I suppose what I should have said was 'it is easier to end up unpopular as a boy than as a girl.' An unpopular girl might still have the nerdy boys talking to her -- the reverse, unfortunately, is not necessarily true...
Of course, I can only speak from a male perspective. The fact that the field is dominated by nerd fights probably doesn't help make it female friendly. (OTOH, a female co-worker recently told me that 'real men use vi, not IDEs':) )
I believe there are two reasons. The first one (already discussed here) is interest. I did not study computer science to get a job -- I did it because I couldn't see myself NOT doing it. I know very few girls who get excited about mechanical things earlier in life (I spent elementary and middle school daydreaming about technology...female daydreams at that age seem to be different). I do not know how to change this.
The second one is more subtle: being really good at anything requires thousands of hours devoted to it with no apparent reward. If what you are devoted to is math or programming, it really helps to be unpopular for at least a period in your life, especially earlier. The same is not true if you are devoted to theater, chemistry, or biology, which you can practice in a more social environment. I think it is easier to be unpopular as teenage boy than it is as a teenage girl.
[this, of course, is a male point of view...I would love to hear the other side]
Spread the actual battlefield with these, use some view-synthesis (if you can afford the war, you can afford the real-time computing power), and you've got better situational awareness than anyone else. If they have microphones, all the better...
Think about it, even if they _know_ these are there, a certain very tall, very wanted individual would dare not go out of the cave...
Circa 1994, rumors of a "Good Times" virus started circulating the Internet. This was supposedly a virus that could open your address book, take control of your computer, and send copies of itself to your friends.
This was, at the time, tinfoil-hat laughable. There was no standard e-mail client, no "Visual Basic for Applications", and on standard address book. And you _knew_ if an extra application was running on your machine (I got my mail with "PINE" so it wasn't a problem at all).
About a year or two afterwards, the "Melissa" worm came around implementing the urban legend.
I wonder if gangs of malicious jerks will start picking on these (now organized) groups just to freak them out. (There are already directional sound technologies, etc. that are becoming available)
Thinking critically and asking questions seems to be out of fashion these days. It scares me that this woman might be in charge of a life somewhere...
One of the best things that we did in high school did was to have units on "Critical Thinking."
We were given real consumer ads to "deconstruct" by answering questions (e.g., "The ad says that the coffee is 'mountain grown.' Explain why this does/doesn't make a difference"). We even had the assignment of coming up with a misleading ad ourselves to drive home the point.
I guess liberal, Midwestern "Outcome Based" educators in the US Educational system do some good after all...
This opens up entirely new uses for a projector for the nerdy crowd:
Some examples/ideas:
* Projector tiling
* Cheap, portable 3D Scanning
* Real-time photo sharing (obvious)
* Portable video-conferencing, telepresence (think projector-screen-like avatars around the screen with a tiny projector attached to each of them)
* Pseudo-Invisibility!! (Think helmet-mounted camera, white t-shirt, dorky looking wearable projector mount)
* Head-Mounted Projector applications (other types of invisibility, "Virtual Cockpit", freaking people out at night clubs, etc.)
I run Ubuntu on a similar laptop, and the performance was HORRIBLE until I decided to ditch Firefox and go with Opera as the browser (such a laptop is generally just useful for browsing anyway, in my experience). Turn Flash and GIF animation off, and you're good to go...
Your other alternative is DSL for its low memory footprint.
Of course, the quality won't be that good, unless you've got an HD capture card and the appropriate playback utility. Your staff are going to figure out how to plug it directly into the DVI input very quickly in any case, so you might be better off plugging them directly into the monitors.
Even at game development studios, developers get XBox360 devkits at their desks, and the real consoles in the shared areas--just something to keep in mind.
As a 3D enthusiast, I am glad they are coming out with LCDs that can do 120 Hz -- the NVidia drivers for LCD shutter glasses have been very buggy lately (probably as a consequence of the fact that nobody has CRT monitors that can do 120 Hz anymore).
