What Tech Should Be Seen At TED? 216
J0sh writes "I've been lucky enough to be asked to do tech spotting for the TED conference, one of the biggest and most exclusive technology, entertainment, and design conferences in the US. Many of the folks there are superstars in their field (like Craig Venter and Stephen Hawking), and most of them have the opportunity to take action on the technology that they see there. The problem is that I'm only one guy trying to find the most mind-blowing technology on the planet in order to inform the few people who can make an immediate impact with it. I figured if there's one place to find those kinds of advances, it's here. What unknown tech is about to completely change the world that these people need to know about? Let me know."
Word-changing tech (Score:4, Funny)
What unknown tech is about to completely change the world that these people need to know about?
You came to slashdot to ask that?
Be fair. (Score:4, Funny)
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I'd rather they ask Slashdot than Microsoft, Google or Yahoo. However, it would probably be just as useful to ask on I Can Has Cheezburger or Cute Overload. (OMG, Ponies!!!)
Ponies, definitely ponies.
Robotic ponies.
Low tech == High tech (Score:5, Insightful)
Things that are going to change the world I think don't need to be super high tech or invented 5 years ago. Personally I predict that it will be the mundane tech deployed in just the right places is what will change the world in the next few decades. Things like commodity telecommunications to the other 90% of the planet who currently don't own a PC (OLPC I feel lacks the velocity and momentum to make a difference, but is on the right trajectory) and recycled cellphones sent to Kenya and Uganda to provide affordable communication capacity for populations there. Projects like this are the cutting edge of this millennium.
We as humans have invented everything that we need to make this world a wonderful place to live, we just need to learn how to distribute it fairly and use it sustainably.
Not that I think there is no place for research into new pharmaceuticals and microchips and superconductors etc, but they will bring, at this stage in our history, incremental gains to welfare, and only for the rich. The giant leaps of living standards now will be made by advances in our capacity to deal equitably with each other.
Re:Low tech == High tech (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup - it's the small, simple and readily available things that count, a few ideas:
* The rollable water container - a round thing that you can roll over to get water with, rather than carrying it on your back/arms/head
* The little heater with an AA rechargeable battery in it for the fan, that you recharge at the local solar panel
* The huge and incredible mobile phone informal/illegal repair subculture in developing countries - such as putting 2 simms in the same mobile with a simple switch mechanism.
* The pot with sand in it, and a smaller pot inside, that uses the physical properties of wet sand to create a refrigeration system for fruit and other perishables at markets
* The solar furnace - a curved mirror or reflective sheet with a black pot in the middle.
* The indian project to use harvested stomach bacteria to process recycled food into gas for cooking.
Loads of this stuff is happening and IT teams are out in the craziest places doing incredible things - these examples above are old, and I could dig out links if needed, but there's 10000 other projects that TED could highlight, even if you just want to talk about software: as well as the IT needed to create information infrastructures around completely non-IT stuff - like (this is more of a developed world example) the simple discussion boards and mailing lists used to power next generation barter/free/exchange systems like freecycle, freeconomy, feral trade and various post-LETS barter systems that are now taking off now that the administrative time-suck has been dealt with. Next step I think, will be project management systems that are just as simple and low-tech, so you can organise say a milk round around it.
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I was curious what a "rollable water container" was, so I went out and found this youtube video [youtube.com]. It seems it's a kind of water drum that you pull behind you, and it rolls so you don't have to carry it on your back or something. It's for third-world countries that have to travel somewhere and bring back their potable water.
Mosquito killer? (Score:2)
In some outdoor cafes in buggy coastal areas, they have these little "mosquito traps" that silently trap and kill mosquitoes. They have a gas tank that looks like what you'd attach to a gas grill, and I believe they somehow emit CO2 to attract the pests.
My wife and I recently gave some money to a missionary group going to Uganda so that they could buy and distribute mosquito nets for people there. Devices like this, which kill mosquitoes without spraying chemicals that could be harmful to humans, might help
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Re rollable water container...
pulled at 3 mph - standardwalking speed over flat but unimproved dirt roads, this puppy lasts for how many hours before the wall springs a leak?
People carry water containers for a REASON.
Carts are multi-purpose. Single taskers suck.
