XPrize Founders Launch Tech Innovation Competition

metlin writes "The organizers of the Ansari X-Prize have launched the equivalent of the X-Prize in a variety of technology areas, called the WTN X-Prizes. The idea is to have a series of prizes for important technology challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, which will be judged by the World Technology Network. The website mentions that, 'The concept of the WTN X PRIZES is to utilize the concepts, procedures, technologies and publicity developed X PRIZE Foundation's Ansari X PRIZE competition for space and the global science and technology innovators identification process and community developed by the World Technology Network (WTN) to launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.' Sounds like a good idea, maybe this will help make that flying car a reality?"

Comments

Re:crappy article

[Sqwubbsy]

Actually, if you follow the link, there's a space where you can suggest what the prizes should be for.

Re:crappy article

[91degrees]

From the "Click for more information" link:

Here is a very rough and incomplete list of the sorts of challenges that might be appropriate:

• Medical challenges, such a cure for cancer or other major diseases.
• Technological "holy grails", such as artificial intelligence, teleportation, molecular assemblers (true nanotechnology), cold fusion, or a believable virtual reality system
• Major global challenges, such as the various UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) announced by the world's leaders at the UN in 2000 at the Millennium Summit.

Idea for important technological innovation

[Denver_G]

Can they make one of the 1st prizes some of the X-ray specs so I can see through womens clothing! (Yes, it must have a gender filter)

Re:Idea for important technological innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Already been done (minus the gender filter)

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/GoodMorningAm er ica/GMA010807Xray_cameras_hunter.html

Re:Idea for important technological innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony already made one.

For the gender filter, just don't point it at guys, duh!

Re:Idea for important technological innovation

[Random Web Developer]

(Yes, it must have a gender filter)

it better have an uglyness filter of some sort too.
I wouldn't want to see through every womens clothes :)

Re:Idea for important technological innovation

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

How about an on-off-switch?

Re:Idea for important technological innovation

[Random Web Developer]

an on-off switch wouldn't be as nice as an uglyness filter.

imagine walking through a busy street, lots of nice women, lots of less nice women. would you rather switch it off, or would you rather only see the goodlooking women naked.

PS: I do realize I'll sound sexist. This started out as a joke, so I apologize beforehand.

Re:Idea for important technological innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they make one of the 1st prizes some of the X-ray specs so I can see through womens clothing!

Done and done

Cool

[ender1598]

Instead of fusion power constantly being 10 years in the future, it'll now be stuck at 5!

Re:Cool

[someme2]

Instead of fusion power constantly being 10 years in the future, it'll now be stuck at 5!
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.

Why does the new X price delay the advent of fusion power by three years?

Important technology challenges

[Advocadus Diaboli]

like e.g. making Microsoft Windows secure? :-)

SCNR

Re:Important technology challenges

[Capt'n Hector]

it's as simple as unplugging the ethernet cable and using a Linux or OS X box to surf.

Re:Important technology challenges

[neonstz]

like e.g. making Microsoft Windows secure? :-)

...and throw in cold fusion, anti-gravity, faster than light travel and a perpetuum mobile while you're at it.

Re:Important technology challenges

[Skadet]

I gave up moderation on this thread to make this point -- so listen up, bitches.

Why is this +5 insightful? It's not offering insight into making Windows more secure; it's a knee-jerk /. reaction to any Windows security comment -- and a bad one at that.

For example, unplugging the ethernet cable would render the box useless in a home network. It's analogous to saying, "Can't write with your left hand? Cut it off and use the right hand instead!".

Please. It's +interesting at best, but in no way insightful.

Re:Important technology challenges

[Anonymous Coward]

You understand that in Slashdot (i.e. Bizarro World) you will be modded Troll/Flamebait for daring to unplug yourself from the Matrix right?

Re:Important technology challenges

[polecat_redux]

It's called overcompensation.

Re:Important technology challenges

[isorox]

Back the the days before the commodotiy internet, we had non networked computers. People had floppy disks to bring their files in. Those disks had viruses on.

Re:Important technology challenges

[ceeam]

Imagine that the next Windows version is very secure. Describe in 25 words or less how would it affect your life.

Re:Important technology challenges

[DrBobcf]

Think people! If everyone uses Linux, then Trojans and virus programs will be written for that OS. The most used OS is the biggest target. Pushing everyone to use your OS is standing up and saying "SHOOT ME!!!"

There's probably a lot more people writting these programs than there are compitent people able to fix the problems they'll create in Linux

Re:Important technology challenges

[jdray]

And the floppy disks were small, too. None of this 1.44 MB stuff, no. We had to put up with 300K. The neighbors had 720K floppies and we were jealous. We walked uphill both ways in the snow to get to their house just to look at their computer and wish we had one. Of course, we were still better than the other neighbors who had a measly Apple ][ with 140K floppy that only worked on one side...

Re:Important technology challenges

[Cplus]

I wouldn't have to fix so much of my friends shit. Hallelujah!

Re:Important technology challenges

[Rei]

There are serious reasons why viruses wouldn't be nearly as effective on Linux systems. One of the biggest is the issue of "nonprivileged users". Unlike in windows, a virus can't go infect all of your system's binaries, because if you run as anything other than root, you don't have write access to the vast majority of them.

There still is stuff viruses could do - say, email a bunch of virus-infected emails and the like from your user account - but it can't compromise your system. And if it can't compromise your system, it means that tools can be installed to detect virus-like activitiy and stop it (say, sending out virus-laced emails ;) ) without risk of being disabled by said viruses.

Re:Important technology challenges

[Rei]

Hey, cold fusion shouldn't be in the same league as antigravity and perpetual motion. In fact, muon-catalyzed fusion, one type of fusion, without a doubt occurs (the challenge is making it energy-positive, which means you need to stop the newly-formed helium from monopolizing the muons). Next down on the scientifically-accepted scale is sonofusion - bassically, accoustic cavitation-induced fusion. The only real questions raised were on whether the detected neutrons were in the proper quantity, but I think the rebuttal to the challenge, and subsequent information, did a pretty good job of addressing the concerns. On the more outer fringes, but still interesting and worth research, are the various zirconium rigs that have been set up. They're incredibly unpredictable, and don't have a fusion neutron signature, but they're definitely producing heat (sometimes for long periods of time), and the helium concentrations afterward often are pretty hard to discount offhand.

I would really like to see a cold fusion prize.

Also, FTL-travel is possible, under two circumstances:

1) If you're not talking about the speed of light in a vaccuum (for example, the blue glow from nuclear waste storage pools is due to electrons moving faster than the speed of light in water)

2) If space is "bent" by a gravitational source, you can move faster than c in non-bent space. Of course, bending space would be the challenge ;)

Re:Important technology challenges

[Kalgash]

Perhaps your comment should have been modded funny instead of Insightful. Seems the L-herd is out in force today.
Either of those systems are likely to be unsecure out of the box.
Safe browsing is possible from almost any platform given a small investment in time to properly patch and configure said system. Including Windows.

Re:Important technology challenges

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah! That made so much sense...

Sprechen sie Inglis?

Re:Important technology challenges

[Anonymous Coward]

That's simple enough to fix: Each person writes his/her own operating system, browser, etc.
They can't all have the same exploits.

Zooming out

[n54]

I'm getting a bit worried that the X-Prize people have lost focus. Better to do one thing right at the time as they have with the Ansari X-Prize.

Re:Zooming out

[polecat_redux]

Considering that the X-Prize was one at a loss of 2-3 times the winnings, perhaps this sort of thing doesn't provide much of an incentive to innovate to anyone but the random billionaire philanthropist.

Re:Zooming out

[dnnrly]

Since the X-Prize has been won now, they technically don't have any focus any more. But I do agree that they shouldn't let their new challenges get too confused. It could easily go 1 of 2 ways now, losing focus, letting the differences between challenges blur and being ignored as they wrestle with internal management and resource issues OR effectively splitting the new challenges up and providing clear and acheivable goals that will inspire people to going out there and win.

In my ill considered and completely unprofessional opinion, they should have different fields such as green automotive, green air transport, automated land transport etc. and each field have no more that 1 or 2 challenges such as "first to do X" and "the highest/biggest/best Y by date Z".

Re:Zooming out

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that the X-Prize was one at a loss of 2-3 times the winnings...

No it wasn't.

Allen will make back MORE than his original investment with the prize money plus the Virgin Galactic deal, PLUS there are other groups queueing up to license the tech. It's starting to look like a pretty smart investment.

Re:Zooming out

[polecat_redux]

Allen will make back MORE than his original investment with the prize money plus the Virgin Galactic deal, PLUS there are other groups queueing up to license the tech. It's starting to look like a pretty smart investment.

While that may be true in this particular case, there's no guaranteeing that further prize attempts are going to see any appreciable return. However, I won't dispute the importance of privately-funded R&D. It seems like a great way to spur some real progress into the discovery of actual cures for diseases rather than treatments (thereby wresting control of the medical industry from the big drug manufacturers).

Re:Zooming out

[JAgostoni]

At face value, yes. But I am sure the publicity the winner's have received along with the licensing/purchasing of their technology is going to make up the difference very quickly. Heck, Virgin has already done that. Trust me, they are not going to be in the hole for very long.

Re:Zooming out

[hamelis]

exactly. what incentive do drug companies have to develop an actual cure for cancer, rather than a treatment? treatments cost a *lot* (my chemo drug was $5k+/litre, and some people don't respond to any drug) which means bigger profits as people stay sick longer (since most of the cost is developing/marketing the drug, not producing it). drug companies want to maximize profit, they don't necessarily want to help people (if it hurts their bottom line: notice how much r&d money is put into malaria treatments). that's why governments and private organizations fund medical research, to correct (hopefully) market failures.