An alternate technology to consider is the passive polarized LCD monitor such as the Arisawa P240W (and its cheaper, lower quality cousin, the Zalman Trimon). This type of monitor has amazing depth, DOES NOT require any sort of a refresh rate, and does not require fancy drivers to operate. The disadvantage is that there is a 7 degree "sweet spot" from which it must be viewed, even with glasses.
I am also hopeful for 3D Ready DLP TVs which, for around $2000, can deliver stunning 3D content at around 100 Hz.
The breakthrough will come when eye-tracking autostereoscopic monitors (i.e., ones that don't require glasses) become good and cheap enough.
Problems such as focus, convergence, and cheap practical head tracking remain, and need to be addressed by the next generation of displays.
The "make or break" factor will not be whether there's a device that can support good 3D (there has been for a while), but whether the user base will reach critical mass. I hope the trickling down of 3D stereo content to the 3D TVs will help.
I agree that console support would help greatly (there's something about getting a bunch of people playing together to see the 3D content)
Here's what I have discovered through blood, sweat, and tears:
* Use Eclipse 3.3.2 (instead of 3.4.x -- I found 3.4 to be VERY unstable with PyDEV -- and the debug shell doesn't work) * Use PyDev 1.3.20 (or later) * GET Pydev Extensions -- it's well worth the $42 (gives you an interactive debug shell and PyLint integration) * Virtual Word Wrap (it should be built in, but is not).
I've found that its best to NOT let Eclipse copy files to its "workspace" directory -- force it to use the existing files. I have adopted the habit of taking regular tarball backups of the workspace directory (and files I'm editing). Be sure you set your PYTHONPATH properly in your debug configuration, turn on line numbering and display of whitespace characters.
Unfortunately, I haven't found any IDE that is as mature and complete. If you must use something else, I recommend Geany. WingIDE is also good, but lacks support for Projects, sophisticated debug configurations, etc.
This is an excellent promotional idea for selling USB drives, but not movies: you are already buying the hardware dongle, might as well get the movie with it:)
On the other hand, I could envision "Movie ROMs" being pulled off if marketed properly. They would have to sell very cheap hi-def "movie dongle" players that hooked up to your TV. I'd buy such a device if it also played regular video files.
Such a scheme would not deter the hard-core hackers, but I could see people buying into the idea of "owning" a movie on a USB dongle that was difficult to copy and more durable/compact that a DVD.
You will need a copier, printer, and some labels. And a person to man (or preferably woman) the door.
Register every guest by 1) Copying their driver license 2) Writing the number of items (N) they brought with them on the copy (which you keep) and having them sign next to the number 3) Printing out their name on N labels along with a unique graphic "seal" that you've designed/downloaded/etc. [this is low security... all you need is for them to not know what this will be in advance]
When they leave, have your door-person find their registration sheet, and check that 1) They are taking out the same number of items they brought 2) All the items have labels with their names (and your seal) on them
Give your guest their registration form back so that there are no privacy issues.
A simpler approach might be writing the number of items they brought with them on the back of their hand with a sharpie.
You possess the naive optimism of someone who has never done business outside the United States. (I did too, at one point -- search my earlier posts:) )
I like my free games and hate DRM as much as the next guy, but the reality is that I would never try to start a business producing shrink-wrapped software (such as a game) in a country with unenforced intellectual property laws. And guess what -- when you can buy any piece of software for $3 in a stand around the corner, NOBODY pays for it, and it becomes impossible to even buy the thing legitimately (meaning that if this became the case in the USA, the thing would not have been produced at all).
The assumption that all the content you like would be produced anyway (but with a different business model) is wrong. There are many countries in which no such content is produced. This is due not to a lack of talent, technology, customers, or desire but primarily to the lack of intellectual property laws that would allow the producers to make _any_ money.
As for the hobbyists: making a game is a lot like making a movie. Given a handycam and an enthusiastic staff, try making Star Wars!