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Yup - it's the small, simple and readily available things that count, a few ideas:
Most of the ideas you list are pretty good; they can be built and maintained with local resources. However, I have to take exception to this one:
* The little heater with an AA rechargeable battery in it for the fan, that you recharge at the local solar panel
As others have pointed out, solar panels aren't cheap, but I think it is more important to focus on the batteries. Rechargeable batteries don't last forever. After a while, they stop holding their charge and need to be replaced, which drives up the costs over the long term. Yeah, they can be recycled into new rechargeable batteries, but that requires a fairly h
Missing option (Score:2)
* The hand-painted wooden ball in a cup - Toss the ball, catch it in the cup, dump it out of the cup, toss it and catch it in the cup again. The ball is on a string and attached to the cup, so there's no worry if you don't catch the ball in a cup. And clean up is as easy as catching a ball in a cup.
Re:Low tech == High tech (Score:5, Insightful)
You find TED nauseous and fake, because they're not doing anything about American farm subsidies? That's what I 'got' as the point of your post. You'd rather see these inovations (if not pure "inventions") buried in a closet somewhere until the corn lobby disappears? I really don't understand what you're bitching about at all. You come off as a troll that somehow worded your post well enough to get modded up.
Please explain what TED is supposed to do about US import/export policy. Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'
If you can't do that, then please do stfu.
Re:Low tech == High tech (Score:5, Informative)
You'd rather see these inovations (if not pure "inventions") buried in a closet somewhere until the corn lobby disappears?
These (solar powered heater, charcoal from dung or solar smelters etc.) are no innovations or inventions. They are gadgets, and expensive gadgets too ( you can probably boil beans with a "solar smelter", but you won't smelt anything unless you can get some really large mirrors). If they are distributed they will make the "beneficiaries" become more dependent on aid and handouts because they will kill whatever industry supplied those people with the same services as the "innovations and inventions" pushed by TED.
TED and the folk behind it are no better than the Victorian ladies that went slumming and giving handouts to the polite paupers. It did not help the paupers much, but it made those ladies feel a lot better about themselves.
Those "poor third world people" are not helpless dopes. If they can't export wine or grain, they will export cocaine or opium, since it's a lot easier to sneak in a 5kg package than to sneak it's equivalent in grain or frozen meat. This was done by Europeans, too, when they were themselves third world countries (Opium Wars happened only because the Chinese taxed imports to death when not forbidding them outright, and opium was the only thing that had a high enough mark up to justify the trouble of fitting a ship).
Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'
"evolutionary technological advances" ? Have you watched the TED movies ? Dung or corn stalk charcoal is a technological innovation ? "improve the lives of billions of people" ? Can anybody pay for solar panels to improve the lives of billions ? Last time I heard there were not enough money to pay for solar panels to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands: in my area a 40W (peak power) solar panel costs 380 Euro. At this price the whole military budget of US for 2008 will buy about 40GW of power, which is less than what, for example, Rumania uses during one year [wikipedia.org].
Want to help the poor ? Then stop sending aid [blogspot.com], and give them a chance to build their economies. Or, if you are into churches and going on missions, send English language teachers and set up Internet Cafes besides talking about Jeesus H. Christ and handing out used clothes.
Don't worry about "farm subsidies" right now: worry about "quality standards", "sanitary regulations" etc. ... yes, about the Bumpers Amendment [biotech-monitor.nl], too, if you do care about "foreign aid".
The sad part is that the whole trade lockup is not directed against the "third world countries", but is set up against the other "first world countries". The 'poor aborigines' are just innocent bystanders that get slugged down when US and EU and the other big guys fire trade regulations and taxes at each other.
Re:Low tech == High tech (Score:5, Insightful)
At this price the whole military budget of US for 2008 will buy about 40GW of power, which is less than what, for example, Rumania uses during one year.
With 40GW of solar panels Romania will generate a years worth of power in 1462 hours, or about 180 days given 8 hours of daylight per day. (thems big numbers but I get 58,490,000,000,000 Wh/year / 40,000,000,000W). But here's the thing, if that much money poured into buying solar panels, the price would come down, the manufacturing would further innovate, and likely efficiencies would go up. Solar thermal generation technologies are not new, but they are innovations relative to coal and ng power plants and these things are low tech enough to be viable now. As we (the rich countries like Germany) deploy them they also get cheaper and can be viable cheap alternatives to emerging countries.
