Why not go to this page and complain to google that you are fed up with this nonsense and will change search engines as a response...
http://www.google.com/contact/search.html
It's about time that we used technology to reduce the amount of bad drivers out there...it would also force car manufacturers to change the advertising for cars (no more fast/dangerous driving by "cool" owners), it would save humanity lives, gross use of gas, promote indirectly more efficent, practical, (read: slower vehicles)...an end to the fast car culture (at least in street use, sure go ahead, race on tracks instead.). It would also promote better driving habits...a real plus...too bad it would take a long time to implement here in north america...
The thing is, is that once all the cold surfaces (read: ice and water) get too hot, the heat will not stop there, but will start to get exponentially hotter, by then, it we have not used nanotech to slow down the solar radidation reaching earth and developed solar panels to collect energy (no oil use anymore) and build a more efficient future for ourselves, if we fail to heed the current warnings, our fragile civilization will collapse into a bunch of canibals eating each other...if the enviromental life-support system doesn't fail first and we virtually roast in the heat...like, who cares about stupid things like money and posessions if you'r dead!!!! We only have a few years before all hell breaks loose, right now, europe is roasting, what about 5 years from now???, will all the fish, wheat, and cows be dead??? Time to break out the soilent green...
Good Excuse to develop nanotechnology to do it...
on
Cloning Mammoths
·
· Score: 1
Yes, do this by developing nanotech dis-assemblers to take apart tons of these broken cells and put together a good cell copy...then they can clone it by using nanotech to make another copy (who needs the old biotech way of cloning...it's too error prone...better to develop and use nanotech methods where you have precise computer software/hardware control over all the processes)
It's about time a lot of scientists realized that the sciences of nanotech and biotech (life extention and not growing old) is the best way to go in promoting better chances (self interest) of all scientists who have not yet "made it by 30" to continue long productive careers well past 30 and not look a day over 20.....why should it be just rich people, athletes, polliticians etc, that benifit from these soon to be here technologies. Who wants to be the last naturally old person in their feild...at least there would be one less reason for your employer to get rid of you just because you get old (what is it, 30 is old for programmers in IT, and 45 for electrical engineers)? The other thing that really bugs me is when you get older, they expect you to move int management...(okay, it pays more, but it can be more boring..)
Aha!!, so that's why most geniuses tend to fall off the end of the world after 30 or there abouts....maybe that's why a lot of older math proffs arn't so productive...but if that's the case, how do you explain the continued productivity of other science feilds?
This article points out that fact that we do not get very good bandwith today for what we pay for, and also, that we pay far too much for what bandwitdh that we do get.......
You have to fund basic science, otherwise, you would have future scientific discoveries and technologies dry up and your economy and empire would eventually crash faster than it normally would (rise and fall of empires). SETI research is very important, SETI@Home proved that BIG supercomputers could be built from the internet, it has provided driving impetus to develope better low-noise reciever technology, optical SETI research advancments, ie: you train the next generation of researchers who "go on to discover things like "the cure for acancer etc"...the fact that the cancelation of NASA funded SETI 10 years ago was very pollitically motivated (if it had a "easy military component" to it, it would have survived)). War based societies tend to crash faster (I believe that this was a basic tennant of the people who used to critisize the old Soviet Union empire, was that it was entirely militairy based, it basiclly had little or no free thought to explore and do things that were not of immediate militairy advantage due to the fact that all resources are put into war and there is no support for the arts, sciences etc..so no good ideas get developed or discovered,), so basiclly, in these scocieties, if the eviroment changes, your toast. Any way, the discovery of life out there will be the biggest motivation for humans to expand beyond earth, maybe stop fighting each other so much, and develop cheap nanotech to get out there and do things, who knows?
