www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/prod/robo/LEDLightEmitterandDetector7-31-07.pdf

As I recall they did buy the company that developed the "ZCam" 3D camera. But then they went with another technology entirely with the Kinect.
(ZCam used time of flight, Kinect uses structured light)

It can't be a fraction of the cost ! If it's too cheap then obviously it's medication that won't work and you just counter-placedboed your placebo effect :(

I agree, these number are meaningless. It doesn't make any sense to compare the energy in the LHC to the energy of a car, so I felt such a question called for an answer that doesn't make any sense either :)

I'm not a particle physicist so I have no idea what I'm talking about but:
Once two protons collide (with enough energy) they pretty much explode into their quark components (plus probably gamma rays but whatever), so I don't see how you could have more than two protons colliding in a row ... and there shouldn't be a three+ "simultaneous" protons collision since it's not like they all converge to a single spot, they are shot in beams (or they couldn't be guided) so two protons that could collide have to be on the same trajectory, you can't have two or three trajectories intersecting.

And about a MBH as someone posted above us one resulting even from a 3 or more proton collision would have such a small radius that it would be a looooooooong time before it can swallow anything, which wouldn't increase its size much, and it would again wait a looooooong time to satisfy its hunger, and the sun would be out before it becomes a real threat to the planet.

^ again, IANAPP, nfi what I'm talking about.

Kinetic energy released by two protons colliding at the LHC: 14 TeV = 14*10^12 eV = 2.24*10^(-6) J
Kinetic energy released by two 1 metric ton cars at 90 km/h (56 mph): 2*0.5*m*v^2 = 2*0.5*1000*(90*1000/3600)^2 = 6.25*10^5 J

(2.24*10^(-6)) / (6.25*10^5) = 3.6*10^(-12)

The LHC packs roughly 1 000 000 000 000 LESS energy than a car collision.

For the kind of applications they suggest, the monitoring of various biological parameters, they could have them displayed as "meters" (my blood sugar is 3 bars ! yay the same as my cell phone) in the peripheral vision, that would still be readable I think; when you want to clearly see it you would "click" or whatever on a navigation device to bring it to the center of the field of view. Imagine your FOV surrounded by a ring of icons that you could bring to front using an ipod-like wheel !
When displaying something like a webpage I suppose you could use again a navigation device (trackpad/touchpad in the middle of the wheel ?) to center the interesting part of the document. I would suck for movies or pictures though.