spiffy little brochure and a writing contest. Even if it never results in any new technology actually being developed, the site is a nice resource for science educators and science fiction fans."

Comments

Nasa

[D4Vr4nt]

I wonder if Nasa's budget getting larger is part of the science-fiction to be tracked and logged. heh.

Are we ever gonna get to Mars or what? I remember reading back in "Science et Vie" about populating and building an atmosphere by 2020 or something silly. Seemed believable then..

Re:Nasa

[bobs your uncle]

I sincerely think all NASA has been about the past at least 10 years, is going to Mars. Think about it. Sending probes up there on an almost daily (well, not exactly) basis, keeping austronauts in space for longer and longer durations (figuring out if the human psyke can handle the long journey), physical studies etc etc, the list goes on. So, OF COURSE WE ARE GOING, heh. Why? Like all space endeavours, cause we CAN! :)

"Drinks 1500 rps, Hotel room 300rps, a condom 10rps, an erection - priceless! There are certain things mony can't buy. For everything else, there is Mastercard"

new innovations from space movies!

[ohzero]

Does this mean that we could finally end up with a guy named dark helmet flying commuter routes to Duran Duran? "Today's inflight meal provided by Pizza the Hut"

Re:new innovations from space movies!

[Anonymous Coward]

only one man would dare give me the raspberry...

Spaceballs

[craigtay]

Remember the giant maid in spaceballs? That could be reality in a few years.

What about other fields?

[GothChip]

This is a great idea. I always thought that other fields should pay more attention to turning science fiction ideas into reality.

The two inventions I'm looking forward to are credsticks to replace cash (like in Shadowrun) and reactalight contact lenses to reduce glare from the sun.

Re:What about other fields?

[IncarnationTwo]

Credit cards.
Cash (debit?) cards.

Both of these are widely aivailable in europe, though it is fairly hard to pay with EC("electronic cash"), as not so many shops have needed readers for EC cards.

Why is that?
Because there is no market for "credstics" or EC
in consumer markets. People like to see how much money they have.

Maybe when you can get visa electron 2.0 that has lcd-on-creditcard that shows your current balance... or maybe not even then.

And you should remember that whern you use EC, all you transactions are _tracable_.

And what about Scifi view of EC-on-skin... I find that a horrible idea. An electronic tracing instrument planted on your skin.

Re:What about other fields?

[Starman9x]

The two inventions I'm looking forward to are credsticks to replace cash

correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we call them credit cards nowadays? [and with the concept of debit cards, the link to "the cash you have on hand" is that much closer]

Personally, I would like to see the seldom talked about "concept" of a complete lack of currency [this is alluded to at times on startrek, and see the book I mentioned later for a more in-depth discussion of just what would happen if the need for "currency" actually disappeared "overnight"]

Re:What about other fields?

[Chep]

Well, here (in France) people routinely use their CB/Visa cards (it's mostly direct or monthly debit, though credit cards proper are also widely available. People call both kinds "cartes de crédit" anyway). It's simple, safe, "secure" (well, there is an encryption chip which more or less works; I need to rely on magstrip+signature+insurance scheme only abroad), and just everyone uses it. It costs ~30 a year, and then there is zero transaction cost, Euroland-wide (some banks only recently and very cautiously started to charge 1/withdrawal done outside of their ATM network if this happens more than a half dozen times a month, but that's pretty much all you have to pay besides foreign exchange rates).

In Belgium (and the Netherlands IIRC), they have Proton cards (in addition to Visa || EC), which claim to be equivalent to pocket change cash (if they don't do like the French supposedly equivalent scheme, Moneo, this is both electronic and privacy preserving. Moneo is expensive and 1984ish as hell). It seems to be very hot there.

Don't assume that just because some elderly people in the Bayern area of Germany are still using cash even for large (10K+ reportedly) transactions that the whole of Europe is arrierated(sp).

Re:What about other fields?

[AGMW]

Rather than Debit Cards (automatically debiting your current account) I'd prefer Cash Cards (such as Mondex) where the card is the equivalent of cash.

It should be non-traceable, and I don't think Mondex is non-traceable, such that if you lose your card and someone picks it up, it's like they found cash, and they can use it.

This way, you don't have to worry about all the security stuff everyone gets so uptight about. You load your card (or cards) with cash at a cash point, just like you currently stuff the notes into your wallet!

Transfer from Card to Card using some little do-hicky, or simply give someone the whole Card (Christmas/Birthday Cards!).

Re:What about other fields?

[sql*kitten]

Why is that? Because there is no market for "credstics" or EC in consumer markets. People like to see how much money they have.

IBM trialled something like this a few years ago (in Swindon I believe, but I could be mistaken). You had a card, which you would "charge up" with credit, which would be transferred from your account to the card. The basic problems were

• If you have to charge up the card anyway, why not just stop at an ATM and withdraw cash?
  
• If the value is on the card and you lose the card, you've lost the value, but a credit/debit card can easily be replaced without you actually losing any money.
  

Needless to say, IBM and its partner banks didn't introduce the scheme to the general public.

And you should remember that whern you use EC, all you transactions are _tracable_.

That's not necessarily true. It could be implemented that way, but there's no technological reason for it. You just need a way to ensure that one value token can only be decrypted by one owner at a time, and we can do that easily with key-pairs and signatures, so long as there's a TTP to actually issue the cash.

Re:What about other fields?

[QQ2]

Oddly enough, in europe we have something that kind of works like this.
In Holland it's called the chipper. Basically it's a SIM card that's added to your ATM card.
It's designed for small transactions.
In holland you can use your atm card to pay in shops, kinda like a credit card. However it costs shopkeepers 0,15 euro on every transmission and requires a secure phoneline. So for small amounts and places like the market you can use the 'chipper'. At first i to found it rather weird useless but these days you can pay for more and more stuff using the 'chipper' and i find it works kinda nice. No more loose change etc and a verry slim wallet.
Anyway I wanted to say that this system actually does exist and i works kinda nice, just my 2ct

Re:What about other fields?

[Richard_at_work]

Yes, it was called the mondo card. Infact i still have one somewhere. You had athe card itself, and a little reader that was pocket sized that you could use to move "cash" between cards.

It failed miserably, mainly because the cards were corruptable, and non resilient. Credit/Debit cards are the way ahead.

Re:What about other fields?

[InadequateCamel]

Warning: rant approaching...

One of the most frustrating things I about my move to England has been banking. It takes forever to open an account, and they send you this debit card that is really just a credit card with a strange name because you still have to sign slips rather than use a PI number.

In Canada, nearly every store you walk into has Interac, be it a clothing store, convenience store or gas station. I like carrying around money, but it is much more convenient and safe to use debit cards. I cannot use my NatWest (stupid Switch card) debit card in anything but the biggest department stores (but not Debenhams!), and I live in London. You would think that a city of this size that is constantly warning it's citizens about muggings and fraud would start to implement some of these safer "new" technologies.

Opponents to debit card readers in stores say that it costs a lot to use them, but I suspect that has a little bit to do with supply-demand. Once all the big stores start carrying them it trickles down to the smaller stores, and pretty soon everyone uses the (more) secure debit purchases. If you still think it is too expensive, institute a minimum purchase limit (hell, they still do it with credit cards!)

A PI number is much harder to break than a signature is to forge. Some people don't even carry credit cards; they just set up the credit account on the debit card and use it with a separate PIN.

Re:What about other fields?

[ideonode]

eactalight contact lenses to reduce glare from the sun

What'd be really cool would be those Peril-Sensitive sunglasses from Hitch-Hikers. In fact, most of the stuff in Hitch-Hikers should be invented, including the BabelFish, the Improbability Drive, the Total Perspective Vortex and the Guide itself.

Re:What about other fields?

[printman]

Here in the US, it is fairly uncommon for a shop to *not* take cards, and many of the local stores now have "self check-out" lines where you can scan the items you want to purchase and then pay with cash or card. The situation is similar in Canada - my former brother in law owns a pharmacy and most of his sales are now done via cards (and thus he sometimes has trouble making change for cash sales now...)

So, just because you don't have a market for cards right now, I would be surprised if over the next 10 years or so you don't see more stores taking cards and using new technologies for automatic payment/checkout. It's not necessarily progress, but consumers like convenience...

Re:What about other fields?

[ThrasherTT]

I live near Washington, D.C., USA, and I rarely use cash... I have a "check card" that is basically a Mastercard that deducts directly from my checking account. Since I've started using it (about 3 years ago), I've found that carrying cash is more and more a pain in the ass. The only time I carry more than $20 cash is when I know I'm going somewhere that doesn't take Visa/MC... and the only place I can think of off the top of my head is a nightclub that I go to see shows (930 Club in D.C.). The crappy little deli in my office building takes credit, and now several local fast-food places (McD's and BK) take credit. Some of the other small restaurants I go to have an ATM on-location, and the check card is my ATM card as well.

