This is a novel method of storing data on light and color intensities of a frame of reference, captured with a lens system and matrix of light sensitive transistors. The resulting data is stored in a file called an "Image".
OR worse
This is a novel method of representing nothing. In the past, nothing was always something. We propose a special character that represents nothing (the lack of something) to be used in communication purposes. We shall call this character the "zero."
Isn't it logical that if more than 50% of a population does something "illegal" (in a democracy) it shouldn't be illegal? Otherwise it's the few imposing their will on the majority, which means that it's no longer a democracy.
But then again, perhaps we are all habitual line-steppers (some sort of excitement is gained apparently), so they set the laws to be arbitrarily restrictive but then allow (through statistics) a certain number of people to break them. However, once in a while that singles out a person who's really not a criminal and throws the book at them, just for bad luck.
The problem is that there are a certain number of whackos that are getting away each day, but that just follows with the statistics also. We just need to be certain we're catching the real whackos more and not punishing the casual non-whacko law breaker any more than necessary. Find out how to do that, and you're an instant billionaire.
Yeah, as the president and CEO, he could have a few minutes alone with the gold software precompile and put whatever he wanted into it, and no one there could stop him.
While I agree with your overall view of the FCC abdicating its responsibility for regulating the spectrum to prevent interference, focusing instead on "wardrobe malfunctions" and Howard Stern, the existence of Part 15 devices isn't really the problem here.
In addition to electromagnetism, they manage the spectrum of taste and skin, to prevent interference with common values?
OR
When we're not regulating the eletromagnetic medium, we also dabble in the message.
I should get a royalty for every wasted tax dollar, every minute I've wasted listening to the same damn song over and over, every wasted hour I've spent watching Hollywood shite. My life has been STOLEN from me and now it's time to get paid. For every SECOND of crappy music played anywhere in the world, I propose I get a royalty of.0001 cents. I need that every month in the form of gold bullion. All I need is a few dozen senators to take my bribes and pass a law and there's nothing they can do. They have to pay me.
Some scientists believe that there were multiple events that caused the massive global change that caused the mass extinction. This theory is that there was only one.
It's amazing to imagine the world populated by giant birds and lizards. But what did these creatures breathe? Perhaps the world was covered in plant life, which provided a lot of Oxygen. Then the impact hit, killing the plants, lowering the oxygen enough that the larger animals just sort of suffocated. The smaller animals had smaller lungs, less air requirements, and thus did not perish.
And I know that everyone here hates it, but the Microsoft Zune has wireless networking built in, thus allowing you access to unlimited video, right now. And all for a few dollars from Movielink and Cinemanow or free from the web.
This article is typical corporate exec boilerplate used to beef up name recognition. When they don't have anything better to say they spout stuff about how much growth there is in storage capacity. It's been going on for 20 years, duh.
What's REALLY interesting about this article is a Senior Google person mentioning their fellow Silicon Valley neighbors with $50+ BIL in cash, Apple Computer. The AppleGooTube, Gapple, Gooooople anybody chime in here at any time
Yeah. I think the main problem plauging mobile phones is the providers themselves. They insist on crippling the phones, making it impossible to create your own software, and charge too much. There is simply no economic incentive for them to do more than they already do.
People like the homebrew mobile club are trying to make a new device that takes the mono out of the poly and gives us all a chance to make it big in the mobile arena. Until the hobbiest can play and innovate, the industry will never be ubiquitous. Look at the PC platform; it really was what led to the widespread adoption of the Internet. BBS's were there first. I don't believe that homebrew mobiles are going to be the wave of the future (where everyone builds their own mobile), but I do believe that it will force innovation that the monopoly providers are not capable of.
Every day I look at my phone and wish I could do more with it. Just play with it, customize features, etc. And though this is somewhat possible with BITPIM and hacking the control software, it's not the same as having a phone with an open operating system that I can install whatever capabilities I want on it. I don't even care if the device is totally tiny; I'd be happy with a brick that can talk on the mobile nets, low battery consumption, etc, provided it can run anything I want and do anything with data that I want.
This device would go far beyond the Palm mobiles and far beyond the blackberry in customizability. The whole thing would be based on components which can be plugged together to make a whole device. So, you could choose your case, your processor, your screen, your radio, your memory, camera, OPERATING SYSTEM etc. and it would all be modular components. You could even have a small hard drive ala iPod. The whole thing could run of a variety of power sources, from off the shelf batteries to car to the wall without a bunch of stupid adapters. And of course it could connect to computers with USB, bleutoof and ethernet (wireless or wired).
