The Year In Ideas

No_Weak_Heart writes "The New York Times Magazine (registration required) presents its annual compendium of ideas. The list ranges from acoustic keyboard eavesdropping to land-mine-detecting plants to water that isn't wet. What catches your fancy? And what do you think is missing?"

What's missing, is..

What's obviously missing is not having to register at nytimes! Come on guys, how hard of a concept is that?

Re:What's missing, is..

I think Editors of Slashdot should not post stories that link to "must register" sites. A like to Google cache should be used instead.

Re:What's missing, is..

Hey, Slashdot editors, use this:
http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink [blogspace.com]

No more searching for google caches, fake logins, or *gasp* actually registering ;). Just copy and paste the NY Times URL and it'll come out with a partner URL (no need for registration, similar to Google News links).

Not having to register at nytimes!

Here's a login and password [bugmenot.com].

Re:What's missing, is..

Here's the New York Times link generator [blogspace.com]. Enter a regular URL and it returns a permanent, no-registration needed link. It's very handy, but certain sections are not supported.

You must admire the irony...

A list of new and innovative ideas hidden behind a required login.

Dambuster bombs

"The Best Way to Skip a Stone" isn't silly. In fact, skipping stones was the basis of the concept of Dambuster bombs [ideas21.co.uk] back in WW2.

One rather bizarre note appears here [bris.ac.uk] . "If the bomb breaches the dam, code word is Nigger but if it does not breach, code word is Gonner."

In any case, skipping objects off water is hardly a new area of research and does not belong on a list of things "new and innovative" as it is neither. But it is not at all silly.

Mal-2

What is missing?

Flying cars.

Worst idea: Employable Liberal Arts Major, The

The whole point of Liberal Arts education is to produce human beings incapable of doing something worthwhile, thus successfully eliminating them from the work pool (yay, more jobs for others). For decades, nay, centuries, this scheme has functioned flawlessly, keeping the World well oiled and working like a chronometer. And now, someone's trying to spoil it by teaching Liberal Arts majors Real World Stuff. I swear, if this is allowed to continue, you'll face the consequences pretty real soon.

Quote from article...

"Worse, cows might be attracted to the weeds growing over mines, with disastrous consequences."

I think it's pretty obvious we have a winner.

Water that "isn't wet" is hardly water...

Apparently, it's a "carbon-based molecule" with "fire-safety applications". Last time I checked, water only contained hydrogen and oxygen, not carbon.

Cockroach bomb shelters and buttered kitten power

They're the only things that will survive a nuclear war, right? So why not build bomb shelters out of them?

Secondly, given that anything buttered always lands butter side down, has anyone considered buttering a kitten's back? Caught between the duel imperatives of landing on it's feet and landing on the butter, it would rotate endlessly in the air. Stick on some magnets and voila, instant free energy

Re:Cockroach bomb shelters and buttered kitten pow

Yes, many many people have considered and attempted to build the butter-cat core reactors. Currently more energy must be put into the system than can be drawn from it.

As the core spins, the butter is flung outwards, causing the system to shut down quickly. Researchers have overcome this problem by cooling the system and containing the core inside a super-conductive bread 'bottle'. As any final year physics student will tell you, cold butter can not be spread onto bread, infact, it is repelled by it. By surrounding the core with high-intensity bread fields, the butter is pushed towards the centre of the reactor, sticking to the cat. Of course, this system requires large amounts of energy.

Much research has gone into this technology, and scientists believe that they have a design that will produce more energy than is put into the system.

Construction of the prototype is due to commence shortly, however it is an international effort. Currently progress has been halted because France and Japan are arguing over who should have the reactor on their soil. Supporters of the french claim that their skills in making french toast will allow for a higher quality core. On the other hand, Japan's extensive collection of 'hello kitty' products puts them at the forefront of feline technology.

Where ever the prototype is constructed, this is an exciting time to be alive. Cheap, clean power is just around the corner.

Re:Cockroach bomb shelters and buttered kitten pow

PeTA probably has plans about the cats to be used, as well as the poor cows that get milked for the butter.