Interleaf is the only "book quality" document creation program I've personally seen (then again, I am not a mathematician or an author). It apparently became Broadvision Quicksilver after being acquired, sold, re-acquired, etc.
The two-party system and the weird political mappings it forces also seemed really weird to me until I thought about it. The "problem" is that the US does not have Proportional Representation. If the people are 15% Green, 20% Libertarian, 30% Democrat and 35% Republican, and everyone votes for their candidate as you suggest, the Republicans will win.
Voting for a 3rd party candidate in the US Political system can only result in:
1) The 3rd party wins, thus replacing one of the parties in the 2-party system. You have some change but are back to square one after a while.
2) The 3rd party loses, as well as the other party it "stole" the most voters from. The Opposition now has a solid lead.
3) The 3rd party affects change in the one or both of the major parties. (Which may be desirable).
The question now becomes: Does the US have the desire or the popular will to go to a Proportional Representation (PR) type of system? (This system comes with more choice, less stability, and coalitions galore).
I believe the answer is no. But if the answer is "yes" and you want more choice, the thing to do is to lobby your congressman for PR. You can still vote for a 3rd party (and I even might), but I doubt you'll achieve anything other than what's outlined above.
Reading Slashdot dulls creativity sometimes... I suggest you deprive yourself of sleep, overdose on caffeine, read something by Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash or Diamond Age), and meditate on your question with a 2-3 geeky buddies of yours around 2am.
1) Find a picture/piece of code/ISO image/etc. you'd like to compress. Treat it as a very big number. Now find a prime number that comes very close to it. Compress it by treating it as the Nth prime + the remainder. Repeat for the remainder See if the compression is any better than bzip. (I think i saw something like this done for the DeCSS code once...)
2) Find something to optimize via brute-force. (My favorite is neural nets predicting time-series). Run a distributed simulated annealing algorithm. (Run an instance of the algorithm on every core, check every N cycles to see which core is more "optimal", share the parameters with the rest of the instances).
3) Create an interactive multi-user raytraced environment. Get someone to bring in an ImmersaDesk or a CAVE. Stun all visitors.
4) Model a giant neural network. Teach it to do something cool in real-time with your favorite training algorithm...
5) Get dictionaries from 50-60 languages. Write something to correlate similarity of words meaning the same thing. Make pretty graph clustering them by similarity. Post pretty graph on Slashdot.
[In one of his classes, we tried (in a very rudimentary way) to give computers a "3D imagination space" by extracting spatial information from natural language and displaying it in a virtual reality environment. (We could visualize sentences such as "the chair is behind the table"). There was also much discussion of visual/spatial metaphors that humans use to understand abstract sentences. I agree that this "3D imagination space" would be very useful in some forms of natural language processing.]
0) Make sure the Bill of Rights is respected (also applies to the ideas below).
0.5) Re-define 'Patriotism' to mean caring about your country not just 2 but 20 and 200 years into the future.
1) Overhaul the educational system by
a) Increasing K-12 teacher salaries to 90-200K range, then recruiting teachers from top research schools/industries
b) Encourage competition among teachers by firing all those who do not pass regularly administered tests in their area or whose students perform below the 60th percentile (compared to their school district or immediate area)
c) Making it patriotic to care about education
d) Increase funding for science fairs, math contests, etc.
e) Implement meaningful school choice (without funding religious education with state money)
2) Create several (preferarbly secret and independent) Manhattan-project style programs to solve the gravest problems we face. If appropriate, give huge tax breaks to corporations who succeed in these areas instead.
a) Clean power generation (algal biomass, wind, fusion, solar, etc.)
b) Environmental pollution (including greenhouse gases, carcinogenic chemicals, etc)
c) Transportation (including more efficient cars, more efficient civilian air transport, personal air vehicles)
d) Geriatric care
e) Cancer/AIDS/Alzheimers/etc.