Re:Zooming out

[Rei]

I don't know... one of the biggest flaws of the X prize, in my opinion, is that it doesn't encourage new component research. For example, SpaceShipOne used a standard nozzile, a standard composite frame, etc. There's little incentive for such companies to do the expensive thing: basic research. Currently, NASA is one of the few places that do basic research related to rocket tech.

I'd like to see basic research prizes. Develop an alane booster? Get 10 million dollars. Develop an ion drive thruster that weighs less than 10 kg and can produce more than 1N thrust? Get another 10 million. Create a significantly more heat resistant/heat radiative skin material? Get another 10 million. Demonstrate an reentry system that can allow a craft of A kilograms to reenter in B minutes from C meters altitude that weighs no more than D kilograms? Get another 10 million. Etc.

This sort of basic research, which currently is mostly falling to NASA and the companies it contracts out to, might well work as prizes, and would allow teams like Scaled to build better rockets.

Re:Zooming out

[Anonymous Coward]

the winner's have received

"winners".

Re:Zooming out

[some guy I know]

one of the biggest flaws of the X prize, in my opinion, is that it doesn't encourage new component research. For example, SpaceShipOne used a standard nozzile, a standard composite frame, etc. There's little incentive for such companies to do the expensive thing: basic research.

But "basic research" wasn't the purpose of the X-Prize.
Its purpose was to create (or spur on) an incentive for the private sector to produce a reusable (i.e., "cheap") manned spacecraft.
It has accomplished this goal.

Now, the other items that you mentioned may make space travel even cheaper in the long run, and may be worth creating prizes for, but it had to start somewhere.
The X-Prize has helped jump-start the private manned spacecraft industry.
As the industry grows and prospers, the other stuff that you mentioned may follow (or things may take off in entirely different direction, such as the Space Elevator).

But the X-Prize helped to start it all.
This, IMO, was in no way a "flaw".

Whats the deal with flying cars?

[ActionJesus]

Seriously... why is having flying cars lauded as "the next big thing" all the time? There are several things that would make travel easier and cheaper, such as electric or hydrogen powered cars. Or, even at the less techinical side of things, an effective public transport system. Also nicer to the environment.

Also, think of the mess you get when theres a car crash on a motorway. Now multiply that by 40 times - thats the mess you get when flying cards run out of fuel and plough into regular traffic.

Instead of worrying about flying cars, lets just try and make the cars we DO have less of a hassle.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[tom17]

cant see one of these doing much damage in a crash....

Flying card

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[secretsquirel]

I still don't get why helicopters and planes aren't considered flying cars. Is there a rule or something that says you must use anti-gravity to be a flying car.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they would be, if it were reasonable to stow one in your home garage. The key element in the dream of the "flying car" is that I, Joe Blow, can take it up into the sky just as easily as driving away in any average sedan (oh what time am I living in, SUV).

But planes require too much infastructure to be personal for the average person, not the lest of which is a runway of some length, and helicopters are perhaps concievable as personal transports, but are both loud and relatively difficult to control.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[polecat_redux]

There are several things that would make travel easier and cheaper, such as electric or hydrogen powered cars.

Well, that doesn't exactly solve the problem of traffic congestion. That being said, I personally fear the day flying cars are made available to the average person. Unless auto-navigation systems progress to the point that vehicles can safely drive themselves, I really don't see flying cars becoming mainstream. You think that idiot tailgating you in the "F-950" is a hazard? Just wait until he has 3 dimensions to behave erratically in.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[Jesrad]

Or let's make flying vehicles preferable over cars, maybe ? I have been fascinated by this project for quite a good amount of time already.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[cloudmaster]

Seriously, I've driven on the road before. People can't handle "rolling" cars. However, maybe flying cars would be OK if either 1) the licensing was changed so that it required actual proof of aptitude to obtain one or 2) the cars become cheap enough that most of hte bad drivers will get them, allowing me to use my wheeled car on roads no longer polluted by hordes of unqualified idiots. :)

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

flying doesn't necessarily reduce the problem of traffic congestion. it's fairly well proven that when you increase capacity in a personal transportation system, useage increases an equal or greater amount. providing more capacity is not the answer to traffic congestion.

even with air traffic, you would still need 'roads' (defined volumes in which traffic can move). traffic flow could not be totally diffused: too messy, too many accidents. i personally wouldn't want cars flying over my house.. having my mailbox taken out 4-5 times a year is bad enough.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[syukton]

I see two advantages:

1. Flying cars don't need roads
2. Flying traffic can be layered both horizontally and vertically for a near-unlimited traffic bandwidth

#1: The cost (it's all about cost, you should know this by now) of surveying, constructing, maintaining and upgrading roadways is large both in terms of dollars and in terms of man-hours consumed. Not much of an issue here in the USA where we already have plenty of roads, but elsewhere in the world where they've got more dirt roads than cars to travel on them, those are the places that could benefit the most from flying cars.

That brings us to...

#2: These other nations with their explosive population growth are going to be experiencing a traffic nightmare unless something like flying cars comes along.

So you're right, in a very single-minded way, that flying cars aren't really a big priority for us the Americans. But elsewhere, it may be the future because their past is nothing like ours.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[retards]

Roads are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, at least in large and sparsely populated countries.

Flying 'cars' would make multi-laned highways obsolete (in the long run).

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[rah1420]

People can't handle "rolling" cars.

LOL

allowing me to use my wheeled car on roads no longer polluted by hordes of unqualified idiots.

Meaning all you'll have to be worried about is the aluminum rain when they collide.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[toconn]

The problem often overlooked about flying cars is NOISE.. until you can make flying cars as quiet as normal ones, it will never happen. What is more realistic, but nearly as far off are things like the NASA SATS program.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[toconn]

SATS Link: http://sats.larc.nasa.gov/main.html

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[frankvl]

If conventional science will finally accept that matter is made purely out of waves, not little marbles or strings, we could produce a machine which could transfer (or copy) anything with the speed of light, or maybe even faster if we could produce a wormhole.

Now that's a feature I would actually like on my mobile phone!

P.S. Some guy has already made an anti-gravity device using this theory. It works and it has proven Newton wrong (check his movies).

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[niktesla]

Umm, sorry but your link to an "antigravity device" clearly states that the machine has nothing to do with antigravity. In fact it explains that the device works by creating an "ion wind" to create thrust. As to your comment about matter being made of waves, its accepted due to the particle/wave duality of light, just that its harder to work with "matter waves" since they are so small in wavelength, that the "marbles" model is accurate. Anyhow, thats my physics rant for the day.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[sapped]

If you have flying cars you no longer need to build roads.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[jdray]

Got something in English?

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[elhaf]

Flying cars have been made several times in the past. The deal is that flying is hard. Moller's Skycar, which purports to solve this problem, will be available "real soon now."

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[aspx]

The problem I have with flying cars is that it will require energy just to keep the car off the ground. The car would need to behave more like a helicopter than an airplane, and we know helicopters are not very efficient.

Flying cars are at odds with conservation. It might ease traffic congestion (especially for early adopters) but it will trash the environment. How is this the wave of the future?

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[Atzanteol]

But, as anyone who lives in the city will ask, where do they all *park*? Traffic in the city isn't *half* as bad as parking in the city is. I suppose roads could be converted to runways/parking lots, but only after "normal" cars are obsolete...

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[Jesrad]

Unfortunately, no, but Babelfish can make it understandable (albeit comically sounding), except for the q&a page because the URL field for auto-translation can not parse the &.

Anyway there's not much information except for the .mov file.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[Koatdus]

Instead of flying cars, I want a car like they had in the movie Minority Report. One that I can just sit down in, punch a few buttons, and sit back and relax while it gets me where I want to go all on its own. You will notice that although there was plenty of traffic and it was not moving 200 mph it WAS moving steadly and smoothly because the speed of every car was computer controlled to avoid turbulence and congestion. Cars where queued up at an interchange and were merging one at a time with the steadily flowing traffic on the main road with out any slowdown of the already flowing traffic. No brake lights, no nitwits that don't know how to merge properly, no one slamming on their brakes for no reason or wildly changing lanes and creating a backup.

Ever ride in a limo. When someone else is doing the driving it is way more relaxing and seems to go much faster. You can kick back and talk and relax and not even worry about how you are going to get there. The driver has all of that under control and is far enough forward that you can't easily back seat drive. I would be willing to give up being the first one there if I could sit and read, or surf the internet while I was traveling. Also it would be very nice if I knew that there would never be any traffic jams and that it would always take me exactly 21 minutes to go from my house to my office.

One of the things always mentioned is public transportation. If you don't have a choice that is great but nothing beats door to door service. People want to go from point A to point B quickly and at a time that they choose. I personally really dislike standing at a bus stop for 35 minutes waiting for the next bus headed my way. That coupled with the fact that I have to drive about a fifth of the way to work to get to a bus stop that even has a bus going where I need to go means that you will never see me riding a bus to work. I mean it takes longer to drive to the park-and-ride, park, and wait, then it does just to drive in. Another problem with the park-and-rides around here is that the parking lots are too small. If you don't have a spot by about 6:45 am you are not going to find one. Think they are going to expand any of the lots or put in multilevel parking garages? No. That would be too sensible. Instead we are building a MULTI-BILLION dollar tunnel and light rail that goes from the University to downtown. (A complete waste! NO ONE who works downtown lives at the UW! If they live at the University they are going to classes there. If they are working downtown they are living in the suburbs. Fricken morons!) Think that they have any plans to simplify the route system enough so that you don't need a laptop and a spread sheet to figure out how to get anywhere. No. God forbid they follow a regular schedule and have a bus go southbound every 10 minutes and westbound every 20.

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to have one of these :-/

Re:Whats the deal with flying cars?

[cloudmaster]

I drive a '96 Caprice. It held up that cop light bar for years, surely it can hold up under some cheaply-made car parts falling from the sky. :)

RE: maybe this will help... O/T

[Anonymous Coward]

"maybe this will help make that flying car a reality?"

I sure hope NOT , I don't want more people in the air than we already have.

