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Top Inventions of 2007
Gibbs-Duhem writes "Time Magazine is reporting on the best inventions of the year. The top invention is the somewhat well-known iPhone, but there are some extremely cool projects included that I had certainly never heard of, including a device for capturing waste heat from car engines to increase efficiency up to 40%, a novel car designed to run entirely on compressed air claiming to have a range of 2000km with zero pollution, a James Bond style GPS tracking device that police can use to avoid high-speed chases, a small-scale printing press capable of printing and binding a paperback book in 3 minutes for under $3/book (and $50k per machine), a microbe-based technology for turning soft sand into sandstone, a water-based display which uses computer controlled nozzles to produce coherent gaps in the water, and a way to convert type A, B, and AB-negative blood into type O."
2007 isn't over yet. :-) Sheesh, you're as bad as retailers mentioning Christmas in August.
This has gone too far. There is no way you can place the iPhone as the top "Invention". It is a phone just like any other but with a lot of features you would expect on a phone removed. No novelty or ingenuity. The only thing that it has going for it is that it looks nice. If looking nice is a quality of a great invention then I proclaim the Mona Lisa as the greatest invention of Leonardo da Vinci. I will be hearing next that the iPhone gets the Nobel peace prize as well.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
The triple jump just got a lot more entertaining. :-D
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
And yet still no flying cars
We have a phone that's not done yet, a wind-up car that uses air for a spring, and a bus that stole its gear from the local railroad's maintenance vehicles.
WowWee's FlyTech Dragonfly!
i was going to release my teleportation prototype next week, but now I have to wait to Jan. so I can make the best of 2008 list. Either that or complete my time-machine project so I can go back and get my teleporter finished before the deadline for this award.
ôó
Editor or poster added an extra 0... the anticipated range on the aircar is 200km (about 125 miles).
Such a great device with so much potential, it's just a shame. And I really don't even blame Apple. It's this country's telecomm industry that's broken.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
The iphone is a great cell phone, but I wouldn't say it was the best invention.
i'm sorry but GPS car tags have been around for a while, as if their use in pursuits provides any more utility than a helicopter with a FLIR unit.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Jeep has been using that water based display at auto shows for a few years now.
I have always suspected that magazines are influenced by their #1 pick of any consumer product by some form of income, maybe through advertisement contracts?
I do not know if there is a law against such a fradulent practice, but fact that money talks seems like there wouldn't be.
I want to be retired when I grow up.
How is the IPhone even classed as an invention? IT is something that already existed (cell-phone) that someone else added some gee-gaws to.
That's like saying the 2008 Chevy Malibu is the top invention for 2008 because it is so cool and hip!
How sad...
Blinded by Light The hunt for better non-lethal weaponry gained new urgency when several people died in recent years after being shocked by a Taser. The LED Incapacitator, funded by the Department of Homeland Security, is a novel alternative. When officers shine the flashlight-like device in a person's eyes, high-intensity LEDs, pulsating at varying rates, will make the suspect temporarily blind and dizzy.
Making the Car Chase Obsolete High-speed chases may be money shots in Hollywood, but everywhere else they're just dangerous. The StarChase Pursuit Management System uses a laser-guided launcher mounted on the front grill of a cop car to tag fleeing vehicles with a GPS tracking device. Then the fuzz can hang back as real-time location data are sent to police headquarters.
Good Morning, Sunshine Embedded with a grid of LEDs, it [pillow] uses nothing but light to wake you up. About 40 min. before reveille, the programmable foam pillow starts glowing, gradually becoming brighter, to simulate a natural sunrise.
This helps set your circadian rhythm and ease you into the day.
Maybe this will inspire the people who invented the blood converter to buy iPhones with their Nobel prize money.
It's still a heat engine, which means, maybe 30% efficiency under ideal conditions. Then there's the problem with getting heat into the cylinder fast enough as the air expands so it won't even come close to the ideal.
Compare with an electric motor where 95% efficiency is not uncommon. An air car just doesn't make any sense, particularly when you're using electricity to charge the tanks.
Deleted
Even we're not this sick. You can love the technology, but you can't LOOOOVE the technology.