Then, in public places you could have special docking stations that would give you access to a fullsize keyboard, mouse and screen. You could have tons of software that could do anything. For instance, since anyone can write software, a local restaurant might higher a phone geek to program a special server at their restaurant that gives the specials, and handles the bill. The bill could be signed authentic with a private key of the restuarant (thus getting rid of all those pesky receipts come tax time).
I can think of hundreds more. The best part is I DON'T HAVE TO. Because anyone can think of anything and do it, stuff no one has even thought of will come out. Voice services based on asterisk are just the beginning (not that running your own mobile provider wouldn't be awesome)
Anyway, although the cell network is pretty crappy, it works. They have covered most of the country with at least analog service. The idea we need to focus on is riding on their investment; we can't afford to WiFi the country or even a city in most cases. Although, along those lines, an automatic Wifi exchange would definitely open up the airwaves a lot more, because private individuals have a motivation to open their bandwidth. Anyway, the main thing holding back innovation isn't the network, it's the hardware and provider monopolies on the hardware. So, fight back, join the club, make a cell phone, etc.
Or at least buy it from a small local businessperson and not from the "machine" (ie: walmart). Go see Fast Food Nation, which really makes you feel like a pawn.
To close, you may like living in a "Demolition Man" society, where everything is tracked and controlled. But eventually, such a society will foster members who are soft and weak, and unfit to take care of themselves. And then they will be overrun by someone who's utterly ruthless and without fear or respect of rules and laws.
You're talking about Dystopia, a "fictional society that is the antithesis of utopia. It is usually characterized by an oppressive social control, such as an authoritarian or totalitarian government." Demolition Man was loosely based on Aldolus Huxley's A Brave New World. There is also a list of dystopian films at Wikipedia.
We allow our governments to this, in part because the middle class has become so coddled and lazy that they don't want to do anything for themselves. Societal paranoia. I think the real reason is that we've been being told that we should be afraid, that anxiety is a sickness, that the human existance is a long string of mistakes and deficiencies punctuated by the occasional conformity. Why do we feel this way? It's because the collective consciousness feels this way. There is a great movement occuring in the field of positive psychology, the study of human wellness. The real question is this: why SHOULD we always focus on the negative, the sickness, the problems when in reality there's so much good about humans and individualism? What is needed is a SEA CHANGE across the entire human consciousness to look at the positive and not the negative. We need new schools, new language and a new way of life to combat this scourge of negativity that's attacking our speicies.
Above someone posted a very interesting comment. They were a "child of the 60's", the offspring of parents who lived through WWII in England and the blitz, etc. Their parents let them go out and play, let them go do stuff because they knew how fragile life is, they knew perfectly rationally what safety really is. That's the problem, it's all relative. But there is one thing that you can never get rid of (although the huge medical industry is trying as hard as they can). We are always going to die, one way or the other. So why the fuck should we focus on that when we could focus on what a great day it is, and all of the wonderful things each and every one of us is capable of? Is it so hard to think this way? I say no, and by that I mean yes.
After doing this, try going here: http://209.67.106.203/oss/common/vc/ and then viewing the source. It seems that there's a lot of cool java and javascrpt here. Apparently there are java objects to access the video and sound of the Wii, some other stuff.
Anyway, you have an electron rotating a nuclei, not a free electron. So the spin has a different effect because the electron is locked in the orbital (and maybe even the orbital of the surrounding silicon). It doesn't just fly off in one of two directions. It's going around in a circle. So, the electron has it's spin (which is not really spin, but some sort of momentum without rotation) and it's also orbiting in a cloud of probability. At quantum level and timespace, it's pretty much a solid sheet of varying thickness because the spin (angular momentum, not really spin) causes the path it takes to sort of "spiral". So I visualize this little electron by the path it makes say one orbit and I see that it is not just a big circle but really it's constantly trying to dive one way or another but the orbital force attracting it fights back. Now, they are talking about using electricity in the article to measure the spin. That implies a flow of electrons so you know electrons are involved somewhere. I'm saying the electrons are flowing through the silicon and when they encounter a sort of thinner area of the silicon where it stretches around the phosphorus (like a tennis ball in a sock, or something), they are regulated somehow by the underlying spin of the phosphorus, which they think they can change by cooling or heating. I'm not sure why that is because the spin (which is not really spin) is just, as you say, "there". But anyway, the electrons are somehow regulated at this site by the spin. I THINK that the spin of the phosphorus somehow affects physically the silicon that's stretched around it and that's what allows it to be measurable. If that's the case, it's a simple matter to isolate a single phosphorus and make a quantum transistor. But of course, the real goal is getting a bunch of them working together to somehow just magically "have" the answer because we're asking for it, which is what quantum computing is. It just is. Anyway, I'll let you get back to your textbook now, I'm just someone trying to make a picture in my mind of what's going on. I'm not really interested in proving how smart I am or regurgitating the wikipedia article I already linked above..