I have allways been an info junkie...(and I got ADD too(fun!))..I collected hundreds of science/electronic magazines when I was in high school decades ago...that was the basic info lifeline for nerds back then..libraries were okay, but you were lucky if your local lib. had any up-to-date books on high tech (here in canada, I suppose the local univ. library had more stuff, but I didn't discover them until later)..I guess if you lived around Mit or stanford in those days, your local library was way more up to date. Anyway...stuff is much better now, the internet has caused a big paradigm shift, now everything moves like it should since (I think popular nerd magazines tend to publish better articles) everybody (nerds) has access to basiclly instant info, it can get a bit much to keep up with everything. This of course, means that we are all approaching, or on the vertical part of the exponential growth curve of science and tchnology, just imagine what all the future genieses are going to accomplish with easy and cheap access to this and the future internet, especially if we can get voice actived/slightlly intelleigen computers to do all the grunt work of finding info and if we could create an interative web existence so people could exchange ideas easily (say, just by thinking about something)
It is about time that the hardware opened up...this would enable the development of all sorts of cool unforseen applications of existing hardware which would incidentally mean more sales to the hardware makers (it would also mean the hardware makers would have to open up the designs, but that would benefit everybody by having pressure to make good, clean designs, not cheap, quick shorcuts). It would also be cool if really big FPGA technology was cheaplly availible so that people could explore different hardware configurations depending upon the application they want to do...after all, customized FPGA architecture that was incorporated into future motherboards could probably find cool uses. Besides, it's allways better, both from a creative viewpoint and an economic one too that the existing hardware base be effectivly used, look at SETI at home, it proved that a very big supercomputer could be constructed out of a community of people contributing their un-used cpu cycles. The same with open source software and open sourec hardware, it's about releasing the pent-up creativity that commercial interests keep under tight lock and key, that's why microsoft is so scared of open source software, they can't really compete, the model is by it's very an darwinian evolving system that has no constraint other than learning, curiosity and meeting the demands of actual users, not a community of proffit makers (shareholders, owners)
Yes, that movie where that nerdy genetic engineer created all those cool pets he had..(I always thought the writers made a big mistake by making that character "thick", when in reality, he would have to be very smart.. (dumb plot line I guess)
What sort of cheap, expensive garbage are these LCD manufacturer's trying to sell us here? It's not like LCD's are any cheaper than CRT's and the LCD's will eventually need their cold cathode lamps replaced...so what gives with this inferior tech? LCD's have the problem of reduced viewing angle, but are more compacet than CTR's, I would hope now-a-days that burn-in was a thing of the past? I have heard that other types of displays like expensive plasma tv/displays can get burn-in, quite severly too, so what's a person to do?, wait until flat plastic OLED's displays come out and hope that they have no burn-in too, or hope that OLED's are so cheap that if it craps out, throw it away and get an new one? What a mess, we get pathetic LCD's, pathetic hard drives (notice how warrenties have gone from 3 years to 1 year) and I don't know if anybody has done any statistics, but I suspect that processor chip life-spans and motherboard life-spans are not that great now-a-days (I recentlly had an expensive motherboard expire after about 3 years, over a decade ago, that would have not been the case, as most motherboards were built with some quality in mind)
What everybody needs is a world-wide co-operative approach to develop nanotech so we all can visit the moon (in comfort), or to stay there. Space cables, biotech enhancements probablly will allow people to live there (in underground mall and apartment complexes quite easily)..what we need is the first movie made on the moon, that would probablly attract people up there..not to mention all the medical spinoffs of a crash nanotech program (life extention, porgrammable good looks, enhanced brain power (who needs their PC now..it's built-it)
Nice thesis on parallel processors...but I wonder how many people have the resources (both financial and the "stick-with-it) to make it through university to eventually get to the phd level...what is it about the human species that like to build these huge obsticles (or tasks like jumping through a million hoops) to get a university education (I guess it has to do with darwinian competition, limited educational resources and even the fact that all the corporate/educational/militairy-Industrial institutions tend to be run by left-brainied individuals who demand exact performance etc. Also, if any feild (like bio-tech, medicin, genetics, computer-science, electronics, nanotech,etc..looks like it will make lots of money, boom!, it becomes very expensive to get an education in it). I am myself, very lazy, I like to daydream and have never made much money, and can't stick to jumping through a million eduational hoops, (have Attention Defict to the n'th degree) it would be much better, if in the future, we could all get educational machines to cram stuff into our heads using, say, nanotech or those "education machines" in "Battlefeild earth " movie. that would be cool.