3) Renew USA's commitment to the space program. Give NASA renewed direction (colonize the moon and beyond in 10 years), 10x the funding (still small compared to some other things), and get rid of 90% of the projects/bureaucrats who do not add anything to do space program (new document management systems, IT frameworks, etc.)
4) Give our enemies no reason to hate us (i.e., pull out of unwise engagements, enter into wiser engagements when required, etc.).
a) Increase the scope and activities of the Peace Corps
b) Increase closely-monitored foreign aid to unstable nations that need it. Use it as leverage to push democratic ideals.
5) Fight the war on drugs for real while balancing civil liberties
a) Leave "responsible" adult users alone so long as they do not propagate the problem.
b) Make it a capital offense provide drugs to a minor, and prosecute accordingly (i.e., get the dealers off the streets for good. Perhaps offer amnesty for enrolling in the military, etc.).
c) Cut off supply lines by securing borders
d) Provide treatment to anyone who needs it.
6) Investigate and prosecute frivilous government spending. Consistenly and veto any legislation containing "pork" no matter which party it comes from
7) Create a healthcare security net that complements the current system. Get the smartest advisors I can find to tackle this problem
8) Balance the budget. (Increase taxes on super-rich individuals, temper military spending, cut pork)
Picking a fruit without damaging the fruit or the tree seems like a pretty complicated task from a robotics standpoint. I'm sure Honda or a couple of CMU grad students could demo something that can pick an orange from a tree--but picking a million oranges from thousands of trees in a real orchard is a different type of task entirely.
Not saying it won't happen, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Until then, this kind of looks like an R&D firm "picking the low hanging fruits" of funding from the immigration debate...
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose what I should have said was 'it is easier to end up unpopular as a boy than as a girl.' An unpopular girl might still have the nerdy boys talking to her -- the reverse, unfortunately, is not necessarily true...
Of course, I can only speak from a male perspective. The fact that the field is dominated by nerd fights probably doesn't help make it female friendly. (OTOH, a female co-worker recently told me that 'real men use vi, not IDEs' :) )
I believe there are two reasons. The first one (already discussed here) is interest. I did not study computer science to get a job -- I did it because I couldn't see myself NOT doing it. I know very few girls who get excited about mechanical things earlier in life (I spent elementary and middle school daydreaming about technology...female daydreams at that age seem to be different). I do not know how to change this.
The second one is more subtle: being really good at anything requires thousands of hours devoted to it with no apparent reward. If what you are devoted to is math or programming, it really helps to be unpopular for at least a period in your life, especially earlier. The same is not true if you are devoted to theater, chemistry, or biology, which you can practice in a more social environment. I think it is easier to be unpopular as teenage boy than it is as a teenage girl.
[this, of course, is a male point of view...I would love to hear the other side]
Spread the actual battlefield with these, use some view-synthesis (if you can afford the war, you can afford the real-time computing power), and you've got better situational awareness than anyone else. If they have microphones, all the better...
Think about it, even if they _know_ these are there, a certain very tall, very wanted individual would dare not go out of the cave...
Circa 1994, rumors of a "Good Times" virus started circulating the Internet. This was supposedly a virus that could open your address book, take control of your computer, and send copies of itself to your friends.
This was, at the time, tinfoil-hat laughable. There was no standard e-mail client, no "Visual Basic for Applications", and on standard address book. And you _knew_ if an extra application was running on your machine (I got my mail with "PINE" so it wasn't a problem at all).
About a year or two afterwards, the "Melissa" worm came around implementing the urban legend.
I wonder if gangs of malicious jerks will start picking on these (now organized) groups just to freak them out. (There are already directional sound technologies, etc. that are becoming available)
Thinking critically and asking questions seems to be out of fashion these days. It scares me that this woman might be in charge of a life somewhere...
One of the best things that we did in high school did was to have units on "Critical Thinking."
