In The News:

Control a mouse cursor with brain implants - I want to be a cyborg!!

Researchers build wearable generators - It may not be a huge amount of energy generated, but if we all wear these and use them to power our personal gadgets, it could have a big impact on the global energy situation.

Boy scouts can now earn robotics merit badges - so cool! wish this was available when I was a cub...

U.S. Navy getting closer to arming ships with lasers - sweet... Laser guns are one of the foundations of Science Fiction, now I'm waiting for a portable version.

Scientists aim to improve photosynthesis - talk about tinkering with nature! still... it could have a great impact on food and energy problems.

In The News:

New surveillance robot, and it knows how to hide - these little UAVs are getting smarter and smarter

Rome's Air Force super computer made out of PS3s - 1,716 PS3s linked into a massive super computer for image processing.

Artificial leaf may be a breakthrough in solar energy - another step closer to a viable energy alternative.

Nanotech implant checks for Cancer and heart attacks - where can I buy mine?

China to overtake the US in science in two years - a lot sooner than commentators thought... this should be a wake up call for the western world.

In the News:

Sweden to replace stamps with SMS - great new use of existing technology.

Researchers show method to disable cellphones by SMS - as cellphones become more advanced, they become exposed to the same dangers as computers... this is worrying.

Google gives Japan a hand with People Search - Great lateral thinking here. Putting existing technology to work, helping during a time of crisis. Google FTW.

Laser scribing to create better solar cells - anything that provides clean energy (without the risk of melt-down) has to be a good thing.

Cuba sentences a US citizen for setting up Internet connections - Disturbing, yes, but not inconceivable. We've recently seen the effect that the free transfer of information over the internet has had on dictatorships.

In The News:

World largest radio telescope built - at least until the Square Kilometer Array gets approved

US Military to cloud source new military vehicle design - .... my version would transform into a giant robot.

Biodegradable sneakers - I'm all for green technology and recycling is essential to our continued existence... but biodegradable shoes? really?

Researchers create computer that fits on a pen tip - tiny computers... very cool. I want one attached to my car keys that will beep at me when I scream "GOD DAMN IT, WHERE THE F#*& ARE MY KEYS!?!?!"

Two planets found sharing one orbit - which entirely sinks our current theory on how planets form... and our definition of such... sorry Pluto, we might have been a bit hasty.

Taking on the Big Boys

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Even though I joined the evil Microsoft empire (resistance if futile), I do enjoy seeing somebody... anybody... take on this multinational goliath and win. So on the off chance that you don't know about them, this week I'm going to tell you about some easy alternatives to Microsoft products. 

The first Microsoft product you should replace is your web browser. Even though IE9 is a lot better than it's earlier incarnations (I'm using the beta for work and it's pretty good), it still can't hope to hold a candle to Google's Chrome bowser, which is my personal favorite. Microsoft is under serious threat in the bowser market, so if you're still using IE, trade up to chrome and be prepared to be astonished by it's silky smooth operation and lightning speed.

Next in line is your Microsoft Office suite. You've probably already paid for this (unless you're a pirate, Aarrr!), without ever considering that there might be alternatives. There are alternatives... in fact, they're free! The first stop for me would be OpenOffice, even if they've recently lost 33 of their top developers to the new solution,LibreOffice... Either way you get a free product that does the exact same things as Microsoft Office.

If downloading and configuring your office product doesn't sound like your cup of tea, why not keep your head in the clouds and use Google's office solution: Google Docs. It runs right in your web browser, so you can access your files from anywhere at any time and with broadband and mobile internet in South Africa only set to improve, it's not a bad bet at all.

So expand your thinking a little, have a look at the incredible Open Source alternatives on the 'net and stop paying 'The Man' such a huge chunk of cash... unless you're paying me to do something Microsoft related... then it's necessary.

In the News:

Electric car recharges in 6 minutes - One of the greatest drawbacks to 'green' cars is being solved.

The Pope warns against a digital world - .... well... he would... wouldn't he?

Military "Laser Beams" getting closer to mass production - so they're still so big they have to be mounted on a  truck... who cares? they're Lasers!!! so cool.

NASA Survey Suggests Earth-Sized planets are common - and a good thing too, since we're close to befouling ours beyond hope of redemption.

NASA's Mars Rover Spirit Finds evidence of Subsurface water - so a colony on mars is possible... if you were offered a one-way ticket to the red planet... would you go? .... I think I would.

Kindle Allowing Chinese Unfettered Access To the Web - Awesome! go Amazon!!!!

Word of the Week:

Hypocrite (noun) -
1: A person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2: A person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Another week, another post... Thanks to everyone who gives my random scratchings a read... I do appreciate it. If you liked it (or disliked it), post a comment with the links below.... and I nearly forgot... check out my friend's blog Business Minds. :)
-Odd

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
-Winston Churchill

In the News

Urinal video games - .... WTF? seriously? .... actually... that could be pretty cool

First photos taken of China's new stealth fighter - yet another of America's biggest military advantages is no more

Tampa airport shuts down due to change in magnetic poles - They had to shut down the airport in order to re-mark the runway... starting to worry yet?