Yes!!...Dreamers=lousy grades but=more fun..yea!!
on
Fishing for Ideas
·
· Score: 1
It's obvious, if you spend all your time dreaming about way-out-things, then you have less time to jump through all those hoops and exercises and assignments, tests, etc.. that higher learning (at universities) loves to produce. Of course, it would help to be hyper efficient, then you could dream AND do your school work, but there are even fewer people who can succesully do both(this also applies to people who have to work at a boring job and dream about cool new ideas). The history of any new field say nanotech,(for instance), will follow a similar history to personal computers, lots of innovation, then the feild will coalless into engineering and scientific disciplins, of course nanotech allready is like a big science and engineering feild because of the equipemnt and knowledge required can only be obtained from university and industry, but it will probablly follow a similar trend as the pc industry did (but it would be cool if nanotech did a reverse evollution where future big university/industry/goverment(s) competition eventually give everyone a home nanotech replicator device and everyone could make their own nanotech products and research (especially if mediacl nanotech enabled everybody to get a cheap brain-boost effect)..in fact, everybody could look like whoever they wanted to look like (watch out hollywood..you thought pirating was a problem, wait till people can change their looks to the latest popular movie star look(at their local nanotech genetic rebuild clinic):(new microsoft add: Who do you want to look like today?..or..jeez, those werewolves, vampires, (this halloween) sure look real...) ((oops, sorry I'm daydreaming too much again..))
long term: give everbody nanotech replicators..
on
Giant Sucking Noise
·
· Score: 1
Unless you can impose duties on imports, the long term will be a country full of poor people who buy items/services/high-tech from countries like china and india. In the future, they will be the most high-tech and developed countries, use the example of how the US eclipsed the UK in the 20th century. One way is to develop nanotech replicators (think star treck), where everybody has their material needs met, there is no "I want to be the next super rich geek" mentality..everybody can have enough material stuff to keep them happy, when that happens, the urge to get more stuff and money just will evaporate and people can just be people, however, over-population on earth could be a problem, so establishing colonies on the moon, mars and orbiting space stations etc..
You could build systems that incorporate the CYC system..(www.cyc.com)..to put a system(s) like CYC into your system so that it could look for faulty conditions etc...I think that CYC is use in the Ask Jeves search engine..of course, fuzzy, neural networks and traditonal AI could be used too..all this stuff (AI, Comp hardware/software languages, complexity theory) has come out of the last 60 years of comp sci research and math and physics and now biology and chem etc will determin how we make future technologies (like nanotech), it's clear that may people have worked on these problems and there is no single quick solution to the program complexity/reliability issue and probably not one person asking these questions or soving them..perhaps there are more than one good answer and that existing languages and protocols are good enough with correct use and mabey some tweaking too...
It's like all the debates a long time ago about what the best computer/parrallel computer hardware/software architecture would look like..the answer depends upon what task you want to perform (be it model something, design a game, build a computer system etc). The answer is dictated by what resources (tools, your experience, etc),you have at your disposal and the time frame at hand. Nature can build complex biological systems because they are essentially made from self-reproducing nanomachines (build lots of them cheaply). Like most things, nothing is perfect, it usually gets the job done..if you have all the time and resources, you could build a computer system that uses biology etc as models and simulates most anything and can deal with unexpected inputs etc, but using current echnology, that would be expensive and be sort of like a big smart emulator system..
Would the use of Open Standards verses this proprietory standards help, or the adoption of some sort of future model of time limited standards where, once a "standard" is used for N number of years (in a technical feild like computers), and/or gets hold of >50 % of market share, that it become an open standard?
I think that this comes under the ideas people have been talking about for years now in the field of nanotechnology where you can get surfaces or materials to programmably change to whatever color you want them to be...