We were given real consumer ads to "deconstruct" by answering questions (e.g., "The ad says that the coffee is 'mountain grown.' Explain why this does/doesn't make a difference"). We even had the assignment of coming up with a misleading ad ourselves to drive home the point.
I guess liberal, Midwestern "Outcome Based" educators in the US Educational system do some good after all...
I humbly suggest www.halfbakery.com
This opens up entirely new uses for a projector for the nerdy crowd:
Some examples/ideas:
* Projector tiling
* Cheap, portable 3D Scanning
* Real-time photo sharing (obvious)
* Portable video-conferencing, telepresence (think projector-screen-like avatars around the screen with a tiny projector attached to each of them)
* Pseudo-Invisibility!! (Think helmet-mounted camera, white t-shirt, dorky looking wearable projector mount)
* Head-Mounted Projector applications (other types of invisibility, "Virtual Cockpit", freaking people out at night clubs, etc.)
Mod parent up. Pidgin is not as full-featured as MS's IM, but otherwise rocks (esp. wrt security)
|Find me anyone who can predict the market and knows how it works
This dude.
I run Ubuntu on a similar laptop, and the performance was HORRIBLE until I decided to ditch Firefox and go with Opera as the browser (such a laptop is generally just useful for browsing anyway, in my experience). Turn Flash and GIF animation off, and you're good to go...
Your other alternative is DSL for its low memory footprint.
Of course, the quality won't be that good, unless you've got an HD capture card and the appropriate playback utility. Your staff are going to figure out how to plug it directly into the DVI input very quickly in any case, so you might be better off plugging them directly into the monitors.
Even at game development studios, developers get XBox360 devkits at their desks, and the real consoles in the shared areas--just something to keep in mind.
As a 3D enthusiast, I am glad they are coming out with LCDs that can do 120 Hz -- the NVidia drivers for LCD shutter glasses have been very buggy lately (probably as a consequence of the fact that nobody has CRT monitors that can do 120 Hz anymore).
An alternate technology to consider is the passive polarized LCD monitor such as the Arisawa P240W (and its cheaper, lower quality cousin, the Zalman Trimon). This type of monitor has amazing depth, DOES NOT require any sort of a refresh rate, and does not require fancy drivers to operate. The disadvantage is that there is a 7 degree "sweet spot" from which it must be viewed, even with glasses.
I am also hopeful for 3D Ready DLP TVs which, for around $2000, can deliver stunning 3D content at around 100 Hz.
The breakthrough will come when eye-tracking autostereoscopic monitors (i.e., ones that don't require glasses) become good and cheap enough.
Problems such as focus, convergence, and cheap practical head tracking remain, and need to be addressed by the next generation of displays.
The "make or break" factor will not be whether there's a device that can support good 3D (there has been for a while), but whether the user base will reach critical mass. I hope the trickling down of 3D stereo content to the 3D TVs will help.
I agree that console support would help greatly (there's something about getting a bunch of people playing together to see the 3D content)
Here's what I have discovered through blood, sweat, and tears:
* Use Eclipse 3.3.2 (instead of 3.4.x -- I found 3.4 to be VERY unstable with PyDEV -- and the debug shell doesn't work)
* Use PyDev 1.3.20 (or later)
* GET Pydev Extensions -- it's well worth the $42 (gives you an interactive debug shell and PyLint integration)
* Virtual Word Wrap (it should be built in, but is not).
I've found that its best to NOT let Eclipse copy files to its "workspace" directory -- force it to use the existing files. I have adopted the habit of taking regular tarball backups of the workspace directory (and files I'm editing). Be sure you set your PYTHONPATH properly in your debug configuration, turn on line numbering and display of whitespace characters.
Unfortunately, I haven't found any IDE that is as mature and complete. If you must use something else, I recommend Geany. WingIDE is also good, but lacks support for Projects, sophisticated debug configurations, etc.
really...I wish I had the points
This is an excellent promotional idea for selling USB drives, but not movies: you are already buying the hardware dongle, might as well get the movie with it :)
On the other hand, I could envision "Movie ROMs" being pulled off if marketed properly. They would have to sell very cheap hi-def "movie dongle" players that hooked up to your TV. I'd buy such a device if it also played regular video files.