Some of the private pilots I've seen shouldn't be driving a car, much less flying one!

Bad Idea all the way around.

Do we really need prizes for this stuff?

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Are we afraid the guy who invents the usable flying car won't be able to sell any? Is there someone with an AI sitting around saying, "If only I could figure out how to make some cash off this?"

The prize for the space travel thing was incentive to do it cheaply, wasn't it? That doesn't work when the hard part is doing it at all.

That said, it's still pretty cool.

Re:Do we really need prizes for this stuff?

[vinukr]

I guess the guy who invents a flying car wont be able to make immediate money selling it coz after all the research that would go into it, it would cost a fortune and it would take sometime for it to get mass produced and become cheap.

Thats exactly why u need prize money for this. After all, prize money is also a catalyst for the invention... isnt it??

Re:Do we really need prizes for this stuff?

[squaretorus]

Theres one thing to have an idea, to have the motivation, to have the ingenuity and the focus. It's quite another to have the money and time to actually DO anything about it.

Finding a funder can be a bitch - prizes like this mean that the funder has a second bet on - firstly they are betting the flying car will make money - second they are betting that the prize itself will give them some additional publicity.

Imagine HP spending a few million on an Xprize entry for... well... anything. Thats a fraction of an advertising budget. They will sink the money more quickly based on a prize timescale and the reduced 'risk'.

At least I _think_ thats the theory of this kind of prize.

Re:Do we really need prizes for this stuff?

[Halo1]

You could see it as an alternative to patents, without the harmful monopoly effects.

Re:Do we really need prizes for this stuff?

[Atzanteol]

I think the prize is more psychological than anything else. It's not so much about the money (AFAIK the X-Prize didn't cover the cost of building/flying SpaceShipOne).

It's the *challenge* that matters. I say "I bet $500,000 that nobody can build a flying car" and it gets attention. Now there will be people out there to prove me wrong. Like the space race between the USA and USSR. And there wasn't even a prize! Just the competition and the challenge.

That's what the X-prize does. Creates a challenge, and competition. We humans operate best in that environment.

Prize for Fuel Cells?

[antivoid]

I feel someone should offer a nice prize for creating an efficient and clean way of producing hydrogen for fuel cell technology. Fuel cells already exist, but the cost, pollution and work involved in producing the hyrdogen required to run a fuel cell is prohibitive. If cheap and clean hydrogen production was achieved, we would be able to stop burning fossil fuels, the world would be a cleaner place, and stuff like flying cars could very well become a reality due to the sheer amount of power fuel cells can produce.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuel cells already exist, but the cost, pollution and work involved in producing the hyrdogen required to run a fuel cell is prohibitive.

So is the cost, pollution and work involved in making the cells themselves!

we would be able to stop burning fossil fuels

Not going to happen... at least not until Peak Oil hits and we can't afford to keep burning them:
http://www.peakoil.net/

stuff like flying cars could very well become a reality due to the sheer amount of power fuel cells can produce.

Erm, no. What we need are less wasteful modes of local transport, not flying, and presumably higher speed, modes.

At the end of the day, if you want clean energy, then "it all comes from the Sun". Work out how many hectares of land you'd need to reserve to acquire the energy from solar radiation you need to commute in your car... happily assume 100% efficiency. Then multiply that by 100million... and then compare that to the land area of the US.

See a problem yet?

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[kuiken]

You mean like they plan in Iceland.
Use geothermal vents to build power stations and use the leftover power (after providing electricity to the net) to produce hydrogen.

A clean and for all intents en purposes endless suply of free (beside mainanance and transportofc ) energy

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[polecat_redux]

I feel someone should offer a nice prize for creating an efficient and clean way of producing hydrogen for fuel cell technology.

Does this count?

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[mprinkey]

The problem with hydrogen is *not* producing it. Electrolysis is easily accomplish. People have been genetically engineering algae to produce hydrogen gas directly from sunlight. We can gasify coal or other hydrocarbons, bleed off and sequester the CO2 to get H2 pretty efficiently.

The problem with hydrogen is storing it and transporting it safely. There is no good solution for this. The concept of using hydrogen as a bulk fuel is a complete non-starter until this problem is solved. With current approaches, either the pressure is too high, the temperature is too cold, or the energy density is too low. It leaks very easily, so it is difficult to store for extended periods of time. And recent studies seem to indicate that the environmental impact from significant H2 leakage could be worse than CO2 emissions.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[mOoZik]

I think your understanding of fuel cells and their limitations is, well, limited. The cost of fuel cells are prohibitive primarily due to the PEM - Proton Exchange Membrane. This is the HEART of the fuel cell, which unfortunately becomes pretty expensive once systems are scaled up. The second limitation actually comes from the fact that hydrogen is very difficult to store in densities needed to provide longevity, safety, and frankly, cost. Solve those two problems, and such technology will be as commonplace as the internal combustion engine. Hell, eliminate the first problem altogether and combust hydrogen. Now worry about storing it. Hydride tanks are one solution, but still not good enough.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[bp2179]

Wasn't the Hindenberg just a giant fuel cell? That is my worry with hydrogen cells...very flamable. Depending where they are in a vehicle, they could make the Pinto look like a firecracker.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[rxmd]

And recent studies seem to indicate that the environmental impact from significant H2 leakage could be worse than CO2 emissions.

Care to elaborate and/or provide a link? H2 tends to go straight up into space, as Earth's gravity is too weak to hold it. No environmental impact, unless you count explosions. While water vapour (H2O) is a greenhouse gas, its lifetime in the atmosphere is orders of magnitude lower than that of CO2.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[Rei]

Compared to batteries, compressed hydrogen has good energy density. That's the reason for fuel cells in the first place. However, everything about fuel cells is inefficient. The fuel->energy conversion is lossy. The water electrolysis is lossy. Any regenerative braking? You'll either need batteries, or accept lossy re-electrolysing.

Fuel cells also have poor *power density*. In general, you have the following

Ultracapacitors:
Best power density, worst energy density. Slowly leak energy, but have almost no storage loss.

Batteries:
Medium power density, medium energy density. Generally minor storage loss.

Fuel cells:
Worst power density, best energy density. Significant storage loss.

Knowing what fuel cells are good for and what they're bad for is critical for this debate - something that the grandparent seems to have no clue of. They're not good at efficiency. The reason for using them over battery powered cars is that they have a longer range for a given amount of mass (although, to get a sizable amount of power out of the vehicle, you generally need a pretty heavy set of fuel cells, due to the low power density).

** For those who don't know **

Energy density: How much energy can be stored in an energy storage device per mass of the device. A way to picture this is "how long could I run a 100 watt lightbulb with 1kg of this energy storage device?"

Power density: How quickly the energy can be discharged from a given mass of storage device. A way to picture this is "how *many* 100 watt lightbulbs could I run (ignoring how long I could run them for) from 1 kg of this energy storage device?"

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[jdray]

Um... Where do you get energy other than from the sun? Excepting the possibility that some of the nuclear fuel we use in reactors actually came from extra-solar asteroids striking the Earth, all our energy comes from the sun. Some of it is just stored a long time in a wide variety of forms.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[jdray]

will sell soul for gmail invite

How do you expect to get a gmail invite if you don't have some way of contacting you listed?

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[jdray]

Umm.. No. Read up on the Hindenberg. It was the aluminum paint that caused the problem.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[vtolturbo]

the hindenberg was simply a giant balloon full of hydrogen. however, the explosion was not caused by hydrogen combustion. hydrogen is lighter than air and burns clear (with faint blue). if you look at the flames from the images, you'll notice that the flames are orange and originate at or below the balloon. this is because the actual cause was a highly flammable surface coating used to keep the fabric in tact and feep the hydrogen from leaking out.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[jdray]

Well, the technology does seem to be getting better.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[pavon]

Thanks for bringing up the difference between power density and energy density. I had been overlooking that when thinking about alternative fuels. It also put a question in my head that perhaps you could answer. Currently, with hybrid cars, the electric motor has a good deal of torque at low speeds, but not at high, compared to combustion engines which can be made to have decent torque at all desired speed ranges.

Is this a property of the motor or the energy source? Ie, if we could increase the discarge rate of the source, would an electric motor have comprable power to a gasoline engine at high speeds? Are fuel cell cars doomed to having pathetic accelleration at prolonged high speeds because of their low power density? Do you know of a good site to read about this aspect of alternative fuel / fuel system vehicles?

thanks!

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[Anonymous Coward]

Geothermal: from gravitational collapse of Earth. Due to the Sun, but not actually from it. Same goes for your asteroid strikes.

Nuclear fission: Heavy elements created in supernovae.

Nuclear fusion: Basically burning leftovers from the big bang.

Sulphur oxidation (as in certain extremophile bacteria): From the creation of suphur in stars/supernovae.

Starlight: Other stars. (Also various other astronomical systems with their own energy sources, like quasars or the cosmic microwave background. AFAIK these are all from either nuclear power, gravitational collapse, or the big bang.)

When you get right down to first causes, all our energy is from the big bang. It comes to us in a variety of ways from that, chiefly via the Sun.

n.b. the Casimir effect isn't from the big bang (well, maybe), but I don't think it'll ever be successfully exploited to generate energy.

Re:Prize for Fuel Cells?

[Rei]

It's a bit of both. Electric cars are an optimizatation problem. We can, via our selection of batteries, get different amounts of energy density vs. power density. If you increase the power of the car, you'll cut its range (which is already a problem for electric cars). Also, the engine requirements get bigger the more torque you want out of it, which means less overall energy efficiency because of the now-heavier vehicle.

If we can reach the holy grail of energy storage - high energy density, high power density, and low loss in charge/discharge - noone would dream of using a conventional vehicle again ;) There is hope that some day fuel cells can become this; it'll be a while, though, if ever.

Flying car?