I think that a good web interface that anybody could use, would be,is a set of virtual reality glasses (voice controlled and response) that anybody could use simply by looking (in any direction, up, down, sideways) and seeing the universe as it is , then asking the glasses to zoom-in, zoom out, and get visual feedback (in the glasses display) what you are looking at. You wouldn't need a telescope to look thru, simply put on the glasses. The system would need a good interface, perhaps use a version of the CYC intelligent databas program (askjeeves search engine uses it, you can ask it questions in english..). A simple astronomical interface would introduce a lot of people to the astronomical universe around them..
It's stupid that all these companies (defence, drug, publishing etc. benifit from the resources of the goverment (through publically funded research and projects done by universities and darpa etc), yet try to limit access to this information for their own simple greed. It is a sham that people fall for this scam, the example that reserchers have to basicaly do everything (typesetting etc)for these scientific publications and then pay to have their work published is a total capitalistic orwellian fantasy even bill gates would have trouble dreaming up...we now live in the internet age, it's about time this publishing stuff was put out on the web by the reaserchers themselves, we don't need a bunch of companies claiming ownership to the publishing process...
With the earth at 6 billion + population and people genetically programmed to breed like rabbits, what nature will probablly do (to stabillize the population at more controlled levels) is global warming, this will reduce the excess population thru enviromental collaps. Of course, we could develop nanotech real fast and try to stop this from happening, but we will probablly have to get used to living in what ammounts to a giant computer controlled greenhouse coverd planet..of course, you could use nanotech to go to the moon or mars, or the asteroid belt cheaplly to get away from the maddening crowds...
Technology improvements follow moores law with it getting cheaper and cheaper with every passing day..and these companies have the nerve to tell us what to do with the high speed sevices we buy off them, they also have the nerve to use this cheaper technology to monitor what we do.. it's time they were told what to do and use that better technolgy to provide better service for us. It's also about time that the holdover of data bit pricing that is lovinglly worshipped by these big companies was thrown out too, it's not the 1950's with expansive telephone service (voice only), it's the 21st century with exponentially growing technolgy of fiber optics (most installed fibers currentlly not used) where technolgy allows increasing amounts of data to be put thru fibers. So the excuse that it's expensive to send data bits thru an ISP network is crap, it's getting cheaper all the time with no end in site, it's time to dump this obsolete pricing model and move on..
Slashdot Mirror
Why not go to this page and complain to google that you are fed up with this nonsense and will change search engines as a response... http://www.google.com/contact/search.html
It's about time that we used technology to reduce the amount of bad drivers out there...it would also force car manufacturers to change the advertising for cars (no more fast/dangerous driving by "cool" owners), it would save humanity lives, gross use of gas, promote indirectly more efficent, practical, (read: slower vehicles)...an end to the fast car culture (at least in street use, sure go ahead, race on tracks instead.). It would also promote better driving habits...a real plus...too bad it would take a long time to implement here in north america...
The thing is, is that once all the cold surfaces (read: ice and water) get too hot, the heat will not stop there, but will start to get exponentially hotter, by then, it we have not used nanotech to slow down the solar radidation reaching earth and developed solar panels to collect energy (no oil use anymore) and build a more efficient future for ourselves, if we fail to heed the current warnings, our fragile civilization will collapse into a bunch of canibals eating each other...if the enviromental life-support system doesn't fail first and we virtually roast in the heat...like, who cares about stupid things like money and posessions if you'r dead!!!! We only have a few years before all hell breaks loose, right now, europe is roasting, what about 5 years from now???, will all the fish, wheat, and cows be dead??? Time to break out the soilent green...
Yes, do this by developing nanotech dis-assemblers to take apart tons of these broken cells and put together a good cell copy...then they can clone it by using nanotech to make another copy (who needs the old biotech way of cloning...it's too error prone...better to develop and use nanotech methods where you have precise computer software/hardware control over all the processes)
It's about time a lot of scientists realized that the sciences of nanotech and biotech (life extention and not growing old) is the best way to go in promoting better chances (self interest) of all scientists who have not yet "made it by 30" to continue long productive careers well past 30 and not look a day over 20.....why should it be just rich people, athletes, polliticians etc, that benifit from these soon to be here technologies. Who wants to be the last naturally old person in their feild...at least there would be one less reason for your employer to get rid of you just because you get old (what is it, 30 is old for programmers in IT, and 45 for electrical engineers)? The other thing that really bugs me is when you get older, they expect you to move int management...(okay, it pays more, but it can be more boring..)
