I'm a little disappointed at the short battery life of this little puss. One hour is just too short for an attempt at a realistic pet. Can't they power this thing with lithium ion cells and then use IR photodetectors on the pet to look for IR emitters on a recharging "dish" when the pet get's "hungry"?
I'm also a little put off by trying to make it look like a real cat. They missed the mark. At least AIBO is only stylistically similar to a dog. Robotic pets might be a little more enjoyable if they don't pattern themselves too closely after real animals.
Who would want to have to "walk" AIBO or scoop out Tama's litterbox?
I am annoyed with the bias these researchers have applied to their study. To consider in-person communication to be the only valid way one can interact with others says more about the people behind the study than the ones behind our keyboards.
I met my wife through the Internet several years ago. I have regular contact with my ordinary friends using IRC-type software. And I've had contact and made friends with people around the world thanks to the Internet -- people I never would have met otherwise.
Does engaging someone in a lengthy telephone conversation constitute interaction? If so, then what is the difference between sitting there with a handset pressed to the side of your face, and sitting at a computer with your fingers on the keyboard...or even using an Internet phone?
Ultimately, junk studies like this might serve an educational purpose: to remind people that something labelled a study does not necessarily constitute an irrefutable fact. That a study can have biases to support the agenda of the people behind them or the people who pay for them. That a single study means absolutely nothing until it is confirmed by independent researchers in an effort to duplicate the findings while eliminating confounding factors.
The titles were "Visit to a Weird Planet" and "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited," the latter of which appeared in the Bantam paperback "Star Trek: The New Voyages"
A few of the stories were actually pretty good...including the above.
Sounds okay in theory, but in practice the solution won't work. GPS can be interfered with by trees and is almost useless inside of a building. If these things were to become common, your average kidnapper would simply bundle the victim away in a metal vehicle and park underground or within a metal carpark. Even wrapping the victim in plastic and then wire screening would probably block the signal.
A lost child might be easier to find, but if they huddle under an overpass or trees to seek shelter from bad weather, they won't be spotted either.
On the other hand, an otherwise law-abiding citizen would have difficulty walking around day-in and day-out shielding themselves in this fashion. People who are on someone's political enemy list would be easy targets.
The potential for misuse looks worse than the problems this technology could solve.
Anti-technology sentiments are hardly unique to the United States, or even Canada. The Europeans, for example, have caused quite a bit of trouble for genetically modified foods and plastic softeners. Much of this can be traced to organizations like Greenpeace, which seems to have taken a more extremist approach in recent years.
I think the average person in Western Culture is probably suspicious of individual technologies these days, and until something has been repeatedly shown to be "safe", it is in jeopardy of being scrutinized by one group or another and used as a scapegoat for one or more societal ills.
"Geeks" latch on to new technology almost without hesitation. We are attracted to the novel sensations of playing with new gizmos or new algorithms. The rest of the planet prefers to stay with what's comfortable or may even be openly hostile to it...and not always for legitimate reasons.
Yep, there's Cloanto's Amiga Forever. It works fine on my PII 266, but it feels a bit slow. It's definitely not as responsive as my A4000T and a dog compared to PPC. It's a neat thing to see, but there are some applications that don't work. Imagine for example does a wonderful job of raytracing black screens. Photorealistic black screens.
I have both as well and am devoted to the Psion Series 5 (and new Revo) as a PDA, but the fact of the matter is:
1. That the Psions are slower than any desktop computer currently on the market (including Amigas, which are still available),
2. Have poor displays with (at best) 16 shades of grey and no video or other display-out capabilities, 3. Have limited expansion options, and even less software available than the Amiga.
Can a Psion read a CD-Rom? Not unless you hook it up to an Amiga with AmigaNCP. Have you tried browsing the web with a Psion? It's really a joke at this stage...maybe Opera will make it workable.
Okay, the Psion is a great little PDA with an outstanding OS (for a PDA), but please don't make it out to be something it isn't.
Finally, if AmigaOS were updated and open-sourced, there's no reason it couldn't continue to support a committed user base. Most major applications are represented on the platform still, and hardware is still available.
(Oh, and my nick has nothing to do with the company or its products.)
Wow. Good post, Fizgig! So could someone set up a dummy corporation to sign the NDA, break the agreement, then let the dummy corporation take the heat and be litigated out of existance? Isn't incorporation supposed to shield individuals from corporate action? Or am I mistaken or hopelessly naive?
