Cuz We Said So

Should A Dome Cover Houston?

Well first, let me answer that for you.  YES! 

Those people who know me well know I am not a fan of Houston weather, though I’ve lived here off and on for many years.  I hate… and I mean hate the heat.  The humidity is worse.  I’ve joked more than once that I’d welcome summer in Houston as soon as somebody stuck a dome over it and fired up some air conditioning.

You know, though, guys… I was actually just joking. 

KPRC 2 Houston:

It seems like an idea from science fiction, a comic book, or even The Simpsons movie -- a 21 million-square-foot dome encompassing a city and insulating it from hurricanes, humidity, and heat. The Discovery Channel program Mega Engineering recently explored the possibility of a dome that would stretch out over downtown. It would be made out of Ethylene Tetrofluoro-ethylene or ETFE -- a light, durable material that withstand winds up to 180 mph, which is well above the speed for a Category 5 hurricane. …Air vents would regulate the temperature and massive doors would allow transportation in and out of the structure.

Bottom line: possible, but probably not for another fifty years.  Crap!

Can software make older drivers sharper?

Maybe… but I don’t think we know yet.  SFGate:

Earlier this year, a car ran a red light at an intersection in Pittsburgh and narrowly missed smashing into the driver's side of W. Larocca's car.

Larocca, 57, was able to stop in time. He believes what saved him was the 40 minutes a day he spent using brain fitness software that supposedly improves reaction time and peripheral vision.

The program was part of an experiment run by Allstate Insurance and Posit Science, a San Francisco software startup.

"I was thinking it was just like the (software) game," he said, remembering his near-miss. "I was looking straight ahead - I didn't expect this car on the left. I can't prove it, but I'm 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't taken the course, I would have been hit."

…Although it's not clear how effective these programs are, interest is growing in this type of software, which is evolving rapidly. Some firms are attracting venture capital. USA Hockey last year signed a partnership to develop brain fitness software for its players, and the Army is using it to screen soldiers before they're deployed.

The article’s headline is actually “Software designed to make older drivers sharper.”  The emphasis in the headline should really be on “designed to”, because we don’t know yet (at least, from the information provided in the article) whether the software works.  It would appear there is more work to do on the science before we can draw conclusions.  I am always of two minds when I see a report like this, on research for which results are not yet available.  On one hand, it is interesting that such studies are underway, and it would be of great benefit if it turns out such software can be effective.  On the other hand, I suspect there are a great many people who will see this article who don’t have much grounding in how scientific research works.  How many people will reach the headline, not read the article, and think “huh, they have software now that can make older driver’s sharper!”  How long before there are unscrupulous entrepreneurs out there selling software that claims to do this very thing?  Indeed, while I have not investigated, I would not be surprised to learn such software is already out there.  (I am assuming, though I don’t know for sure, that the popular games out there along these lines are clearly identified as games, and make no medical claims, in which case I would not count those as unscrupulous.)

UK Green Says Huge Pop Cut Needed, Does Not Offer to Do Self In as Example to Rest of Us

UK population must fall to 30m, says Porritt:

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s proposal would require the population be cut roughly in half.  Anyone have any ideas for that might be accomplished?  You know, I doubt… indeed, I hope… that there aren’t 30 million people in the UK who agree with Mr. Porritt… but if we’re going to thin the herd, we’ve got to start somewhere.  Let’s hear from the volunteers.

Personal Supercomputer Is Coming… Again

Jack Gold of Computerworld says, “Within the next three to four years, most PC users will see their machines morph into personal supercomputers.”  I’m glad to hear this, of course; no one loves a new, faster gadget more than me.  But it doesn’t strike me as a startling revelation.  Indeed, this has already happened, hasn’t it?  Everything is relatively, after all, including what we call a supercomputer. 

Anyone remember the Cray X-MP?  It was the world’s fastest computer between 1982 and 1985.  Here’s a chart comparing the processing power of the earliest and fastest models of the X-MP with the Core 2 Quad processor in the desktop PC I’m using to write this blog post.  (The chart is based on figures I pulled from Wikipedia and CPU World.)  I think you’ll agree my PC compares favorably.