Science could be much better if people were more casual from time to time. That's where ideas come from. Not memorizing long words and terminology. Where is Feynman when you need him? Oh wait, he invented all this shit. Haven't you ever heard of wobble?
Actually, TFS is incorrect; they only measured the "net spin" of millions of phosphorous atoms. According to TFA, they took a measurement of the hair thing at room temperature (where the spins are pretty evenly 50-50), then they measured it at liquid helium cold (where spins are "down") and when heated by microwaves (where spins are "up"). It's important to note that "spin" really refers to the electrons. I'm guessing that in a nice silicon matrix the "spin" affects the surrounding silicon either making it more or less conductive around the phosphorous. They don't really get into what "spin" is, so you think they are actually talking about a spinning ball or something which couldn't be further from the facts. Since electrons are like photons and they are waves at small scales, it's more about these little probability eddies or whirlpools where the electrons hang out more. There's a wikipedia article that explains the concept, they say "spin angular momentum cannot be associated with rotation but instead refers only to the presence of angular momentum." So like I said, it appears the particles are affected by angular momentum (statistically), but they are not actually "spinning" because there's no such thing that that scale.
Not to mention whomever controls the library can decide what stays and what doesn't. Which means they can create any picture of history they want. Which, as we all know, means they can control the future.
The bottom line is that democracy is a farce. It's not the machines, or the voters. It's just like any other system, arranged from the top down. The person at the top has the real power. The people at them bottom entrust him with the power. How is this different than a king and serfs? It's not.
The only real difference is in our minds. We think that voting serves the same purpose that armed rebellion used to serve back in the day. We think that we can replace our leaders by voting if we don't like them. But really they are all from the same stock, multiple generations of the same families, over and over. If they aren't in government this year, they'll be in business and vice versa.
The fathers of this country knew this. It's built into the system. America is still very young but it was built to last forever. The system of checks and balances helps smooth out the instability over time. The problem is when a fluke (or fraudulent activity) arises (ie: 00 and 04) and one very small group gets ultimate power over all three branches, and has favors to cash in. A lot of great men have said that it only takes the right major crises to bring fascism... and it's for good reason. You need strong, powerful leadership during times of crisis. When most people are crying at home, depressed and unable to do anything, you need someone to stand up and make the hard decisions.
But when those decisions are mistakes, such as the decision to create a permanent state of war, etc. it seems pretty hopeless. We can only hope that some new great leader will arise and right the wrongs. It will happen eventually, somewhere. Maybe Europe will arise to be the new world leader? Maybe it will be China whom the world looks to for hope and guidance? The momentum the U.S. got from WWII is nearly played out. The baby boom will retire and we're going to be faced with the biggest economic crisis ever trying to feed 80 million vegetables. And we're worried about terrorists............
All programming is maintenance programming sometimes. Especially when the business lacks core processes. A lot of times even new development will be redone 3-4 times just to satisfy everyone. And new software enevitable spurns inspiration in people, which means new processes which means new development. I prefer the evolutionary model, as in "What is the very least we can do right now?" and do it. Usually that means writing the "program" on paper for people to do. Say you have a paper file. It's not going to do you much good to have that in the software if people don't have a definite workflow. Of course, you can make software that will allow all special cases in workflow, but that takes months or years.
It would be cool to incorporate this type of controller into a portable device. You could have portable laser-tag like games with real-time mapping, or incorporate some type of ball and it automatically keeps score and records the game. You could have "operations" players indoors that have some different role (view the maps, for instance, and direct the players)
With networking and GIS in a portable device, it's almost necessary to have new interfaces to use all the new space it knows about. In gaming it's the most fun but these types of thing could be used in more professional ways also.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean "K-K-Kramer", as the Weekly World News is calling him.
This is a novel method of storing data on light and color intensities of a frame of reference, captured with a lens system and matrix of light sensitive transistors. The resulting data is stored in a file called an "Image".