A beowulf cluster of them, though? fapfap.
The iPhone didn't add much in the way of technology or features. All Apple did was add their Apple view of everything and added the 'i' to a very common word. There were phones that could do everything that the iPhone did before the iPhone was released. My choice for the invention of the year would have to be the Wii because Nintendo truly added a new idea to an already great thing.
Hey what are you doing? Ow, don't hurt me!
Similarly anything powered by compressed air can't fail to have low efficiency.
And that's just the obvious Carnot-cycle defying impossible inventions. One wonders about the rest of them.
The fact that the iPhone placed as "top invention" speaks more to the ubiquitousness of cell phones in our society and how irritated people are with the current state of affairs with respect to the cell carriers. Most of the Time article about the iPhone spoke about how poor current phones were (the iPhone is "pretty" because "Most high-tech companies don't take design seriously") and how it will encourage carriers to open up their sandboxes ("It's not a phone, it's a platform") than it did about how cool an "invention" the iPhone is.
It's also interesting because many of the complaints about the iPhone revolve around the fact that Apple somehow didn't go far enough to crack the cell carrier hegemony (the iPhone is locked to a single carrier, the iPhone contract is two years) than it goes towards actual design flaws in the physical unit.
In fact, I've never seen people get so worked up before over a single cell phone--and I suggest it's because we all hate the cell carriers and are hoping someone--either a powerful government or a powerful company (either Apple's iPhone or Google's Android OS) will force the cell carriers to improve.
Look, I'm an iPhone owner, and I love the damn thing, no question about it.
It was worth every penny, and then some; the SDK should only make it better.
However, that said, labeling it as "Invention of the Year" is a pretty sad state of affairs for the country. I'm pretty medical, environmental, and social breakthroughs deserve FAR more attention.
I'd hate to tell the guy with cancer that the really cool virus that eats cancer cells could've had a ton more funding for R & D if only it had one Time's Invention of the Year.
The iPhone is cool, no question, but it is the height of frivolity, and can't possibly compare with all the other wonderful things mankind is dreaming up and making a reality that deserve far more press coverage than the iPhone has already gotten.
Not that I'm complaining too loudly, my Apple stock just keeps on truckin'
In what way does a compressed air car create zero emissions? Where's the compressed air coming from? Unless it's being hand pumped the energy to create the compressed is coming from somewhere (and even if it is being hand pumped - food has to be grown to provide the fuel for the human). Say a power station - followed by a very inefficient and lossy process to compress the air (ever felt how hot a scuba tank gets when it's filled).
If you're looking at emissions you have look from source to sink. Picking an arbitrary starting point and saying "look - zero emissions" is pure crap.
I've dreamed of tabbed browsing for years and finally Microsoft made my dreams come true... oh wait, that was 2006, wasn't it.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
Ok, lame. Still I was surprised it wasn't the first point.
2007 isn't over... What if they come up with a cure for cancer between now and 12/31? Time will be like "Sorry cancer cure! The iPhone already won!"
BMW Has already made plans to incorporate steam engines in their vehicles (and retrofit them in previous models)
If you ignore the over-hyped (and still pretty damned cool) iPhone as 1st place, this list is pretty amazing. The water-injected engine at first glance sounds alot like the water-injection that was hyped back in the 1970s, but it's not. A little bit of digging (thanks, Google!) reveals that it's actually a 6-stroke engine that uses the heat that would normally be radiated away. If done right, there's no need for a radiator or other cooling system!
My first thought is about what this could mean for General Aviation - having the fuel burn rate cut by 40% WITHOUT needing any cooling gear (think: reduced weight) could be a real boon... already there are diesel aviation engines already that are significantly more efficient ( but need radiators, and already have a high compression ratio) this could help out even more - imagine a diesel engine that reduces fuel consumption by 60%, maybe even 70%?!?!?
Pipe dream? Yes. But I sure do hope. And it would likely happen in cars before airplanes, thanks to the glacial pace of technology advancement in aviation. Everybody's so terrified of risk that innovation is radically reduced. The reality is simply that (Private Airplanes) == (Money) == (Lawyer Bait) == (an industry that is forever on the edge of shutdown).
