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NextFest
anzha writes "This Saturday and Sunday between 9 and 6 pm at the Fort Mason Center's Festival Pavilion in San Francisco, NextFest will be taking place. Organized by Wired and sponsored by HP, The SF Chronicle, General Electric, General Motors, and many others, this is an expo on 'almost there' technologies. Ranging from [in]famous Moller aircar to a 'transparent cloak' from the Tachi Lab at Tokyo University to antibacterial powders from Canada to many, many others. Read more here."
In one vision of the future, the world will have flying cars, coats that make people "transparent,'' digital cameras that translate foreign signs and robots that can attend classes for sick children.
The exhibits include the Moller Skycar, a four-passenger vehicle from Moller International of Davis. The Jetsons-style craft is small enough to drive on the ground, but can take off vertically and fly as fast as 380 mph
They're still promising me the flying car, spiffy.
This thing is actually pretty cool:
http://www.moller.com/
the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350+ MPH and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon. Awesome.
http://www.moller.com/skycar/
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
That transparent cloak is not just for wearing!
The inventor, Professor Susumu Tachi from Tokyo University, believes that it has practical applications that range from surgery, where the surgeon could be wearing this cloak on his hands to be able to 'see through them', to pilots who wish to be able to see the ground underneath the cockpit, for when they are landing.
Really, the possibilities are endless. Military, Medical, Transportation, Commericial products.
Hell, even the napkin holder could use this, so you can have a huge frivolous artsy napkin holder in the center of the table (or a center-piece, something along those lines), and be able to talk to the other person across the table as if nothing were there.
Of course the technology has to improve until the applications become a reality, but just think what this could enable us to do!
Conesus.
Don't eat your soul to fill your belly.
conesus.com
Drill baby drill - on Mars
First of all, the site has a Flash intro that's more epilepsy-inducing than the latest Japanese cartoon craze.
Second of all, it's sponsored by Wired. I remember picking up one of the early issues and there was all this stuff about VR. If this were the early 90's, VR would be all over NextFest or whatever it's called.
Anyways, it sounded like a cool idea and all until the inventor dude talked about the actual applications. He had had a party the last night, and everyone had to pretend they were lobsters. They wore the low-res headsets and had to use the special gloves to make pincer movements with their hands.
It was then that I concluded that VR wasn't what it promised to be. Also that Wired was basically a newer Omni, but without the virtue of being published by a pr0n baron.
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
Moller's been been taking investors' money for decades, and has exactly squat to show for it. Credible aerospace engineers say that, unless Moller's invented a radically new, ultra-compact engine, there's no way you can move enough air mass to actually lift the thing.
The spiffy model on the showroom floor is nothing more than a stage prop. It doesn't fly, it never did, and it probably never will.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
So. Fscking. Cool.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
People who were living during the 1950s and 1960s saw advances that would have been considered acts of magic fifty years before; if someone from the 1890s or 1900s were transported into the 60s, they would have been totally caught off-guard. Vehicles that could allow you to travel on any road at 55 mph? Devices that allow you to see and hear images of people thousands of miles away? A large tower that could put someone on the moon? It would be a fantasy world.
Now, take someone from the 1950s or 1960s and put them into the current 21st century. Imagine this conversation:
"So, do you have your hovercar now?"
No, but now we have cars that can run on electricity, some of the time!
"Well, how about the Moon or Mars? Do you have friends who live on bases up there?"
No, we went to the moon a few times with a couple dozen people, and that was it. We have had a couple of space stations, but only one is left because the others crashed after funding was cut.
"What about diseases? Have you cured cancer?"
No, we have had some progress, but there are some even worse diseases now.
"Is there any new technology that is actually good, then?! Jetpacks? Super-buildings? Contact with aliens?"
Well, we did shrink the size of computers and made them hundreds of times faster, and anyone can communicate with anyone else in the world real-time. We can store large quantities of data on small disks. Here, check this out...
(The computer accidentally gets rerouted to Goatse.)
"AAUAAUAGGHHH! My word, what is wrong with that man's bottom?"
Face it, the future largely sucks. I want my hovcercraft.
--Chag
Yeah baby: 33 and 40Mhz of pure power . With that "mainframe on a chip" Digital Signal Processor.
Ok, one of the NeXTs has booted open source, but then I figured why run NeXT if not for the OS?
So lets all show up with our NeXT slabs under our arms and start a commotion!