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I am afraid there might be a problem with finding enough space for all those solar panels, and then you'll have to import a lot of guestarbeiters to keep them clean.
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You were not ? Oh, how wrong of me, unless I was talking about the solar panels installed in Germany.
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sorry to have worked you up this way ... my point was that there is not enough space anywhere on earth to install enough solar panels to make a difference. According to Wikipedia, Germany Analysts estimate that solar cells in Germany now generate about 2 TWh of electricity per year, or about one-half of one percent of German electricity consumption [wikipedia.org]. This is neat, how much of that never gets used, since most of the power is generated during the day ? How many coal power stations have to be kept on stand-by t
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Re:Low tech == High tech (Score:4, Informative)
Please explain what TED is supposed to do about US import/export policy. Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'
TED gets the kind of people who can afford to pay $6k for a conference, and who on top of that have enough pull to get on the list. The total net worth of the attendees is in the tens of billions, possibly the hundreds of billions. These are people who get listened to.
You talk as if farm policies will get fixed by themselves. That's ridiculous; they have gotten worse lately, not better. The person you reply to is right; no bit of technological gimcrackery could improve the lives of the poor as much as just buying what they're selling at a fair price. Instead we spend tens of billions every year distorting the marketplace, keeping them in poverty. Then we give a fraction of that back as aid and pat ourselves on the back.
Diverting the attention of those who could make a difference may be fun, and it may be profitable, but nobody should think it particularly effective.
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I grew up on a farm in the developing world (South Africa). While we had farm subsidies (pre GATT etc.) my father produced about three times as much food as he does today (actual figures). This, despite the fact that we went through one of the worst droughts during those years ('76
Farm subsidies (Score:5, Insightful)
Calvin Coolidge, who grew up on a farm, was against farm subsidies because "farmers have never made much money" (and shouldn't expect to). Then the Depression hit and the government couldn't resist the notion that having most of the farms go out of business could be a bad idea. So is the problem our farm subsidies, or the failure of the third world to enact their own tariffs and subsidies to protect their own agricultural base? With the current price of transport, countries which have maintained local production, rather than increased dependency on foreign trade for foodstuffs, are far better positioned.
What free trade also does for third world farmers is encourage them to grow for export rather than for the local markets. There are countries with plenty of farms, but starving populations, because the farmers are growing fancy stuff for us rather than staples for their neighbors.
There's a strong argument that agricultural trade should be severely limited, with people becoming "localvores [localvore.co.uk]." I write this as I'm drinking some Sumatran coffee, so I haven't totally bought the argument. Still, based on the cost of oil-based transport, the plain fact is the world needs to transition quickly back to local agricultural economies. What technological developments can help speed that?
Re:Farm subsidies (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny thing is, "poor countries" are enacting their own tariffs [twnside.org.sg], if they get a chance (nobody financing a civil war) or don't care about getting loans from development agencies.
I don't think I'll ever become a "localvore" ... there is only so much cabbage and potatoes I can eat ... or I'll have to become a nomad, to be a 'localvore' in a more than one climate zone.
"What free trade also does for third world farmers is encourage them to grow for export rather than for the local markets." -- if they don't grow crops for export, how are they going to buy computers ( and iPods :-P ) ?
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So is the problem our farm subsidies, or the failure of the third world to enact their own tariffs and subsidies to protect their own agricultural base?
Tariffs raise the price of food. Higher food prices mean more people go hungry, and less money to spend on fixing other problems. Trade barriers generally hurt everybody, even the nations that create them.
There are countries with plenty of farms, but starving populations, because the farmers are growing fancy stuff for us rather than staples for their neighbors.
People would never argue about space flight without knowing something about the math behind gravitation or friction, but you are talking about economics with a similar level of education in economics. Spend some time with the principle of comparative advantage [wikipedia.org], which is as central to economics as gravity i
Solar Panels (Score:2)
Yes, but solar panels can be supplied by aid organizations. They make this sort of power use possible because they don't require any infrastructure.
I agree with you that we should drop the farm subsidies. Before that happens, stuff like this could help. Would you rather they wait around for the subsidies to go away without whatever hand-up help we could give them?