Actually, I do have a kid. And he's learning values and how to negotiate a world with differing values just fine, thank you very much. The reason? No one ever sheltered him or tried to preserve an arbitrary concept of innocence. Given time, I honestly expect him to be better able to "build bridges" and turn cheeks than many Christians I know because he is developing a mature and tolerant response to diversity.
Be that as it may, your shot-in-the-dark about whether I have kids is about as accurate as the rest of your comments. "More people agree" with you? It's likely a more vocal minority from where I sit. What happened to CDA, Amphigory? What's the status of CDA-II? These brain-dead approaches to regulating web content failed in the US because they went exactly as far as where you predict things will go if we don't all panic and adopt this latest effort at control of speech immediately.
And I definitely insist that education is superior to legislation. An educated thinker who can reason around a problem is far superior to one whose only experience is falling back upon the politically expedient demands of the close-minded.
What is desperately needed (now) is an organization and appropriate technologies to construct a publically, freely available list of offensive sites.
Pardon me, but what constitutes an offensive site? I have no problem at all viewing someone without clothes, but you might draw the line at viewing a woman's breasts and a Muslim might not want to see a woman's face! You might think that a "voluntary" system lets a browser choose what to view, but how does the creator of a webpage know that her descriptions of safe sex practices would offend you?
Further, you have already conceded that the very sites you're trying to protect the kids from are the ones who "deliberately misrepresent themselves as appropriate sites." So what, under a voluntary system stops them from continuing to do this?
Finally, there's that old refrain that "pornography treats people as objects," whatever that means. First, define pornography. Then explain to me how an image of a man and woman (or man, or two women, or whatever!) engaged in sex suddenly reduces the participants to simple objects in a way that is any different from any other form of entertainment or instruction.
The fundamental flaw in this approach is the effort to shield children from the realities of the world rather than teaching them basic, realistic ways of coping with them. Rather than desperately diving for the monitor's power switch when you and junior get an eyeful of a man peeing on a woman, maybe you should just let it linger for a moment and then turn to Junior and simply say, "Eeew! That's gross!"
Ah but the important point is that you, as an individual who avoids the device, are an exception. Generally, nearly everyone wears a watch. Except you. And me.
A convenient, stylish, and compact wearable will become everybit as ubiquitous as a watch. Indeed, it will replace the watch.
Some few centuries ago, there existed the concept of the Renaissance Man -- a person so well educated he knew just about everything there was to know. Of course, the accumulated wisdom of humanity didn't amount to much, so the standard was a bit lower than today. As time passed and structures for scientific investigations formalized, this sort of thing became harder to do, and by the beginning of this century the very idea of knowing everything had become absurd. No scientist alive can practice proficiently in every science -- despite what Gilligan's Island may have taught us.
And consider the law. In the U.S., it is common to hear that "Ignorance of the Law is no excuse!" Despite the fact that our legislators really have nothing better to do with their time and have passed so many laws that no one fully understands or can even recite them all. I just found out that I have to pay $10 for a permit to install a garbage disposal in my house, for criminy's sake!
People seem to have a need to complexify everything they do. In the search for knowledge, this is sort of a natural state of affairs -- there's alot out there to know. But something interesting has happened over the years. Know-it-alls be damned, there has been an emergence of specialists who don't know everything about everything, but who rather have chosen to focus their attention on one particular subject, relying on others to handle the details of things they don't understand. Thus, the town surgeon no longer is any good at giving shaves and haircuts, he goes to a hairstylist for that!
Sure things keep getting more complex. But inevitably, there's some settling that occurs that makes things easier to handle as soon as that complexity starts to exceed human grasp. So much of the hype about the future of computing is vacuous and inane, but in it are ideas that will mature and genuinely help sort out the complexities. And where they can't, some other change will make things easier -- implants or gene therapy might make us smarter, for example. Life will go on -- pseudo-malthusian alarmism aside.
Oh, and will someone please fix Jon's apostropy catastrophies?
To those of us trying to follow the Amiga, the developments of the past few weeks *are* news. These shifts in political power at Amiga Inc. are every bit as relevant to a final product as pushing that product out the door.
Wow. First 'O' gauge, then 'HO' gauge, and now, 'nano' gauge. This will make for wonderfully complex layouts, but somehow I think it will be difficult to detail and weather these suckers without an electron microscope.
Actually, they've completely redesigned the hinges in the 3c and 5 series. Much better, although the display on the 5mx is a bit tough to read at times. (Oh, and I have nothing to do with the company.)
I thought it was a joke at first, too. But it seems Seed, who is a physicist by training, is trying to talk investers into funding a cloning project intended to allow couples with fertility problems to clone one or the other parent and bring the clone to term as a baby.