Wireless car-jacking - hackers to start stealing cars?

New 'non-lethal' laser designed to deter pirates - I do so love stories about laser guns :D

WebComics vs. WebManga

You might not realise it, but there has been a debate raging around certain nodes of the internet. Namely: what is the difference between WebComics and WebManga. There have been panels about this at numerous conventions, blogs and rants by cartoonists, writers and fans... so what's it all about?

WebComics seem to follow a more western style, both in artwork and composition, something like the Sunday newspaper cartoons: each strip has a limited number of panels (usually 3 or 4), is usually self contained (doesn't have a story-line that must be read to understand the comic) and will most often provide one joke per strip. Some examples of WebComics would be ThreePanelSoul, MacHall, RealLife and AppleGeeks.

WebManga, on the other hand, follows more of a Japanese theme, with Manga-inspiredartwork and a complex story line. This is where it gets a little confusing, because if we want to avoid a third category called WebGraphicNovels, we must add the comics with a western drawing style and complex stories to the WebManga group. Examples are stuff like MegaTokyo, the Order of the Stick or ErfWorld.

So that's my definition: WebComics are a joke a strip, while WebManga have more complicated stories... but that's just my two cents, what do you think?

In the News:

Iceland Volcano's Ash Grounds European Air Travel - I'm sure you all know about this... it's insane what a huge effect it's had.... there are dinosaur extinction theories that start remarkably like this.

Using Your Thought-Controlled iPhone to Dial Home - sugoi!!!! told you it was coming.

China hackers stole key Google program - Google's single authentication code was stolen... supposedly by Chinese hackers... they've changed the code, but it's still a massive worry for your privacy.

Fatal Flaw Discovered In Invisibility Cloaks - aw... :( that sucks.

SETI To Release Data To the Public - the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence tries crowd-sourcing... cool ^^

And there you have it, another week, another post. Tune in next week: Same geek time, same geek place.

-Odd

"You know what they call a quarter-pounder in France?"

The Large Hadron Collider does it's thing

Yesterday saw the greatest moment in science since Einstein came up with general relativity... did you notice? I guess not, so here's the lowdown:

The worlds largest particle collider the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) has it's first full power collision yesterday, and it was successful. They've been accelerating some light beams around the gigantic machine for the last few months, reaching 99.99% the speed of light... hard to grasp that sort of figure, isn't it? An article over at the Sydney Morning Herald equates the energy of this light beam with a train traveling at 144km/h .... Let me say that again... a beam of light that will hit you as hard as a train.

With the experiments run off this collision, Scientists are exploring what the universe was like at the moment of the big bang, hopefully providing us with a better understanding of how our reality works and finding the elusive God Particle that is supposed to give mass to everything.

So... no black holes, no giant crater in Europe.... it all turned out well, despite the court cases and miscellaneous doom mongering.

On another topic, I challenge all of you to click through to the link in the news section called Fixing Reality with Online Games. This is a truly exceptional program... and one I hope we can all get behind. Do it! It's good karma.

In the News:

First Anti-Cancer Nano-particle Trial on Humans a Success - tiny machines designed to hunt down and kill cancer cells... how cool is THAT?

Fixing Reality with Online Games - What can I say? This could very well save us all from ourselves... READ IT!!!!!!!!

Hubble Builds 3D Dark Matter Map - Our first detailed schematic of the universe?

A Samsung Robot In Every Home By 2020? - How South Korea is getting it right... a lesson for all of us in SA perhaps?

Zero carbon, zero waste city being built in Abu Dhabi - an ambitious project that I'm fully in support of. Great thinking.

Australia reveals prototype 'bionic' eye - History is going to look back at this century as the century of the cyborg... very cool.

Study shows chocolate reduces blood pressure and risk of heart disease - I can already hear you saying, "see, I TOLD you it was good for you".

...And there we have it, another week, another post. Hope you enjoyed it.

-Odd

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality" - Albert Einstein

 

Facing Eternity

It might not be immediately noticeable, but modern medicine has greatly increased the human life span. Sure the most drastic extension is available only to the privileged minority, but even the lower classes have benefited greatly advancements in treatment and medication.

Doctors and researchers aren't the type to just sit back, so medical science is always pushing the envelope further, developing or adapting all the cutting edge technologies from robotics to material science. What does this mean for us? Well, because the rate of technological advancement is exponential, there will come a time when treatments can stave off death long enough for the next technology to be developed, which will keep people alive until the next one, and the next, and the next. The end result? Immortality.

I'm not talking about cutting peoples heads off and getting struck by lightning, being bullet proof or completely immune to disease, but the fact is that death from aging will become (for some) a thing of the past. How we adopt these technologies is, however, a completely different question.

Any new technology always starts it's commercial life as an exclusive product. Only the richest people can afford the huge price tag associated with the cutting edge, but because capitalism runs best on the volume game, new technology quickly becomes old technology and gets cheaper and cheaper. So, we start off with a elitist class of immortals... but pretty soon everyone can afford it... then what?