Some people probably complain that using credit to pay for stuff takes longer than paying with cash, but many times recently, I've done unscientific timings. Basically, when the person in front of me in line is paying cash, and I plan to use my check card, I time how long it takes for the person to "move along" after the ringing-up of the purchase is finished. I've found that unless the cashier is quick with counting out change (or has an automatic coin-change-dispenser), paying with credit only takes about 5 seconds longer. Of course, some credit-payers are slow, probably from inexperience... I know I was when I first got the check card.

Re:What about other fields?

[swillden]

Yes, it was called the mondo card.

Mondex. It's MasterCard's version of electronic cash.

Re:What about other fields?

[Bicoid]

Frankly, that opens up a huge can of worms. Once you get to consumer products, you also allows all sorts of unpleasant ways to violate the rights of individuals.

For instance, those of you who have read Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash remember a particular virus that restructured an individual's brain to allow an individual to control those individuals through particular language programs (nam-shub). Can you imagine what this could do if ANYONE created such a virus? Especially considering that they effectively found a way to crash the brains of potential opponents.

Or how about the cut-out chips used in the House of Blue Lights in William Gibson's Sprawl stories? Kidnap a woman and put her under the chip. It's like rape drugs, but worse, because she isn't even aware of ANYTHING. Or hell, just let the government use it for shutting up dissidents or prisoners.

And what ABOUT replacing cash? Frankly, I like cash. Not all the time, mind you, but sometimes it's good to have some cash on hand. It's anonymous. It's easily spent. It's easily transferrable. It's very difficult to track. In a world where electronic interactions are easy to trace and are being watched by people like John Poindexter, the anonymity of cash is definitely a plus.

Black ICE from Gibson's Sprawl trilogy would be loved greatly by the RIAA....you try to decode a disk of theirs and the file you decode kills you. no lawsuit because you yourself were breaking the law by trying to break their encryption.

The neural restructuring found in Sterling's Schismatrix stories uis also disturbing, allowing organizations to "reshape" people who acted differently than they wanted, either by making them more adept at a certain skill, or by putting blocks on other skills. Do we really need gene-tampered and mentally-reshaped assassins walking around the streets? I think not.

Or if we go the way of hard scifi, do we want the "Drouds" of Larry Niven's Known Space books? Direct stimulation of one's pleasure center may be a boon for addicts of other drugs, but is much more likely to turn humanity into a pile of vegetables.

And I refuse to touch the whole Big Brother, Soylent Green, and other similar things with a ten foot pole.

The fact is, Sci-fi gives plenty of warnings about technology....in fact, at least as many as it gives potntial "good" technologies. But once you get governments trying to develop said technologies, they'll adapt other technologies that are really warned against rather than hoped for because it's there and it *could* be beneficial to them for one reason or another.

Just something to think about.

Re:What about other fields?

[swillden]

That's not necessarily true. It could be implemented that way, but there's no technological reason for it. You just need a way to ensure that one value token can only be decrypted by one owner at a time, and we can do that easily with key-pairs and signatures, so long as there's a TTP to actually issue the cash.

Yes and no.

In theory, perfectly anonymous digital cash that can flow from person to person is feasible. Many cryptographers have proposed schemes that have various strengths and weaknesses, but most of them are pretty solid, theoretically.

In practice, we run into the fact that there really isn't any place we can store private keys with adequate security and mobility. The obvious answer is auditability: if the technology can make counterfeiting moderately difficult and we can establish a solid audit trail that tracks every penny, then anyone who does crack the technological barriers wil have to risk exposing themselves in order to spend their counterfeit cash.

Of course, auditability is pretty much the opposite of anonymity, although there are various compromise positions that can offer a reasonable solution.

Mondex goes the route of complete anonymity, and even allows person-to-person exchange of value, through an arbitrarily long chain, with no records. The result is that Mondex is highly vulnerable to counterfeiting, since it depends almost entirely on the security of the electronic tokens (smart cards) carried by the end-user. I say "almost entirely" because the Mondex scheme also includes some mathematical models of cashflow which theoretically allow the scheme operators to obtain an estimate of the amount of electronic cash which is in circulation. If this estimate turns out to be significantly larger then the amount that has been issued, then the system may need to be shut down.

Visa Cash goes the route of complete auditability at a device level, as opposed to a user level. Every transaction that loads value onto a device is archived and most transactions that spend value from a device are also reported back. If the value spent by a given card ever exceeds the value placed onto that card, then that card has been compromised, and actions can be taken to (a) disable that card and (b) attempt to aprehend the criminal. To allow users to divorce their own identity from that of the card, Visa got the idea of providing vending machines that would sell preloaded cards, unassociated with any particular user. Unfortunately, you must use some form of payment to buy the anonymized card and most payment mechanisms require you to identify yourself, thus re-establishing the identity link. The exception, of course, is cash. But why would you want to use paper cash to buy electronic cash?

Also, Visa permits member banks to choose whether or not they will reimburse cardholders for lost card value. Since transactions are fully auditable, the bank can know how much money is on a given card. So, if you have an identity-tagged card, the value can be replaced if you lose it. Convenience, but no anonymity.

Many other approaches have been recommended that take a middle path, and achieve security by moving the keys out of the public's hands and into bank vaults where they can be protected. Perhaps the most promising of these a few years back was David Chaum's "DigiCash", which had a number of appealing properties. First, it was truly and completely anonymous if and only if you never tried to "double spend" a digital coin. If you did spend the same money twice, there was a very high probability (Chaum suggested (2^32 -1)/(2^32), but it could be made arbitrarily high) that your identity would be revealed. Second, it was partially auditable, in that after you received an electronic payment, you could not use that money to pay someone else, you had to deposit the "coins" you received in the bank. You could then withdraw spendable "coins" from the bank. The result is that while it's not possible to know where or how you spend money, or who you receive money from, the bank does know exactly how much money flows through your hands. Governments like this feature.

Other approaches address some of the "limitations" (the scare quotes are because some don't see them as limitations) of DigiCash, allowing respending, and deferring auditing while retaining the essential "anonymous unless you double spend" character. Most of these proposals are horrendously complex, so much so that it's hard to verify their properties analytically, much less build a secure implementation. Every one that I've looked at is impractical as well, although advances in hardware may change that, eventually.

So, no, I don't think we can "easily" implement a secure and untraceable electronic cash system. The answer depends heavily upon your definitions of "secure" and "untraceable", of course.

Re:What about other fields?

[swillden]

I've found that unless the cashier is quick with counting out change (or has an automatic coin-change-dispenser), paying with credit only takes about 5 seconds longer.

What's even quicker is ATM-style debit, because even your checking card requires that you hand-sign a receipt which is not presented to you until after the the purchase is rung up.

With ATM-style debit, you can swipe your card and enter your PIN while the cashier is still totaling up your purchases. Then, as soon as the total is available, your just have to approve or deny the payment. Assuming you approve (the typical case, obviously), you're on your way out the door essentially as soon as the cashier is done scanning and bagging.

In the future, credit cards may move to PIN-based authentication rather than hand-written signatures, and that will speed up checkout lines as well.

Re:What about other fields?

[TygerFish]

The whole cash-versus-credit/debit cards question is a combination of the technological and social and three things determine it:

1. Has it been implimented well enough for it to work, replacing what is already there?
2. Does (should) our society and our traditions facilitate its acceptance?
3. Is the individual user comfortable with it and what does that comfort mean?

Debit cards work well in places like New York City, but are there an ATM networks in small towns and will you pay a premium to use them?

How comfortable are you knowing that a truly cash-less credit/debit scheme establishes an rapidly accessable paper-trail on everything you buy everywhere, at any time?

The questions lead to interesting scenarios.

'Pornography is illegal in this state. Your bank's routine data-mining reveals that you bought a copy of Hustler in Connecticut and your spending suggests you drove home without stopping. What did you do with the magazine?'

'It's probably a nuisance suit, but until you've gone to court, your account is frozen. I'm sure you have friends willing to feed you and pay your rent until this is cleared up.'

The most interesting of the three questions is one of who you are in time. Some of the posts here handle cashless transactions and PIN authentication very intelligently, but not even the posters here are as comfortable with the idea of having the annonymous exchange of cash replaced by plastic as kids will be in only a few years time.

Imagine that: a generation-gap that you feel at thirty.

Re:What about other fields?

[ThrasherTT]

In the future, credit cards may move to PIN-based authentication rather than hand-written signatures, and that will speed up checkout lines as well.

That would be awesome, since using my check card for debits costs me between $0.5 and $1 per transaction. Even faster than all that is my SpeedPass from Mobil... no PIN required (but don't let go of that sucker!). I'd love to see more than Exxon/Mobil gas station + food mart locations accepting SpeedPass, like, say, Arby's :)

Re:What about other fields?