Such a scheme would not deter the hard-core hackers, but I could see people buying into the idea of "owning" a movie on a USB dongle that was difficult to copy and more durable/compact that a DVD.
You will need a copier, printer, and some labels. And a person to man (or preferably woman) the door.
Register every guest by ... all you need is for them to not know what this will be in advance]
1) Copying their driver license
2) Writing the number of items (N) they brought with them on the copy (which you keep) and having them sign next to the number
3) Printing out their name on N labels along with a unique graphic "seal" that you've designed/downloaded/etc. [this is low security
When they leave, have your door-person find their registration sheet, and check that
1) They are taking out the same number of items they brought
2) All the items have labels with their names (and your seal) on them
Give your guest their registration form back so that there are no privacy issues.
A simpler approach might be writing the number of items they brought with them on the back of their hand with a sharpie.
You possess the naive optimism of someone who has never done business outside the United States. (I did too, at one point -- search my earlier posts :) )
I like my free games and hate DRM as much as the next guy, but the reality is that I would never try to start a business producing shrink-wrapped software (such as a game) in a country with unenforced intellectual property laws. And guess what -- when you can buy any piece of software for $3 in a stand around the corner, NOBODY pays for it, and it becomes impossible to even buy the thing legitimately (meaning that if this became the case in the USA, the thing would not have been produced at all).
The assumption that all the content you like would be produced anyway (but with a different business model) is wrong. There are many countries in which no such content is produced. This is due not to a lack of talent, technology, customers, or desire but primarily to the lack of intellectual property laws that would allow the producers to make _any_ money.
As for the hobbyists: making a game is a lot like making a movie. Given a handycam and an enthusiastic staff, try making Star Wars!
Interleaf is the only "book quality" document creation program I've personally seen (then again, I am not a mathematician or an author). It apparently became Broadvision Quicksilver after being acquired, sold, re-acquired, etc.
The two-party system and the weird political mappings it forces also seemed really weird to me until I thought about it. The "problem" is that the US does not have Proportional Representation. If the people are 15% Green, 20% Libertarian, 30% Democrat and 35% Republican, and everyone votes for their candidate as you suggest, the Republicans will win.
Voting for a 3rd party candidate in the US Political system can only result in:
1) The 3rd party wins, thus replacing one of the parties in the 2-party system. You have some change but are back to square one after a while.
2) The 3rd party loses, as well as the other party it "stole" the most voters from. The Opposition now has a solid lead.
3) The 3rd party affects change in the one or both of the major parties. (Which may be desirable).
The question now becomes: Does the US have the desire or the popular will to go to a Proportional Representation (PR) type of system? (This system comes with more choice, less stability, and coalitions galore).
I believe the answer is no. But if the answer is "yes" and you want more choice, the thing to do is to lobby your congressman for PR. You can still vote for a 3rd party (and I even might), but I doubt you'll achieve anything other than what's outlined above.
Reading Slashdot dulls creativity sometimes... I suggest you deprive yourself of sleep, overdose on caffeine, read something by Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash or Diamond Age), and meditate on your question with a 2-3 geeky buddies of yours around 2am.
1) Find a picture/piece of code/ISO image/etc. you'd like to compress. Treat it as a very big number. Now find a prime number that comes very close to it. Compress it by treating it as the Nth prime + the remainder. Repeat for the remainder See if the compression is any better than bzip. (I think i saw something like this done for the DeCSS code once...)
2) Find something to optimize via brute-force. (My favorite is neural nets predicting time-series). Run a distributed simulated annealing algorithm. (Run an instance of the algorithm on every core, check every N cycles to see which core is more "optimal", share the parameters with the rest of the instances).