Aha!!, so that's why most geniuses tend to fall off the end of the world after 30 or there abouts....maybe that's why a lot of older math proffs arn't so productive...but if that's the case, how do you explain the continued productivity of other science feilds?
This article points out that fact that we do not get very good bandwith today for what we pay for, and also, that we pay far too much for what bandwitdh that we do get.......
You have to fund basic science, otherwise, you would have future scientific discoveries and technologies dry up and your economy and empire would eventually crash faster than it normally would (rise and fall of empires). SETI research is very important, SETI@Home proved that BIG supercomputers could be built from the internet, it has provided driving impetus to develope better low-noise reciever technology, optical SETI research advancments, ie: you train the next generation of researchers who "go on to discover things like "the cure for acancer etc"...the fact that the cancelation of NASA funded SETI 10 years ago was very pollitically motivated (if it had a "easy military component" to it, it would have survived)). War based societies tend to crash faster (I believe that this was a basic tennant of the people who used to critisize the old Soviet Union empire, was that it was entirely militairy based, it basiclly had little or no free thought to explore and do things that were not of immediate militairy advantage due to the fact that all resources are put into war and there is no support for the arts, sciences etc..so no good ideas get developed or discovered,), so basiclly, in these scocieties, if the eviroment changes, your toast. Any way, the discovery of life out there will be the biggest motivation for humans to expand beyond earth, maybe stop fighting each other so much, and develop cheap nanotech to get out there and do things, who knows?
I have allways been an info junkie...(and I got ADD too(fun!))..I collected hundreds of science/electronic magazines when I was in high school decades ago...that was the basic info lifeline for nerds back then..libraries were okay, but you were lucky if your local lib. had any up-to-date books on high tech (here in canada, I suppose the local univ. library had more stuff, but I didn't discover them until later)..I guess if you lived around Mit or stanford in those days, your local library was way more up to date. Anyway...stuff is much better now, the internet has caused a big paradigm shift, now everything moves like it should since (I think popular nerd magazines tend to publish better articles) everybody (nerds) has access to basiclly instant info, it can get a bit much to keep up with everything. This of course, means that we are all approaching, or on the vertical part of the exponential growth curve of science and tchnology, just imagine what all the future genieses are going to accomplish with easy and cheap access to this and the future internet, especially if we can get voice actived/slightlly intelleigen computers to do all the grunt work of finding info and if we could create an interative web existence so people could exchange ideas easily (say, just by thinking about something)
It is about time that the hardware opened up...this would enable the development of all sorts of cool unforseen applications of existing hardware which would incidentally mean more sales to the hardware makers (it would also mean the hardware makers would have to open up the designs, but that would benefit everybody by having pressure to make good, clean designs, not cheap, quick shorcuts). It would also be cool if really big FPGA technology was cheaplly availible so that people could explore different hardware configurations depending upon the application they want to do...after all, customized FPGA architecture that was incorporated into future motherboards could probably find cool uses. Besides, it's allways better, both from a creative viewpoint and an economic one too that the existing hardware base be effectivly used, look at SETI at home, it proved that a very big supercomputer could be constructed out of a community of people contributing their un-used cpu cycles. The same with open source software and open sourec hardware, it's about releasing the pent-up creativity that commercial interests keep under tight lock and key, that's why microsoft is so scared of open source software, they can't really compete, the model is by it's very an darwinian evolving system that has no constraint other than learning, curiosity and meeting the demands of actual users, not a community of proffit makers (shareholders, owners)
Yes, that movie where that nerdy genetic engineer created all those cool pets he had..(I always thought the writers made a big mistake by making that character "thick", when in reality, he would have to be very smart.. (dumb plot line I guess)