[ThrasherTT]

Completely valid points. I think that the freedom of using "anonymous cash" should never, ever disappear. However, when I want to have the convenience of instantaneous cashless transactions, I'd like to have it. When I roll through a McDonald's drive-thru it'd be nice to be able to just flash a badge and be done with it. When I want to buy an , I'll drop by the ATM beforehand...

Re:What about other fields?

[StevoSE]

Well, here in Germany you can pay with EC in almost everywhere. Most EC Cards also have a "Money Chip". On this chip you can store up to 300â, IIRC. Paying with the Chip on your card seems to be much cheaper for the stores than EC, because you can use it in almost every store, you can even buy Bus Tickets at vending machines with it, or buy your bread at the bakery. Don't assume that just because some elderly people in the Bayern area of Germany are still using cash even for large transactions that the whole of Germany does.

Re:What about other fields?

[Chep]

Heh :-) fair enough

Things change fast even in a very few years, I guess.

Maybe..

[Ribert]

Maybe they will invent those communicaters from ST!!!

Re:Maybe..

[sql*kitten]

Maybe they will invent those communicaters from ST!!!

Why? They have considerably less functionality than a present day mobile phone. Apart from the voice activation and (I presume) the battery life, they're WW2-era walkie-talkies.

Just think, Picard can travel faster than light but he has to rely on an audio-only channel to find out what's going on down on the surface. Hell, Nokia could be the Federation's secret weapon, the ability to send lame low-resolution pictures back to a ship in orbit! Revolutionary!

Re:Maybe..

[mentalist23]

Yeah, my Clie doesn't make that cool "chrrrrpp-st-sthck-stchk" noise when I open the cover... why not, damn it?

Re:Maybe..

[kin_korn_karn]

the Nextel phones are basically ST communicators.

Bluetooth?

[chrisseaton]

Bluetooth is on the list, since when has this been science fiction?

Re:Bluetooth?

[awakened tech]

Obviously not now, but I imagine that some SF writer in the 80s (or earlier) proposed computers talking to each other and other devices wirelessly, a vision that has now become reality.

Re:Bluetooth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you paid attention to Star Trek? Whenever Kirk and crew got their hands onto some alien technology they would immediately be able to control it, often using their tricorders. You'll notice that these have nearly 100% inter-operability with any tech out there (alien or not), and it is wireless.

Bluetooth is much the same. The reason you don't see many UFO reports these days is because the aliens are now afraid some madman with a bluetooth-enabled mobile phone will hijack their ride. That's how good those phones are.

Bluetooth: yesterday's SF, today's reality! ;-)

Re:Bluetooth?

[Longjmp]

You don't need UFOs. This is even more scary.

Translation of screen display:

New hardware detected.
(spoiler omitted)
Start auto-configuration now?
[Start] [Cancel]

Re:Bluetooth?

[JordanH]

Hey, you don't need Bluetooth.

Remember in Independence Day, the Jeff Goldblum character could upload nasty viruses into alien technology with any laptop. Not sure the interface, but maybe you just have to have the laptop close to the alien tech.

Re:Bluetooth?

[moonbender]

Arr! Damn you! I wanted to post this! :)

Re:Bluetooth?

[Hast]

He he, reminds me of when we had a market guy from Sony-Ericsson visiting our school to talk about Bluetooth. (Sending a market guy to talk to a bunch of CE/EE is quite annoying.)

It didn't take long before someone printed a greeting using the BT enabled printer he had brought.

Re:Bluetooth?

[jasenj1]

Not just any laptop. An Apple PowerBook. Everyone knows Apples "just work". Haven't you ever noticed the "Alien Mothership" driver extension in the System folder? - Jasen.

Re:Bluetooth?

[Enigma2175]

You'll notice that these have nearly 100% inter-operability with any tech out there (alien or not), and it is wireless.

As R2D2 has showed us the most high-tech, interoperable interface is not radio, electrical or even optical, it is mechanical. He's got to be able to push at least 5 bps through that thing.

Re:Bluetooth?

[el_chicano]

Everyone knows Apples "just work".

I thought it was kind of nice that the aliens' "Spaceport" wireless system was backwards compatible with the old-timey "Airport" system Jeff Goldblum's Mac was using.

I can't wait for the reworked/remastered DVD version where Jeff Goldblum is replaced by Janie Porche, the girl who "saved" Christmas!

/. doesn't just suck at English!

[*coughs loudly*]

"Cliquetez." Bless their illiterate hearts.

Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[91degrees]

Has anyone actually read this report? While the concept was quite clever, it was clearly written long before anyone had got into space.

His proposal was to build no more than 3 comsats. These were huge beasts that would be constructed in space, and manned permanently. Each comsat would deal with communication over 120 degrees across the earth.

This is a far cry from dozens of highly specialised and semi disposable comsats that we actually use. I don;t mean to be too hard on Arthur C. Clarke, but people really ought to remember how wrong he was with a few gems of being right.

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[little1973]

I don't mean to be too hard on you, but I don't think you can come up any original ideas which will be implemented in some way in the future. Or do you criticize Clarke because he did not forsee the miniaturization which occured in the past few decades?

Anyway, what Clarke fortold may be realized as space stations on geostationary orbit for space ship assembly (or some space mission).

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[anonymous cupboard]

I read his original report, he was showing how a minimum system could be built for full earth coverage. He wrote this at a time when space flight was still very much fiction (about ten years before Sputnik) and there were vacuum tubes rather than semiconductors. Tubes need regular replacement, hence the need for a manned presence.

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[91degrees]

I'm not criticising Clarke. Just commenting on the how interesting it is that another advance changed the potential future so much.

What people weren't expecting is much more interesting than what they were.

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[alistair]

For people who wish to read the report itself, the London Science Museum has images of the entire Wireless World article available here.

Personally, I think he got the most important points correct in anticipating the advantages of a Geostationary orbit. I suspect he suggested only three of them due to the huge cost of building them and he does show (correctly) that these three satellites would cover the major regions of "Africa and Europe", "China and Oceana" and "The Americas" (page three) while allowing point to point communication between the three satellites.

True, he did predict huge manned stations powered by valves with people to replace the valves but it seems harsh to critisise him for not inventing Moores Law 20 years early. Much of the rest of the text is both valid and visionary. For some other examples of his work the site has a short information page here.

While browsing the site you may also want to look at the Quicktime VR movie of the inside of Apollo 10. The Science Museums Space Gallery has always been one of my favourites and this is a nice attept to put some of it online (plus I helped in the making of this a few years back :-) ).

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[MrFredBloggs]

What makes you so sure that in the future they`ll laugh at how we had loads of satellites, and not just three.

I mean, if you're going to be a smart-arse, isn't one of the requirements that you are actually smart?

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[91degrees]

What makes you so sure that in the future they`ll laugh at how we had loads of satellites, and not just three.

Who's laughing. It's just interesting how this is so different. Why would they want just three satellites? What would they do with all the other geostationary real estate?

I mean, if you're going to be a smart-arse, isn't one of the requirements that you are actually smart?

It's a serious impediment in my experience.

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[Hast]

Yes but he wrote it before they developed micro-electronics. His proposal was supposed to be "do-able" using tech they could then develop. (Getting stuff into space wouldn't be easy, but it was at least possible to do something about that.)

If he had used "micro electronics" it would just have been fiction. That was about as easy to predict before it happened as the development of current airplanes and cars. (For someone living when airplanes and cars didn't exist.)

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[R2.0]

The brilliance wasn't in his plans for execution, but in the base concept - an object in orbit with a period of exactly 24 hours means the thing stays still in relative terms. Then immediately hooking it up with an application - communications.

Both of these base concepts were so far ahead of their time that the execution part is trivial. I'm glad AC Clarke got these ideas - an average person's head would have exploded.

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[isomeme]

Also, it should be noted that the referenced article is talking about harvesting ideas from science fiction, while Clarke's article proposing geosync radio relays was a factual (if speculative) work for a radio technology magazine. Clarke worked on British radar systems during WWII, so he had a very good practical grounding in radio technology.

Re:Arthur C. Clarkes Geostationary satellites

[theophilosophilus]

I don;t mean to be too hard on Arthur C. Clarke, but people really ought to remember how wrong he was with a few gems of being right.

I think you misunderstand the ESA's interest in Sci-Fi. Sci-Fi isn't as much prophesy as it is self-fulfilling prophesy. Sci-Fi can be the impetus to the creative process at the heart of all good technology. Further, it explores the impact that technology will have (good or bad) on people, cultures, environment, etc.

Time to raid the library...

[Starman9x]

...of my old "Tom Swift" books I guess -- didn't this kid "invent everything" in the pursuit of "the bad guys"?

