71–80 of 98 posts
I wonder if they will ever work on a flawless mobile OS that has tons of great apps and great offline support for Google Docs.
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No one from the government competed in the Darpa Grand Challenge. It was all private companies or universities. I was there, DARPA sponsored it and oversaw it, that's all. Check the wiki link below and tell me which team listed was from the DoD? They wanted self-driving cars for military transport into dangerous locations. The first DGC there were only a few competitors and none of us did very well. In 2005 there wer…
Wouldn't you consider the mitre entry basically a government entry (it's a non-profit funded by the government).
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The "Internet connected refrigerator that manages food for you" has been an example of this sort of thinking for at least 10 years, and it's no closer to being something that anyone actually wants.
Except advertisers. Remember, it's still Google.
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I disagree that dod has the best tech already in "top secret". The best tech is often dod sponsored, but is made public by the university researchers who usually create it. And it's not costly, you can go read it and use it, often the stuff is released as open source software on the researchers' website.
"But is made public by the university researchers who usually create it" <-- yeah, the stuff you know about is made public, and the stuff you don't.... isn't. That's what secret means. I think I heard that 50% of the research in Neuroscience labs today is DoD sponsored and never sees the light of day. Mind-hacking anyone?
No.
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I take it you think there are MBA types that wander around NSA headquarters, grab the dragonfly-size spy robots and bring them to market?
yeah, exactly. there has to be a management structure even at nsa, and management types are "networkers" who'll talk to people with money to invest.
The stuff that could have been invented 5-10 years ago but was not interesting enough to warrant the effort
It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. The stuff that could have been invented 5-10 years ago but was not interesting enough to warrant the effort
I suppose I wouldn't mind having a fridge which knew what was in it, so I could check what I needed to pick up on my way home before I left the office. But I doubt the system could be made smart enough that it actually saved me more mental effort than it consumed. The low-tech version is to simply put cameras in your fridge so that you can check its contents remotely... but even if I had this set up I doubt I'd use it all that often.
Maybe I'm being overly harsh on the smart-fridge idea. But I think it's representative of a huge class of dumb ideas: let's use fancy technology to save some minor effort for the consumer, at the cost of the consumer now having to go to the effort of acquiring, learning and maintaining yet another fancy piece of new technology. Screw it, I want my microwave with dials back.
It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. The stuff that could have been invented 5-10 years ago but was not interesting enough to warrant the effort
It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. The stuff that could have been invented 5-10 years ago but was not interesting enough to warrant the effort
Or, more realistically: not economically viable enough to warrant dropping millions of dollars into R&D that may never be profitable. Google's piles of cash change this.