What sort of cheap, expensive garbage are these LCD manufacturer's trying to sell us here? It's not like LCD's are any cheaper than CRT's and the LCD's will eventually need their cold cathode lamps replaced...so what gives with this inferior tech? LCD's have the problem of reduced viewing angle, but are more compacet than CTR's, I would hope now-a-days that burn-in was a thing of the past? I have heard that other types of displays like expensive plasma tv/displays can get burn-in, quite severly too, so what's a person to do?, wait until flat plastic OLED's displays come out and hope that they have no burn-in too, or hope that OLED's are so cheap that if it craps out, throw it away and get an new one? What a mess, we get pathetic LCD's, pathetic hard drives (notice how warrenties have gone from 3 years to 1 year) and I don't know if anybody has done any statistics, but I suspect that processor chip life-spans and motherboard life-spans are not that great now-a-days (I recentlly had an expensive motherboard expire after about 3 years, over a decade ago, that would have not been the case, as most motherboards were built with some quality in mind)
What everybody needs is a world-wide co-operative approach to develop nanotech so we all can visit the moon (in comfort), or to stay there. Space cables, biotech enhancements probablly will allow people to live there (in underground mall and apartment complexes quite easily)..what we need is the first movie made on the moon, that would probablly attract people up there..not to mention all the medical spinoffs of a crash nanotech program (life extention, porgrammable good looks, enhanced brain power (who needs their PC now..it's built-it)
Nice thesis on parallel processors...but I wonder how many people have the resources (both financial and the "stick-with-it) to make it through university to eventually get to the phd level...what is it about the human species that like to build these huge obsticles (or tasks like jumping through a million hoops) to get a university education (I guess it has to do with darwinian competition, limited educational resources and even the fact that all the corporate/educational/militairy-Industrial institutions tend to be run by left-brainied individuals who demand exact performance etc. Also, if any feild (like bio-tech, medicin, genetics, computer-science, electronics, nanotech,etc..looks like it will make lots of money, boom!, it becomes very expensive to get an education in it). I am myself, very lazy, I like to daydream and have never made much money, and can't stick to jumping through a million eduational hoops, (have Attention Defict to the n'th degree) it would be much better, if in the future, we could all get educational machines to cram stuff into our heads using, say, nanotech or those "education machines" in "Battlefeild earth " movie. that would be cool.
It's obvious, if you spend all your time dreaming about way-out-things, then you have less time to jump through all those hoops and exercises and assignments, tests, etc.. that higher learning (at universities) loves to produce. Of course, it would help to be hyper efficient, then you could dream AND do your school work, but there are even fewer people who can succesully do both(this also applies to people who have to work at a boring job and dream about cool new ideas). The history of any new field say nanotech,(for instance), will follow a similar history to personal computers, lots of innovation, then the feild will coalless into engineering and scientific disciplins, of course nanotech allready is like a big science and engineering feild because of the equipemnt and knowledge required can only be obtained from university and industry, but it will probablly follow a similar trend as the pc industry did (but it would be cool if nanotech did a reverse evollution where future big university/industry/goverment(s) competition eventually give everyone a home nanotech replicator device and everyone could make their own nanotech products and research (especially if mediacl nanotech enabled everybody to get a cheap brain-boost effect)..in fact, everybody could look like whoever they wanted to look like (watch out hollywood..you thought pirating was a problem, wait till people can change their looks to the latest popular movie star look(at their local nanotech genetic rebuild clinic):(new microsoft add: Who do you want to look like today?..or..jeez, those werewolves, vampires, (this halloween) sure look real...) ((oops, sorry I'm daydreaming too much again..))
Unless you can impose duties on imports, the long term will be a country full of poor people who buy items/services/high-tech from countries like china and india. In the future, they will be the most high-tech and developed countries, use the example of how the US eclipsed the UK in the 20th century. One way is to develop nanotech replicators (think star treck), where everybody has their material needs met, there is no "I want to be the next super rich geek" mentality..everybody can have enough material stuff to keep them happy, when that happens, the urge to get more stuff and money just will evaporate and people can just be people, however, over-population on earth could be a problem, so establishing colonies on the moon, mars and orbiting space stations etc..