OTOH, "The Venus Equatorial" [or was that "equalateral"?] presents an interesting social impact study once things like "perfect copies" are perfected [as in a startrek "replicator"] People simply won't stand still for the desctruction of the concept of currency [ok, it IS early in the morning -- read the book to understand what I'm talking about]

Re:Time to raid the library...

[Starman9x]

Since I don't give a rodent's nether region about whether or not it is "netiquettely correct" to continue one's own /. post without an intervening comment, I'd like to throw this link at you:

The Funny Thing About Fear is a short story that I found while trying to "remember" (via google) whether it was equalateral or equetorial [and, subsequently, that most of the links I *did* find were links to amazon.com, noting the book can be had for about $0.15 nowadays...]

it may still be early, but the story got a laugh from me

/. french is wrong

[liberteus]

"cliquetez ici pour la version française" is almost good, at least it is understandable.

Correct french is: "cliquez ici pour la version française".

Re:/. french is wrong

[fruey]

Isn't that "cliquetez" some kind of bullshit politically correct Canadian suggestion for Cliquer -> Cliqueter as being synonymous? Google returns over 21,000 pages with cliquetez in them, mostly French pages saying "Cliquetez ici"

Check the mouse button name: Enfoncer et relâcher le bouton-poussoir (ou cliquet) from here: http://www.cfwb.be/franca/bd/infofich.htm#Cliquer

Re:/. french is wrong

[ramdam]

You are right ;-) (glad to see another french geek on /.)

But I found CowboyNeal's sentence more "poetic" (even if it's accidental).

Furthermore, "cliquer" is somewhat a comptuter-related neologism, so he's not "really" wrong regarding the respect of french language.

I think that this word found in a french text would have been interpreted as a style effect.

Re:/. french is wrong

[wsapplegate]

> I think that this word found in a french text would have been interpreted as a style effect.

Especially if used in conjunction with mulot (a sort of rodent) and Chirac's name (for those who don't know, Chirac made big efforts to ridicule himself more stupidly than Al Gore claiming he had invented Internet. Thus, he went to a IT fair, and when showed a computer asked what was a mouse. And then, these same politicians will decide what laws will be applied on the Internet. Amazing, eh ? :-)

By the way, Canadians do use other strangely mangled words, aside from cliquetez , like sélecter (for sélectionner ), and other odd variants. And what's totally incredible is that I've seen Canadian people on IRC speaking a truly awful French, and then complaining that the documentation URL I'd sent to them was in English because... they didn't speak English ! Some people probably have decided they don't need to communicate at all :-|

Fifth Element

[Red Pointy Tail]

1) DNA reconstruction machine
2) Milla Jokovich's DNA
3) ???
4) PRICELESS!

Re:Fifth Element

[kin_korn_karn]

3) reconstruct Milla with breasts and not a 13 year old boys body

Hyperspace...

[$$$$$exyGal]

That's a really cool site. When I looked up hyperspace, it says:

The Hyperspace is described as the 5th dimension; ships which jump through it can travel to they targets immediately (i. e. without loss of any time). However, the jump causes pain to the crew and very much energy is needed to do it. Later mankind learns to travel within a special forcefield that allows them to get between our 4 dimensions and the 5th. This allows no longer instant travel but "only" speeds of million times of light. The advantage is they now can navigate and have no longer to suffer the pains of the former "Hyperjump".

It gives that description from a title with the name "Hyperspace". The site also has some great pictures!

Douglas Adams

[froh]

I hope they don't try to make a impropability drive.
It's just too dangerous.

Re:Douglas Adams

[Geek_in_Marketing]

Building an Improbability Drive?

Come on - what are the odds of that happening!

Someone got a pencil and paper? I'll work it out for myself.....

Re:Douglas Adams

[mentalist23]

Well, no labs in the States will have access to a fresh cup of really hot tea, so I guess it's up to the boys at QinetiQ...

Re:Douglas Adams

[AGMW]

I suspect that The Improbability Drive is more likely than The Bistromatic Drive, especially for those of us who aren't drinking and didn't have the rice.

Re:Douglas Adams

[louzerr]

But think what science could do for the towel of the future!

(As long as is doesn't turn out like Towely from South Park)

SF

[Fizzl]

I hope they heavily refer to Douglas Adams' Hitchikers guide to galaxy.

I wana take a trip powered by infinite impropability motor. (I hope that translated ok. I have only read the Finnish version.)

Re:SF

[whimdot]

You must remember that bistro mathematics was more advanced than improbability drive since it avoided all that dangerous mucking about with infinite improbability.

The skill of DA was that, like George Orwell's 1984, he perfectly described contemporary society as a foreign land, eg. Vogons are just green lawyers; the American president already has a role remarkably similar to Zaphod Beeblebrox's...

Hee hee

[InadequateCamel]

Two I saw just by glancing at the page...

"Ashtray"
Soon we will have revolutionary waste receptacles for the combustion byproducts of another of my inventions, Coolness Extrapolation Tubes (or "cigarettes")

(Yes, I realize the actual item is something completely different)

The next was "Crash Landing"

This came from the film "Destruction (sic) Man" where the car crashes through the glass sign and lands in the fountain, but the passengers are saved due to the car filling with foam. The poster then envisions saving the Space Shuttle from crash landings with this stuff.

Someone get this guy a Physics book, stat!

Made me look :)

[Starman9x]

noted under "K" was keyword1 (and keywords 2 & 3)

something suspiciously self-referential is going on here...

Ok, I'll bite on this one

[ThinWhiteDuke]

OTOH, in Europe, we don't have to pay gazillions to Hollywood in order to fake a moon landing just because serious professionals with years of training have overextended themselves ;-)

Death Star

[rde]

Under normal circumstances, I'd suggest a Death Star. In these heady days when we're considering technologies that might, in our lifetimes, get us to other star systems, it's important to have something that'll enable us to blow the shit out of anything that looks at us funny.

Of course, there would be problems. Remember the arguments about the status of Pluto? That'd be nothing compared to something like the death star.

"That's no moon."
"Yes it bloody is"
etc

Re:Death Star

[Anonymous Coward]

Well George W Bush does have some similarities to the Emperor...

Re:Death Star

[fredrikj]

He's more like a combination of Jar-Jar and the Emperor.

Re:Death Star

[Lars T.]

No way in hell! Jar-Jar's accent isn't half as funny!

Re:Death Star

[jayrcee]

Simply not possible since Jar-Jar Binks IS the Dark Sith Lord.
We are supposed to believe it was dumb luck that saved him in Episode I? More like the power of the darkside.
In Episode II who put Senator Palpatine into power in the Senate? Jar-Jar binks was there leading the vote...

Re:Death Star

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way this is possible. This given by many facets of evidence.

1. ITS JAR-JAR BINKS, George Lucas would never let such an evil thing happen to his story.
2. ITS JAR-JAR BINKS, a marketing gimic should never and will never be allowed to be the great keeper of the Sith
3. GO HERE AND READ THE CODE http://www.thedarkside.net/code.php
4. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR DAMN MIND !

Not space related but...

[idletask]

Jules Vernes has led the way to modern submarines with its "twenty thousands leagues under the sea" novel. Remember Captain Nemo? :)

Re:Not space related but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jules Vernes has led the way to modern submarines

Hardly. Vernes' novel was published in 1869/1870. The Confederacy was already using proto-submarines in the U.S. Civil War (1861). Now given these weren't "modern" designs, but the concept was proven and it wasn't such an imaginative leap for Verne to outfit these working models with more advanced, futuristic (for his time) systems such as electrical power.

Re:Not space related but...

[djeez]

I'm sorry to tell you that, but there were a few submarines before Vernes' story in 1873.

For example, there is the Hunley, which was effectively used to sink a ship with a harpoon-torpedo. Or even before that, in 1776 with the Turtle.

And while the first real submarines were not built before the 1890's, I doubt Vernes was the main inspiration for all the work done on them. There was even a Nautilus in 1801!

Re:Not space related but...

[Anonymous Coward]

He did say MODERN submarines. You know, the ones that are nuclear powered?

Anal-retentiveCamel

[InadequateCamel]

>"cliquetez ici pour la version française" is almost good, at least it is understandable. ...I think you mean "almost correct". And "french" should read French. But I understand you :-)

intellectual property rights?

[v(*_*)vvvv]

I am assuming these writers don't get recognized or paid. Is that good or bad?

I guess ideas are free from IP laws, as long as they don't involve mice and speach.

But if it doesn't cost them anything, it would be cool to at least name the projects or objects after their sci-fi authors.

Re:intellectual property rights?

[Kong the Medium]

Hey in the 50's somebody wanted to patent the water-bed. He couldn't becaus R.A. Heinlein described it 5 years earlier.

