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Posts with tag scifi

Could This Flying Car be for Real?

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 7th 2008 at 5:10PM

Could This Flying Car be for Real?
Could this finally be it? We've been promised flying cars since the 1950s, but so far nothing has made it past the prototype and demo film stages. The father and son team of Chris and Jame Milner seem to think they can bring this dream to reality by 2010.

At the New York International Auto Show later this month the pair will unveil their prototype convertible car / plane. The vehicle is small, no larger than a standard sedan such as the Toyota Corolla. Part of the compact size is thanks in part to its retractable and foldable wings which hide some of the airplane hardware.

The dash holds two computer displays that switch the information displayed based on whether the vehicle is in driving or flying mode. When on the ground, the car has a top speed of only 85 miles per hour, but that should be fast enough. When the aircraft engines are engaged, theoretically at least, the vehicle will be able to cruise at 200 miles per hour at 25,000 feet.
Could This Flying Car be for Real?
The Milners have built a drivable prototype and hope to have a flying model soon. The pair estimate that the car will cost around $500,000.

From Daily Mail

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Homeland Security Goes Sci-Fi

by Tim Stevens, posted May 31st 2007 at 10:04AM

If there's one thing U.S. government institutions lack, it's imagination. So, we're happy to hear that the Department of Homeland Security is actively pursuing the talents of some extremely creative thinkers -- namely, science-fiction writers. The Department admitted it needed "people to think of crazy ideas" and turned to a group called Sigma.

Created 15 years ago by science fiction author Arlan Andrews , Sigma provides consulting services to clients looking to up their fantasy factor. Its members are all authors who hold doctoral degrees, including heavy hitters like Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

The group gets together to dream up scenarios based on a potential threat -- it's then the Department's job to figure out what to do with these scenarios. Whether or not we'll have anti-UFO defense satellites spinning in orbit a few years from now remains to be seen, but with any luck, the next time we see items banned from flights will be before someone tries to blow up a plane with them.

From 'USA Today'

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Your New Boss Is a Robot

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Apr 4th 2007 at 10:18AM

Amazon's New Human Slave Patent
Amazon's latest patent, called the "Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement," has people a little freaked out. As reported by Slashdot, the patent describes a, shall we say, situation, in which some program or robot called "Task Server" arranges humans to do things called "subtasks". While that may at first sound like a benevolent division-of-labor scheme, things get very creepy when the patent describes how the human workers are ranked based on skill-set and education.

For instance, the patent divides humans into education sets, like "college educated, at most high school educated, at most elementary school educated, and not formally educated." In essence, the Task Server robot looks at the task at hand, does what it can at the high end, and then calls for humans with various skills to finish the job. Consider this tasty tidbit: 'For example, the task on hand requires French-speaking humans, and Task Server has requested that each subtask be performed by at least 10 humans with a past accuracy record of at least 90%.'

As to what Amazon plans to do with the mighty Task Server, no one is sure. This could just be a fancy customer-service algorithm that will save us some headaches in the future when we want to return DVDs, but for some reason we can't get comfortable with the worker-bee terminology.

From Slashdot


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