It's a strange world where a man named Dick Seed could get involved in reproduction!
Well, first of all, those nations that have a higher dependence on advanced technologies (including medicine) also have a lower birthrate. If this trend were to continue, it's possible that the birthrate wouldn't be much higher than a deathrate from accidents, suicide, and homocide.
Further, I'm also confident that by the time we have the ability to significantly extend human lifetime with better medicine, we'll also have the ability to easily expand beyond this planet and begin to live in space or on other worlds.
This is interesting. I have been watching and commenting on Dolly ever since she was announced. At my website, I have a small section devoted to her and even warned about the possibility that something along these lines, a sort of sheep progeria, might strike her.
I wonder now what impact this will have on Richard Seed's infertility work...
That's actually an exaggeration started by Helen Caldicott and perpetuated by anti-nuke activists like Karl Grossman. I suggest an interesting article by Ilya Taytslin to be found at Dr. Caldicott and the Truth About Plutonium. The article largely discusses the space probe Cassini and the uproar over it's use of an RTG power supply, but the points made are generally applicable.
Of course AC has a wavelength, it Alternates between polarities typically at a rate of 60 Hz (in the U.S.). Nicola Tesla experimented extensively with AC at extremely high frequencies with a variety of results.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm also a little put off by trying to make it look like a real cat. They missed the mark. At least AIBO is only stylistically similar to a dog. Robotic pets might be a little more enjoyable if they don't pattern themselves too closely after real animals.
Who would want to have to "walk" AIBO or scoop out Tama's litterbox?
(Made ya look!)
Watch it with that possibly offensive reference to the Amiga!
We coulda been a contender...
I met my wife through the Internet several years ago. I have regular contact with my ordinary friends using IRC-type software. And I've had contact and made friends with people around the world thanks to the Internet -- people I never would have met otherwise.
Does engaging someone in a lengthy telephone conversation constitute interaction? If so, then what is the difference between sitting there with a handset pressed to the side of your face, and sitting at a computer with your fingers on the keyboard...or even using an Internet phone?
Ultimately, junk studies like this might serve an educational purpose: to remind people that something labelled a study does not necessarily constitute an irrefutable fact. That a study can have biases to support the agenda of the people behind them or the people who pay for them. That a single study means absolutely nothing until it is confirmed by independent researchers in an effort to duplicate the findings while eliminating confounding factors.
A few of the stories were actually pretty good...including the above.
A lost child might be easier to find, but if they huddle under an overpass or trees to seek shelter from bad weather, they won't be spotted either.
On the other hand, an otherwise law-abiding citizen would have difficulty walking around day-in and day-out shielding themselves in this fashion. People who are on someone's political enemy list would be easy targets.
The potential for misuse looks worse than the problems this technology could solve.
I think the average person in Western Culture is probably suspicious of individual technologies these days, and until something has been repeatedly shown to be "safe", it is in jeopardy of being scrutinized by one group or another and used as a scapegoat for one or more societal ills.
"Geeks" latch on to new technology almost without hesitation. We are attracted to the novel sensations of playing with new gizmos or new algorithms. The rest of the planet prefers to stay with what's comfortable or may even be openly hostile to it...and not always for legitimate reasons.
Yep, there's Cloanto's Amiga Forever. It works fine on my PII 266, but it feels a bit slow. It's definitely not as responsive as my A4000T and a dog compared to PPC. It's a neat thing to see, but there are some applications that don't work. Imagine for example does a wonderful job of raytracing black screens. Photorealistic black screens.
I have both as well and am devoted to the Psion Series 5 (and new Revo) as a PDA, but the fact of the matter is:
Can a Psion read a CD-Rom? Not unless you hook it up to an Amiga with AmigaNCP. Have you tried browsing the web with a Psion? It's really a joke at this stage...maybe Opera will make it workable.Okay, the Psion is a great little PDA with an outstanding OS (for a PDA), but please don't make it out to be something it isn't.
Finally, if AmigaOS were updated and open-sourced, there's no reason it couldn't continue to support a committed user base. Most major applications are represented on the platform still, and hardware is still available.
(Oh, and my nick has nothing to do with the company or its products.)
Wow. Good post, Fizgig! So could someone set up a dummy corporation to sign the NDA, break the agreement, then let the dummy corporation take the heat and be litigated out of existance? Isn't incorporation supposed to shield individuals from corporate action? Or am I mistaken or hopelessly naive?
Naw...anyone who advocates "Pounding the Protoplasm" as a euphemism for sex deserves another chance in my book.