Re:intellectual property rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is right and proper that the writers don't get paid for someone who wants to invent something they had the idea for. If that was how intellectual property worked just think how easy it would be to make a buck.
Gee, today, I am going to write about a machine that makes pizza from hydrogen atoms. Tomorrow I shall talk about a gizmo that makes someone travel at 99 per cent the speed of light, and if ever these are really invented (by someone who can make a working model) I get the rewards.

Re:intellectual property rights?

[juhaz]

I think it quite likely the writers WILL be at least recognized if not paid. After all, lots of people have been reading those books and would know the tech if it would be used in the real world, and make the fact known, even if there would be official info (Though I think that too would be given, as you said, there's nothing to lose by merely giving out the name of writer, or naming it).

And that may very well be better than being paid, I, at least if I were a Sci-Fi writer and figured out something that might some day be actually implementable, would like the "immortality" of my name being used on the tech. Who knows how long into the future it or its derivatives would be used...

Think about..

[Anonvmous Coward]

... how obnoxious the USA is going to be when one of these Death Star things finally gets built.

Re:Think about..

[Pooh22]

Especially when it gets built by !

Interesting things from Sci-Fi in Real Life

[dWhisper]

I'd be curious to see if they extend the study outside of just Sci-Fi, and see how many of the things that have appeared in Sci-Fi end up, or have ended up, in real life.

Some examples I know of are the Sick Bay beds and displays from Star Trek, which appeared in hospitals shortly thereafter. On those same lines, a hypospry always looked like it would beat a shot or pills.

My personal thing I'd like to see is a holodeck, though I'd assume that that's just a tad bit off. But Quake in one of those would rule. Or be messy and dangerous. Or all above! It'd just give politions and parents something more to whine about.

And I'd just love a hoverboard, compliments Back to the Future. Or a self-drying jacket, autolace shoes, flat-tvs that play the scenery channel, and pizzas the size of my palm that come out fresh. It had to be Sci-Fi, pizza hut pizza is far greasier than that.

Re:Interesting things from Sci-Fi in Real Life

[No Such Agency]

...a self-drying jacket, autolace shoes, flat-tvs that play the scenery channel, and pizzas the size of my palm that come out fresh.

Autolace shoes, huh? You, my friend, are a prime candidate for a fastening technology called "velcro". It looks terribly fashionable on a pair of runners too ;-)

Re:Interesting things from Sci-Fi in Real Life

[dWhisper]

Yes, miracle thing that velcro. Making shoes unfashionable for all.

Actually, I think shoes have already gotten to that autolace step, since most new shoes don't seem to tie anywhere.

We should...

[Anonvmous Coward]

...reclassify Animaniacs as Scifi. Remember that garage door opener that Yakko had that could turn women upside down?

IP.

[DaBj]

The site is also a nice resource for finding prior art.

Hope that doesn't make companies avoid inventing the stuff, since they can't really patent it, and we all know that it's the patent that creates a profit, not the invention...

Re:IP.

[Dun Malg]

The site is also a nice resource for finding prior art.

Well, I wouldn't say that. All one would have to do is come up with a specific implementation of one of these ideas to make it patentable. You can't actually patent raw ideas (or shouldn't be able to, anyway).

Re:Wait...

[hplasm]

Well, what do all the sci-fi writers who hang around NASA do? (Pournelle, etc) Surely they aren't there to get autographs? Or to sign them?

NASA has regular brainstorming sessions with authors in many fields and spends a lot of cash in (often criticised) research into 'alternative technologies' -Sci-Fi propulsion etc.

'In the USA, you believe what you want'- facts get in the way? Just carry on regardless.

Hard sci-fi

[sql*kitten]

Its goal is "to review past and present SF literature, artwork and films in order to identify and assess innovative technologies and concepts described which could be possibly developed further for space applications."

Anything that is "space fantasy" (like Star Trek) can probably be dismissed out of hand, since it all relies on an inconsistent physics model. The physics of the Star Trek universe are mutable to suit the story, they are functionally indistinguisable from magic spells in traditional fantasy genres. Babylon 5, Farscape et al are no better. - altho' to be fair, both of those place far less emphasis on technobabble than Star Trek.

But there is a lot of good stuff in hard sci fi. My favourite author at the moment is Alastair Reynolds. In his books, humans have colonized other worlds relying on cryogenic suspension (theoretically possible, actively being researched now) and relativistic time compression (a known fact), rather than an FTL drive. If a ship is in orbit it's internal "down" is outwards as a section of the hull rotates to simulate gravity, but while its underway, down is backwards because of drive thrust, and you have to reconfigure somewhat before switching modes - no "artificial gravity". There are no "deflector screens" - if you want to protect your ship, find some cometary ice and wrap yourself in it. Other technologies he uses, like nanotech manufacturing are all extrapolations from current research.

Of course, it is fiction, so there are a few things that are made up (the Conjoiner's power source, for example). But if fiction is to drive research, it could do a lot better than what passes for mainstream sci-fi.

Re:Hard sci-fi

[mentalist23]

"they are functionally indistinguisable from magic spells in traditional fantasy genres."

ANY sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

In order to stay on topic...

I always liked Niven's novels, because they do include a great deal of hard sci-fi, yet at the same time he also clearly puts a great deal of thought into what technology a society would realistically have adopted. For instance, think of all the weapons that aren't weapons in the Lying Bastard...

OTOH he does cheat a bit from time to time, by introducing Slavers and Outsiders when he -does- need some magic (in the Clarke sense as above.)

On my wish list are Niven's stepping disks, and an Iain M. Banks-style drone.

Re:Hard sci-fi

[JimPooley]

To be fair, Babylon 5 did get the Starfuries right.
Rather than flying like aeroplanes (I'm talking to you, X-Wing) they had thrusters along each axis, so a burst from the rear thrusters would accelerate the ship forwards, and then it would coast along, until a burst from the forward thrusters stopped it.
So someone had a grasp of elementary physics...

Re:Hard sci-fi

[sql*kitten]

To be fair, Babylon 5 did get the Starfuries right.

There's something I never got about the station. You would want to do most of your work close to the outside, to maximize area, and keep the rotation speed as low as possible to avoid mechanical wear. The area of the station at 1G is going to be the most valuable (for humanoids at least), and gravity goes up the further from the axis you are. The station must have a contrarotating counterweight somewhere, because part of it doesn't rotate. So where is "down below"? It wouldn't be further out than the main commercial and residential districts, because all you'd want between them and the outside would be shielding/life support, and it couldn't be closer to the core, because there would be lower gravity, and that area seems to be mostly docks anyway.

Re:Hard sci-fi

[lyoz]

The whole point is to go crazy with your imagination and come up with something that may not be according to the "physics" as we know it, but challenges it.
The 19th century scientists and physicists at one stage had a strong beleif that they have completely understood the laws of nature and universe. Not untill someone challenged the said laws of physics was is discovered that many of these laws were baseless and false. We need dreamers and artists like DiVinci, and Wells, who thrive upon nothing but pure creative thinking, and thus provide modern science with its biggest challenges.
So i say go crazy with ur imaginations. Keeping it restricted to the "sceintific knowledge" might just be stopping us from viewing it from some other angle.

Re:Hard sci-fi

[susano_otter]

My wish list includes an Iain M. Banks-style anything, starting with an Elencher GSV named Stock Options Not Salaries.

Re:Hard sci-fi

[geekoid]

yeah, they'll never be communicators...

OK now this part's lame...

[teaserX]

Open to: - space and science fiction enthusiasts from all nations between 15 and 30 years of age

WTF?
Whoever it was that said "...my old Tom Swift books..." can forget it.

Re:OK now this part's lame...

[Embedded Geek]

I noticed that too when I first saw the site last month. I actually considered not submitting this to /. to better my chances in the contest, but since I'm a dottering 34 I decided "a bird in the hand..." and submitted it here.

As is, I still intend to dust off a few old stories and try to ship one of them. Heck, the worst they'll do is disqualify me.

(Hmmm... must fight urge to post again and make a lame joke about hexidecial... must resist... Aw, Hell. I'll do it!)

Re:Wait...

[anonymous cupboard]

our space program takes its cues from scientists who are serious professionals with years of training

Regrettably it gets its money from the lunatics on the hill and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With an obsession with providing rewards for the backhanders received from the aerospace inducstry, a lot is spent on inappropriate and/or ineffective technologies (Star Wars).

value

[mackstann]

for $6K, you could build a hell of a system. 15K SCSI drives in a RAID 5 array, dual Athlon 2600+'s or whatever the newest is (or dual xeons or whatever), but this thing is pretty fucking lame. is this a joke? why the hell was this posted? remember cowboyneal, there are p4 3.06's now? and the systems with them dont cost $6K? and they arent in shoddily painted cases and overpriced by about 5x?

Re:value

[ContemporaryInsanity]

You sure you posted this under the right topic ?!?

Re:value

[mackstann]

haha, NO!

