Isn't this the study which was founded by the John Templeton Foundation? I believe it was, and if so these scientists were religiously motivated. They did not want to disprove any gods / supernatural / sentient beings, but just the opposite: they wanted to find evidence of the *existence* of such a being.
If one believes in a crazy, jealeous, murderous, petty Creator of The Universe, who would like his followers to smite unbelievers and kiss his feet at every opportunity, and roasting those who gets on his bad side forever and ever in Hell, what science could one possibly do that would be more important than to actually first show hard evidence of such a being, and second, try to figure out his motivations, likes and dislikes?
Absolutely none, of course. Cancer research would fade so much in comparison to that, it would seem completely worthless.
If something doesn't work you have to offer some proof before slamming it.
Ohnononono.. you've got it all backwards: the burden of evidence is on the other side.
Crackpot ideas are less damaging to society than a missed chance.
Well, to use the quote that Carl Sagan loved to pull out in circumstances like these: extraordinary claims demands
extraordinary evidence.
Is there any extraordinary evidence in this case that indicates it's actually worth looking into? Or is it just yet another case of a mental patient roaming the 'net? Why aren't scientists from far and wide already throwing their collective intellects into investigating these claims?
Yes, the Electrolux Trilobite actually recharges itself automatically. Check out the English press-kit.
The technology they are using in the Trilobite to let it map out rooms is really cool: echo-location with ultrasound, just as bats do.
As far as I know, it's so far only being sold in Sweden (since spring 2002) and Norway (since autumn 2002). I've read that Electrolux plans to start marketing it for other European countries in early 2003.
The only down-side about this robo-cleaner is the price.. about 12000 kroner here in Norway, which is about USD $1500. (Ouch.)
I've been drooling over this thing since it was released on the Swedish market, but it's way too expensive for me yet. Hopefully competing products will force Electrolux to lower the price.
We at the Coin project (i.e. the API compatible Inventor clone) have bindings for Qt and GTK+ (and Win32 and BeOS). The Qt binding is near complete (works with both Coin and Inventor, BTW), the GTK+ and Win32 bindings are "in-the-works" (fully usable for most Inventor applications, though), while the BeOS binding has been put on the backburner.
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Isn't this the study which was founded by the John Templeton Foundation? I believe it was, and if so these scientists were religiously motivated. They did not want to disprove any gods / supernatural / sentient beings, but just the opposite: they wanted to find evidence of the *existence* of such a being.
If one believes in a crazy, jealeous, murderous, petty Creator of The Universe, who would like his followers to smite unbelievers and kiss his feet at every opportunity, and roasting those who gets on his bad side forever and ever in Hell, what science could one possibly do that would be more important than to actually first show hard evidence of such a being, and second, try to figure out his motivations, likes and dislikes?
Absolutely none, of course. Cancer research would fade so much in comparison to that, it would seem completely worthless.
> Do you have links? I can't believe this happened!!
Check out James Randi's book "The Faith Healers" for the full story (and other hysterically funny stories about Randi's encounters with the kind).
If something doesn't work you have to offer some proof before slamming it.
Ohnononono.. you've got it all backwards: the burden of evidence is on the other side.
Crackpot ideas are less damaging to society than a missed chance.
Well, to use the quote that Carl Sagan loved to pull out in circumstances like these: extraordinary claims demands extraordinary evidence. Is there any extraordinary evidence in this case that indicates it's actually worth looking into? Or is it just yet another case of a mental patient roaming the 'net? Why aren't scientists from far and wide already throwing their collective intellects into investigating these claims?
The technology they are using in the Trilobite to let it map out rooms is really cool: echo-location with ultrasound, just as bats do.
As far as I know, it's so far only being sold in Sweden (since spring 2002) and Norway (since autumn 2002). I've read that Electrolux plans to start marketing it for other European countries in early 2003.
The only down-side about this robo-cleaner is the price.. about 12000 kroner here in Norway, which is about USD $1500. (Ouch.)
I've been drooling over this thing since it was released on the Swedish market, but it's way too expensive for me yet. Hopefully competing products will force Electrolux to lower the price.
Your posting somewhat matches the topic of the latest Tom Tomorrow "This Modern World":
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2000/09/05/tomo/Just BTW.
:^/
Check us out at www.coin3d.org.
Regards,
Morten (Coin developer)
Which Free Software project do you personally consider to be the most exciting project at the moment? (And why?)