You could say the same thing about the Hanso Foundation, back at the day ;)

oh, I still do.
Hanso is a source of goodness in this world.

Not like Widmore corp...

Good, but I dont see why we cant just use Network cable to connect everything to everything else these days.

yeah, that would make more sense -
*same speed
*makes shared network drives/printers easy
*no drivers for each seperate device
*quite a lot of people already have a 1gb/s card (my laptop does)

Maybe it's just more expensive?


edit--
ethernet doesn't give power to devices.

Scientists found a new (extinct) species of humans, and named it "Hobbit" (link 2)

Well, they're either too big fans, bored or just can't think of proper names. :p

Saw that on TV ages ago...

They only found 1 IIRC

They say in the articles there's like twelve of them or eleven or shit.

Anyway, as long as I'm concerned, the Neanderthals are Orcs, the Gigantopithecus are "giants" etc. We all lived together at some point, and that's where all the legends came from. Must've been a magical world once.

Dinosaur bones probably gave us the legions of dragons.

OMG!!!

That's amazingly awesomely AMAZiNG. And Awesome.

I can't wait to be in space.

I think I'm gonna live in a space station someday, someplace with a nice view of the stars. And no gravity. I loathe gravity.

Indeed, gravity is a killer.

Lack of gravity is a killer too, mind. (weak bones).
Probably less then earth is good within reason, but not none at all.

Id like good-old 9.8 when I want to sleep.

Dubia is planning one too, I hear.
Richard Brason is also looking for spots in England.

Not sure what will truely be "first". (by which I mean, really operating rather then just one off tests)

http://www.physorg.com/news109425896.html

Yay! More Augmented Reality :)
Our future gets closer and closer.

That's so cool! I always wanted to do that. Guess soon enough I'll be able to :D

Heh, untill it can be coupled with a real holographic display, my interest in "augmented reality" will remain small. Merging the border of "real" with the "unreal" is not something I would like to see done without clear borders.

As a work tool? Awesome |)

You can keep it on 70% opacity. Sounds good enough?

Well, actually... no. I'd like it to say out of my head :p, hence the holographic display - I would love to have sculptures shaped with a wave of my hand etc. tough. As long as they are "real" to some extent, not an illusion in my head, or only for my eyes.

What's the big difference? The main difference is, AR is a lot less expensive to make.

The big difference is, I wouldn't have the mental comfort of being 100% sure where the border is.

Imagine, let's say, that you have a chip, that imprints the augmented reality into what you perceive as reality, and someone places a virus in your head, that creates a scenario in wich you find an ill treated animal, care for it, nurse it to health etc. and then the virus makes it die horribly, and then shows you in some very direct and cruel way, that it was a fantasy - how would that make you feel? It would be like mental terrorism.

There's no way something like that could happen when you know exactly where the border is, and I think I wouldn't participate in a social experiment like the fool implementation of the augmented reality, simply becouse of my own mental comfort.

And furthermore, life brings enough mental problems, to create new ones, like not knowing what is real anymore.

Of course it's a long way to that, and as long as it's a stationary pair of goggles, or a holographic display, used for art rather then normal life activities - I don't mind it, and even would really like to try it out.

Of course I would prefer to have it a hologram, so that I could set up my creation somewhere, for every human/animal/whatever to see and hear. Couse art should be widespread, for all to see, and not just restricted to those owning a pair of stereo goggles or some brain implants or whatever.

But holograms also aren't real.

What do you mean? They will be a visible 3dimensional object that you can see becouse it has some sort of a substance (you don't consider a rainbow not real right? And it's just an optic "illusion") , not something created in your head, or in some goggles.

I still don't understand your phobia :p

AR seems like a natural progression of display technology. It can actually enhance your senses if you use it the right way. (By senses I mean, sensing the real world around you)

sounds like drugs, the way you put it...

:D :D
Well, I'm sure it will be.
But less so then Video games and the Intenet.

At least with AR you get out the house, and its real people you are interacting with :p
===
Augmented Reality dosnt have to be 100% solid anyway. (in fact, thats very hard to achieve).

Making AR completely indistingishable from reality is a dream.

The reality will be things 99.9% the same, but slightly transparent and misplaced.

The very idea of being scared of "misplaceing reality" is so far in front of the tech its crazy :p

Its much like the fear of tiny self-replaciateing machines eating the planet. Cool in a sci-fi way, and theres some great stories you could right, but so far from whats possible that is just silly to dissmiss amazing real world applications of the tech.

Contradictory statement really.

The fact that Art should be for all too see is precisely why it should be googles. (or, I hope, comfortable glass's).
Else your limiting it too one room, one area.

Sure, the glass's cost, but so would access to any room or area. (or even if its free, travel to that area). Also, having AR restricted to an area removes 75% of the practical uses for it.

And even if we could "project the world" so no one needs glass's, it would be a mess!

It would be like having every IRC channel open at once :D


Still, cost is a concern.
I see AR as being as important as the car, or internet in the long run.
It will probably start expensive, then get cheaper.
Componant wise, a couple of OLEDs, cpus, motion sensors, WiFi and GPS should cost the same as a laptop once production has scaled up.

Naturely though, there will be high-end and low-end models, and various degrees of realism, and resolution blah blah blah.
After awhile though, it really wont mater.
Most users will be perfectly fine and functional with the lowest models. (just like with PC's today)

Earth in 250 million years.

If of course, the expanding earth theory is complete bollocks :p.