If you want to see the crippling effect that excessive lawyering can cause to industry, you need look no further than private aviation.
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Another convenient feature: a built-in air compressor can be plugged in to refill the tanks within minutes.
Imagine that. Power up a compressor for just a few minutes to keep going on a full tank! Presumably a full tank lasts more than a few minutes of propulsion.
The Lucky Camera for astronomy technique has been used by amateurs for years. The Elasitc space suit was a concept going back to the 60's. Injectying water into engines is a technique that's been used for decades. These guys should edit slashdot.
Apple is doing NOTHING to break the hegemony. Apple released a phone which does barely nothing more than other phones on the market (and indeed a lot less than some), tied to a single network (which was THEIR choice), and then charged massive amounts of money for the phones. And what happened? People who either don't use phones a lot, or people who love marketing spiel, or people who love apple, bought the flying shit out of them. Apple is one of the bad guys! This article is saying that a product that isn't better than any others, but which costs more and is locked more and runs less software is somehow better than, say, any other mobile out there? That's what's truly horrifying about this. The only thing Apple is changing is how much people will pay for a mediocre phone. And currently that's $400, with a contract. Jesus.
Did this one make anyone else think of Star Trek VI? No? Anyway, it's just another example of how science fiction can't keep up with reality. The idea of a 2001 prequel to a 1960's science fiction series is what doomed Enterprise from the start -- society and science in 2001 had surpassed many aspects of TOS (transporter and FTL excepted, of course).
I invented myself a job in 2007. Beats everything else in my list.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I usually find the "best invention" of the year is something that's been around a decade or two and I just didn't know it even existed that's in my price range.
Also known as actually knowing and using the right tool for the right job.
It's like introducing duct tape and WD40 to some one that has never encountered or previously needed them before. I need a list of the tools that I would be using if I properly knew about them. My best invention of the decade is cheap powerful PCs for less than $600. That's more of a refinement in existing tech being cheap enough that most people can finally use it though. It's sort of like $20 a month "high speed internet." When high speed internet costs $100+ a month base price for your area, only rich folks will really even know that it exists. It's not a useful invention if I can't buy it.
I guess my other favorite invention is 19+" LCDs becoming standard on low end desktops.
I'm not an architecture expert, but I have read several times that one of the largest complaints with actually living in Frank Lloyd Wright's home designs is that they were designed to look fantastic in photographs but are inconvenient to actually live in.
Regardless of whether or not that is true, it underscores the critical thing about design and function-- it's a delicate balance, and designers must be careful not to trade too much functionality for aesthetics and vice versa. Everyone's tastes differ, but Apple frequently makes design choices that I find detrimental to function with no benefit beyond aesthetics. (lack of tacticle keyboard on iPhone, gorgeous all-in-one PCs that make your monitor a disposable item, elegant slim notebooks that offer inadequate cooling for the GPU and necessitate factory underclocking, iTunes' ignorance of audio organized by folder rather than tags, no handy screws for battery replacement on the clean, mirror-finished backs of iPods, etc...)
The "air-car" is bullshit.
First, all they have is blurry cad-drawings, and still they claim it'll be on the market in 2008. That's not possible, if that where to actually be the case they'd have to ALREADY have several completed prototypes of the car at the minimum for safety-testing and similar.
Second, there's just not enough energy there.
If you believe the claims of the aircar-makers themselves, (which ain't a safe thing to do, because they assume near termic equilibrium, among other things, but nevermind) then, and I'm here quoting their website: 300 litres at 300 bars results in 46 MJ (Y 52.1 MJ with 340 litres at 300 bars ).
Okay, so a 340lite (90 gallon!) air-tank can hold the same amount of energy as 0.4 gallons of petrol. Really
So, after you've refilled this gargantuan 90 gallon tank with air, you'll have the equivalent of 0.4 gallons petrol worth of energy. Thereafter you have to refuel again. Who wants to refuel every 10 miles ? This think makes electric cars look EXCELLENT by comparison.
That's not insignificant. Previously phone designs were limited by what it was percieved people would pay... phones were always free with a contract 6-9 months after their release, which meant they had a fixed budget. As production got cheaper, phones improved.. but it was limited.