OR worse
This is a novel method of representing nothing. In the past, nothing was always something. We propose a special character that represents nothing (the lack of something) to be used in communication purposes. We shall call this character the "zero."
Isn't it logical that if more than 50% of a population does something "illegal" (in a democracy) it shouldn't be illegal? Otherwise it's the few imposing their will on the majority, which means that it's no longer a democracy.
But then again, perhaps we are all habitual line-steppers (some sort of excitement is gained apparently), so they set the laws to be arbitrarily restrictive but then allow (through statistics) a certain number of people to break them. However, once in a while that singles out a person who's really not a criminal and throws the book at them, just for bad luck.
The problem is that there are a certain number of whackos that are getting away each day, but that just follows with the statistics also. We just need to be certain we're catching the real whackos more and not punishing the casual non-whacko law breaker any more than necessary. Find out how to do that, and you're an instant billionaire.
It's called corporate America, the biggest criminals of them all. They are so advanced, they don't break laws; they fly between them.
Yeah, as the president and CEO, he could have a few minutes alone with the gold software precompile and put whatever he wanted into it, and no one there could stop him.
That's why we all need to buy an OpenMoko, and then someone needs to write a public key encrypted network layer.
While I agree with your overall view of the FCC abdicating its responsibility for regulating the spectrum to prevent interference, focusing instead on "wardrobe malfunctions" and Howard Stern, the existence of Part 15 devices isn't really the problem here.
In addition to electromagnetism, they manage the spectrum of taste and skin, to prevent interference with common values?
OR
When we're not regulating the eletromagnetic medium, we also dabble in the message.
I wrote "SEE ID" on the back of my card instead of signing it. In case it gets lost.
I should get a royalty for every wasted tax dollar, every minute I've wasted listening to the same damn song over and over, every wasted hour I've spent watching Hollywood shite. My life has been STOLEN from me and now it's time to get paid. For every SECOND of crappy music played anywhere in the world, I propose I get a royalty of .0001 cents. I need that every month in the form of gold bullion. All I need is a few dozen senators to take my bribes and pass a law and there's nothing they can do. They have to pay me.
Some scientists believe that there were multiple events that caused the massive global change that caused the mass extinction. This theory is that there was only one.
It's amazing to imagine the world populated by giant birds and lizards. But what did these creatures breathe? Perhaps the world was covered in plant life, which provided a lot of Oxygen. Then the impact hit, killing the plants, lowering the oxygen enough that the larger animals just sort of suffocated. The smaller animals had smaller lungs, less air requirements, and thus did not perish.
One word: hoverboard.
And I know that everyone here hates it, but the Microsoft Zune has wireless networking built in, thus allowing you access to unlimited video, right now. And all for a few dollars from Movielink and Cinemanow or free from the web.
This article is typical corporate exec boilerplate used to beef up name recognition. When they don't have anything better to say they spout stuff about how much growth there is in storage capacity. It's been going on for 20 years, duh.
What's REALLY interesting about this article is a Senior Google person mentioning their fellow Silicon Valley neighbors with $50+ BIL in cash, Apple Computer. The AppleGooTube, Gapple, Gooooople anybody chime in here at any time
Yeah. I think the main problem plauging mobile phones is the providers themselves. They insist on crippling the phones, making it impossible to create your own software, and charge too much. There is simply no economic incentive for them to do more than they already do.
People like the homebrew mobile club are trying to make a new device that takes the mono out of the poly and gives us all a chance to make it big in the mobile arena. Until the hobbiest can play and innovate, the industry will never be ubiquitous. Look at the PC platform; it really was what led to the widespread adoption of the Internet. BBS's were there first. I don't believe that homebrew mobiles are going to be the wave of the future (where everyone builds their own mobile), but I do believe that it will force innovation that the monopoly providers are not capable of.
Every day I look at my phone and wish I could do more with it. Just play with it, customize features, etc. And though this is somewhat possible with BITPIM and hacking the control software, it's not the same as having a phone with an open operating system that I can install whatever capabilities I want on it. I don't even care if the device is totally tiny; I'd be happy with a brick that can talk on the mobile nets, low battery consumption, etc, provided it can run anything I want and do anything with data that I want.
This device would go far beyond the Palm mobiles and far beyond the blackberry in customizability. The whole thing would be based on components which can be plugged together to make a whole device. So, you could choose your case, your processor, your screen, your radio, your memory, camera, OPERATING SYSTEM etc. and it would all be modular components. You could even have a small hard drive ala iPod. The whole thing could run of a variety of power sources, from off the shelf batteries to car to the wall without a bunch of stupid adapters. And of course it could connect to computers with USB, bleutoof and ethernet (wireless or wired).