I found the absorption heater that you can power by putting it into a fire interesting. The fact that we can use this to distribute vaccines s
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Well, dropping the farm subsidies would take about two hours: one hour to count the votes and one hour to type and spellcheck the law.
"They make this sort of power use possible because they don't require any infrastructure." ... Have you ever operated a solar panel ? Did you find it does not require "infrastructure" ? It might not require poles and wires, but requires a lot of cleaning and maintenance, unless you live somewhere in a desert on the top of a mountain (to escape rain and dust).
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Many of TED's attendees are top of their field. Not all of them might be likeable people, but I'd say very few of them are at a "junior-high-school-dropout housewife" level. Yet most of the TED presentations end with a standing ovation.
Personally Ive seen some pretty interesting TED talks, addressing subjects other than the ones I normally think/read/hear about. Most of t
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Many of TED's attendees are top of their field. Not all of them might be likeable people, but I'd say very few of them are at a "junior-high-school-dropout housewife" level.
I guess you are right about that, but the last show I watched and the one that put me off completely was about teaching some poor dark skinned schmucks from someplace dirty how to make charcoal out of corn stalks instead of burning cow dung, and everybody was getting woozy about helping the poor and the ingenuity of the solution etc., never thinking that those "poor helpless people" were feeding their cows with the corn stalks in the first place (quite a bit of sugar in the core of the stalk, you know, even
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Well, I don't have to worry about trade subsidies, since my country does not give any worth to be called that. We haven't had a easy ride with EU so close: had to surrender and join in order to escape being eligible for "export compensations", and it looks like we're going to hold on even without EU subsidies (which seem to be scheduled to arrive sometimes during the next century).
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We as humans have invented everything that we need to make this world a wonderful place to live, we just need to learn how to distribute it fairly and use it sustainably.
Except maybe for cheap, efficient solar cells. And a cure for HIV.
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Things that are "only for the rich" invariably trickle down to us "poor folk". I am more than happy to have rich people around overpaying for cellphones, electric cars, plasma TVs, life-extending medicines, etc., funding the research to develop better, cheaper replacements that can then become available to the masses (i.e. me).
Re:Low tech == High tech (Score:5, Insightful)
You are not poor. If you have a PC with broadband, you are richer than approximately 90% of the planet. Malaria tablets are under $1 each, yet *millions* die every year because they can't afford it. I'm not seeing much trickling down over there, I lament to say.
Re:Low tech = High tech or MID TECH (Score:2)
I think Mid-Tech items will lead to transformations, where the scientific & engineering leaps get commercialized without consumers being aware of the technology...unless they watch TED, read Slashdot and scientific and engineering journals.
Small & micro sensors and imagers integrated into new devices in unique ways & often operating wirelessly and autonomously use "HIGH TECH" but are easy to miss. They put an incredible amount of knowledge on top of the micro-sized sensing, letting even common
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Educate and empower the women. Most women don't want to have 8 or more kids, and wouldn't if they weren't being forcefully kept "barefoot and pregnant".
Most of the human brainpower on the planet is wasted. Advances that change that will have more profound effects than anything else. Could be anything from education for all and stopping brain-stunting malnourishment to miracle drugs that make people smarter (smart pills?), and curb addictive behavior including compulsions to watch too much TV or play to
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Most of the human brainpower on the planet is wasted.
So let's gather all that wasted brainpower into a grid, or, ....Matrix..., and use it!
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You came to slashdot to ask that?
Honestly. If it's truly "mind-blowing" and revolutionary, then how exactly is your average Slashdotter going to have heard of it? I mean, have you read the comments on any science article recently? What about that impressed you with the idea that people here are a good source of scientific insight?
Fix the TED video player (Score:2)
Other than Google Video and Youtube, the TED talks have one of the best video players on the web.. except that you can't full screen the video for some reason. I can't understand why you might not have thought this was a useful feature at the time when TED talks were first being put on the web, but surely you use Youtube and have noticed the utility of full screen playback.. add the feature.. I'm sure it's one line of code.
All the videos have a "download" option... (Score:4, Informative)
If a talk is worth watching fullscreen I usually download it.
PS: You can make the ted window quite big by clicking the arrow thingy in the top-right corner.