So awesome! It can be used to, like, put street cleaners out of job and stuff.

But I bet it'd be used as a military weapon first.

Yeah, that new version of Asimo is amazingly impressive.
Supprised they havnt gone into mass production yet :p
(or, well, batch at least, there must be plenty of good applications even how it is at the moment)

For me, this video is just another proof that all sci-fi eventually turn into just sci-.

Well, I don't know about an army application, a robot like that is extremely vulnerable to enemy fire, it moves slowly on all terrain.

The "mule" would be something I'd be counting more to be used by the army.

Asimo is very cool but I have to say it must be prohibitively expensive. It is a bit freaky watching it run mind - very lifelike

oh, sure, its extremely expensive.
But its more expensive to develop then actual create.
So you would have thought there would be a market for at least 100-1000 worldwide.

this asimo robot is very impressing, but...
i wonder why so much time and effort is invested into a robot doing jobs,
that every human could do better. i mean this is not some kind of study trying to push the limit of technological possibilities. they want to sell this thing.
i read that the japanese are counting on such "social" robots to avoid immigration.. instead of overcoming their irrational attitude towards immigration, the japanese rather try to imitate the human body: a machine they cannot reproduce with 10000 more years of engineering. sorry but that's just stupid.

robots are useful where they can do the job better than humans. they can enter dangerous areas, they can fly into space and they work more accurate and less error-prone. but these are not the tasks asimo is designed for.

All tools are designed for humans, same for buildings, button and switch placing, keyboards etc. Now, to develop a robot, that would be able to do dangerous and tedious jobs, that require mostly repetition, the only logical course of action is to do a human-like robot.

Seriosuly, there is no point in people doing meaningless jobs, like cleaning the sewers, emptying the trash, doing simple repairs, maintenance etc.

With more and more sophisticated robots, we could create an environment in which humans can concentrate on more creative jobs.

Saying it will put people out of work is just pure scare-talk, machines in factories did, in the beginning put people out of work yes, but in the long run, we can't see people protesting on machines in factories, and the unemployment rate does not climb becouse of the use of robots! It lets people do less tedious, more self-expressing jobs that push the society into higher and higher levels.

Asimo is just a step, so that money can be made, to produce more sophisticated machines, that could take care of more complicated and dangerous jobs.

Jase - I agree, well, there's nothing to disagree with. (and btw, I didn't mean it seriously when I said "put streetcleaners out of job". not on the bad sense anyway)

we're talking about a robot replacing humans in social contexts. we're not talking about a cleaning robot. we're talking about a robot that -by all means- tries to imitate a human.
that's something different. as i've written: robots can excel in jobs where they work better than a human. but you won't deny that being a human is still best done by humans, isn't it?

What Jasiek said is that making robots human-y is good for PR and for future fund rising to build more functional robots, if I understood correctly.

These might be great for working in caves, they have very strong arms I assume (Or have I watched to much futurama :(?), and they can just be dug out if the cave is collapsed, or at least they don't die like humans do.

And of course other dangerous jobs, such as taking down plutonium to the core or something .

So I guess you find a receptionists job a very fulfilling one? Or bringing coffee to people? Or being an interactive tourist information?

For jobs like these a robot IS best suited! Of course it needs an interface easy to cope with, and an imitation of human behavior is the best and the most intuitive interface you can think of.

I don't really see anything scary in that. It will relieve humans of tedious jobs.

If you could even buy a robot like that, and then have it work for you - now that would be great.

Ok, you two have a little Ms. Understanding.

Jasiek says: "Robots are not replacing humans, they are helping humans."

Onmi says: "Robots will be more functional if they will not imitate humans."

See? You both AGREE.

Well actually no... A human like interaction interface will be least time-consuming when ordering the robot to perform tasks, also a some degree of intelligence will also save time when forming the order.

Wouldn't a weasel like interface be better? Or a seagull? Or a bigfoot?

The first would give you the rabids, the second would steal your fish, and the third stomp you to death, run away when spotted, leave singled out footprints all over, and leave fur on the trees.

Absolutely right.
As human society evolves, it should take less and less humans to do essential jobs, leaving more of humanity to do creative/interesting fun things.

This already has happened over the last few years.
Now just a (relative) handfull of humans can feed the rest of society, when it used to be shitloads of people slaving away in fields.

Human-like robots are simply a good design for a world designed around humans. (staircase's, cars, ect...if we want mass-produced flexible robots, rather then specific ones for certain jobs, then the human shape "fits" the world we have made)

By deffinition, yes.
But thats the whole point.
While theres loads of practical applications for robots, the challange of replicating ourselfs artifialy is what draws so much researchers.
We learn lots of insites into so many aspexs of how humans work by trying to reproduce them, but thats not the point. The point is all about the challange :)

My only worry is more the side of AI development.
With evolutionary principles and nural-nets one day I think one day we could well create truely sentient AI's. I belief the creation of another lifeform is one of the most wonderfull things our species could do.
My only fear is we would abuse our creation. Asimovs 3-laws of robots has one law I dont like. The 2nd. Why should they obay humans?
I would hope if we ever get that far we have the forsite to define them as a creature into themselfs.

So, in many ways, Id rather that AI research and "robot research" are kept a bit seperate. We need dumb robots a lot more then smart ones in some ways :p

Ok, folks, remember that cool resize technology?

Try it online;

http://rsizr.com/
:)

Cool! It actually works.

What is so good with it? It can resize good?