I'm waiting for them to get artificial-mussle technology right.
If you can make fabrics which stretch or compress under current, you should be able to make much more streamlined "enhancement suits"
(wouldn't be an exo-skeletons so much as an exo-skin)


Wait...whoa....CYBERDYNE?! Their company is called frecking Cyberdyne...and they make exoskeltions...err.....this better be a joke.

And the suit is called HAL, so it only means the Japanese nerd that founded it is a sci-fi fan without an imagination ;). It's strictly non military though, so no worries, medical purpose only.

If there's no copyright issues, then it's a pretty good publicity stunt. Sort of like "Wii".

hows that going?

Absolutely shitloads of pictures;
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/imageCategories.php

Nothing particularly interesting though except, imo these two;
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/image...gID=833&cID=24
(360 view)
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/image...gID=831&cID=24
(silly names for nearby rocks)

They had a communication glitch with one of the satalites orbiting, but its going fine now.

oh..surrrreeee...thats what they say at first :p

What's HAL?
Anyway, suit should have been called HEV :p

@CF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000

Might as well post it here.
Apple has been caught filming their new ad at the 5th Avenue Store in New York.
Apparently they're filming the new 3G iPhone.

You can read more about it on the AppleInsider or on TheiLife Blog

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/2..._under-427.jpg

Phoenix update ; They think that might be ice right under the darn thing!
They are taking colour photos soon to help confirm.

I wonder if in case they actually find something significant they'll release the findings to the public, or just keep it to themselves.

Well, the pictures (as far as we can tell) go up online pretty much within hours of them being downloaded. Even before they are completely examained.
If you look at the pages for the rovers, theres thousands of images..both the raw images and the processed ones.
I guess Phoenix will be the same.
Not that it would be impossible for them to keep something to themselfs, but the gap would be obviously. They would have to cover it with a system fault or something, and that would involve basically all the staff there in on it.

I believe there is something in the American law that if they have found alien life-forms, they will not release it to the public.

This is really a step forward with this robot.

There's a law that enforces conspiracy?

No :p otherwise all the conspiracy theories would just use that as extra proof :p

Actually, I can vaguely remember something like that, that the US government has the "right" to withold information like that from the public, in case they think it would cause major panic.

Not surprising. But it's wrong that it's legal to do it.

I have mixed feelings about it, do you remember the movie Contact? I think that's exactly what would happen, every religious nut job would raise his/hers voice about humans being the only ones made by God and yadda, yadda, yadda. Of course it is not fair to decide for everyone, whether or not they are ready, but imagine we do have guests, would you like to be ashamed of all those people? Or would it be best to select a delegation of people with the most appropriate background? And then, when we conquered war and hunger and illiteracy and superstition, slowly release the information. And show new finds of more and more complex life in the universe, so that at some point, intelligent life won't be such a shock.

Sounds bloody unfair to me, but also sounds very reasonable...

Well, in any even vagualy reaslistic scenaro we would have a huuuugggggeee period....possibly centurys...of communication before physical contact.
So I believe freedom of information is in all partys best interest.
I would want anyone we have contact with to see both sides of humanity.
For however bad we have been, its far worse not to be honest about it!

Besides, anytime science/fact comes into conflict with religious belief the same things happen. Either;
a) They pretend their belief fitted this all along, and its more evidence to support their viewpoint. ("See, how unlikely is it that there would be *two* inteligent lifeforms in the universe?! Thats twice as impossible as one! That prooves a God!")
b) They denigh it, calling it a conspiracy (see; evolution)

There might be a c) group of nutjobs that use it as an excuse to do stupid things. But that group is grossly outnumbered by a and b, and would have done stupid things for stupid reasons anyway.
For the most part though, I think its just a period of shock, adjustment, then back to buisness as usual.

I seriously doubt interstellar communication via radio is even possible like that. How great and wide a radio wave "beam" would have to be to actually "hit" some planet? Even if you point it at some star, becouse of gravity warping light you might not even be pointing in the right direction. We might send a signal, yeah, if we make an energy equivalent of a pulsar...

It's either some not yet developed faster then light communication, or a real encounter with a species capable of space travel.

Ok, first:
"Intelligent life form"? What exactly, is your definition of intelligent life form? You're worried about the possibility that we would encounter "aliens" from the Homo ancestry? Because if they're not from the Homo ancestry, their brain is likely to work entirely differently from ours. In other words: I think "Mars Attacks!" is more of a comedy than a science fiction.

Secondly: Major panic is really not that bad. A small group controlling the rest of the population is far more dangerous.

It's America you're talking about...

No offence DJ or Lightwing...

It isn't really a law, but a set of guidelines that NASA supposedly follows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Report

Make of it what you will.

Wow, this mars mission is exciting in a way.. It would be more so if there was some big fore-headed aliens with massive hands and glowing brains that you can see through the head. But still, its exciting as it is now..

i was just looking at info on the mars mission on robots.net and found something about cats :

A NewScientistTech article describes new software based on the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of a cat's brain. When connected to a video camera the software responds to visual information in much the same way as the biological cat brain. The system was initially tried with simple test patterns and other artificial scenes. Later the input was actual video coming from a catcam, a small video camera mounted on a cat's head. Other test data included scenes from an animated Tarzan movie. The ultimate goal is to develop a bionic eye for humans with non-functional optic nerves. The sensor would be able to directly stimulate the brain's LGN, bypassing the eye and optic nerves. This research is being done at Carandini Lab of the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute. More information can be found on the lab's Predicting visual responses webpage.

now owuldnt it be cool to understand a cats thoughts :p

Depends how densely packed the universe is.
Radiowaves could certainly go a hundred light years or so in a spherical shape. (they go out in a spherical shape by default).
It really depends how sensative the recieving equipment is. If the aliens have something like the radio-satalite arrays we have, or better, its possible.
If however it goes to far it just blends in with the background noise of the universe.

As "Contact" points out, the first impression aliens will get of us is probably going to be Adulf Hitler. (first major satalite broadcast)

A targeted direction can probably go much much further...and theres other methods possible too...comminication ver beams of light is still closer to our current tech then any faster-the-light travel.

My guess is first there has to be some sort of "We are here" becon, either by us or them.
Once we know where they are, it will be comminication in some form before physical contact.
Even if theres some easy, very fast, method of physical movement we dont know..it will still be easier to move robotic probes then living-creature carrying ships.
So any species that high-tech would, I assume, send probes out in all directions first.