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Or subscribe to the TED Podcast and watch the MP4 file full screen.
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Try watching them with Miro [getmiro.com]. Fullscreen functionality, saved to your computer in high definition, automatic downloads of the latest episodes, and yeah, fullscreen downloads. Search for TED in the Miro guide after installing and add the channel. Watching TED talks is one of the things that got me interested in Miro development :)
(The UI is nice but sometimes feels a little slow and clunky... that's being totaly overhauled for the next release.)
Both Biggest and Most Exclusive? (Score:2, Funny)
It is unlikely to be both the biggest, and the most exclusive, unless it is the only one. Which it may be, since how many conferences are there that focus on Technology and Entertainment, and Design.
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It is exclusive as in the people who attend/give speeches.
Biggest as in it probably covers the widest range of topics.
might not change the world (Score:5, Interesting)
But this is cool if it works:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore.html [wired.com]
http://www.gizmag.com/go/7214/ [gizmag.com]
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I dunno. Those sort of things immediately jump to mind as "whatcouldpossiblygowrong"
It sounds a whole lot like those experiments that the Navy did to attempt to increase the efficiency of sub crews by "fine-tuning" their sleep patterns. It worked great for about two weeks, and afterward, the crews went raving mad (but thankfully recovered eventually).
Pushing the limits of human endurance for non-lifesaving purposes seems like awfully risky business to me. It's no surprise that DARPA stayed well away from
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I want one at home. With the current prices I cannot lower my AC setup temperature below 80F which makes it even higher (~86F) at higher levels of my house.
I do not need my house cooled. I need my blood cooled and pumping air out of a coffee pot is more cost-effective than ventilating with cold air the whole house.
May be I could by one of the grocery packing machines and do it myself
bring back comdex (Score:2)
Forget about TED. I want someone to bring back Comdex. That used to be the ultimate new technology show. Maybe one day we'll have shows about trade shows of the future.
frightening (Score:5, Interesting)
A venue with the kind of visibility and recognition as TED shouldn't send out "spotters" who need to ask Slashdot, it should follow some established protocols for finding and evaluating work. And I think the haphazard selection processs is reflected in the quality of the program.
Re:frightening (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the quality of TED conferences, it's not a criticism to say the quality of the process is reflected in the program. The strength of TED is that it shows a broad cross-section of what's out there, rather than the more usual scheme of presenting and reinforcing the interests and prejudices of some clique of "experts" who think they know the subject well enough that they don't need to ask the community at large.
It's not about having too limited an understanding to come up with something to say; it's about being willing to consider that somebody else in the world (outside your usual group of contacts) might have a good idea that's worth hearing -- and then sharing.
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For example most new drugs are created via formalised, long, diligent process. We need this but it seems to me that no single drug in a long time has had earth-
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I always get the feeling that the really mould-breaking steps forward come from a single bright idea or accident, rather than by diligent work over long periods.
I think that feeling is misleading.
If you look at the history of penicillin, you'll see that it took decades of work to transform the original observation into a workable product. Furthermore, other people had made the same observation before, but what made Fleming and Florey different was that they invested the hard work to actually transform the
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Don't know the numbers but I suspect that "progressive development" is interspersed with many smaller "Eureka moments".
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Besides, posting here is one more way of finding emerging tech, and that's his job. I would criticize him if he DIDN'T consider asking Slashdot or any other similar forum.
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it should follow some established protocols for finding and evaluating work.
You want an established protocol? How about the one called "ask smart people"? That's the one I use when I want to find interesting things.
Given the discussion here, he may have misapplied the protocol, but you can hardly get mad at him for giving you the benefit of the doubt.
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Please try and remember that almost every revolutionary idea was unpopular with the peer review system at their time.
Yes, and that is the problem with TED: in addition to using a peer review system, it uses pre-selection by scouts, non-anonymized reviewing, and it seems to go for celebrity factor. How much more exposure do Clinton, Bono, Gell-Mann, Brin, Page, or Wales need?