[Hittite Creosote]

I'd hope they come up with real 21st century ideas, rather than rehashing old 20th century ones. Besides, what's the point of being able to fly to work when you still can't find anywhere to park? Anyway, the real problem isn't making a cheap flying machine as much as making it safe for the average person to control it - so what they'd really need are AI pilots, rather than flying cars.

Re:flying car?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever tried to parallel park an Aeroplane? Do u have one in your garage. Are airplanes affordable enough so that most middle-income families can afford one. Can trailer trash live out of an airplane? I don't think so, so no, airplane != flying car.

Re:Flying car?

[Gadzinka]

so what they'd really need are AI pilots, rather than flying cars.

And with AI pilots you can just ditch flying: traffic jams can be avoided completely by perfect cooperation of well disciplined drivers. Quite impossible with humans.

Just look at the column of any (para)military outfit starting the parade march.

Well trained people keep the right distances while forming as well as starting and stopping, so the column starts moving immediately in all places.

Badly trained recruits at the front of the column start walking immediatelly, while those at the end have to wait to have space to start walking. It looks just like traffic jams.

Robert
(after basic 1.5yr military service ;)

Re:Flying car?

[frankvl]

The REAL problem is that people need things that are distant to them in the current environment (work, food, tourist attractions), perhaps there will be a better way of getting people to those places (or vice versa?). Of course people shouldn't do things they don't have to (like controlling cars), but even so it doesn't have to be a car at all. You need to understand this thoroughly if you want to innovate.

Re:Flying car?

[Pxtl]

I've often thought about this myself - the fact is that "good driving habits" like not tailgating, not constantly accelerating and breaking to keep perfect pace with the movements of the next car - these things increase congestion.

So maybe Minority Report was right? The future isn't flying cars, but AI cars that work together in the city.

Either way, just take the friggin' subway you planet-screwing losers.

Oil?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just hope one of the prizes is for a technology to help us kick our oil addiction... Peak Oil is coming people!

Re:Oil?

[eheldreth]

As a certified right wing concervative I usualy don't go in with the tin hat croud, but I have got to say the therory of peak oil is sound and the only question to be answered is have we used half of the available oil. I think that if we have not we are getting close.

A bit off-topic but...

[DeepDarkSky]

Flying cars sound really great, but quite frankly, I think it's a waste. Unless it offers considerable advantage, it would never take-off (pun intended). By considerable advantage, I mean it can get to places a lot faster or uses less fuel or something. I can see the use of them, but not on a large scale basis. Flying cars will obviously use consierably more fuel than regular cars and other ground transports. For other purposes, there's the airplane, which has been economized and travels much faster.

The flying car, then, I think will end up being like helicopters - but perhaps slightly more common. Wealthy people will have them and for emergency purposes (organ transplants, etc.), but other than that, I don't see flying cars as truly useful. In the U.S., we already consume so much energy driving, etc., do we really just need more ways to consumer energy faster?

(Granted, if we all had this attitude, we would have had the technology advances we've had up to know, airplanes and all, but current energy usage trends are quite alarming).

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[GreyPoopon]

By considerable advantage, I mean it can get to places a lot faster or uses less fuel or something. I can see the use of them, but not on a large scale basis. Flying cars will obviously use consierably more fuel than regular cars and other ground transports.

Well, there's always the Moller M400. Top speed of 350 mph, uses regular gasoline, gets 20 mpg (better than an SUV).

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[Anonymous Coward]

And, as an American, you probably figure that 20 mpg is good! :-)

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[aXis100]

[sarcasm] Yeah, but does it fly? [/sarcasm]

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[BasilBrush]

From a century ago: Flying aeroplanes will obviously use considerably more fuel than regular cruise liners and other sea transports.

A flying car occupies an area of usefulness between a car and an aeroplane. For example, I happen to live on a island 10 miles off the French coast. If I want to go to France, I have to book a ticket on a plane, go to the airport according to a schedule. Wait 45 minutes mandatory checkin time, fly to another island, wait for the connection, fly to the one single French airport that is served, then rent a car to get to my final destination 10 miles away. Alternatively, I can take a boat trip, but the ferry only runs in the summer months, once pre day, and once per week in winter. And then I still need to rent a car to get to my final destination. I could buy a two seater aeroplane or a helicopter, but they are prohibitively expensive, and difficult to learn. The concept of a flying car is that it is affordable for the reasonably average person, they are not significantly more difficult to drive than a road car and they don't require an airport at either end of the journey.

It's a very hard nut to crack, but then so is space travel, and that's what the original X-Prize was intended and succeeded to encourage. And with commercial space travel, they didn't start by offering the prize for the first passenger trip to the moon. They started with something more achievable.

There has to be a suitable challenge that is further along the way towards personal flying transport than we are now, but maybe isn't a practical flying car for the masses. I know there are companies that are already doing prototypes in this area, so the prize needs to be set some useful distance beyond where they are now.

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[mirio]

Well, there's always the Moller M400. Top speed of 350 mph, uses regular gasoline, gets 20 mpg (better than an SUV).

This project has been going on for years and the most they've managed is a few feet off the ground. We can talk about fuel economy once the thing is flying.

I also don't think the Moller is that good of a design. Why fly at 350mph and NOT have a wing? The lift is essentially free...the only cost is induced drag...the natural byproduct of lift in an airfoil. I just don't understand why he wants to have these fans pounding the air into submission (and consequently using more energy => burning more fuel). Now, if this thing had retractable wings...that may make more sense to me.

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[GreyPoopon]

Now, if this thing had retractable wings...that may make more sense to me.

Erm, it *does* have wings. They fold up and down. I don't know whether the wings alone are enough for lift, though.

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[hughk]

The problem with cheap and easy personal flight is infrastructure *not* the plane itself. We can build a cheap plane now. We can even build a super-duper autopilot that will get it from A to B. It isn't hard. The price is then a matter of mass-production and the old bug-bear of product liability. I understand that is why many private planes are now available only as kits.

The problem is the infrastructure. NASA has their concept of 'highways in the sky', which essentiaally allows pilots to request flight clearance between two points and then to receive a flight plan in real-time which can be fed dircetly into an autopilot. The plan can then be updated depending upon the presence of other traffic.

Essentially the pilot no longer does much flying, it is the autopilot under guidance from air-traffic control and ATC must be automated to cope with the volume. At the moment ATC still comes under the category of computer assisted rather than a truely automated problem.

Ironically the problem of "highways in the sky" is actually somewhat easier than automating driving on the ground and a great deal of progress has been made there. However, while having a computer controlled car requires image recognition, a plane doesn't need that as no kid is going run after a ball in front of it.

In short, your problem is solvable, but it won't happen tomorrow because of the cost. Planes also remain a lot more vulnerable to bad weather than surface transport.

Lastly, I should add that flying is never a problem. Just be able to land and walk away!

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[BasilBrush]

You see, you are falling into the hole I talked about. You are doing the equivalent of setting the X-Prize for a visit to the Moon, instead of just reaching a high enough altitude to be called space. Yes, the autopilot is absolutely critical. That's why now is a very good time to be doing it, and the 1970s or the 1950s for example, wasn't.

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[Idarubicin]

In the niche market that you describe, it very well might be cheaper to buy a boat and hire a taxi on the mainland, than to own and maintain a flying car. (You don't want to be in a situation where you need "roadside" assistance--I suspect that the enhanced reliability and more frequent preventive maintenance will be costly indeed.) In any conditions that you wouldn't want to take a small boat out, you probably wouldn't want to try the trip in your flying car either.

Small hovercraft also come to mind as a possible solution in this situation.

Maybe an amphibious vehicle would be appropriate. Those have been tried before, though with limited commercial success.

I fear that any vehicle that can operate on regular roads and fly will probably do a half-assed job at both, and the market will always be a tiny niche--a toy for the wealthy. Such vehicles may have some military potential, though the military already has helicopters which do the job in most situations. Unless entirely new technologies for flight are developed (stuff that we don't even know about now--techniques to build Back To The Future-style hoverboards and the like) I just don't think there ever will be a "practical flying car for the masses". The masses don't need it, can't afford it, and would hurt themselves and others if they had it.

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[hughk]

No, the problem with cheap aircraft is solved. Guidance/auto-pilots is also a done deal, think cruise missiles. A cheaper version based on GPS with a cheapo INS for attitude and backup (hey, they are using them in advanced RC models now).

Given waypoints, we can already navigate automatically anywhere within a plane's range. A flight management system that will do this currently costs about $100K. It could possibly be done for $5K, GPS is really cheap. The problem is attitude control.

However as mentioned there is a need for a massive ground infrastructure for traffic control.

Re:A bit off-topic but...

[BasilBrush]

Your're not thinking out of the box. When someone says flying car, you are thinking cheap plane/helicopter, and when talking about autopilot, you think about existing aircraft/missile autopilots and think that that is the way it must be. And that there must be centralised air-traffic control scaled up from what we have now.

It's like before the wright brothers, inventors generally thought that a flying machine would involve flapping wings, because that was their model of things that fly.

Leaving aside the actual pysics of providing lift for one moment, a flying car is not a cheap plane/helicopter in concept. If I get into a road car, I don't have to decide on my destination before I go, and I can just go for a drive and see where I end up if that's how I feel. The car is a vehicle for freedom where I feel I can go anywhere at any time. Of course it isn't complete freedom - we all have to obey rules like driving on roads, on the correct side and obeying roadsigns. Which leads on to the next point...

Why assume there is a need for air traffic control? Small prop planes typically fly at around 1000 feet or above, and jets fly higher. It would be perfectly possible to allocate the airspace below 500 feet, outside of an exclusion zone around airports, for the use of flying cars. Use ground based beacons in addition to GPS and other instruments to allow the car computer to follow virtual one way roads in the sky, and thereby avoid collision. Because flying cars are not high speed vehicles like planes, a centralised air-traffic control to prevent collisions is not needed. In addition to the roads in the sky, the car computers can communicate their positions and intentions to each other by short range radio in order to avoid collision, and back that up radar and/or cameras with vision recognition. The roads in the sky concept can also function to limit noise by diverting non-local traffic around built up area rather than through them.

