Without apologizing for the delay...

More news important to your future.

KurzweilAI.net Is my sister publication in a way, though I didn't discover it untill after I began this blog. A post references a New Scientist article describing new miniscule sensors that change their shape to move in the harsh Martian environment. This seems a logical step towards the possibility of nanoscale exploration of the universe.

Engadget posts a video uploaded to youtube by IBM. Big Blue apparently has some interesting ideas for the future of computing. My guess is that it wouldn't take more than three years to see this stuff ubiquitous in the market if there was enough push for it. Voice recognition at this level is doable today and the wireless technologies for the purposes demonstrated are in production. The only thing in between is software and hardware development.

Physorg.com posts an article on the Gravity Probe-B experiment, giving a thorough explanation of how the new experiment works.

Another post describes the studies scientists have done to discover the genes associated with learning and memory. Not only have they identified the genes involved, they've also made this database availible and searchable, making use of this knowledge much more efficient.

Yet another describes the current state of plastic solar panel technology and how it will soon be cost-effective to deploy.

Two more articles were posted on KurzweilAI.net in rapid fire, researchers are hard at work enabling printers to make electronics and bones from scratch. Add these to the list including plastic, chocolate, cake icing, metal, ceramics, paper, and soon organs. This is personally one of my favorite disruptive technologies. Being able to make your own stuff is what seperates people from large corporations.


Breaking with my usual trend of just the news that matters in the long run, I'd like to put in a quick shot to Swaptree, described in this DownloadSquad post. It's a new web2.0 beta that works like Ebay, only you trade items rather than buy them. They finally approved my application and I made my first trade yesterday, my copy of "Rayman: Raving Rabbids" for Stephen Hawking's "Illustrated Theory of Everything". I'll let you know when it comes in.


That's it for the moment, but I've got some news to browse for the pest of the day and you may see another post by monday.

Space, politics, computers... all that sort of stuff.

Here we go, another post in not too many days. I'll use up to my backlogged news eventually.

The DailyTech blog reports that IBM has developed a new vertical stacking method for computer chips. Most modern integrated circuits are all sketched onto a single plane, but by expanding upwards, they allow much more processing power to be contained in less real estate. The downside being that there is less surface area to dissapate heat, requiring more complex cooling systems.

Physorg.com is running an article about the development of a new telescope. This telescope is similar to the very large array in Arizona, with the notable exception that it is an optical-, rather than a radio-telescope. This first generation tech will only have a few telescopes small working in concert, but they will have an effective aperture of dozens of meters. One can easily imagine blanketing the sky with a large array of these sometime in the future, making a telescope the size of a planet.

Also out in space, Wired reports on a Pentagon imagining of orbit-based solar farms beaming power down to the planet. Unfortunately, economics will most likely prevent it from occurring without a breakthrough in solar panel efficiency or great reduction in shipping costs to space. Fortunately, developments are working along both those lines, see the previous post or google for space elevators.

Slashdot reports that the NSA and the leaders of our executive branch are working on expanding the already broad power granted to them. Now, I'm totally not opposed to letting the president tap phones at will and do whatever he likes as long as we are granted the same power. If the NSA wants to listen in on me, let us listen in on them. It's a balance of power between the three branches of government (which is being demolished) and the state and people tha has maintained our nation for so long. Times change and the balance will shift but we have to push back so that no one leg of our five-legged table grows too long and flips us on our metaphorical backs.

An Iraqi veteran is one of 25 or so trying out a new prosthetic leg designed for above the knee amputees. The new limb acts more like a natural limb than those previous by sensing the environment and preforming the actions of calf muscles. It's being called the first bionic prosthetic for it's efficiency in acting like a regular limb, and personally, the guy looks awesome wearing it. Check out the pic through the link.

And our last article for the night, also from physorg.com, describes a new online census showing more female Americans are online than male. It's not stunning news, what with myspace, flickr, and other social and life-sharing sites popping up, it stands to reason that more persons less interested in viral video would come onboard. I guess the old meme about there being no girls on the interwebs has finally had it's coffin nailed shut.

The Weekends' News.

There’s a good deal of news today as I’ve gone the whole weekend without making an update.

Engadget reports a Computerworld article questioning the validity of banning RF devices on planes. The article reports that it’s a lot easier and cheaper to ban cell phones, Wi-Fi, and other wireless communication devices in flight than it is to independently test and certify every product. The author makes a very compelling argument: If wireless devices could take down a plane, what’s to stop terrorists from doing so? Then goes on to suggest that the lack of news reports implicating radio technology in plane crashes indicates that it is not too dangerous to ban their use completely. This is a fallacious assumption, as RF does interfere, but the possibility of the ban being intended as a crowd control measure certainly bears investigation.

Slashdot links an article in the UK Guardian describing a particularly troubling estimation of future trends made by their nation’s Ministry of Defence. Predictions include Marxism, famine, war, urbanization, climate change, and, in a slightly more hopeful note, direct mind-machine links through ‘brain chips’ by 2035. When ministry of defense of the English-speaking worlds’ oldest imperial nation makes a grim prediction, people better notice. You don’t get to be a 1040 year old nation by not changing with the times.

Disinformation links another article from the guardian describing the events of a small welsh village that’s leading the charge of sustainable habitation. Small towns like Lampeter are pioneering our energy-depleted futures. One can only hope that they’ll be able to iron out the kinks in time to start spreading their innovations to communities that use much more resources than the farming village of 4,000 residents does.

Another post on Engadget sends us to an article from ABC news. Citizens from a county in New Mexico have voted to accept an increase in sales tax to pay for the proposed spaceport. Critics of the bill think that the $198 million price tag should be left to the state, as Dona Ana county has its own problems to deal with. Supporters of the project are excited that the plan is finally moving forward, and hope the momentum of this election will sway nearby counties and the state to their side.

And for the last bit this evening, Techdirt reports that the judge in the Vonage vs Verizon patent has issued an injunction against Vonage to stop them from bringing in any new customers. This, according to the article, is the corporate equivalent of holding their head underwater. Without new customers to sustain the company, Vonage will eventually die. All this because Vonage’s VoIP system uses the technology from three of Verizon’s patents. These patents “cover technologies that deal with connection of VoIP calls to the regular phone network, some features for implementing call-waiting and voice mail services, and VoIP calls using Wi-Fi handsets.” So far, the company has been orderet to pay a $58 million fine, and post $66 million bond, the injunction would be the final nail in an airtight coffin around the already struggling company, but a recent update shows they’ve been granted a temporary stay pending appeal. These are monopoly tactics, similar to Microsoft in the past decades. Verizon is slowly eliminating Vonages’ competition using the broken patent system as a weapon of corporate destruction.