Yeah.. surely just gloves with little magnets in them would be more sensible?

I'm pretty sure Google Street View already does some of this. Browsing around, it seems to know where the sides of buildings are and let you zoom in on them.

From what I can see they're not blowing their own trumpet as much as these guys, but it can't be far away that Google Earth will have quite comprehensive 3D models of cities (Tokyo is already amazingly complete, although I don't know if that's an automatic system or not).

What about Google Reader (or any other rss reader) in Expanded Mode? Loads the first paragraph of every story, you press "j" to flick to the next one. There's no network traffic between flicking at all, so it's basically instant (well under 100ms).

I fail to spot the difference, apart from having to pay for the new one. I guess Google could break Reader, but that would be kind of evil.

Whales and flowerpots.

Disappointment is me.

So all the bots just start sending mail to their herders?

On the other hand, this could actually be a good thing - getting (immediately) financially punished for being infected with a virus might make normal users more concerned about security.

Yeah... and imagine how fast it would be if it was written using o3d!

From the Age article:

Sounds like they're trying to make it affordable, let's hope they do. I for one would really enjoy smog-free cities.

That was a very moving post.

Well, given that the planets were FORMED from colliding objects, it's not really surprising that collisions are still happening.

Yeah, but no-one can just make more gold when they feel like it.

Unlike government-backed currency.

Do you really think the USA is going to be able to pay off its national debt? I think a lot of inflation is coming for the USD, and everyone will switch to the Euro or the Chinese dollar (which will be unhitched from the USD, obviously). Someone has to pay (not with "money", but with work) for all the corporate greed we've been seeing recently, and historically it's always (eventually) been the poor or the working class. After all, who else is there?

I wonder if the RepRap guys are excited about this. This could be very good news for them, they are already trying to have the RepRap make circuits.

It seems to me the US is going the same way as Soviet Russia.

In the US, corruption kills you?

Alpha/beta/gamma waves aren't exciting at all, you can get those out of a very simple model of nonlinear D.E.s.

I'd be more interested in:
  - whether they can simulate it in real time
  - what sort of inputs and outputs it takes

Of course the biggest question is how much scope there is for it to evolve, because nothing really interesting is going to happen until we let (short-term) evolution take care of most of the designing.

Cue the overlords jokes.

My Australian university (I'm a grad student in the physics department) is ridiculously anal about safety. There are regular audits and weekly safety meetings.

It's all got something to do with much lower WorkCover insurance premiums for certified institutions.