The human beings place in all this could be to simply set a final destination, or it could be to actually drive. However, the car would never directly follow the persons direct instructions, but rather follow as closely to his wishes as possible while following the roads and rules of the sky.

There's a whole new form of transport possible for the future that isn't an extension of the flight systems we have now. It may sound like dreamland, and the stuff of movies like Bladerunner and Minority report, but then so did space travel in the 1950s. To get there we need a series of X-prizes, each solving part of the problem.

Of course the biggest problem that I don't see a suitable solution to is broken down cars falling from the sky. But do *I* really have to think of everything? ;-)

Innovations are nice, but . . .

[Gabrill]

We already have lots of innovation in raw technology. The problem is that they're not economically feasable. The next prizes should be given to the company (or individual) who brings a next generation technology to the masses.

A true highway autopilot in a sub $30k car

Safe fog and rain navigation for the same car

Economic and RELIABLE robotic assembly lines

Stuff like that.

Re:Innovations are nice, but . . .

[isorox]

We do have a prize for them. It's call capitalism. Develop the product and you'll get the customers. Patents ensure noone rips your idea off before you recoup R&D costs either.

Re:Innovations are nice, but . . .

[Gabrill]

Call me a half-empty glass but what consumer product of great complexity than a donut is not encumbered by OTHER patents that make it prohibitively expensive to sell that product to any smart consumers.

what I want to know is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The concept of the WTN X PRIZES is to utilize the concepts, procedures, technologies and publicity developed X PRIZE Foundation's Ansari X PRIZE competition for space and the global science and technology innovators identification process and community developed by the World Technology Network (WTN) to launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.

What will the prize be for a foolproof way of teaching writing skills?

flying car?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe this will help make that flying car a reality?

Is not that just called an airplane?

Potable water

[Rxke]

Cheap ways to purify water etc.
The much-talked about global water-crisis in the making needs some attention.

Crazy ideas aplenty: Thinking of Dune: the big 'stills, that take moisture out of the air and cool it, so it condenses, comes to mind. But something like that would be possible to build with simple stuff... In 'underdeveloped' nations...

Re:Potable water

[mikael]

I always wondered whether you could have airships that fill up with the hot and humid air above the ocean areas where hurricanes start, and have them travel to the regions where there are shortages of water (or at least some high-altitude grouond and let gravity do the rest).

Where's the opposite prize?

[thrill12]

Wherever a prize was awarded, anti-prizes where tought of: the golden raspberry(anti-Oscar), ig-nobel prize('anti'-NobelPrize), etc.

Where is this "Anti X-prize" then ?
My personal idea for the contents for such a prize would be:

Prize for the craft that crashes most spectacular (without people, duh)

Prize for the most useless invention on (name your territory here)

Prize for the worst overshoot of a set target (wanted to the moon, went to Mars)
Any more ?

Re:qweqweqw

[tarunthegreat2]

Aw c'mon this has got to be among the funniest trolls out there. Note that the buttons pressed are only on the LEFT side of the keyboard....I'm still laughing, at least somebody give it an underrated (and avoid moderating my post at all, comprendo?)

I have little hope...

[Skadet]

'The concept of the WTN X PRIZES is to utilize the concepts, procedures, technologies and publicity developed X PRIZE Foundation's Ansari X PRIZE competition for space and the global science and technology innovators identification process and community developed by the World Technology Network (WTN) to launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.

Until they can demonstrate sufficient mastery of language to write a readable sentence, I don't think we'll be seeing those flying cars any time soon.

On second thought, maybe we will... but the manual will be too incomprehensible to enable anyone to drive them.

Re:I have little hope...

[Skadet]

You have GOT to be kidding. Troll? Good God the moderation system needs fixing.

Re:crappy article

[BasilBrush]

'The concept of the WTN X PRIZES is to utilize the concepts, procedures, technologies and publicity developed X PRIZE Foundation's Ansari X PRIZE competition for space and the global science and technology innovators identification process and community developed by the World Technology Network (WTN) to launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.'

A prize for software that takes overly long and unweildy sentances, and converts them to plain English.

Ethanol or biodiesel

[spineboy]

offer the prize for making a working ethanol (or bio diesel)production plant that has a lower cost of energy than say a 30 dollar barrel of crude oil. As far as fuel cells go, I guess adding fuel cell tech to efficiently use ethanol, would be useful.

Because what this world needs is....

[zarthrag]

...The NEW Cadillac Escalade Flyin' SUV! With motorized "spinner" rims that spin even when you're flyin!

Gimme a friggin break! The X Prize was cool and all, but that's not quite effective for everything, only encouraging lower costs. If you wanna help the world by offering a prize, try these:

1. Energy Efficient homes. The car is a good start, but the american home could stand to be improved. How about homes that produce more energy than they consume?

2. Space Resource gathering/production. This is what the X prize should work toward IMO. The nearest asteroid is worth (I think) ~3 trillion. Now that's smart resources!

3. Energy production. Solar energy "farms", in space!

4. Energy transport. Friendly/safe synthetic fuels or batteries are a must.

For most of these 10M may not cut it. But I'd like to see some kinda push.

Re:Because what this world needs is....

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

How about homes that produce more energy than they consume?

IMHO a challenge for designing a house that doesn't use more energy than it produce, would only have real meaning if it isn't more expensive than ordinary houses (plus a few years of energy costs), has a decent reliablity and no hassle.

Re:Because what this world needs is....

[wikdwarlock]

The asteroid one is great! Keep stretching our space abilities and knowledge and we may just spread humanity beyond Earth someday.

How about feeding the entire World?

[Anonymous Coward]

... sure it isn't as "cool" but is the greatest problem facing humanity.

Re:How about feeding the entire World?

[hamelis]

we produce enough food to feed everyone, and surplus. the problems are distribution, in the short term, and population increasing geomterically (mostly) while food production (mostly) increases linearly, as well as the fact that a population always increases as much as its food supply allows. both make it necessary to produce more food to feed a growing population, which leads to more people, in a positive feedback loop (unsustainable in a limited resource system). the greatest problem facing humanity is itself: the population doubling by 2050 won't exactly make that problem smaller, especially when oil runs out, the green revolution (cheap pesticides/herbicides/fertilizers) ends, and we can only produce and distribute a fraction of the food we do now.

Re:How about feeding the entire World?

[ocelotbob]

Food production is solved on the scientific front. It's the delivery vectory that's the problem -- getting dictators to stop playing food politics would probably end a great deal of the hunger on the planet. That, and serving the neoluddite anti-gm people a big glass of STFU.

Re:How about feeding the entire World?

[frankvl]

The greatest problem is making sure we will prevail; atom bombs and climate changes are the bigger threat imho. Hunger is not a global threat and CAN be solved if we weren't such lazy hypocrites.

Re:How about feeding the entire World?

[cakefool]

step 1 cease all farming subsidies - it is cheaper for africa to import food than grow it - all money leaves africa, no investment in farming, all bad.

step 2 ???

step 3 The whole world profits in the long run!

Africa is just an example here, other countries are in need too.

suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Prize for a working quantum computer would be a very good idea.

Alternative Energy Sources

[BlueMonk]

I think the biggest challenge facing humanity right now is energy. I don't know if everyone realizes how many of the world's problems are based on energy consumption and how much better off we would be with some alternative energy source that is safe, clean, cheap and plentiful. Surely we've put our minds to it before, and maybe it's futile to hope for such a miracle, but maybe it's time to try again. Any hope of finally getting that cold fusion to work? :) Or maybe some combination of high yield solar panels with efficient storage cells.

Imagine -- forget mideast oil and all their conflicts; forget pollution -- most of it comes from our current, primary energy sources; forget nuclear waste disposal (after we're done with what we've already got to deal with); and if the energy source is reasonably self-contained / localized (like solar panels on the house), forget transmission problems and dangers. If I had to pay double taxes for 2 years to get this worked out, I'd be all for it!

Re:Alternative Energy Sources

[squaretorus]

The big challenge isn't so much generation - as transmission and storage. If we can create a reliable way of getting energy to cover a few hundred miles and a few dozen hours with 50% losses we have really achieved something tangible in getting rid of the energy problems by making relatively remote wind / solar / etc sources viable.

At the moment, from the last report I read, wind X energy collected in west of Scotland last night ans stored in a hydro plant until I needed to use it this morning turns into X/50 coming out of my outlet to power this PC.

Holey shit! Turn that into X/2 or even X/10 and you have a VASTLY better economics of energy production. Most of the current production is simply going into warming up transmission cables and hydroelectric damns!

Re:Alternative Energy Sources

[n54]

I agree, even starvation (which another poster mentioned) can often (in part) be attributed to lack of energy, for example local overuse of wood contributing to drought or desertification.

Still, research into energy sources probably wont get much help from prizes given out afterwards: either they're already funded by governments or (usually oil) companies, or they lack enough present funding like this interesting fusion project: http://www.focusfusion.org/home.html - disregard the horrible site design, and if there's a VC out there why not have a closer look? If it's successful you'll make Paul Allen green with envy ;)

Such projects or other more established ones might benefit a lot more from "fasttracking" than a prize by getting more funds and brainpower. Then again with all the research going on it might not help at all: do we want to try a broad approach or hedge our bets on a few? Choosing is very hard. Most governments in America, Europe, Asia and Oceania are giving pretty big incentives for energy research as it is. Some big examples are the US hydrogen focus, Chinas pebble reactors (the South African Republic is also looking at this, so Africa is in too), and the Australian solar tower (european technology), and there are lots and lots of smaller projects almost everywhere.