Do we allow anyone and everyone to walk through the eons? It's been shown that the lower we go on the social scale, the more children we have. What happens when we've got 300, 400 years worth of fertility? The earth is already overpopulated with people that barely scrape a century of life... I doubt it can cope with an immortal population that breeds and acts as we do.

What I find exciting, worrying and scary is that the Longevity Turning Point is not as far away as you'd think... I've read articles that posit it in the next 50-100 years... thats us or our children as humanity's first immortal generation... and I, for one, don't think we're ready for it.

Don't believe me? Go ahead, Google it...

In The News:

Caltech Makes Flexible, 86% Efficient Solar Arrays - Finally! we can kick escom out the house.

Chilean Earthquake Shortened Earth's Day - not by much... but I hadn't thought it could have such a global effect.

Long-distance quantum communication - getting that much closer to reality. This is a very important technology for our plans for space travel... communication that doesn't take days, months or years to reach other planets? Brilliant.

Skinput turns your arm into a touchscreen - this is COOL! watch the video.

One in four Germans wants microchip under skin - very interesting poll done in Germany... raises all sorts of ethical/anthropological questions.

Your Personal Memory Device - brain scans, networking and data-centers could turn us all into perfect recall, telepathic cyborgs... I'd sign up.

The World's First Commercially Available Jet-pack - watch out for those Nazi's (5 points to anyone who gets this reference)

Google's Computing Power Refines Translation - getting closer to a perfect universal translator... awesome.

New Phone Allows Bosses To Snoop On Staff - whoa... I REALLY don't like this... too Orwellian for me.

Work's been heavy this week... hence the late week post... but there it is, hope you enjoyed it.

-Odd

"Who wants, To live, Forever...."

 

Hello, my name is Odd and I'm a bibliophile

I recently bought the 25th anniversary edition of David Gemmel's masterpiece Legend (and, being the raging geek that I am, bought one for my gorgeous girlfriend so that she has to read it too ^^), and it got my thinking on my reading habits.

I'm not a huge fan of non-fiction (besides textbooks, i don't touch it) or even real world fiction, my textual consumption consists entirely of Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction... and some people have a problem with that. It would never have crossed my mind that some would find my reading habits frivolous and wasteful, but I spend a fair amount of time reading in coffee shops and I'm often randomly accosted (usually by business types) asking why I'm wasting me time reading whichever novel I happen to be engrossed in.

Usually I just send them politely on their way... they're much to busy and self important to actually listen to any sort of rational (which begs the question, how do they have time to give me greif?), but occationally I do put down the book, set aside the caffinated ambrosia and try educate the unwashed masses.

I think that Heroic Fantasy and even more so Science Fiction are the most important genres that the combined genius of humanity produces. Heroic Fantasy (the good ones at least) open and expand the mind to a degree that non-fiction and real world fiction just can't match. It introduces us to ideas, worlds and situations that (while not physically possible in this reality) mirror, exemplify and extrapolate everything in the world around us.

Science Fiction is an even greater necessity for the modern world. Every piece of technology, scientific theory and every gadget that has integrated so seamlessly into our lives were (at very least) influenced by the work of a SciFi writer. They are the true visionaries of our age, and we can only benefit from tapping into their genius.

So, next time you're in a book store... be expansionist in your thinking: visit the Fantasy/Sci-Fi section... and if you happen to see me in a coffee shop, brain deep in a novel bigger and more complicated than a V2 rocket manual, have a thought before wrenching me back to reality to tell me I'm wasting my time.

In the News:

Europe's LHC To Run At Half-Energy Through 2011 - The LHC is still a long way from full operation.

Dune Remake Could Mean 3D Sandworms - Hope they do a good job on this one, it's one of the greatest Sci-Fi series ever written.

Patient presumed vegetative communicates via brain scan: study - I can think of nothing scarier than being stuck in my own head with no way to communicate... thankfully, science is making progress.

Stanford's robotic Audi to brave Pikes Peak without a driver (w/ Video) - Self driving cars are getting closer and closer

Carbon Based Chips May One Day Replace Silicon Transistors - A new technology that could keep Moore's Law going.

Hello Robotnaut: Nasa, GM introduce latest humanoid robot - NASA joining the race with this cool new robot.

Artificial intelligence: Can AI crack the conundrum of consciousness? - a great article on AI, how it's evolving and how it can tell us about ourselves.

Virus-Detecting "Lab On a Chip" Developed At BYU - great medical breakthroughs with nano-tech

Google Shooting For Smartphone Universal Translator - totally SciFi technology from my favorite evil corporation.

New Material Transforms Car Bodies Into Batteries - a new meta-material that could change the automotive industry and go a long way to making all our lives the little bit greener.

And there you have it, another week of looking into the excuse I call a mind. ^^ hope you enjoyed it.

-Odd

“Never violate a woman, nor harm a child. Do not lie, cheat or steal. These things are for lesser men. Protect the weak against the evil strong. And never allow thoughts of gain to lead you into the pursuit of evil. Never back away from an enemy. Either fight or surrender. It is not enough to say I will not beevil. Evil must be fought wherever it is found.” - The Iron Code of Druss