With a regular conference, at least everybody can submit and the review processes attempt to be fair and impartial. Reviewers still s
few picks (Score:2, Interesting)
* firefox (for revolutionizing the web)
* petrol from algae tech ( great potential there )
* photonic switch ( see http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Sydney-Uni-hero-chip-breaks-light-speed-record/0,130061791,339290492,00.htm [zdnet.com.au] )
regards
trueknowledge (Score:2)
I think trueknowledge [trueknowledge.com] is very cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IONdWQwcmxA [youtube.com]
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Also Global scaling [globalscalingtheory.com]
and TESLA'S Formula of inventing [inventions...titute.com]
is two things that might change the world
technology? (Score:2)
Perhaps you could tell them about this thing called the "internet" which seems to appreciate more data, faster. You know, rather than "exclusive" or "let's post a video a week arbitrarily out of our archive".
Don't get me wrong, I've seen a quite a few of the videos hosted by TED (because new ideas are only worth spreading if they've got a sponsor such as BMW), but seriously, for the rest of us, that might not be able to afford the cost of entry, how about you share the idea of "ideas worth sharing" to an au
Coal Liquefaction (Score:4, Interesting)
If one technology could really change the world, it would be coal liquefaction. It's an 80 year old, proven, technology - that no one has ever heard of.
What is it? It solves the gasoline crunch by converting coal (which is crazy abundant, especially in America) into gasoline. It throws off energy as a byproduct (which helps solve our energy grid needs) as well as CO2 -- which sounds bad, but can be trapped easily since it is in a closed loop.
Cleanly converting coal to gas is more expensive than the normal FT process, but still produces gas at around the $2 a gallon level, which would be enough to kickstart our economy, rescue the airlines, save energy costs for poor people (as much wealthy environmentalists hate to admit it, poor people are the ones that get fucked by sky-high gas and energy costs), and produce CO2, which is needed for, aha!, Craig Venter's latest pet project, which involves custom bacteria that consume large amounts of C02, and which he's publicly stated he needs a large supply thereof.
Best of all, it's a mature technology. It was used to power the entire Nazi war machine in WWII, and South Africans under apartheid. Not because evil countries have an affinity for it, but because they were cut off from the world's oil supplies.
And yet when Coal Liquefaction was debated in congress, retarded children like our very own Senator Feinstein claimed that it was an immature technology, and voted it down.
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>>Problem is that the other liter goes up on smoke .. I mean CO2.
Which I talked about. There's actually a demand for high percentage CO2 air.
>>The energy solution you want is nuclear. No emissions.
Absolutely. For the power grid.
But nuclear has nothing to do with gas prices, except indirectly, as it will free up more coal to be converted into gasoline.
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Why should gasoline be used? As far as I see, electric cars can do the trick. I'm not saying that today but really, we are looking for what to do within the upcoming years and I see electiricity (and thus nuclear) based cars as feasible solution as liquified coal.
Also I find it interesting what americans think of the gas prices. "Oh no, 4 dollars! Our economy might collapse!". Well, know what? It's 2.5 times as much here in Finland (and most of Europe at that) without economy having collapsed. So could some
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score:4, Interesting)
The oil price has more than doubled in the last year, and quadrupled in the last three years. There has never before been such an extreme, sustained increase in the oil price. This will cause severe inflation, and the economic consequences will be severe.
This is what's causing all the fuss. The economies of the world are in the early stages of heading into a very severe inflationary recession. Some people go further and anticipate economic collapse, others fear something similar to The Great Depression [wikipedia.org]. The technical term for it is stagflation [wikipedia.org]. Investors look for ways out of trouble, but the consensus is that there is no easy way out of this one. Some investors have therefore panicked. Panic is dangerous because it fuels itself, making the panic worse.
You are not going to see the same impact in Finland because Finland has much higher fuel taxes than in the USA, so the price increase of retail fuels has been much smaller in Finland than in the USA. But recession in the USA, which is the world's largest economy, will be felt in other countries, including Finland.
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Why should gasoline be used?
Easy:
Liquid fuels in general are therefore worth looking at, because we can easily convert a pump or two at a gas station to the new liquid fuel. Even if this requires some modification of the pump itself, like it would for ethanol, it's still fairly easy to do. This is not to be taken as saying that electric cars are not a real possibility, just that liquid fueled-vehicles are pro
Rescue the airlines? (Score:2)
Should we consider the airlines worth rescuing? (Again?) And why do you think lower fuel costs will do this?