Re:Alternative Energy Sources

[Anonymous Coward]

We dont need cold fusion or tomahak fusion. We already have cheap safe hot fusion, but without the need of massive ammounts of equipment. See Focus Fusion http://www.focusfusion.org/

Re:Alternative Energy Sources

[apsmith]

Actually, despite the hype, there's relatively little real R&D money going into alternative energy in the US, other than the nuclear options. The hydrogen car thing is funded at something like $100 million/year. Solar cells get about $80 million/year. Energy efficiency efforts get a few hundred million/year. Fusion gets a lot more than all those, if you include the inertial confinement stuff, at about $1 billion/year.

That's out of the Department of Energy budget, which is funded at well over $20 billion/year. Where does the rest of that $20 billion go, if not to alternative energy? Well, there's the fossil fuel R&D and subsidies. And then there's all the nuclear weapons work - WMD's right here at home... that's where the bulk of the money goes.

If a $10 million prize can bring in a hundred million dollars of R&D investment, a few of those could make an enormous difference to progress in alternative energy. Except for wind power (developed mostly in Europe) and some efficiency stuff like hybrid cars, there's been very little improvement in energy alternatives since about 1980.

Re:Alternative Energy Sources

[n54]

Interesting numbers, do you have comparable numbers for the EU? (I don't).

I agree completely that if a big prize would attract a lot of extra investement it would be superb.

Hmm, I've followed the Ansari X-Prize for at least two years now and while writing this reply I realized I was overly pessimistic about something similar in alternative energy, it might just work :) ...so I edited away a huge chuck here lol.

However, I don't think big companies already investing in such R&D would be too interested in participating unless for PR reasons. They have their own strategic interests to protect.
Also it might be beneficial to keep the contestants at somewhat the same level it was in the Ansari X-Prize. Not sure about this but I'm thinking about teams formed around less explored ideas/methods (university level research). Depends a lot on the aims of the prize I guess.

It really is a lot harder than going suborbital

As to the numbers, if I read you correctly you are referring to R&D spent by the US government, and my gut feeling is that it will pale in comparison to US private/corporate R&D spending on alternative energy (just something like GE R&D on windmills is probably quite big). Much of it is by oil companies on non-fossile fuels as they know (probably better than anyone) that they need to diversify their potential in the energy market (Shell and BP are good examples of this, multinationals but likely to do a lot of the R&D in the US). A lot of university research (much of it related to questions important to alternative energy) is also corporately sponsored (at least compared to the situation in other countries than the US). In addition to this federal and state incentives for alternative fuels are big in the US and have a huge non-monetary impact on investment (I'm especially thinking about hydrogen and californian legislation).

All in all I wouldn't be surprised if the US is actually the country both spending the most money and doing the most research in alternative energy. Maybe not relative to population size, but at least in quantity.

WTN X-Prizes

[ironman_one]

1. Robots and AI
Robot players beats human world championchip masters in a standard soccer match.

2. Space
2.1 - Race around the mon.
2.2 - Land on the moon.
2.3 - Bring back one kilogram of moon material
2.3 - Land on mars.

3. Medicine
Neural computer interface(say matrix)

4. Energy
Superconducting powerline over 100km

5. Transportation
Antigravity

Re: WTN X-Prizes

[bo0ork]

They forgot:

6. Bureaucracy
Redesigned patent system

Re: WTN X-Prizes

[Gabrill]

1. Robots and AI Robot players beats human world championchip masters in a standard soccer match.

Only three humans were injured unintentionally by their bulky metal foes. The fourth doesn't count because he deliberately picked a fight with top robotic player Android Schwarzenegger.

5. Transportation Antigravity

Baloon trash is a thing of the past. Now, when you lose grip on the string, the baloon navigates itself out of the solar system.

Innovations

[vinukr]

Innovations that reach out to the poorer mass, especially in the developing and under-developed nations should be what must be concentrated on..

What about research on agriculture?? novel farmland efficiency increasing and cross-breeding techniques.
More on materials that could be useful in cutting costs of basic amenities (shelter especially) for the poor
Also on diseases like cancer and AIDS

It is only innovations like these which are going to make this world a better place to live in.

One option

[Augoeides]

I believe one very good place to start off would be IT development in the poorest of the poor countries (which is one of the UN's goals for the millenium). The reason is that, as others pointed out, the X Prizes work best when used to increase incentive for things we already know how to do. This could improve the lives of people living in these countries AND make us, as a species, better able to know what we know.

Re:One option

[rvw]

This could improve the lives of people living in these countries AND make us, as a species, better able to know what we know.

Not only would it make their lives better, it's a known fact that when the living standards of the poor improve, the standard for everyone gets higher. Everybody benefits from this. The same goes for education: it's more usefull to give all people basic education and leave it with that, then to give the top 10% top level education (like sending them to universities etc).

This isn't a popular opinion here,

[kmmatthews]

and I will be the first to bitch about our oil addiction, but:
Peak Oil is coming people!
Prove it. We have a lot more oil than these kind of people would have you believe. Granted, I think that oil should stay the fuck in the ground as we focus on nuclear power and electric cars, buses (sp?), etc.

Re:This isn't a popular opinion here,

[Anonymous Coward]

Prove it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/

Re:This isn't a popular opinion here,

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok Kris.

Just be sure to enjoy the coming Maryland winter; it'll be one of the last few in which you'll still be able to afford (or get access to) heating oil.

Re:This isn't a popular opinion here,

[Anonymous Coward]

"I will be the first to bitch about our oil addiction"

That's a lie.
I would be willing to bet that the first person to bitch about our oil addiction did so before you were even born.
In fact, I'll bet 25 cents right now.

You claim that you will be the first to bitch about our oil addiction?
In the words of kmmatthews, "Prove it.".

How about an X-Prize for writing?

[Airwall]

The concept of the WTN X PRIZES is to utilize the concepts, procedures, technologies and publicity developed X PRIZE Foundation's Ansari X PRIZE competition for space and the global science and technology innovators identification process and community developed by the World Technology Network (WTN) to launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.

Man, what a complete trainwreck of a sentence.

Re:How about an X-Prize for writing?

[aquadood]

Took me 3 tries to read it... I thought my ADD was kicking in or something. Glad someone else had troubles with it too :)

No thanks!

[MadDirector]

"A true highway autopilot in a sub $30k car"
No thanks! I won't use that crap... Car With A Mind Of Its Own

solar power

[bob_avernus]

Solar panels are still pretty expensive, so why not have a prize for an efficient process for making solar panels?

Re:solar power

[xott]

Too right.
Cheap energy is the key!
There is a giant ball in our sky, just radiating energy towards us. Yet we still dig up fossil fuels and ignore the free energy falling upon us.
A very cheap solar panel (or maybe a paint-like substance) strong enough to use for roading & roofing would be my idea of a great prize. Efficiency wouldn't have to improve much; sheer area would generate a large current. If we could catch even a small percentage of all the sunlight falling upon the highway system, it would substantially reduce the price of electricity.

Helping humanity...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most innovatve doomsday device.

Dimensional gateway to hell.

Most incurable and effective plague/computer virus.

Most annoying AI.

The Matrix/Terminators/Daleks.

Most read spam.

101 unuseful things

[rvw]

Prize for the most useless invention on (name your territory here)

I remember a Japanese book called 101 unuseful things or something. I can't find the title on Amazon or Google that quick. It was about inventions that were really useless or absolutely impractible to use. It should be really made (not just on paper) and it should be used at least once. It was incredibly funny I remember. It was kind of a competition to have the most unuseful invention.

Anyone read J. Halperin's The Truth Machine?

[ArbiterOne]

In James L. Halperin's book "The Truth Machine", the government is persuaded to offer a prize to the company which can construct a machine capable of determining whether someone is telling the truth, with 100% efficiency. Maybe the WTN could make this one of the prizes?

Flying cars?

[Dorsai65]

Are you kidding me?

Most people can't think in two dimensions (how many morons do YOU cuss on the road?), and you want to toss in a third?

I say screw the _flying_ cars; how about automated cars & traffic control systems.

My suggestion..

[Anonymous Coward]

SPAM-free Email

Energy is on everyone's mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

What we want to focus on are areas that are underfunded and out of public view. (i.e. like spacecraft developement ~4 years ago.)
I submitted a suggestion for a bioreator that produces blood. Hospitals are always short it...

Re:crappy article

[Harald74]

Technological "holy grails", such as ... teleportation, ...

Well, that would certainly keep their prize money safe...

I submitted one..

[jmcmunn]

I submitted the "Duke Nukem Forever" WTN Xprize. What better technological breakthrough could we ever see!!

I listed the prize as $1 million (and yes I did the Dr Evil thing when submitting). I listed the method of funding as $1 from each of the first million Slashdot readers to buy the game, since I figure we'll all be rushing out to get it when it comes out.

Who's with me!?

Re:I submitted one..

[gears5665]

there aren't a million geeks in the world...let alone on slashdot. You'd have to get everyone and their mother to buy the game to break even. Otherwise you'd need 5$ from each of us.

Advances?

[builderbob_nz]

maybe this will help make that flying car a reality?

Oh God I hope not. It is bad enough now with drivers not watching what they are doing in two dimensions and now you want to add a third!? The day that they let the average Joe Blogs drive a flying car is the day I give up driving and to back to walking/cycling/public transport - I'll live longer!

