The Year In Ideas

No_Weak_Heart writes "The New York Times Magazine (registration required) presents its annual compendium of ideas. The list ranges from acoustic keyboard eavesdropping to land-mine-detecting plants to water that isn't wet. What catches your fancy? And what do you think is missing?"

Comments

What's missing, is..

[Quickfry]

What's obviously missing is not having to register at nytimes! Come on guys, how hard of a concept is that?

Re:What's missing, is..

[denis-The-menace]

I think Editors of Slashdot should not post stories that link to "must register" sites. A like to Google cache should be used instead.

Re:What's missing, is..

[tonywong]

I don't understand what the big deal is with registering to view NYT articles. In all the time I've been registered, I've never been spammed or had my information sold to someone else.

This organization is well respected and pays their writers and editors real money in order to give information that is timely and well researched. In return they are only asking for you to register for free. If you do not think this exchange is fair, do not register and do not look at the article. Sheesh.

I'd bet a large portion of the do-not-register-and-bypass-the-system-hyporcrites- whining-because their-tinfoil-hats-are-too-tight are the same ones who post angry articles because the GPL has been violated. But now I'm just burning karma. Mod me down, but posts like this are not insightful.

Re:Concur with the "no more registration required"

[God_of_Belac]

You don't need to know the make and model of the keyboard to be able to decipher the keystrokes. As long as each key makes a slightly different sound, you can give each sound a number and it becomes a letter-substitution code. More complex because there are more keys, but really not all that hard. Now what's the relative frequency of e and ,?

Water that "isn't wet" is hardly water...

[Sarcastic Assassin]

Apparently, it's a "carbon-based molecule" with "fire-safety applications". Last time I checked, water only contained hydrogen and oxygen, not carbon.

Re:How's this for a better idea

[Kymermosst]

Linux is fractured between two dominant desktop enviorments; which is hindering it's market penetration.

No, the fact that one company already held 90% of the market share when Linux became viable as a desktop OS is hindering its market share. If your average Linux distro was 100% compatible with MS-Windows XP, Microsoft would disappear.

So, therefore, why don't we merge gnome into kde so that we have one major desktop enviroment with two 'sub-desktops' (the original kde and gnome) that users can choose between?

There already is a common denominator, and that is pure X11 programs. Besides, I don't like one of those two desktop environments, and I'd rather use nothing than a combined monstrosity of a desktop. If I wanted that, I'd use Windows.

Don't be so quick to scoff, after emacs absorbed vi its' user base increased, and I think that with a little thought and planning the same could happen for linux, too.

Since when did emacs absorb the vi userbase? I use vi every day, and haven't used emacs for... 8 years maybe. Is this some sort of joke? Emacs is a bloated overbuilt editor that takes too damn long to start up. (If it takes longer than about a second, it's too long.)

My guess is that you are trying to reignite a KDE-vs-GNOME or VI-vs-EMACS flame war.

Re:Land mines

[Nate Eldredge]

Um, if the war is still on, this "someone" would likely have their plane shot down in short order.

Re:Land mines

[xtermin8]

It is specifically the use of landmines along the North/South Korean border that keeps the US from banning land-mines. If that situation is ever resolved, the land-mine issue can be revisited and negotiated. As things stand now, a plane flying along this border is not going to get very far.

Two words: Paper Ballots

[MarkusQ]

Two more words: Counted Honestly --MarkusQ