I wonder how the hell I did that....

looks like the queen's english... +2 funnIE

[Anonymous Coward]

is on it's way out, also.

ur so on robbIE's foems list. damm you.

Idea for Slashdot

[Nighttime]

Visitors to the site are encouraged to submit technologies from SF works, although they should look at the master keyword list to avoid duplication first.

Heh, maybe Slashdot should adopt something similar to prevent duplicate stories :)

I don't know what you have...

[Corporate Troll]

... I have heard people from Quebec use that word (I used to work for a Canadian company).
However, in Europe one usually says "cliquez"... Well if you're in a french speaking country, of course.

Re:I don't know what you have...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Québec, and i have never heard anyone use this word...

Re:I don't know what you have...

[Corporate Troll]

Well I did... Perhaps the guy just was playing silly. I don't know, but there are a lot of differences between the french spoken in Québec and the one in France. I really have trouble understanding the Québec french.

OUCH!

[HerbieStone]

Cliquetez ici pour la version française

Please, don't do this. English isn't my first language, but since this is an english forum I do my best and give it a try. I guess its not perfect but still ok.

But this sentence is just horrible! Never make fun of "All your base are belong to us" and then go on and write such french crap... well, unless of course you want to make ass of yourself for some foreign countries ;)

Why isn't The /. Effect listed?

[spookymonster]

They seem to have a working demo on their site....

Re:Why isn't The /. Effect listed?

[Noren]

I'm feeling a little verklempt- talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic. The /. effect is neither science nor fiction. Discuss.

Re:Why isn't The /. Effect listed?

[susano_otter]

In Coffee Talk, Soviet Russia is neither Soviet, nor Russian. Discuss.

What we also need . . .

[Badgerman]

This is, simply, something I find very cool. However, what we need is a counterpart:

Predictions that went WRONG in SF. We don't do our space-travel math by hand, I'm still waiting on my personal helecopter, etc.

I'm not being sarcastic - such a work would be very informative, and would contrast well with this one.

Re:What we also need . . .

[AGMW]

Certainly, you'd need more fingers (or take yer shoes off) to do the space-travel math(s) by hand, but you can just pop out and get yerself a personal helicopter.

Re:What we also need . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

See http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?FailedScienceFictionPro phecies

been done before

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the CIA and KGB used to send agents to watch each new James Bond movie. Notes would be taken of the device ideas, and some of them would be produced for actual spying. (Someone from the CIA admitted this.)

Re:been done before

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they have been going to too many Austin Power movies these days.

And the greatest invention we could ever hope for:

[Anonymous Coward]

A production line of Seven-of-Nines.
Grrrrrrrr.

they right... you really are a bunch of kids

[tcmardoc]

heh.. think you know something about NASA.. read this http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/klee/misc/slash dot.html

But are any of it enough to get patents lifted?

[Mynn]

I recall reading of someone who tried to patent the water bed, but couldn't because of the description in RAH's Stranger in a Strange Land.

What about lifiting "Ginger"s/Segway patents based on the very similar transport devices described in "The Roads Must Roll"? (when they go down under, they talk about the little zippy personal transporters used to move around the tunnels)

Re:But are any of it enough to get patents lifted?

[sql*kitten]

What about lifiting "Ginger"s/Segway patents based on the very similar transport devices described in "The Roads Must Roll"? (when they go down under, they talk about the little zippy personal transporters used to move around the tunnels)

You can't patent an idea, only a specific implementation of an idea. I doubt the Segway HT itself is covered by a patent, but its individual components that solve specific problems will be. The point is that unless you do your own R&D from scratch and solve those problems for yourself you won't be able to build one, and even if you did, there's no guarantee that they didn't beat you to the optimal solution. In reality, I'm sure that if you wanted to use some of their technology in a way that didn't compete directly with them, they would be happy to license it to you. That's a win-win scenario: cheaper than you doing the research for yourself, more profitable for them than keeping the patent to themselves.

An example of this is Gillette - you obviously can't patent a razor, but they could patent the specific spring mechanism they use to let the blades adjust their height.

Re:But are any of it enough to get patents lifted?

[superdan2k]

Hard to say: Rollerblade owns the patent on inline skates, but such things were first made back in the 1800's.

Hyperspace... Oh, Jesus, NOOOO!!!!!

[imag0]

Ok, you got me curious about the hyperspace thing so I went a took a look at the article. It all sounded pretty cool and interesting until I got to the bottom:

Feasibility: Requires New Technology

Damn, I thought by then NT would be killed off by MS but it looks like it has a promising future in getting us to Hyperspace.

Oh, the humanity!

Re:Hyperspace... Oh, Jesus, NOOOO!!!!!

[susano_otter]

Well, Windows is a two-dimensional interface masquerading as a three-dimensional UI.

The logical next step is three/four-dimensional interfaces masquerading as four/five-dimensional UIs.

In the future, we'll all be scrambling to upgrade to Microsoft HyperspaceNT SP6 to avoid being haxored by all the superstring-kiddies, or else face the prospect of losing our data forever in the 8th dimension (which which will be accessible via a quantum buffer paradox overflow exploit).

To settle this....

[Corporate Troll]

While I have no dictionary around here now, I just did a quick test. I opened Microsoft Word (French version) and typed both words: "cliquez" and "cliquetez". They both are accepted by the spell checker, so I suspect they both are valid.

I do prefer "cliquez", but that's a personal opinion.

Re:To settle this....

[Anonymous Coward]

>I do prefer "cliquez", but that's a personal opinion.

Geeze, who the hell invented "cliquetez"? That sounds attrocious. First time I ever hear the word too. By the way I live in Quebec... Yes there IS differences between Québec and France, but not THAT much.

(Man... "cliquetez"? There's dumbasses all over the World, I tell you)

Re:To settle this....

[Corporate Troll]

Yes, French do invent some of the stupidest words around. Especially for technology-related stuff. While doing a google search on "cliquetez", I found another one that hit me: "webmestre". Sure! Whatever they want!

The difference between Québec French and normal French is usually just the pronunciation and some awkward words. I can understand it, but it's really hard due to the very different pronunciation. Luckily, Québec people in Europe usually adapt quite fast to nomal French when they are around here.

So how long do we have to wait...

[schambon]

... before faster-than-light travel, positronic robots, and time travel?

On the other hand, I suppose if we are supposed to have time travel in the future, I guess we'd have learned that already. Or something. My head hurts.

PS. It's "cliquez". "Cliquetez" means "make clicking sounds" :-)

-S.

Re:So how long do we have to wait...

[Embedded Geek]

Interesting point on future technology & time travel. Similar to an argument against time travel I heard once by an SF author (whose identity eludes me at the moment). He posited that if time travel ever got invented then we'd know already because we'd be hip deep in tourists.

On the French issue, good catch. See my earlier post.

Re:So how long do we have to wait...

[geekoid]

Thats assuming:
a)we're interesting enough to be visited
b)we would know time travellers were here
c)time travel isn't 'forward only'

Re:So how long do we have to wait...

[Embedded Geek]

Good points, however I have to say that they all (well, two for three) get knocked out pretty easily:

1. we're interesting enough to be visited - We don't have to be interesting - they just have to be bored. Considering there are 24/7 cable channels dedicated to food, to cartoons, and to "look at how funny my cat Fluffy is when she falls into the toilet" in our own day and age, I think we can say there's a very low threshold for boredom in the average human animal.
2. we would know time travellers were here - There are no secrets. The biggest secrets of the 20th & 21st century (A-bomb construction details, the forumla for nerve gas, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's and Mao's campaigns against their own people, etc) remained secret for a relatively short time. A secret as juicy as time travel, especially when entrusted to tourists, would be old news by now. Besides, ask anyone who lives near Disneyland or another tourist attraction and they'll be able to pick tourists out of a crowd with something like 90% accuracy (the same, of course, can be said for Europeans picking out Americans pretty much anywhere). You might argue a few James Bond-esque temporal operatives could pull it off (and then with great risk, of course) but if you put any amateurs (tourists) or academics in your Wayback Machine and the cat's out of the bag.
3. time travel isn't 'forward only' - I conceded. A legitimate point. I interpret the term 'time travel' as implying reverse and forward travel, mostly because it makes intellectual discussions on the matter more interesting. 'Forward only' time travel is basically time diallation or cryrogenics (despite the mechanism used to get the result). Still interesting topics, but free of the conundrums that a 'backwards' setting on the Wayback Machine introduces.

Again, very good points - thanks for commenting!