Then apple decided to build this hugely expensive gadget and unexpectely they actually sold some. That means others can now do the same - bigger screens, better features, faster processors.. the base phone will be a lot more expensive but do a lot more out of the box.
It's a design that integrates multiple, previously existing technologies/features/products/etc.
But, if the design is patentable, I suppose it's an invention; I just don't hold with it.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
IPhone shouldnt have made the top 10.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
The bookbinding machine? That was mentioned on Slashdot previously. It's not that novel. Many of the bigger copiers/printers have a binder option. Larger Kinkos outlets can crank out perfect-bound books. The price and cost figures are vaporware; the bookbinding machine isn't actually in production. The Internet Archive has a printing and binding operation in a van (the "Internet Bookmobile"), and has for years. Uses a semi-auto binder.
The programmable water display is one of those cute one-off things. I've seen some similar gadgets, including a projection screen made of mist. That showed up at a venture capital conference in Silicon Valley a few months ago. Modulated water displays were done in Japan in the 1980s, and they've been tried in some US retail locations.
The "air car" has some grand claims. "For various reasons, one of which is industrial secrecy, we havent published all technical details on this site." Right. The thing is actually supposed to be a gasoline-powered hybrid - "The Series 34 CATs engines can be equipped with and run on dual energies - fossil fuels and compressed air". Plus, there's an electric motor and battery in there. "Parking manoeuvres are powered by the electric motor." It's not clear why they need both electrical and compressed air energy storage. The actual range they've achieved running on compressed air is only 7.2Km. All they actually have on the road is one prototype car made of welded tubes, with steel compressed air tanks driving an ordinary reciprocating compressor as an air motor. None of their claimed technology (the carbon fibre tanks, the wierd crankshaft linkage, the low-friction seals) is in use. They have a good Monster Garage project, but not a major invention.
The "40% more efficient gasoline engine" thing isn't new. See this 1979 article in Mother Earth News. Wikipedia has a good article on water injection, and there's a link to Crowder's engine. The general consensus today seems to be that turbos and intercoolers have made water injection obsolete. If you use water injection, you have to carry either a water tank about as big as the gas tank, or a condenser and oil/water separation system.
I'm not impressed with Time's selections. There must have been some better work this year, or we're in real trouble in technology.
From the article: "The future of automotive technology may lie in the past. Bruce Crower, 77, an auto-racing designer with a thriving business in San Diego, has invented a hybrid steam engine in which water is sprayed into a traditional gasoline-powered cylinder, turning waste heat into usable energy. How much energy? Enough to travel 40% farther on a gallon of gas."
This has been known for decades. The problem is that the extremely hot steam corrodes the extremely hot steel.
Slashdot editors apparently spend all their time playing video games, and learn nothing about the world.
I really don't get why the rail car is on this list. This idea is far from new as HiRail has been making them since the 70s.
The clever invention was done by his maid, according to this Dutch TV ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3E389H650o.
Please watch first, then read the translation here: Maid: 'Master, you know this painting has to be ready tomorrow?' Leonardo: 'Yes, tomorrow... i know, tomorrow...' Voice over: 'Sometimes things look complicated, but the solution is always simple.' Customers: 'Well... it's small...' 'But it's beautiful!'
(Sorry for posting AC, subscribing to
From the article: 'Boeing Phantom Works, with NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory, has tested what it calls a "blended wing body," an 8.5%-scale prototype of what Boeing hopes will eventually be a fuel-efficient, quiet, high-capacity multipurpose jet for the military. The X-48B is destined for transport, bombing and intelligence. Wanna book a flight? Don't count on it ever going commercial.'
Boeing is now in the violence for profit business.
You can all just take the rest of the year off now.
... what if somebody invents a time machine next week, will we be able to go back and fix this list retroactively?
But wait
Either fraud, or not explained well: "Frank Pringle, CEO of Global Resource Corp., has developed an emissions-free process that uses microwaves to pull fuel out of shale rock, tires and even plastic bottles. The extraction technology might also help recover oil that is stuck in muck inside hundreds of capped wells across the country."
