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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."
This is what's next?
I guess, if the nextfest.net website is anything to go by, that in the future all websites will be based solely on ultra-annoying Macromedia Flash! A page focused on this type of event should be slim and trim and have a large section devoted to easily viewable/editable/blownupable (to make bigger) pictures of every single device at this convention. Or at least has a large chunk of the site like that.
Casual Games/Downloads
My first thought on what this was involved Steve Jobs and black boxes!
The raincoat-like cloak is made out of "retro-reflective'' material covered with tiny beads that reflect light back in the same direction it came.
The cloak is designed to make whatever it is covering, a body or object, appear transparent by projecting video shot with a camera from behind the cloak onto the front of the cloak.
Hold on a sec, these are two very different things. Are they talking about two different cloaks? If so, it's not very obvious from the article. Also, wouldn't the first cloak be a mirror, as opposed to transparent?
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
Was I the only one that saw the headline and immediately thought of a gathering of NeXT computer users?
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
Actually, I think its pretty funny, given that NeXT Computer played such a pivotal role in making the word "vaporware" part of the common lexicon.
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
"For fun and games, there's Brainball, which is best described as an anti- game, because the goal is to achieve nothing."
.. Ah screw it I'm going back to bed ..
Woohoo, I won I won!
Moller website.
Links are good, people!
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
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
Like digestion for example???
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
To all of the posters that are critisizing the expo as a vapor-fest, I say to you, why not let your imagination run wild? Decades ago we had Worlds Fair and the famous Futurama in New York. People were left in awe of possible future technologies that improve quality of life. People came back wide eyed and filled with imagination. The closest thing I experienced to something like this today was a showcase at Disney Expo 12 years ago when I was 10... It had on display futuristic cars and possible technologies that openned my youthful imagination. It made a big impact on me and got me interested in technology. I hear people complain about the lack of innovation today and I'm personally disappointed at the lack of creativity in a lot of industries. In the 40s and 50s people got to see glimpses of the future presented by GE and Ford where everything is automated. People were happy and it gave them something worthwhile to look forward to. It gave us faith in technology. We have nothing like this today. I for one welcome conventions that inspire us, especially at a time when the future looks so bleak. Sure, it's funded by big corporations but so were the World Fairs in the past and they turned out great!
It's true that he has been taking money from investors for decades, but he's been pouring his own money into it as well. He made about $20 million from real estate investment and millions more from his invention of the SuperTrapp muffler. He invested that in his company. So while it's true that he has been taking money from others, he hasn't been getting rich from it, as the word "scam" implies.
Dr. Moller is a credible aerospace engineer. He is the started the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at UC Davis. And he has invented a new type of engine for the SkyCar.
As someone else pointed out, there have been tethered tests that have shown that the thing can at least hover.
Don't get me wrong. I think that Moller's claims are continually over-optimistic, even to the point that he got in trouble with the SEC for misleading investors. He's been over-promising and under-delivering for decades. But he has made slow, painful progress, and I've seen every indication that he really does believe in what he's doing.
To call it a scam is completely unfair.
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