3) Create an interactive multi-user raytraced environment. Get someone to bring in an ImmersaDesk or a CAVE. Stun all visitors.
4) Model a giant neural network. Teach it to do something cool in real-time with your favorite training algorithm...
5) Get dictionaries from 50-60 languages. Write something to correlate similarity of words meaning the same thing. Make pretty graph clustering them by similarity. Post pretty graph on Slashdot.
6) ???
7) Profit!
You wouldn't happen to be a student of the late Prof. Sheldon Klein, would you?
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~sklein/sklein.html
[In one of his classes, we tried (in a very rudimentary way) to give computers a "3D imagination space" by extracting spatial information from natural language and displaying it in a virtual reality environment. (We could visualize sentences such as "the chair is behind the table"). There was also much discussion of visual/spatial metaphors that humans use to understand abstract sentences. I agree that this "3D imagination space" would be very useful in some forms of natural language processing.]
Bill Beaty has had the same thing on his Amateur Science web site for years:
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
0) Make sure the Bill of Rights is respected (also applies to the ideas below).
/.)
0.5) Re-define 'Patriotism' to mean caring about your country not just 2 but 20 and 200 years into the future.
1) Overhaul the educational system by
a) Increasing K-12 teacher salaries to 90-200K range, then recruiting teachers from top research schools/industries
b) Encourage competition among teachers by firing all those who do not pass regularly administered tests in their area or whose students perform below the 60th percentile (compared to their school district or immediate area)
c) Making it patriotic to care about education
d) Increase funding for science fairs, math contests, etc.
e) Implement meaningful school choice (without funding religious education with state money)
2) Create several (preferarbly secret and independent) Manhattan-project style programs to solve the gravest problems we face. If appropriate, give huge tax breaks to corporations who succeed in these areas instead.
a) Clean power generation (algal biomass, wind, fusion, solar, etc.)
b) Environmental pollution (including greenhouse gases, carcinogenic chemicals, etc)
c) Transportation (including more efficient cars, more efficient civilian air transport, personal air vehicles)
d) Geriatric care
e) Cancer/AIDS/Alzheimers/etc.
3) Renew USA's commitment to the space program. Give NASA renewed direction (colonize the moon and beyond in 10 years), 10x the funding (still small compared to some other things), and get rid of 90% of the projects/bureaucrats who do not add anything to do space program (new document management systems, IT frameworks, etc.)
4) Give our enemies no reason to hate us (i.e., pull out of unwise engagements, enter into wiser engagements when required, etc.).
a) Increase the scope and activities of the Peace Corps
b) Increase closely-monitored foreign aid to unstable nations that need it. Use it as leverage to push democratic ideals.
5) Fight the war on drugs for real while balancing civil liberties
a) Leave "responsible" adult users alone so long as they do not propagate the problem.
b) Make it a capital offense provide drugs to a minor, and prosecute accordingly (i.e., get the dealers off the streets for good. Perhaps offer amnesty for enrolling in the military, etc.).
c) Cut off supply lines by securing borders
d) Provide treatment to anyone who needs it.
6) Investigate and prosecute frivilous government spending. Consistenly and veto any legislation containing "pork" no matter which party it comes from
7) Create a healthcare security net that complements the current system. Get the smartest advisors I can find to tackle this problem
8) Balance the budget. (Increase taxes on super-rich individuals, temper military spending, cut pork)
9) Repeal the DMCA (obligatory for
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Shake_20N_20Bake_20Cryptophone
... :(
Sorry, couldn't resist
Picking a fruit without damaging the fruit or the tree seems like a pretty complicated task from a robotics standpoint. I'm sure Honda or a couple of CMU grad students could demo something that can pick an orange from a tree--but picking a million oranges from thousands of trees in a real orchard is a different type of task entirely.
Not saying it won't happen, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Until then, this kind of looks like an R&D firm "picking the low hanging fruits" of funding from the immigration debate...