Microwaves don't "pull". They heat rock. Microwave heat costs money, since it is necessary to burn fuel to get electricity to make microwaves, and that process is not efficient.
From the article: "In April, the Tibetan Meteorological Bureau shot silver iodide particles into clouds above the Nagqu grasslands. The researchers hoped this cloud-seeding technology would produce vapors that would result in artificial snowfall. A few hours later, in a historic first, half an inch (1.3 cm) of white powder blanketed the plateau."
This has been known for decades. Problem: Silver is expensive, and Silver Iodide is even more expensive.
From the article: "Imagine a big new house with free heating--and cooling. Mike Sykes' Enertia Building System relies on thick wooden walls and a natural convection current to even out temperature extremes. For more on the winning entry in this year's Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge, whose co-sponsors include the History Channel and TIME, go to history.com/invent."
Thick wooden walls are expensive. Convection makes hot air rise, it does not "even out temperature extremes". There seems to be nothing about it that is free.
These Time Magazine articles seem to be trying to take advantage of people who don't have a lot of science knowledge to sell magazines.
Clearly we are in the middle of an energy crises; any innovation that can reduce our reliance on
fossil fuels could prove to be the most important of our time. My vote is for this fellow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rA-zhTJuFU
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
God I hate articles formatted like this, please put them all on one html page so I don't have to click and wait 100 times. The 'print article' trick doesn't even work, at least provide an option for this format.
if the cheapskates here could afford the iPhone and have it work on their carriers, they would be quite happy. Oh and it HAS to run Linux and have something complicated about it so nerds can feel superior.
most of that list is based on products that are innovations, not inventions.
Devices that don't exist, cars with impossible energy claims, claiming the OLPC is only $150 when it's really $400. Do these guys just sit and read press releases and do absolutely no investigative reporting?
This article dates back to 1979 and is one of the first google results for "water injection" http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Home-Building/1979-09-01/Water-Injection-Wizardry.aspx "During the second World War, fighter pilots could push a button and inject a stream of water into the turbochargers of their monstrous powerplants . . . to get extra thrust on takeoff." Similarly, Crower's engine "harnesses normally-wasted heat energy by creating steam inside the combustion chamber, and using it to boost the engine's power output and also to control its temperature" This Crower guy must have a lot of nerve to claim as his own an invention that has been around for more than half a century. He may know how to build engines, but apparently he does not know how to search the internet ... His difference with Pat Goodman that did the same
thing back in 1979 is that Goodman did not lie (or chose to ignore) about the novelty of his idea.
And btw, unlike Crower, Goodman had his engines tested on actual vehicles:
"Pat Goodman installed his first water injection system (on a Porsche racing car) in 1964, and the racing organization responded by banning his device . . . it made the vehicle too fast! Undaunted, Pat decided that--even if the racing establishment wasn't interested in "improving the breed", he was. Today, several near-bankruptcies later, the innovative mechanic owns a vehicle that only the government could argue with: a 1978 Ford Fiesta . . . that gets 50 MPG in normal around-town driving. (This impressive figure has been verified by a MOTHER staffer, who accompanied Goodman on a 48mile jaunt around Winchester, Virginia. During the drive--which Pat accomplished with, if anything, more speed than normal--the small four-cylinder sipped only .95 gallon of unleaded gas.) "
Boeing has been in that business for decades. The B-52 bomber is a product of Boeing.
Where's the complaints about no Wedgie-Proof Underwear????
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Well, there is still a cooling system: boiling water. I was curious how much water you'd have to carry along for generating steam.
Gasoline has a heat of combustion of 47 MJ/kg. Water has a heat of vaporization of 40 kJ/mol or about 2 MJ/kg.
So if you turned all of the energy from the gasoline into steam then you'd need 24 kg of water for every 1 kg of fuel. But around 25% of the energy goes directly into mechanical motion. And you won't capture all of the remaining heat.
The inventor estimates an efficiency boost of 40%. That's 7 MJ per kg of fuel, or 3.5 kg of water per kg of fuel.
But the OLPC is on it and I now have a greater respect for this early list. The Iphone is listed in the Gadget of the year section with rate it yourself bar at the top. Quit whining. Clearly it deserves that title.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
There are just so many things wrong with the design:
- Thermal shock - injecting cold water into a hot cylinder will eventually break the rings and crack the piston.