Kevin Rice's list of tech innovations needed

[justanyone]

I've been thinking about this for a long time.
Here's my list:

1. Medical technique (drug/etc.) to stimulate regrowth of tissue, as various lizards do. Lose an arm? Regrow it. this would have to take into account the replacement of scar tissue with healthy new tissue. Important in this are skin, nerve, and heart tissues.
2. Replacement teeth. Along the same lines as tissue regrowth for the gums, replacement teeth would have similar properties to existing teeth but be permanently implanted. We have this for hips, knees, etc., why not for teeth?
3. Technique to artificially stimulate (nuclear) Beta decay. This would allow us to reduce radioactivity immediately in radioactive materials.
4. Method/device to increase, decrease (even to become negative) the force of gravity acting on an object. This would NOT include any mechanical device; I'm talking about a gravitational FIELD force here.
5. 3 dimensional display as a transparent globe that we look into to view projected images. This would allow 3-D viewing, and would vastly assist all manner of medical and engineering processes.
6. Caller-id. Oh, sorry, we have that.
7. Recognition in the social sciences realm that peace studies deserves more research and development, allowing disparate, traditionally hateful relationships between ethic/religious/etc. groups morph into peaceful coexistence, without resorting to genocide of one or the other groups.
8. Airborne refuelling using liquid oxygen instead of jet fuel.
9. Ramjet or scramjet jet engines that can go from 100% atmospheric oxygen variably to 100% onboard oxygen, burning kerosene.
10. Same suppemental oxygen engines that are rated for very high mach numbers in rarified air.
11. Space suits that are very thin and easy to put on/take off, and work at higher than 2 psi so there's no prebreathing requirement.
12. Very high specific impulse (ISP) engines (from 1000 to 10,000) with thrust ranges in the tens or hundreds of newtons instead of millinewtons.

Just a smattering of goals here.

Re:Kevin Rice's list of tech innovations needed

[RichardX]

5. 3 dimensional display as a transparent globe that we look into to view projected images. This would allow 3-D viewing, and would vastly assist all manner of medical and engineering processes

Already done

Urr.. can I get my $1M now? :)

Re:Kevin Rice's list of tech innovations needed

[Fr05t]

2. Replacement teeth. Along the same lines as tissue regrowth for the gums, replacement teeth would have similar properties to existing teeth but be permanently implanted. We have this for hips, knees, etc., why not for teeth?

Done. - > http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1835362

Re:Kevin Rice's list of tech innovations needed

[DrBobcf]

The replacements you talk about for hips are metal, just like the implants for teeth - titanium post in the bone. Bone grows and attaches to titanium.

The problem with implants or growing new teeth, when its avaliable, is going to be cost. Implants have been in use for over 15 years and they still cost over $3,000 per implant - that does NOT include the crown ("tooth") that goes on the implant. Unlike other technologies, the cost is going up with time, not down.

Re:Kevin Rice's list of tech innovations needed

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Medical technique (drug/etc.) to stimulate regrowth of tissue

Stopping ageing would be my choice. But it may be strongly linked to this.

If they are looking for suggestions

[VernonNemitz]

The Better Battery, or equivalent energy storage system that lasts a decent amount of time in use, and is quickly/easily recharged.

I wonder why is this so...

[ceeam]

... that with all these "technology innovation" and incredibly effective agriculture we still do NOT have 15-20 hours per week worktime. Makes you wonder what the use in all of it when we still dump our lives at the desks and stuff much like 100, 200, 300 years ago.

Re:I wonder why is this so...

[Dr Cool]

You know why we don't have a 15 or 20 hour work week? Because we want more stuff. How else are we going to pay for trendy clothes for our kids, $35,000 SUV's (one for mom, one for dad), a $250k home in the suburbs, and a 1 hour commute each way? Of course, we need one or two family vacations a year so add on another $4k or $5k. And don't mention the home entertainment center, cell phone bills, DVD collection, computer upgrades, etc. People 100 years ago didn't have such a wealth of choices to spend their hard-earned money on. Today, we make far more money, but we also spend it on far more things. Of course, if you lived like they did 100 years ago, you could probably survive quite easily on an income of less than $500 a month. There's your 15 hour work week.

Nobel Prize

[gradius3]

So, will this compete with the Nobel Prize? Personally, I'm glad that there are visionaries that want to see the advancement of science and engineering and are willing to add monetary incentives to this goal.

Website background a ripoff

[Aralor]

It's all well and good that they want to "launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century" but don't they think they should start by creating website graphics that aren't blatantly stolen from http://www.alistapart.com/?

How will this be as effective?

[arudloff]

It seems to me, we already HAD space flight -- it just wasn't privatized.

Isn't this asking for solutions to problems that are not already solved, public or private?

WTN stand for?

[Anonymous Coward]

WinTows Network.

-sounds fishy to me.

One day we will again build good government. Corporations posing as government is SO NASTY.

Die Microsoft, Die!

Let's move out of the dark ages ...

[snippy]

and come up with a shaving system that doesn't involving scraping sharp pieces of metal across our faces!

I mean seriously, if someone could pack a laser hair removal system into a handheld gadget built for the home user, I'd buy it. I'm all about the not shaving for 4-6 weeks part.

OT: The America the rest of the world admires

[kbahey]

Mod me down if you want, I don't care about Karma.

This news, along with last Monday's first private space flight, is exactly the side of America that the rest of the world likes to see.

America was admired and respected for a long time because of many things, standing up for freedom, innovation, opportunity.

In the post Sept 11 era, America is loathed and hated because of its foreign policy being hijacked by a few with agendas.

Will America in 2003/2004 be remembered for the Burt Rutans, and Ansaris, or for the Bushs, Cheneys and Rumsfleds?

Come on America, be a leader again, and not an empire.

Re:OT: The America the rest of the world admires

[Anonymous Coward]

America will never stand for innovation until it dumps it's draconian IP laws.

Re:OT: The America the rest of the world admires

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems that many think this way in Europe. For example, see this article titled Europeans lament 'changed' America.

Re:OT: The America the rest of the world admires

[Tony Freakin Twist]

>Come on America, be a leader again, and not an empire.

Can't we be both?

Re:OT: The America the rest of the world admires

[kbahey]

Of course you can. No one can stop you form being both if you really want to.

However, a leader is admired, respected, looked up to AND followed. A leader uses influence and concensus building. People will not only listen to him, but they will seek his advice.

An empire is feared, loathed, and hated. It imposes its will on others by force. It thinks that it only knows what is right for others and the whole world. It is not listened to. Some people actively seek its destruction, but most will just gladly watch for the day of the downfall.

Your choice! You decide in November.

Re: Peak Oil

[thomasdelbert]

Peak Oil is already here. The reason OPEC hasn't increased their production capacity lately is because they can't. Saudi Arabia is the only country left with spare capacity left but they don't have much.

Oil in the ground is worthless until it is brought to the surface, refined, and distributed to the gas pump. Oil only comes up so fast and if you poke too many holes in the ground there won't be enough pressure left to carry the oil up the pipe. This happenned in southern Alberta - the oil wells lost pressure because they were drawn too fast, now there isn't enough pressure left to lift the oil up to the ground, meaning you actually have to send equipment down to push the oil up (expensive, and slow). In areas where that is not a problem (like the tar sands in northern Alberta that have to be strip mined anyways) you still have to build a facility to mine it and purify it at a cost of over a billion dollars and a lag time of several years.

Peak oil is here, and it will be until we (USA) can reduce our dependancy on it and China's economy sees a correction (only a temporary reprive).

What I would like to see is a mandatory amount of alcohol in fuel that is determined by the climate and fuel injectors that can adjust themselves according to the alcohol content in the fuel. I think the south can run on mostly alcohol for most of the year and the north can run mostly alcohol at least during the summer months and switch to a more gas-rich fuel during the winter so we can still start our cars. That's 3/4 of oil used for automobiles cut right there. Brazil has been running on alcohol for decades. Why can't we?

Just my $0.02

- Thomas;

Innovation in Renovation and Improvement

[WolfVenge]

Having read many of the threads on this topic, I see a regular pattern. Everyone seems to be focusing on new technologies to add to our current technologies. But innovation is not just about creating a new product to buy, it is also about improving the products we already have.

One thread lists energy efficient homes as a way to help reduce energy consumption. While this is a laudable goal, I think a better, more innovative technology would be a cheap, efficient way to dramatically improve the efficiencies of existing homes.

Another thread mentions building more public transportation. Public transit has proven to be inefficient in the American marketplace for many reasons, but the biggest is that Americans look on the car as an independent freedom. Only in areas where it truly is a hassle to maintain your own car, has the marketplace done well for public transit. Instead of building more public transit, why don't we concentrate on a method to make public transit an "independent freedom" that can still harness the efficiencies of moving a large number of people.

Finally, we come to the flying car. This is a dream that many people have harped on as an innovation. The truth of the matter is that, unless a significant amount of innovation is done in the simple management of traffic flows in general, flying cars will have to stick to the modern paradigm. That means that instead of being stuck in lanes of traffic on the ground, we would have people suspended above the ground, waiting for lanes of traffic to clear. While we would have many more lanes to work with in a 3d oriented environment, most people are not capable of visualizing their turn signals, much less making a 300 foot dive to get on the 1010103 express airway to Newark.

So in short, dreaming of the new product is wonderful and laudable, but let's not lose focus on the fact that innovation should also assist the existing, commonplace products we already have.

non chemical intoxicant, hallucinogen, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

First non-chemical device or method for inducing intoxication, hallucinations, , or other 'experience' desired by the user with no permanent or long lasting phisiological changes to the user
that is cost competitive with unlawful drugs.

Hell, I'll sponsor this prize in exchange for controlling interest in the enabling IP.

Hydrogen storage

[WillWare]

Powerballs are an interesting storage solution. Reasonable pressure or cold temperature, I don't know about the energy density. You have a tank half-full of water, with ping-pong balls floating in it. Inside the ping-pong balls is sodium hydride (NaH), floating above the water is hydrogen gas at a not-too-high pressure. When the pressure drops, a robot grabs a ping-pong ball, cuts it open, and the NaH reacts with the water to free hydrogen and put NaOH (lye) in the water. When most of the ping-pong balls have been cut, you pump out the tank, discard the water, recycle the broken shells, and convert the NaOH back into NaH -- this is where you put energy into the system from outside.

As I said, I don't know how the energy density is with this approach, I'm not enough of a chemist and I'm too busy to do the math right now. If anybody more knowledgeable wants to weigh in, feel free. I've known people to whine about driving around a car with a tankfull of lye, but it's a lot more environmentally benign than driving around with a tankfull of gasoline.