You could build systems that incorporate the CYC system..(www.cyc.com)..to put a system(s) like CYC into your system so that it could look for faulty conditions etc...I think that CYC is use in the Ask Jeves search engine..of course, fuzzy, neural networks and traditonal AI could be used too..all this stuff (AI, Comp hardware/software languages, complexity theory) has come out of the last 60 years of comp sci research and math and physics and now biology and chem etc will determin how we make future technologies (like nanotech), it's clear that may people have worked on these problems and there is no single quick solution to the program complexity/reliability issue and probably not one person asking these questions or soving them..perhaps there are more than one good answer and that existing languages and protocols are good enough with correct use and mabey some tweaking too...
It's like all the debates a long time ago about what the best computer/parrallel computer hardware/software architecture would look like..the answer depends upon what task you want to perform (be it model something, design a game, build a computer system etc). The answer is dictated by what resources (tools, your experience, etc),you have at your disposal and the time frame at hand. Nature can build complex biological systems because they are essentially made from self-reproducing nanomachines (build lots of them cheaply). Like most things, nothing is perfect, it usually gets the job done..if you have all the time and resources, you could build a computer system that uses biology etc as models and simulates most anything and can deal with unexpected inputs etc, but using current echnology, that would be expensive and be sort of like a big smart emulator system..
Well, you could get these two newer SF books:"Darwin's Radio" by Greg Bear and "Moonseed" by Stephen Baxter"...
Would the use of Open Standards verses this proprietory standards help, or the adoption of some sort of future model of time limited standards where, once a "standard" is used for N number of years (in a technical feild like computers), and/or gets hold of >50 % of market share, that it become an open standard?
I think that this comes under the ideas people have been talking about for years now in the field of nanotechnology where you can get surfaces or materials to programmably change to whatever color you want them to be...
I think that a good web interface that anybody could use, would be,is a set of virtual reality glasses (voice controlled and response) that anybody could use simply by looking (in any direction, up, down, sideways) and seeing the universe as it is , then asking the glasses to zoom-in, zoom out, and get visual feedback (in the glasses display) what you are looking at. You wouldn't need a telescope to look thru, simply put on the glasses. The system would need a good interface, perhaps use a version of the CYC intelligent databas program (askjeeves search engine uses it, you can ask it questions in english..). A simple astronomical interface would introduce a lot of people to the astronomical universe around them..
It's stupid that all these companies (defence, drug, publishing etc. benifit from the resources of the goverment (through publically funded research and projects done by universities and darpa etc), yet try to limit access to this information for their own simple greed. It is a sham that people fall for this scam, the example that reserchers have to basicaly do everything (typesetting etc)for these scientific publications and then pay to have their work published is a total capitalistic orwellian fantasy even bill gates would have trouble dreaming up...we now live in the internet age, it's about time this publishing stuff was put out on the web by the reaserchers themselves, we don't need a bunch of companies claiming ownership to the publishing process...
With the earth at 6 billion + population and people genetically programmed to breed like rabbits, what nature will probablly do (to stabillize the population at more controlled levels) is global warming, this will reduce the excess population thru enviromental collaps. Of course, we could develop nanotech real fast and try to stop this from happening, but we will probablly have to get used to living in what ammounts to a giant computer controlled greenhouse coverd planet..of course, you could use nanotech to go to the moon or mars, or the asteroid belt cheaplly to get away from the maddening crowds...
Technology improvements follow moores law with it getting cheaper and cheaper with every passing day..and these companies have the nerve to tell us what to do with the high speed sevices we buy off them, they also have the nerve to use this cheaper technology to monitor what we do.. it's time they were told what to do and use that better technolgy to provide better service for us. It's also about time that the holdover of data bit pricing that is lovinglly worshipped by these big companies was thrown out too, it's not the 1950's with expansive telephone service (voice only), it's the 21st century with exponentially growing technolgy of fiber optics (most installed fibers currentlly not used) where technolgy allows increasing amounts of data to be put thru fibers. So the excuse that it's expensive to send data bits thru an ISP network is crap, it's getting cheaper all the time with no end in site, it's time to dump this obsolete pricing model and move on..