- You have to carry the water around, which reduces vehicle efficiency.
- The six cycle approach suffers from irregular torque and hence more NVH (noise,vibration,harshness).
- You need 50% more capacity to get the same power because there is only one full power stroke every 3 revolutions.
- Chilling a Diesel cylinder is bad for combustion efficiency, raising carbon production (soot) - Diesels depend on the high temperature at the end of the compression stroke to initiate combustion.
- Water in the exhaust will screw the catalytic converter, further reducing available output.
- You will need to extract condensed water from the lubricant, or get rust.
I guess the guy is a great tuner, but is clearly a self taught engineer. And he has probably never seen a European advanced Diesel like the one in the BlueMotion Polo, or the Mercedes common rail designs. Many years ago I was a fan of the Chrysler Hemi, but nowadays with high fuel prices I love my common-rail, intercooled, variable vane turbocharged, 4 valve per cylinder, 600 miles between fill ups Diesel more."device for capturing waste heat from car engines to increase efficiency up to 40%"
TFA says that the invention involves spraying water into the combustion chamber. This reminds me of a farm tractor that my father told me about. He had used such a tractor as a kid or young man in Western Kansas, probably in the 1920s or 1930s. I can't remember if it was a diesel or not (I think it was). But in addition to having a fuel tank, it also had a smaller water tank (in addition, I suppose, to another water tank for radiative cooling). When the tractor hit a "tough spot," as will happen for example when a place where the soil is somewhat more moist than the surround soil, the tractor driver would pull a lever which would cause a small amount of water to be injected with the fuel into the cylinder, causing a burst of extra power.
I don't know if this is relevant prior art with respect to patenting, but it probably doesn't matter since patent examiners never look out the window anyway.
a novel car designed to run entirely on compressed air claiming to have a range of 2000km with zero pollution
Erm, no. Where did the energy come from to compress the air in the first place? The pollution is just happening somewhere else.
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
My car runs on air. And a 2,2,4 Trimethylpentane catalyst. :P
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Ok, why exactly does the Halo edition of the XBox 360 qualify as "Top invention of 2007." Taking a 2 year old system and painting it differently isn't what I'd call innovation.
I can see James Bond's next assignment: saving the billion dollar a year tourist industry of Florida from some mad man with the microbe that will turn the beaches to rock! [Cue: evil laugh]
You've proved my point. Thanks.
The Graduate 2007 edition. This has been a Time magazine message, paid for by Apple advertizing.
The B-29s that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were Boeing, as were the B-17s that bombed Germany for several years. Even those weren't the first, but they are the most famous.
"...including a device for capturing waste heat from car engines to increase efficiency up to 40%..."
We already have these. They're called turbochargers, and they don't need a big tank of water to operate.
Move 'sig'. For great justice!
Since when combining existing tech(even products) makes an invention?
Did I invent my computer when I assembled it from parts I got?
Come on, the top invention of 2007 has got to be Orbo.
Its probably a fast photo-copier with binding, not a press. And although slightly larger, end to end paperback book-producing machines have been in use widely since the turn of the century.
The Admin and the Engineer
Not to mention that to repair or do any significant work beyond (or even) memory/disk replacement is not meant to be a trivial task compared to maintenance-friendly (but otherwise unblessed) Thinkpads. While it's not easy to get to some components on a T series for example, at least you have the documentation to tell you it is only a few screws and a slideoff of the keyboard to get to the inside where the internal memory module is.
For Apple to commit to this kind of error repeatedly over multiple products (even as early as the PM 8500) seems to have them insist on looks over function. Even if the design ends up being a problem on the inside, it's usually "glossed over"(e.g. iPod battery compartment issue, the entire lack of a headless iMac despite demand).
For what "UNIX-like" qualities are in there, the hardware seems to come up looking like a knockoff Sun or IBM pSeries (before the Intel switchover) product.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Just for fun, care to tell us what phones you consider to be better than the iPhone? There are only about 50 technology websites/magazines that would disagree with your assessment, but I'm curious none-the-less.
is there no where the apple marketing cant penetrate?