Check out the airlines in Europe and Asia. Sure, a lot of them are nationalized. But not all. And most are in much better shape than airlines in the U.S.A. That's with higher fuel costs than their U.S. counterparts. Of course, they don't have to deal as much with security theatre, but U.S. companies are not directly burdened with most of those costs themselves.
The reality is, the U.S. airlines are in
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>>Sasol (the âoeevilâ South African company) built a fairly large GTL plant in Qatar (in association with Chevron).
I never said Sasol was evil. In fact, my father (an ordinary man, not a bigwig) has talked with them several times about the cost of building their plants, how much gasoline would cost per barrel coming out of it, etc.
>>Love it how you simplify complex geopolitical situations into evil and not evil.
You must be new here.
And yeah, it's not especially surprising, since I don'
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Also bear in mind that your incarceration rate for black people in the US today is 6 times higher than that of black people in South Africa during racial segregation. Why do you imprison generations of black people?
Straw man.
1) Wanna make declarative statements, and have them believed (or maybe believable)? Show us the numbers. Show us the cites. Where did you get these figures, and what are they?
2) Current US population (just over 303 Million [cia.gov]) is approx 6 times that of South Africa (just over 47 Million [cia.gov]), so the relationship you claim exists (existed?) would seem to be merely statistical, assuming a roughly even amount of population growth in the two countries in the last (however many, we don't know your time
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Actually, I should say used to be a South African.
You see, he surrendered his South African citizenship and became an American. No one forced him; it was solely his choice. Why? He seems to feel that there is a much better chance for him here in America, in the Deep South part of America, than back where he came from...
And Yes, my friend is a black man. Not that I care, but you might.
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I think America, taken on the whole, is quite a lot less evil than the Nazis and the South African regime. Now if you want to talk individuals... feel free.
The Nazis and South African regime each essentially had one big, public act of evil.
USA Foreign Policy has, running through it, small & medium, but repeated evils.
Since very few Americans actually know or care about past Foreign Policy...
(Much the same could be said about the former British & French Empires.)
It is very easy to say "Nazi Germany is much worse than [Country]" if you do not know what you are comparing the Nazis to. Western Democracy is not the shining beacon of light we like to portray
Next Generation Artificial Neural Networks (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone interested should have a look at Geoff Hinton's Google Tech talk [youtube.com] on the matter. A very interesting talk for anyone in machine learning. He does a way better job of explaining it then I could. Fast forward to 21:30 for the live demo.
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The problem with backprop is that its a gradient descent method. That works, but its not really likely to produce the best results.
More and more researchers are turning to evolutionary computation for neural network training. It's interesting, but its a convergence of known techniques which are both well understood by the scientific community.
As interesting as it is, it's not new. People have been doing it for almost ten years now.
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with some experts now believing general AI to be attainable within the next decade.
I think the next decade is a little ambitious. The problem is the amount of space required to store the data, which is probably hundreds or even thousands of petabytes.
For example, take the human brain. It's believed to only have about 100 billion neurons, but there are between 1 and 10 quadrillion synapses (~10 for children and between 1 and 5 for adults).
Whether it's biological or software, it'll require roughly equivalent
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Disk storage follows a Moore's law of 12 months (100% increase every year): http://www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/winchest.html [littletechshoppe.com]
From this, it follows that you should have a 1.5 Petabyte consumer-level hard-disk ten years from now, and break the thousand petabyte barrier at consumer level in a bit less than 20 years.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Heh. And just the other day, I was thinking about 2-stroke and 4-stroke engines, and it hit me that there were probably a lot of other possibilities that could yield worthwhile results. Thanks for the link!
Oh, the usual (Score:4, Funny)
Tin Eye... (Score:3, Interesting)
The TinEye image search engine [tineye.com] should be up there - http://www.tineye.com/ [tineye.com] - one of the most mindboggling things I've seen in a hell of a long time.
New materials (Score:2, Interesting)
So it befalls to me (Score:5, Funny)
Let's get it out of the way:
I'd like to see a beowulf cluster of Linux servers running Duke Nukem Forever on virtualised copies of Vista, whilst at the same time running a grid/distributed computing program that's testing proteins for possible AIDs/MRSA cures in spare GPU cycles - the whole lot powered by solar cells using a revolutionary optical coating, with the standby generator powered by algae-derived biofuel. The whole system to be owned by the former Soviet Union and housed in a hybrid solar/hydrogen-powered car, driven by Natalie Portman, with room in the back for three Senior citizens from North Korea to sit confortably while playing aforementioned game.
