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POPS10 Most Brilliant Gadgets Of 2008 Popular Mechanics announced its picks for the 2008 Breakthrough Awards awards in what the publication called The 10 Most Brilliant Gadets of the Year. Here's the list of international winners; you may be surprised at the gadgets on the list.
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POPS Robots and Humans: Intel say equal by 2050
Robots: From the Factory Floor to Your Kitchen - Robots today are primarily used in the factory environment, designed to perform a single task repeatedly and bolted down. To make robotics personal, robots need to move and manipulate objects in cluttered and dynamic human environments, according to Rattner. They need to be cognizant of their surroundings by sensing and recognizing movement in a dynamic physical world, and learn to adapt to new scenarios. Rattner demonstrated two working personal robot prototypes developed at Intel’s research labs. One of the demonstrations showed electric field pre-touch that has been built into a robot hand. The technique is a novel sensing modality used by fish but not humans, so they can “feel” objects before they even touch them. The other demonstration was a complete autonomous mobile manipulation robot that can recognize faces and interpret and execute commands as generic as “please clean this mess” using state-of-the-art motion planning, manipula
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POPSGordon Moore's Next Act The man behind Moore's Law is tackling biodiversity, the future of engineering education, and the secrets of the galaxies
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POPSUS Intel: Iranian nuclear strike on U.S. ?
“The only explanation we can find is that Iranians are figuring out how to launch a missile from a ship and get it up to altitude and then detonate it,” “And that’s exactly what you would do if you had a nuclear weapon on a Scud or a Shahab-3, and you wanted to explode it over the US.” "If a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between 40 kilometers to 400 kilometers above the earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure" Asked how many Americans would die if Iran were to launch the EMP attack it appears to be preparing, Graham gave a chilling reply. “You have to go back into the 1800s to look at the size of population” that could survive in a nation deprived of mechanized agriculture, transportation, power, water, and communication. “70 to 90 percent of the population would not be sustainable after this kind of attack”.
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POPSWhat waterboarding looks like Note that waterboarding was not created to elicit "actionable" intelligence, but rather was perfected a means of eliciting confessions, truthful or not. Anyone who believes these techniques are keeping Americans safer is a little too trusting. Also see this clip .
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POPSFacts Don't Impress Bush What an ignorant, biased, bigoted, ideologue. Do you people still want to elect a President that you could sit down and "have a beer with"?
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POPS"I am awed by the scale of social change this stuff represents." More: Imagine a science fiction story written 50 years ago like Written 50 years ago, this would be radical left-wing speculation, right? As would a straight description of, say, an office party where I work. The research, management, and support staff a wild mix of different races and sexes? Female mathematicians and engineers and scientists doing lots of the research and work? Half the staff East or South Asian or Latin American, and a good fraction of the US-born staff black? C'mon--that crap will never happen, that's like something out of science fiction.
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POPSHow Computers boot up This extensive 3-part post focuses on the linux booting process, from motherboard & chipset to the bootloader & kernel booting process.
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POPSElectronic paper company receives $100 million funding That's some serious money, looks like the age of e-paper may actually be near. From Plastic Logic's site... "The thinness, lightness and robustness enabled by the flexibility of Plastic Logic’s displays will, at last, enable electronic reader products that are as comfortable and natural to read as paper whether at the beach, in a train or relaxing on the sofa at home."
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POPSMore ignorance about Canada from US Officials Read the entire article. People like Napolitano believe that myths about Canada are true, when the truth is that Canada's border regulations are more rigorous than those of the US. No 9/11 terrorists came across the Canadian border; they all arrived at American entry points with American documentation. No successful terrorist in the US has come from Canada. In the few cases where people intent on causing terror in the US came from Canada (Like the failed "Millennium Bomber"), those people were stopped with help from intel from the Canadian RCMP. This paranoia about Canada being a launching point for terrorists in America needs to stop. It's untrue, and it's damaging a relationship that was already deeply damaged by George Bush. Americans don't want to get on the bad side of Canadians; after all, the vast majority of the US's Energy Imports come from Canada; especially petroleum.
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POPSLife 2.0. A fascinating article of what seems to be near future breakthrough that will radically change the course of human existence. The line between science and science fiction seems to become ever thinner
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POPSKremlin Unleashes "Mafia-on-Steroids" Style Chechen Thugs ........continued........ to disband the unit. The generals refused. At the time, their stubborn support for the outlaw Yamadaev Brothers seemed baffling - a quiet Chechnya was a longstanding Russian goal. But last week, it all made sense: Putin's military, which had been planning the invasion of Georgia for many months, intended to unleash the worst criminals in uniform it had on the Georgian people. Why? Two reasons: First, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants the Georgians to suffer - to really suffer. And Chechens are the world's subject-matter experts in atrocities. Second, this gives the Russian army itself a veil of deniability: When Putin's spokesmen insist that the Russian military isn't involved in the worst savagery in Georgia, they're technically telling the truth (if we don't count air attacks and artillery bombardments), since the Chechen thugs on their payroll are on the job.
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POPSThe FBI is watching on Twitter and responding It shouldn’t be surprising that our government is monitoring Twitter and other social networking sites. This type of communication is a ‘near perfect’ match to what Big Brother dreams of using to check the pulse of our nations mood. One way to make it perfect for them is if they knew exactly who was behind the masks, i.e., the online names and avatars. Another way would be if everyone used social media sites, but they don’t, so they rely on telco’s to monitor us. I find it interesting that, as one commenter stated, a corporation, in this case Allstate Insurance, intercepted a complaint against their company and responded to the complainant on behalf of Allstate. It would not surprise me to learn that political parties would gather intel from these sites to formulate plans on how to structure their next campaign.
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POPSBushco wrote war pitch BEFORE knowing intel National Security Archive reports the Bush-Cheney White paper "justifying" the invasion was developed a full three months in advance of the intelligence data and analysis that should have served as the basis for that justification; then doctored NIE report to agree with their own White Paper. Only imminent threat mentioned was the possibility of Iraqi terrorism in USA if Saddam regime was threatened - but Bushco deleted it before giving the report to Congress.
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