Star Trek does have some good ideas

[nixman99]

While Star Trek physics is questionable (anything can be fixed with a phase inverter), some of the everyday items have come to fruition:

Those "data modules" in TOS look a lot like 3 1/2" disks

The tablets computers in TNG are starting to appear on the market

The equivalent of the medical tricorder is being developed by the US Army

Communicators in TOS look a lot like mobile phones

Laser scalpels
And social aspects of TOS have come to pass: multi-national/multi-ethnic space crews.

why just sci-fi

[stiller]

Why stop there? I mean, with todays technology, it's easy to broaden the scope of this search to all ideas coming from all persons interested.
Sure, a lot more thought probably goes into most which is written by real sci-fi authors, but the chance of anything actually usefull coming out of this research seems so small to me, that having people enter their own, personal ideas might even be more productive.

post hoc ergo propter hoc

[The Fun Guy]

Disclaimer: I love science fiction, always have, always will, however...

Science fiction did indeed predict (in some form, anyway) communications satellites, cell phones, rocket fins, particle weapons, the floppy drive, etc. However, it also predicted antigravity, rolling roads, matter converters, mind control rays, time machines and stasis fields. The trouble with looking back at science fiction and picking out the accurate predictions is that you ignore the 99.9% that was inaccurate, and distort the perceived value of the source material. It's like finding one potato out of a thousand that's shaped kind of like Elvis... you would not seriously conclude that potato fields are a good place to look for new sculptures, would you?

Re:post hoc ergo propter hoc

[jafac]

Oh, and we have all those things today (antigravity, rolling roads, matter converters, etc.) but they're supressed by the "Big Corporations" because they would absolutely kill their profitable businesses, which are essentially a way of enslaving mankind.

And think man, if they had mind control rays, would you necessarily know about it?

Re:post hoc ergo propter hoc

[geekoid]

you mean, those predictions haven't come true, yet.

Re:post hoc ergo propter hoc

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it also predicted antigravity, rolling roads, matter converters, mind control rays, time machines and stasis fields. The trouble with looking back at science fiction and picking out the accurate predictions is that you ignore the 99.9% that was inaccurate

On the contrary, these "inaccurate" items are exactly what SHOULD be noticed, since they are the ones that might have some potential (currently unrecognized) for development. Of course, the "major" failures such as antigravity aren't really failures at all, just things that can't be developed yet. But somewhere within the various writings may very well be things that CAN be developed, and perhaps even mundane (but beneficial) inventions.

Re:post hoc ergo propter hoc

[Thing 1]

[...] rolling roads [...]

These exist, although not like Heinlein envisioned. Just visit any large airport, there are "slidewalks" to help move people more efficiently.

The matter converters are several years away; once we perfect nanotechnology, they'll start popping up all over the place.

Aside on nanotech: I really like the Foresight Institute's Feynman Grand Prize . In order to win the $250,000, you (or your team) needs to achieve two things:

Specifications for the Feynman Grand Prize require the winning entrant to:

* design, construct, and demonstrate the performance of a robotic arm that initially fits into a cube no larger than 100 nanometers in any dimension, meeting certain performance specifications including means of input. The intent of this prize requirement is a device demonstrating the controlled motions needed to manipulate and assemble individual atoms or molecules into larger structures, with atomic precision; and
* design, construct, and demonstrate the performance of a computing device that fits into a cube no larger than 50 nanometers in any dimension. It must be capable of correctly adding any pair of 8-bit binary numbers, discarding overflow. The device must meet specified input and output requirements.

Once these two "parts" exist, many nanotechnology devices will be able to be built. We truly live in interesting times!

retro-tech

[sgt_sloth]

Recently I picked up the term "retro-tech sci-fi", which refers to science fiction written 20-30 years ago which, while able to imagine super-science technology in some areas like faster than light drives, contra-gravity devices, etc., was completely blind to possible advances in other areas, and so either has technology that's actually more primitive than our own (the room-sized computer in 2001 the movie) or technology that's completey missing, like nano-tech, genetic egineering, etc.

That's why I would say Alastair Reynolds sounds like he's writing retro-tech, since why do we need cryogenic suspension if we can simply send shapeships with robots that bio-engineer colonists using genemap databases and some basic chemical compounds once the ship arrives near a habitable world? More to the point, lots of the difficulties in space travel come from accomdating the needs of a human biology that evolved under Earth's particular conditions. Would it not make more sense to bio-engineer human astronauts so they don't need things like simulated gravity?

Re:retro-tech

[sql*kitten]

That's why I would say Alastair Reynolds sounds like he's writing retro-tech, since why do we need cryogenic suspension if we can simply send shapeships with robots that bio-engineer colonists using genemap databases and some basic chemical compounds once the ship arrives near a habitable world?

Actually, Reynolds does refer to this - in his books, it failed because the robots they sent along to act as "parents" to the cloned humans were unable to do the job well enough to create a viable colony, and they died out. It wasn't until a hybrid ship with a cargo of frozen colonists and a generation-ship style crew (took 3 generations to get to their destination) arrived that that particular planet was successfully settled.

More to the point, lots of the difficulties in space travel come from accomdating the needs of a human biology that evolved under Earth's particular conditions. Would it not make more sense to bio-engineer human astronauts so they don't need things like simulated gravity?

It might be - but bear in mind that any serious expedition is going to have to be accelerating or decelerating continuously for almost all the distance (only pausing midway to turn around) so you get the simulated gravity essentially for free anyway.

Re:retro-tech

[juhaz]

Robo-seeding mission may or may work. Technologically and biologically, yeah, sure, it's possible, but I wouldn't be so sure about the social aspects of such an attempt.

First there is problems of that here in Earth - would people let their biological to-be-children be raised by robots, and by the way things are now, gene manipulated?

And on the destination, would robots succeed in teaching and growing up those humans without any human supervision? We are talking about babies and small children, and machines are most certainly not very good at reacting to unpredictable - if there's something that people, and especially children are, that's unpredictable. They might run away, and fall into savagery for thousands of years (or just die), perhaps star worshipping their nannies as Gods, but still not learn from them. They might be partially successfull and attain our technology level but with society nothing like on Earth (that's not necessarily bad thing, just probably not what we have in mind when sending that mission), etc.

I'm too old

[DopeRider]

Open to: - space and science fiction enthusiasts from all nations between 15 and 30 years of age .

Of course everyone over 30 are too stupid to have any useful idea.

60'000?

[Steve Franklin]

When did they start using an apostrophe as a replacement for the confusing comma and period variations of the three-zero demarcation point?

Re:60'000?

[Kredal]

er, sorry about that. We printed the number upside down. We meant 000.09

Viral Memes (from Outer Space) Keeping us Dumb

[MisterSquid]

OK, this might be a bit offtopic, but I started thinking, "Hell yes! Of course in order to journey into space we'd need big fat guns. There are aliens out there."

But then I thought about the technologies and laws of physics that would need to be discovered/manipulated in order to build such awesome technologies, stuff that would make the discovery that mass is equal to velocity times the speed of light squared look like high school algebra.

Then I thought about those benevolent alien cultures that are so far advanced because they really get it (whereas we hairless apes are still stuck on blowing up everything that doesn't look like us, including us!) and how they keep close tabs on threshold civilizations, cultures that may be on the verge of actually achieving extra-solar travel that might bring them into contact with other mathematically-capable species.

Wouldn't those aliens have entire philosophical and cultural systems to undermine the researches of such potentially dangerous cultures (e.g. homo sapiens)? They'd be watching us not too attentively until we, say, got to orbiting our own moon, automating travel to nearby planets, and at that point would determine that humans suck, wanting as we do to build Death Stars. So they'd simply inbuild viral memes and technologies to make our culture dumb.

To wit: Star Wars (as a military policy), Grand Theft Auto 3, undercutting of Clean Air Act, defunding NASA, squabbling over nuclear weapons technologies, polluting our gene pool (e.g. premature human cloning, recombinant DNA eugenics), heck, even Slashdot (fearsome productivity killer).

Granted, the above might just be Pynchon updated for the space age, but if I were on the other end of the human race's attempts to get into outer space, I sure as hell wouldn't let us get there. We're dangerous, hateful, and cancerous. We are not mature enough as a species to come into contact with other species capable of understanding abstract symbol systems, including our very own selves.

Re:Viral Memes (from Outer Space) Keeping us Dumb

[dalamcd]

We are not mature enough as a species to come into contact with other species capable of understanding abstract symbol systems, including our very own selves.

How do you know any other species or race is?

dalamcd

Re:Viral Memes (from Outer Space) Keeping us Dumb

[NDPTAL85]

This type of self hate I find most disturbing.

Re:Viral Memes (from Outer Space) Keeping us Dumb

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Someone once said in response to a similar argument, "I always envision a bunch of Indians standing on the beach watching Columbus' ships coming in and saying to each other, 'Surely any race advanced enough to build ships that can cross the ocean has progressed beyond war and conquest!'" Technological superiority is, IMO, in general a useful tool of moral advancement (Star Wars and GTA3 notwithstanding, people now generally are more moral than they were then, in large part because technology allows them to be) but it's no guarantee.

Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator

[PegQuin]

Submitted for approval.