Be that as it may, your shot-in-the-dark about whether I have kids is about as accurate as the rest of your comments. "More people agree" with you? It's likely a more vocal minority from where I sit. What happened to CDA, Amphigory? What's the status of CDA-II? These brain-dead approaches to regulating web content failed in the US because they went exactly as far as where you predict things will go if we don't all panic and adopt this latest effort at control of speech immediately.
And I definitely insist that education is superior to legislation. An educated thinker who can reason around a problem is far superior to one whose only experience is falling back upon the politically expedient demands of the close-minded.
Pardon me, but what constitutes an offensive site? I have no problem at all viewing someone without clothes, but you might draw the line at viewing a woman's breasts and a Muslim might not want to see a woman's face! You might think that a "voluntary" system lets a browser choose what to view, but how does the creator of a webpage know that her descriptions of safe sex practices would offend you?
Further, you have already conceded that the very sites you're trying to protect the kids from are the ones who "deliberately misrepresent themselves as appropriate sites." So what, under a voluntary system stops them from continuing to do this?
Finally, there's that old refrain that "pornography treats people as objects," whatever that means. First, define pornography. Then explain to me how an image of a man and woman (or man, or two women, or whatever!) engaged in sex suddenly reduces the participants to simple objects in a way that is any different from any other form of entertainment or instruction.
The fundamental flaw in this approach is the effort to shield children from the realities of the world rather than teaching them basic, realistic ways of coping with them. Rather than desperately diving for the monitor's power switch when you and junior get an eyeful of a man peeing on a woman, maybe you should just let it linger for a moment and then turn to Junior and simply say, "Eeew! That's gross!"
Educate. Don't legislate!
Ummm...It looks to me like the volume of air between the two spheres would keep it bouyant.
A convenient, stylish, and compact wearable will become everybit as ubiquitous as a watch. Indeed, it will replace the watch.
And consider the law. In the U.S., it is common to hear that "Ignorance of the Law is no excuse!" Despite the fact that our legislators really have nothing better to do with their time and have passed so many laws that no one fully understands or can even recite them all. I just found out that I have to pay $10 for a permit to install a garbage disposal in my house, for criminy's sake!
People seem to have a need to complexify everything they do. In the search for knowledge, this is sort of a natural state of affairs -- there's alot out there to know. But something interesting has happened over the years. Know-it-alls be damned, there has been an emergence of specialists who don't know everything about everything, but who rather have chosen to focus their attention on one particular subject, relying on others to handle the details of things they don't understand. Thus, the town surgeon no longer is any good at giving shaves and haircuts, he goes to a hairstylist for that!
Sure things keep getting more complex. But inevitably, there's some settling that occurs that makes things easier to handle as soon as that complexity starts to exceed human grasp. So much of the hype about the future of computing is vacuous and inane, but in it are ideas that will mature and genuinely help sort out the complexities. And where they can't, some other change will make things easier -- implants or gene therapy might make us smarter, for example. Life will go on -- pseudo-malthusian alarmism aside.
Oh, and will someone please fix Jon's apostropy catastrophies?
To those of us trying to follow the Amiga, the developments of the past few weeks *are* news. These shifts in political power at Amiga Inc. are every bit as relevant to a final product as pushing that product out the door.
Um...Slashdot isn't really a news service. It's a hobby for a student. And a damned well-done one at that.
Wow. First 'O' gauge, then 'HO' gauge, and now, 'nano' gauge. This will make for wonderfully complex layouts, but somehow I think it will be difficult to detail and weather these suckers without an electron microscope.
Actually, they've completely redesigned the hinges in the 3c and 5 series. Much better, although the display on the 5mx is a bit tough to read at times. (Oh, and I have nothing to do with the company.)
It's a strange world where a man named Dick Seed could get involved in reproduction!
Further, I'm also confident that by the time we have the ability to significantly extend human lifetime with better medicine, we'll also have the ability to easily expand beyond this planet and begin to live in space or on other worlds.
I wonder now what impact this will have on Richard Seed's infertility work...
That's actually an exaggeration started by Helen Caldicott and perpetuated by anti-nuke activists like Karl Grossman. I suggest an interesting article by Ilya Taytslin to be found at Dr. Caldicott and the Truth About Plutonium. The article largely discusses the space probe Cassini and the uproar over it's use of an RTG power supply, but the points made are generally applicable.
Of course AC has a wavelength, it Alternates between polarities typically at a rate of 60 Hz (in the U.S.). Nicola Tesla experimented extensively with AC at extremely high frequencies with a variety of results.