Then, in public places you could have special docking stations that would give you access to a fullsize keyboard, mouse and screen. You could have tons of software that could do anything. For instance, since anyone can write software, a local restaurant might higher a phone geek to program a special server at their restaurant that gives the specials, and handles the bill. The bill could be signed authentic with a private key of the restuarant (thus getting rid of all those pesky receipts come tax time).
I can think of hundreds more. The best part is I DON'T HAVE TO. Because anyone can think of anything and do it, stuff no one has even thought of will come out. Voice services based on asterisk are just the beginning (not that running your own mobile provider wouldn't be awesome)
Anyway, although the cell network is pretty crappy, it works. They have covered most of the country with at least analog service. The idea we need to focus on is riding on their investment; we can't afford to WiFi the country or even a city in most cases. Although, along those lines, an automatic Wifi exchange would definitely open up the airwaves a lot more, because private individuals have a motivation to open their bandwidth. Anyway, the main thing holding back innovation isn't the network, it's the hardware and provider monopolies on the hardware. So, fight back, join the club, make a cell phone, etc.
Or at least buy it from a small local businessperson and not from the "machine" (ie: walmart). Go see Fast Food Nation, which really makes you feel like a pawn.
To close, you may like living in a "Demolition Man" society, where everything is tracked and controlled. But eventually, such a society will foster members who are soft and weak, and unfit to take care of themselves. And then they will be overrun by someone who's utterly ruthless and without fear or respect of rules and laws.
You're talking about Dystopia, a "fictional society that is the antithesis of utopia. It is usually characterized by an oppressive social control, such as an authoritarian or totalitarian government." Demolition Man was loosely based on Aldolus Huxley's A Brave New World. There is also a list of dystopian films at Wikipedia.
We allow our governments to this, in part because the middle class has become so coddled and lazy that they don't want to do anything for themselves. Societal paranoia. I think the real reason is that we've been being told that we should be afraid, that anxiety is a sickness, that the human existance is a long string of mistakes and deficiencies punctuated by the occasional conformity. Why do we feel this way? It's because the collective consciousness feels this way. There is a great movement occuring in the field of positive psychology, the study of human wellness. The real question is this: why SHOULD we always focus on the negative, the sickness, the problems when in reality there's so much good about humans and individualism? What is needed is a SEA CHANGE across the entire human consciousness to look at the positive and not the negative. We need new schools, new language and a new way of life to combat this scourge of negativity that's attacking our speicies.
Above someone posted a very interesting comment. They were a "child of the 60's", the offspring of parents who lived through WWII in England and the blitz, etc. Their parents let them go out and play, let them go do stuff because they knew how fragile life is, they knew perfectly rationally what safety really is. That's the problem, it's all relative. But there is one thing that you can never get rid of (although the huge medical industry is trying as hard as they can). We are always going to die, one way or the other. So why the fuck should we focus on that when we could focus on what a great day it is, and all of the wonderful things each and every one of us is capable of? Is it so hard to think this way? I say no, and by that I mean yes.
I'm in such bad shape, my wii makes me stiff.
I can't decide if this is a Soviet Russia joke in disguise...
After doing this, try going here: http://209.67.106.203/oss/common/vc/ and then viewing the source. It seems that there's a lot of cool java and javascrpt here. Apparently there are java objects to access the video and sound of the Wii, some other stuff.
Lots more to explore, more later.
Anyway, you have an electron rotating a nuclei, not a free electron. So the spin has a different effect because the electron is locked in the orbital (and maybe even the orbital of the surrounding silicon). It doesn't just fly off in one of two directions. It's going around in a circle. So, the electron has it's spin (which is not really spin, but some sort of momentum without rotation) and it's also orbiting in a cloud of probability. At quantum level and timespace, it's pretty much a solid sheet of varying thickness because the spin (angular momentum, not really spin) causes the path it takes to sort of "spiral". So I visualize this little electron by the path it makes say one orbit and I see that it is not just a big circle but really it's constantly trying to dive one way or another but the orbital force attracting it fights back. Now, they are talking about using electricity in the article to measure the spin. That implies a flow of electrons so you know electrons are involved somewhere. I'm saying the electrons are flowing through the silicon and when they encounter a sort of thinner area of the silicon where it stretches around the phosphorus (like a tennis ball in a sock, or something), they are regulated somehow by the underlying spin of the phosphorus, which they think they can change by cooling or heating. I'm not sure why that is because the spin (which is not really spin) is just, as you say, "there". But anyway, the electrons are somehow regulated at this site by the spin. I THINK that the spin of the phosphorus somehow affects physically the silicon that's stretched around it and that's what allows it to be measurable. If that's the case, it's a simple matter to isolate a single phosphorus and make a quantum transistor. But of course, the real goal is getting a bunch of them working together to somehow just magically "have" the answer because we're asking for it, which is what quantum computing is. It just is. Anyway, I'll let you get back to your textbook now, I'm just someone trying to make a picture in my mind of what's going on. I'm not really interested in proving how smart I am or regurgitating the wikipedia article I already linked above..