Re:Wait...

[wsapplegate]

> These men and women work on the kind of basic research projects that don't have the flash and glamour of sci-fi novels and books, but which will one day lead to real breakthroughs in human knowledge and acheivement.

Like a space station so costly they had to pressure the Europeans to fund the enterprise, whose utility is far from being demonstrated (except to serve as a holiday resort for really wealthy people wanting to pay big money to cash-strapped Russians, and to get pictures of spationauts working on who-knows-what-new-device on the station modules), and that they now want to shelve in orbit ? Spare me that old troll. NASA has big, visible projects, but they aren't necessarily more efficient than anyone. And when they make mistakes, they're as big as their usual projects. Sorry, but I'm not convinced that NASA is the example to follow...

oi

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually used the phrase "netiquettely correct", and on /. no less. *smack*

Conspiracy Theory 101

[infolib]

Someone from the CIA admitted this.

Pleeease! Rumours are true when, and only when CIA denies them.

On the other hand. . .

[kfg]

I've got a credit card right here just itching to dump it's entire purchasing power in one swell foop on anyone who can install a "somebody else's problem" field around my home.

KFG

Look up the Seldon patents

[kfg]

Seldon was a lawyer who "patented" the automobile by taking ideas from published sources, extrapolated them into the automobile, filed a claim and recieved a patent. The man never so much as touched a single nut or bolt himself and with one exception never invented a damned thing.

Basically he invented the way things are often done now in the IP "trade."

Once upon a time Feynman said ( just spoken mind you, not even written down) that you could take a nuclear reaction and use it to heat water to power a steam generator. On the basis of this off hand comment he was awarded the patent for the nuclear power plant ( sold to the federal government for a dollar).

IP law, and IP fact, is stranger than dreamt of in your philosophy.

KFG

Communicators != cell phones

[No Such Agency]

They're the size of (old ST) or smaller than (Next Gen) current mobile phones. They require no towers, and are never "out of the service area". They can communicate with each other and with orbiting spacecraft in all but the most extreme weather or radiation conditions and also serve as precise homing signals for the transporter etc. Definitely still a science fiction technology.

Re:Communicators != cell phones

[Anonymous Coward]

They're the size of (old ST) or smaller than (Next Gen) current mobile phones. They require no towers, and are never "out of the service area".

Never out of service area? Did you ever WATCH Star Trek???

Dilbert quote

[vidnet]

To the best of my recollection, feel free to correct me (you anal retentive #&%s!)

Wally: "Remember to turn your laptop on during the flight!"
PHB: "I thought I was supposed to turn it off."
Wally: "That's rediculous, then how would they transfer control to you if the plane was about to crash?"

In flight:
Crew: "For god's sake, turn it off!!"
PHB: "Don't worry, I'll land this baby. I can do that from Excel, right?"

CYA...

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times has an organization based and staffed by "great thinkers" been burned by the one-off visionary? I think they are simply covering their bases to prevent looking silly in case a really good idea comes out of the woodwork, and to take credit and develop nascent, revolutionary ideas before anyone else.

Don't give them your ideas; you develop them.

Yeah, I'm half empty.

Three Days of the Condor

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.

Life following fiction following fiction ...

Attention ESA:

[superdan2k]

Make with the lightsabers. And midichlorian implants. Now.

"This isn't the post you want to mod down."

Re:Wait...

[NDPTAL85]

A Missle Defense system is a necessary strategic advantage for the United States. Not only will it allow the country to defend itself from nuclear missles, but to prevent any other nuclear power from using them on anyone we don't want them to.

Heinlein's Heart

[Sw0rdfiche]

The best example of this I remember from years ago was a story about how Robert Heinlein predicted the use of the valveless pump. This same pump was later developed by NASA and found a "secondary" use in heart surgery. That pump saved Heinlein's life.

Re:Wait...

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Well I think it is a wonderful way to privatize the re-distribution of wealth.

A wealth individual paying for a trip feeds money into the pockets of the thousands of workers making the parts that go into the ships and refine the fuel and ... Could be a good way to redistribute the wealth, unlike the Lotteries with take it from the poor and feed it to polititians.

Go Space tourism..

ageist!

[xirtam_work]

doesn't anyone else feel that their abitary age cut off at 30 years of age is ageist?

i'm sure that there are laws against this kind of thing in the EU.

i'm 30 at the moment, so can technically enter, but i don't feel it's fair to discriminate against someone who's 40 or 70 for example.

a valid idea is valid whoever comes up with it.

...and Heinlein's Waterbed

[Caradoc]

Heinlein also "invented" the waterbed, being a method to support a body that wasn't acclimated to higher gravity.

Supposedly, he came up with this idea when he was still in the Navy, and would sneak over the face to float in a pool at night.

Thanks for the catch...

[Embedded Geek]

Truth is, I don't know the slightest bit of French (and my Spanish is miserable). 'Just used Google language tools. I had a hunch it would at least miss some nuances. Machine translation is incredible, but still has a long way to go.

Again, thanks for the correction. I'm relieved it was good enough to be deciphered.

Maybe it's hex

[Embedded Geek]

0x15 to 0x30 would be 21 to 48 (dec). That lets a dottering geezer like me at 34 just slip in...

Science and sci-fi influencing each other

[Drog]

This story was posted here on December 7, 2002. An interesting excerpt follows:

Science fiction has a long and distinguished history of anticipating the future and inspiring generations of scientists, who have in turn inspired sci-fi writers to extrapolate upon their research--the two professions enjoy a wonderfully symbiotic relationship, each having a profound respect for the other. In the area of space exploration, Jules Verne described the effects of weightlessness during mankind's first voyage to the moon in his 1865 novel "From the Earth to the Moon". Russian schoolteacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was the first to describe a true space station, complete with a greenhouse, a laboratory, living quarters, a docking port for spacecraft and an international crew of six, in his 1920 novel "Beyond the Planet Earth". In 1895, Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky suggested a fanciful Celestial Castle in geosynchronous Earth orbit attached to a tower on the ground. The idea was picked up by Russian engineer Yuri Artsutanov in 1960, American oceanographer John Isaacs in 1966, and Jerome Pearson of the Air Force Research Laboratory in 1975, before the space elevator was used in Arthur C. Clarke's 1976 novel "The Fountains of Paradise".

Similar New Yorker Cartoon

[Embedded Geek]

I'm currently working on an in flight entertainment system for corporate jets that will allow laptops and PDAs to join the LAN on the aircraft (so, say, they could do a presentation on the same screen normally used for movies). In honor of my new project, I posted this cartoon outside my cube.

Somehow, management didn't find it funny.

Talk about old scool! :)

[sryx]

I forgot all about the hidden flight sim in Excel, cool Easter egg ever :)
-Jason

Mod "master list" -1, pseudoscience

[Romothecus]

Yes, it's got all the obvious suggestions like "anti-gravity fields" and "magnetic sail" but it's also got "ESP" and "astral projection"... Apparently someone thinks researching these dead horses will lead to something.

Blame me & Google, in that order

[Embedded Geek]

Don't blame /. on this one. I used machine translation, knowing full well its weaknesses and knowing that someone would call me on it. No skin off my back. I'm just glad it was decipherable, if not correct. See my earlier post.

Re:Star trek physics

[shrikel]

But really, wouldn't it be nice if everything from earthquakes and pollution to cancer and bad hair days could be solved simply by shooting a "modified photon topedo" at it?

Rocket fins!

[Scrameustache]

Science fiction did indeed predict (in some form, anyway) communications satellites, cell phones, rocket fins...

Man, I gots to go to Finland!
: )

the probability of that is far to low

[geekoid]

..oh look there's one now!

Re:Wait...

[anonymous cupboard]

The system proposed is a derivative of the Patriot theatre defence system. This didn't work. Many of the tests have not worked (or more conveniently, the scope of the test was adjusted after the results).

Of course, very few nations have nuclear weapons capable of fitting on top of a missile, all of these are quite friendly now. there are other forms of WMD delivery which are much easier. So why waste money on something that doesn't work and isn't needed? I would like to ask is how all that money is being spent, because it sure as heck isn't being spent on competent engineering. However, I hear politicians come quite expensive these days.

The ESA are not concerned with the construction of fantasy weapons, but they are seeking interesting alternative approaches for the exploration of space and the application of space related technology to everyday life.

Just think what would happen to the US space program if they had ome of the missle defence system development money? The Space Station would have been completed by now and we would have been on our way to Mars.

advanced sociology ala Spider Robinson

[forkboy]

In Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, one of the characters that pops up is an alien from a race that is breeding human beings to be nice fat delicious food purely through advanced sociological manipulation on a large scale. One of his quotes is something along the lines of "A society which does not comprehend sociology cannot be considered truly intelligent."

I say we devote more resources towards truly understand the nature of our behavior and social interactions.