Creepy DARPA research watch

Not even Zion will be safe when the machines take over. Here, DARPA is proposing to develop a network of sensors and satellites that will be able to generate athree-dimensional map the Earth to a depth of five kilometers. Underground cities hiding the last free vestiges of humanity will be immediately detected.


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Blech

I'm suffering from brain atrophy. My innovations at work appear to be in a stationary orbit, not landing any time soon. I haven't thought of any good new ones in a couple months.
All the issues I typically enjoy writing about are either uninteresting or are not hot topics right now.

Maybe it's the weather.

Maybe I shouldn't worry. It's not like I need to keep my page views up at 11 million a month... Perhaps I should just relax and write when I feel like writing.


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Apple vs. Google

I'm a little late up to bat on this one, but I noticed this weekend that Google seems to be doing a fine job of sweeping the legs (Cobra Kai!) out of Apple's announcements. I mentioned a couple times last week that one of the primary shortcomings of Apple's new "iPad" was the lack of flash. This severely restricts content viewable by the device, many online news sites rely heavily on flash for their site content.
The reason for this lack of flash was fairly obvious: battery life. The iPad (and iPhone) rely on AT&T's 3G network for internet connectivity in any non-wi-fi locations. 3G internet browsing chugs battery life, and so it makes sense that by restricting flash, Apple decreases by a large percentage the amount of content a website will have to download to be viewed.
Unfortunately much of the video content on the web is also streamed through flash. There is a fix on the iPhone to watch Hulu, but it requires downloading the complete video before starting to play it, as opposed to just streaming it. For now, though, Apple is hesitant to add Flash to its mobile devices.
Google, on the other hand, released Android 2.1 on the Nexus One phone. Android 2.1 carries Flash 10.1 embedded! The Android 2.1 release is expected to trickle down to the Droid in the next couple weeks. At which point, I will write an app that starts streaming video anytime an iPhone is nearby.
Also this week, Google released their first multi-touch enabled version of Google Maps for Android, which is super handy. It is expected that the 2.1 rollout of Android for the Motorola Droid may include more multitouch capabilities than the iPhone!


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The Years Go Along

And engineering continues to dominate the salary lists.


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Countdown to the New Iron Man Movie

89 Days.


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Evidence of the Decline of Civilization

Let's not prosecute a man for nearly 20 years of documented child molestation and abuse, let's never get him psychological help for deep, serious mental issues he clearly had, let's immortalize him with expensive funerary rites, let's make a movie celebrating his career, and then let's prosecute the doctor that prescribed him sedatives to help him sleep.


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Reader Rebuttal - Fusion

A reader writes to me, questioning my love of fusion power:

Name one functioning fusion power plant (other than the sun), or even a prototype. Last I heard, we're still decades away from the first one.

Let's ignore that Bussard Fusion is nearly at positive yield, the Navy is on their 8th prototype of Polywell Fusion, and that a commercial plant is conceivable within 10 years.

Instead I want to focus on the core of this argument: "technology proposed does not exist, and possibly never will. Therefore, why fund research that will develop this technology?" Obviously I am not talking about warp drives or teleporters when I say this is a crummy, cynical sort of an argument. Should Benz have ignored the idea that a motor could be strapped to an axle via transmission and power people about town in an "automobile?" Because there was a day when any transport other than a horse or train seemed wildly far-fetched. And there was a day when atoms were the smallest things in the known universe. Should we have pulled funding on atomic structures, just because no one had yet proven that electrons and protons existed?

Teleportation, or faster-than-light travel, are topics I can understand cynicism because they require clear and concise violations of the laws of known physics. But right now I am writing this post near a window and that window has photons coming through it, sent here from a giant fusion reactor 8 light-minutes away, and somehow that fusion reactor is stable and continues to power the solar system. So its not like "fusion" is an impossible dream of science fiction. It's right outside, every day.
And it's not even that humans have never achieved fusion of their own. Although early nuclear weapons only achieved fission, many modern thermonuclear devices depend on fusion reactions inside their warhead for their intense destructive power.
And how often in history has a fundamental physical property/technology been first harnessed for war, and then tweaked for peace? Just think of jet engines...first developed at the end of World War II, and now innocuously used on thousands of passenger planes every day to ferry people about. But was there a time when jet engines, and planes in general, seemed impossibly far-fetched and a waste of government research dollars? Certainly. Aren't we glad that the naysayers weren't the ones with the final say?


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