Science could be much better if people were more casual from time to time. That's where ideas come from. Not memorizing long words and terminology. Where is Feynman when you need him? Oh wait, he invented all this shit. Haven't you ever heard of wobble?
And a link to the wikipedia article, since I forgot to insert it before submitting ;)
Actually, TFS is incorrect; they only measured the "net spin" of millions of phosphorous atoms. According to TFA, they took a measurement of the hair thing at room temperature (where the spins are pretty evenly 50-50), then they measured it at liquid helium cold (where spins are "down") and when heated by microwaves (where spins are "up"). It's important to note that "spin" really refers to the electrons. I'm guessing that in a nice silicon matrix the "spin" affects the surrounding silicon either making it more or less conductive around the phosphorous. They don't really get into what "spin" is, so you think they are actually talking about a spinning ball or something which couldn't be further from the facts. Since electrons are like photons and they are waves at small scales, it's more about these little probability eddies or whirlpools where the electrons hang out more. There's a wikipedia article that explains the concept, they say "spin angular momentum cannot be associated with rotation but instead refers only to the presence of angular momentum." So like I said, it appears the particles are affected by angular momentum (statistically), but they are not actually "spinning" because there's no such thing that that scale.
Not to mention whomever controls the library can decide what stays and what doesn't. Which means they can create any picture of history they want. Which, as we all know, means they can control the future.
The bottom line is that democracy is a farce. It's not the machines, or the voters. It's just like any other system, arranged from the top down. The person at the top has the real power. The people at them bottom entrust him with the power. How is this different than a king and serfs? It's not.
The only real difference is in our minds. We think that voting serves the same purpose that armed rebellion used to serve back in the day. We think that we can replace our leaders by voting if we don't like them. But really they are all from the same stock, multiple generations of the same families, over and over. If they aren't in government this year, they'll be in business and vice versa.
The fathers of this country knew this. It's built into the system. America is still very young but it was built to last forever. The system of checks and balances helps smooth out the instability over time. The problem is when a fluke (or fraudulent activity) arises (ie: 00 and 04) and one very small group gets ultimate power over all three branches, and has favors to cash in. A lot of great men have said that it only takes the right major crises to bring fascism... and it's for good reason. You need strong, powerful leadership during times of crisis. When most people are crying at home, depressed and unable to do anything, you need someone to stand up and make the hard decisions.
But when those decisions are mistakes, such as the decision to create a permanent state of war, etc. it seems pretty hopeless. We can only hope that some new great leader will arise and right the wrongs. It will happen eventually, somewhere. Maybe Europe will arise to be the new world leader? Maybe it will be China whom the world looks to for hope and guidance? The momentum the U.S. got from WWII is nearly played out. The baby boom will retire and we're going to be faced with the biggest economic crisis ever trying to feed 80 million vegetables. And we're worried about terrorists............
All programming is maintenance programming sometimes. Especially when the business lacks core processes. A lot of times even new development will be redone 3-4 times just to satisfy everyone. And new software enevitable spurns inspiration in people, which means new processes which means new development. I prefer the evolutionary model, as in "What is the very least we can do right now?" and do it. Usually that means writing the "program" on paper for people to do. Say you have a paper file. It's not going to do you much good to have that in the software if people don't have a definite workflow. Of course, you can make software that will allow all special cases in workflow, but that takes months or years.
It would be cool to incorporate this type of controller into a portable device. You could have portable laser-tag like games with real-time mapping, or incorporate some type of ball and it automatically keeps score and records the game. You could have "operations" players indoors that have some different role (view the maps, for instance, and direct the players)
With networking and GIS in a portable device, it's almost necessary to have new interfaces to use all the new space it knows about. In gaming it's the most fun but these types of thing could be used in more professional ways also.
Did you remember to disable System Restore? ;)