 

It’s my assumption that until we run into some insurmountable physical barrier or the robots take over, the supercomputers in any given period will rival the computing power of kitchen appliances and baby toys in some later period.  It’s just the timing that’s in question.

Jott Update

I've written previously about a service called Jott, which takes speech, converted converts it to text, and optionally sends it in to a variety of places such as, for example, there's this blog. I'm still a fan of the service as a concept, but I find I use it less than I might because there's no mechanism for validating the accuracy of the transcription before it gets sent wherever it's going. This, for example, will post unedited. [DG: I have since edited the post manually.]  This is a feature I think would make the service much more useful if added.

listen Powered by Jott

UPDATE:   Case in point: as you can see from the strike-outs above, the service is fairly accurate, but there are enough errors to make posting a transcription directly to a public venue a questionable proposition.  One other peeve: I don’t believe there’s a way to set the title for a post like this separately—it’s automatically set to the first few words from the body of the post.  Simplicity good; inflexibility bad.

Here’s One Way to Slow Down Touch Adoption

Apple popularized multi-touch gestures with the iPhone, and others quickly adopted the approach, including Microsoft with the upcoming Windows 7 and the Microsoft Surface technology, and Palm with the recently announced Palm Pre.  Unfortunately for them, Apple was just awarded a patent for it.  Apple could license the technology of course, but this quote from Apple COO Tim Cook: makes it sound like they might not be in a hurry to share: “We like competition, as long as they don't rip off our IP. And if they do, were going to go after anybody that does.”

There are, on the other hand, already prior art arguments floating around out there (see this from Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research, for example), which I expect we will now see floating into a courtroom somewhere.  Regardless of who wins, multi-touch technology should be a significant step forward for intellectual property lawyers.

Happy Birthday, Mac… Demo

Twenty five years ago today, on January 24, 1984, some guy named Steve Jobs demonstrated a computer that would change the face of the computer world—by giving Microsoft the ideas it would use to take over 90% of the desktop OS market.  Video follows:

Listen to the reaction of the crowd at seeing that first round of Mac apps.  It’s easy today to forget how big a deal a graphical OS was back then.  The state of the art in PC computing at the time was PC DOS 2.1; the release of Windows 1.0 was still 22 months in the future, and Windows 3.0 (the first version of Windows I personally found to be more than a novelty) wouldn’t ship for another six years.

The ObamaBerry

Finally, modern science has invented a gadget I won’t be buying for myself.  CNN’s Situation Room piece on the president’s new secure PDA:

A wired device seems inherently insecure to me, but it’s not as if he’s going to leave it behind in a rental car or on a plane—at least, not a plane that isn’t his.

Chris Pirillo Demos the Win7 Task Bar

Oh, look, here’s me, going on about Windows 7 again.  As you can probably tell, I’m more enthused about Windows 7 than I was about Vista at this point in the beta… a feeling that only grows now that my work machine has Vista on it.  (I would estimate the Windows 7 beta on my home machine is already as stable as Vista (two years after launch) on my work machine.  I’m not kidding.)

Anyway, Chris’ video caught my attention for two reasons.  First, it’s a nice, quick demo of the the new enhanced task bar.  (Microsoft also has some good videos up on Channel 9, but Chris’ is more to the point.)  Second, apropos of Rip’s and my previous commentary on the use of touch as an PC interface, that’s a touch screen computer Chris has there (an HP Touchsmart, perhaps?), and he uses touch throughout the demonstration—so you get to see that mode of interaction in action, for better or for worse.

Popular Mechanics on Flight 1549’s Water Landing

“When both engines failed, Captain Sullenberger ‘…found himself in the position of being an experimental test pilot.”  The magazine, which has several articles covering this amazing story, says credit is also due to co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles and the aircraft’s in-flight crew.

UPDATE: by the way, can you guess what the subject is of Patrick Smith’s Ask the Pilot column this week?  You can check it out here.