I mean... I had SOME doubts that this list was made by someone on drugs based on the amount of money they were paid for advertising products.
BUT BEOWULF?!!!
ITS A FUCKING MOVIE! With not so great 3D animation.
If there ever was a reason WHY general public should buy 500$ graphic cards and PS3s - this is the case.
So they can be used to educate themselves about current 3D animation and rendering standards.
3 years ago, or even 2 years ago Beowulf MIGHT have been something special.
Now? They look like a bunch of puppets or plastic mannequins.
Oh... and its in 3D if there is a IMAX next to you. Supposed to be better then sex with twins according to the Time's list of "inventions".
Such examples of idiocy make me to want RIAA's and MPAA's claims to be true.
So I could download the movie (not once, but many times) when it comes out and ruin it financially.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
TIME's reasons for the iPhone being its invention of the year:
1. The iPhone is pretty
2. It's touchy-feely
3. It will make other phones better
4. It's not a phone, it's a platform
5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to come
1 and 2 are the same thing: ooo! ponies! 3 and 5 aren't even qualities of the iPhone itself (and kind of stating the obvious... 'in the future, technology will advance') and 4 is irrelevant if Steve Jobs makes it as hard as he does for anyone to do anything with the damn thing. Invention of the year? Give me a break.
Given the charming and compassionate nature of the human race, the single greatest invention in the history of the race was on July 16, 1945. After that, it's all a matter of refinement and waiting. Oh yes, and small-scale destruction.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
"Converting different blood types to O is fantastic"
;).
There have been a fair number of people attempting to convert their blood type to XO positive[1] with varying degrees of success
[1] Seems my uncle is one of those few born with an XO+ blood type, which may explain his compensating by consuming beer, wine and other "soft" drinks regularly.
Yeah, you guessed it. It's called Windows Vista.
Ultimate heat source for those long cold winter nights...
In a theoretical sense, the Crower design is considerably more elegant. As people were pointing out when the initial announcement was made, the thing hadn't been properly tested. Until there's some actual numbers to back up the theory, it's a curiosity, nothing more.
As for retrofitting BMW, I'll bet you London to a brick that even if BMW perfects its technology, bugger-all retrofits will happen.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I want to know why the heck people keep hybridising these clean technologies with fossil fuels? Can someone tell me why on earth they can't just make a car that uses all three (compressed air/electric/hydrogen fuel cell) and ditch the pollution producers once and for all?
Nokia N95 8GB is a substantially better phone. Being a developer, it's clearly superior, as right out of the box I can do whatever I want with it. Built-in AGPS, 5MB Carl Zeiss camera, 1 smaller camera on the front for video calls, 3G, WiFi-tethering (where the phone becomes an access point to share its 3G connection), 2.8" screen. The interface is only part of a phone. Just like the steering wheel in your car - it could have the finest leopard-print cover on it, but if it's still attached to a poor, second-rate engine, it's not doing you any good. All technology is about balance. The iPhone is not balanced, as all the work seems to have been put into making it look good, instead of making it actually function as a phone.
If you believe what technology websites and magazines tell you to believe, then you have bigger problems than someone saying the iPhone is not as great as everyone says it is.
Well, I agree that the Nokia N95 is cool gadget, but it is stymied by over-complexity and feature-glut. The thing tries to do WAY too many things, and thus, a few things suffer. In certain niches, the N95 is a "better" phone, but on the whole, when taken from multiple reviews/sources, the iPhone is simply the best all-around convergence device available. How you can dismiss the iPhone as not functioning as a phone is amazing. The phone part is the best part of the entire device (the mp3 player a close second and the web browser a really close 3rd). The iPhone could have NONE of the non-phone features, and I still would have bought it, because it is the best phone I've used.
Overcomplexity? I want those features! It saves me having to have all of them in my pockets :) Considering the possibilities the iPhone offered, the fact it only shipped with EDGE and no native SDK is a bit of a slap in the face. I'd rather go with a phone that does everything I want, as opposed to one that doesn't. And it's cheaper :)
Actually, the Nokia is MUCH more expensive if you get it without a service plan (around $750)