Re:Hydrogen storage

[vtolturbo]

a much better solution is aqueous sodium borohydride, a liquid at standard temperature and pressure. using certain catalysts, sodium borohydride can be made to liberate its hydrogen into gaseous state, leaving inert aqueous sodium borate. then, using a double-bladder tank system, a full tank of borohydride can be passed through the catalytic reactor, filling the other bladder (with no change in total volume) with the borate mixture. the process can then be reversed at a fuelling station. unfortunately, this process is still not refined enough for use in real world applications, but it does eliminate many of the issues that still remain, such as the production of hydrogen and distribution to fuelling stations.

Space Suits...

[hughk]

I undrstand a lot of work has already been done by NASA on this including volunteers wearing an elasticated but not airtight garment in very low-pressure atmospheres. It worked and was easier to use than a conventional space suit. The prebreath is no longer necessary because the only pressurised part is a bubble over the head. A space suit has a low pressure so that it can be articulated. Without the need for articulation, the pressure can be raised.

They nuked the project on the grounds they already had a space suit design and didn't want to design another even though it would be a lot safer.

Space suits are a problem for the X-prize (the need for cheaper and lower weight). It is very likely that it is being solved.

Total Scam

[Anonymous Coward]

Check their blurb:

"There are over billions of people on the planet, almost each of whom has a dream for a better world"

Over billions?

"Almost each one dreams of a better world". Some people dream of their neighbor blown to bits. Other people dream of going to sleep with a full belly. I assume their cash award will satify both groups.

This seems like a crooked scam. Let's bet they put up a Paypal donate link soon.

A wild ride on SS1

[amightywind]

Last night I watched a 3 hour program documenting the Spaceship1 story on the Discovery Channel. I was struck by the brilliance and perserverance of Rutan's team, but also how insanely dangerous this was. The view from the spartan cockpit of the pilot struggling to control the flight of the rocket was sobering. It was like they were ridding a paint shaker! Chuck Yeager's wild X-1, X-2 flights had nothing on SS1. I'm just glad these great pilots weren't killed. Burt Rutan is still very far from safe suborbital flight for champaign sipping passengers, XPrize not withstanding.

Innovation Stimulation Through Lack of Taxation

[Guncrazy]

Private prizes are very limited in their ability to induce people to meet technological challenges--especially those challenges which have not yet been met. This is because it is difficult to scrape up enough money to compensate the competitors for the time and expenses required to meet the goal.

While I don't think prizes such as the X-Prize are entirely useless, a far stronger incentive could be offered by governments.

The government, rather than taking the public's money and throwing it at scientific problems, ought to set specific goals which, when met, entitle the first achiever to profit from his (or her, or its) invention without paying taxes for a certain number of years.

A wide variety of projects could be selected, and private companies could--and probably would-- voluntarily throw their money at the solutions they deem best. With more people putting more resources towards these achievements, they could be reached faster, with less burden on the public.

Re:Innovation Stimulation Through Lack of Taxation

[mikera]

This is an idea I've been a fan of for quite a while - I think it would make a good replacement for the current patent system.

Interestingly, you don't actually need to set specific goals - you can grant a prize for any idea that is "successful" for some definition of successful, e.g. product sales by companies implementing the idea of >$100m within ten years.

Re:crappy article

[Suriel]

The secret of (and technique to guarantee) the female orgasm. I'd pay a million dollars for that...

Flying car is already a reality

[Blitzenn]

The Skycar, flying car is already a reality. The only thing stopping you from having one is the price tag.

WRONG.

[WindBourne]

Think people! If everyone uses Linux, then Trojans and virus programs will be written for that OS. The most used OS is the biggest target. Pushing everyone to use your OS is standing up and saying "SHOOT ME!!!"

That is false. Virus writers write to whatever system is easiest to break into to. Why? because it is a hard to do.

Lets assume that you are right. Then when ppl are going after money, why do they not go after where the real scores are at? That is, the real money is located at Banks and Credit Cards. So why not break into Mainframes, *nix, and Linux since the most amount of money is carried on these? Why no? Because the MS systems are easy targets. Good example was about a year ago, it appeared that Discover, Amex, and Visa had been broken into. Then it was discovered that a clearing house in Nebraska was running Windows and these ppl were simply grabbing the numbers and figures on those machines. Smart. Very smart.

Now, if you want to argue that the average person switching over to Linux will make it a target because they will not stay up on patches and distros do not be default arrange for auto-updates, well that is a different story all together. But that is a cracking and worm problem, not virii problem.

To Late! It's already here

[Blitzenn]

The Skycar, flying car is already a reality. The only thing stopping you from having one is the price tag.

Nature's Solution

[pavon]

Yes, I find it really interesting, and perhaps ironic that the fuels we are using now - hydrocarbons - have a higher hydrogen density than any of the mechanical (temperature, pressure) or chemical (metal hydrides) methods proposed for hydrogen cars. Not to mention the additional energy stored in the form of chemical bonds. It makes you think that perhaps nature was onto something when (nearly?) every life form on this planet uses hydrocarbons as their primary source of energy.

Also, if you think about it, hydrocarbon fuel cells are a step towards a fuel "metabolism" that closer mimics biology than current combustion engines. Maybe our next improvements in fuel efficency won't come from pure chemistry but learning from and modififying existing biological systems. Genetically modified biocrops, which power biological inspired fuel cells, both tuned specifically for each other.

Re:Nature's Solution

[jdray]

Interesting concept. The one hole I see is that things in nature are geared to use very little energy to do things, relying on time instead. One reason we have vehicles is that we wanted more energy (faster, faster) to get our tasks done.

This is a great idea except....

[Baldrson]

As I stated in my original prize award announcement:

With enough diversity of people and technical objectives, there would be a "fuzzy" gradient of incentive created for ever higher performance amateur rockets, not dependent on the credibility of any one organization's political structure for "fairness" or good technical judgement.

It's great what the X-Prize committee has accomplished but they shouldn't be the "World" (as in "World Technology Network") of prize awards lest they become another single point of failure.

Re:The Flying Car by Kevin Smith

[Nspace13]

hey moron moderators
1) is somewhat on-topic (flying cars are being discussed a whole lot in this thread) 2) it is also fucking hilarious, kevin smith is a genius , link to the actual movie http://www.viewaskew.com/tv/leno/flyingcar.html

Re:crappy article

[Anonymous Coward]

get her a girlfriend...

Prize Suggestions

[randall_burns]

I'm glad to see these folks moving in this direction. I think they'll find that creating good objective prize criteria in a lot of important areas is rather difficult though. Sometimes in medicine for example it takes _decades_ to reach a real consensus whether a particular therapy really works though.

Still, some of the prize awards I'd like to see:

a prize for demonstration of a medical test that can reliably diagnose autism(the tests commonly used today are behavioral tests).

a prize for demonstration of an obesity treatment protocol that when followed reliably
means that 50% of obese patients so treated loose weight and keep it off for more than a year
under "real world" conditions.

Demonstration of self-replicating infrastructure capable of being teleoperated. A lathe for example is a tool that can be used to replicate itself--when combined with a blacksmith's shop and mining tools. Space migration might be helped along by demonstration of something similar that could be teleoperated and used on the asteroid belt/moon. This is sort of like a
von Neumann machine but without requiring that it be totally robotic(i.e. operator intervention would be acceptable).

Prize for a rotovator or other low energy mechanism for transporting payload to orbit.

-----------------
The other thing I'd like to see here:
Something similar to www.ideosphere.com that would help sort out what the key technologies are that would change the world in a positive way.

Finally!

[doombob]

Great! We will finally be able to see the hydrogen/coldfusion powered, flying, anti-gravity, invisible, faster than light, self-regenerating, space car controlled by androids with AI in our lifetime!

One word...

[CSG_SurferDude]

Gasoline

Re:crappy article

[Anonymous Coward]

You never know...

Re: Peak Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

Alcohol is made using Oil. They use Oil to distill it. Alcohol is a energy loser, because I thats far more energy to manufacture it, then it produces when consumed.

Oil peaks isn't quite here, but its only about 6 years away, based upon various reports by the oil industry.

Oil Sands production will never match demand (only a drop in the bucket). We will be royally screwed when Oil Peak is reached.

Re:crappy article

[Anonymous Coward]

He needs one in the first place go give her an orgasm.

Re:crappy article

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny shit, that was. Gud un.

flying cars the least of our problems

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sounds like a good idea, maybe this will help make that flying car a reality?"

Maybe we should be investing in technologies to solve the impending energy crisis. Oil demand now is higher than supply at full capacity, and roughly half the world's oil supply is gone. Without an alternative energy source, we won't have any cars, let alone flying cars.

S-Prize?

[Anonymous Coward]

X-Prize is good.
S-Prize might even be better.
Prize categories to solve pressing social issues, like wealth, consumpsion, power distribution, environmental, etc. problems.

Like a prize for getting technological advancement syncronised with social changes. Right now the speed of advancement in technology in not only way faster than the ability to implement social changes, the gap between technological innovation and the ability of the society to absorb, reflect on those changes is bigger and bigger.

Why are humans so succesful in the development of technology, while much less advanced in development of society?
What are the reasons for this very different succes rates?
Can social challenges transformed into the form of technological challanges, in order to find progress as fast as in the field of technology?

Or was X-Prize itself a misleading challenge and solution? On the surface it looks like X-Prize yield very remarkable result in very short time at a very low cost.
However, can someone calculate that how much more would have cost to develop SpaceShip One from scratch, assuming that no other space programs existed before?
Did SpaceShip One develop so fast, so cheap, becouse it was built mostly on existing knowledge?
Can somebody calculate the value of that pre-existing knowledge, which was developed by huge budgeted, state sponsored programs at NASA, USSR, etc. and "spilled" into SpaceShip One?

Already Reality

[newpath4com]

http://www.fuellessflight.com/ has the system already for flying ships that don't need fuel. Does that mean he can't enter the contest if it's already published?!