Oh, and the whole lot has to be available 'within the next 5 years' - as confirmed by NetCraft.
I'm sure I've missed something - help me out here guys.
It's more interesting than it sounds. (Score:4, Interesting)
Datamining (Score:2)
I wasn't really aware of datamining until a lecture not too long ago, given by a handful of enthousiasts and I was sold; just possible implementations and new approuches to the way we approach data is just mindblowing and is just so freaking cool.
The subject seems soo specific yet its implemenation in our large databases becomes more important and relevant.
SQLServer datamining [sqlserverdatamining.com]
Datamining blog [msdn.com]
XMLA [xmlforanalysis.com]
True artificial intelligence... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a MUST SEE TED issue -
Jeff Hawkins - Founder - Numenta
Jeff is the inventor of the Palm & Handspring. He has gone on to start up a phenomenal research company that has figured out how the brain learns, and has adapted it to solve the problem of artificial intelligence. He is close to solving the problem of having computers being able to actually SEE.
From showing a computer a line drawing of a sail boat, the computer can crawl Google images and pick out actual pictures (clip art) and photos of sailboats from any orientation, from the top, side, rear, bottom, just as a human could.
http://snipurl.com/rsa2008 [snipurl.com]
and the answer is .... WATER (Score:3, Interesting)
Dean Kamen's converting sewage (or absolutely *any* contaminated water) into pure clean water at fraction of the cost has the potential to change the world on a huge scale. Especially Africa.
He has has spoken at TED before. He is a pure legend.
http://gizmodo.com/370698/colbert-first-vid-of-dean-kamens-miracle-water-distiller [gizmodo.com]
OK he invented it a few years ago, but hopefully its ready for rollout.
On Demand Manufacturing (Score:2)
Definitely cover on-demand manufacturing. Then again, I'm prejudiced.
Speckled Computing (Score:2, Insightful)
Google [google.co.uk] has more.
Improved solar concentrator (Score:2)
What tech developing countries need most (Score:2)
It ain't cheap, it ain't easy, but it's what they need most of all [wikipedia.org]
No amazing doohickey we could give them is ever going to improve their lives if there are gangs, militants and warlords controlling and threatening their stability. If all the life changing technology we donate is stolen and sold off to fund pointless tribal warfare and organized crime, then these countries will never get out of the stone age.
Enegy Efficiency = A World Changing Idea (Score:2)
Community Technology (Score:2)
i think TED should do a talk on how communities can organize local production of energy and food.
Vertical farming, waste to energy conversion, local grids, etc.
If every small home owners association were to set aside some land in their community for a vertical farm which doubled as waste treatment / energy conversion and of course solar collection... a lot of standard utility expenses could be offset by large margins.
imagine if your AC bill was subsidized by the solar array / generator down the street and y
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I'm with this poster. There are various simple tech inventions that have changed the world outside of the 1st world countries. I'd like to see how these can be applied to the 1st world to change how we live. In many 3rd world areas, it is not by choice that communities choose some technology. How can what they have learned be applied to westernized 1st world areas. A possible example is: if there are filters that can make any water safe to drink in seconds, can't we use that technology to recapture gray wat
Polywell update (Score:2)
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Re:Owner Free Filesystem (Score:5, Funny)
There was an article on [url="http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/"]this[/url] not too long ago right here on Slashdot, and it could quite possibly be the biggest innovation to file sharing and distribution since BitTorrent.
You probably shouldn't take technology advice from a person who uses BBCode on Slashdot.
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You probably shouldn't take technology advice from a person who uses BBCode on Slashdot.
Wow, you aren't kidding. I went and looked at the "Owner-Free Filesystem" project he mentioned, and it's idiocy. It's a theory for getting around copyright law that any IP lawyer could expose as ridiculously wrong in under 10 seconds.
Why do my fellow geeks so often think that brilliance in coding translates into brilliance in other people's domains? If a lawyer writing his first program claimed that he had solved the halting problem in Excel macros, we would laugh at him. But when it's reversed, it's someho
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