And it has to be butter. Oleo (margarine) has about half the effect that Butter has.

Re:Cockroach bomb shelters and buttered kitten pow

Cheap, clean power is just around the corner.

Clean? Obviously you have never replaced a litterbox. Buttered cats also have a tendency to toxic spills of hairballs, a tendency likely to be increased by buttering. And then there is the still unsolved problem of herding.

In my opinion, the butter-cat core reactor will never be more than a footnote of science. Of course, while it will never achieve large scale production, it will certainly continue to be a very popular lab demonstration.

My dads invention is missing

It is a hydraulic engine with which you can build motors of any size. Want to rotate the Pentagon? It is possible with the Hercules motor:

http://www.indrives.com/frameset.html

Re:My dads invention is missing

Wave cam hydraulic motors have been around for decades. The IBM RS-1 electrohydraulic robot from the 1980s [ibm.com] used them. You can see the wave cam rail here, [ibm.com] above the gripper. The cylinder block, with four cylinders controlled by Moog valves, is visible at

A Cowboy Neil option of course!

How can we have a list of anything without a Cowboy Neil optioin?

Land mines

I think that land-mine plant could have an extra benifit - if countries who refuse to sign land-mine bans continue to use them (COUGH USA COUGH) someone needs to fill a plane with these seeds and drop them everywhere they think land mines are being used - but not after the war, during the war! render them totally useless as a weapon by revealing their locations days after they have been set! Although the plant still seems a little creepy...

Re:Land mines

That's a great idea. Then once you get the enemy to trust that the plants will tell them where the mines are, you swap out a batch of reactive plants with non-reactive plants and when they go strolling through recklesslly, blammo.

A few more ideas of 2004

I don't know if any of these are really new ideas but they seem to have come up a lot in 2004.
- Affordable space tourism for the masses [virgingalatic.com]
- Podcasting [podca.st]. ipod+time shifting+rss
- The Seriousness of Fake news [cnn.com]. It seems like even the mainstream news channels like CNN have started to incorporate comedians and irony in their shows. Jon Stewart interviews John Kerry, and the daily show book is a best seller. Many articles are written about why people are so turned off the real news channels.
- Global Economic Crash imminent [globalresearch.ca]. The declining US dollar is at risk of being dumped by Asia and losing its status as world currency to the Euro - potentially trigger global economic crisis. Another scenario involves the 'peak oil' theory and the increasing price of oil.
- Fighting Terrorism using Drug War tactics [dar-al-harb.com]. An interview with John Kerry in the NY Times magazine reveiled that his view of terrorism as a problem you fight locally in a similar fashion to drug cartels and not as a global war fought at the level of nations.
- Sex Slavery in America [healthdev.net]. A controversial piece of investigative journalism in the NY Times posited that sex slavery is widespread in the US.

the year in patents

i bet the year in patents is a much longer list than the year in ideas.

Re:Concur with the "no more registration required"

>You can even use the time between strokes as a crude measure of distance between (unknown) keys, or as a hint as to what kind of stuff is being typed (c code will sound different from a memo, even if the keys are all the same) to improve your frequency analysis

My advisor (Dawn Song) has a paper (with other people, of course) about timing analysis of interactive ssh sessions. Basically, the upshot is that you can watch how long it is between packets that come out, and you get one packet per keystroke (iirc), so you can use this to learn about what they're typing. It's reasonably difficult, of course, but the microphone attack does gain extra information which the ssh attack does not.

If you're interested, a pdf is at http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~dawnsong/papers/ssh-timing .pdf

Lea

Re:How's this for a better idea

Linux is fractured between two dominant desktop enviorments; which is hindering it's market penetration.

No, the fact that one company already held 90% of the market share when Linux became viable as a desktop OS is hindering its market share. If your av

Re:Ski Bike

> I didn't RTFA, but I noticed my ski bike isn't on there

You did NOT rfta but you DID notice your ski bike isnt there?

Forget the ski bike! Tell us about your paranormal brain plugin invention!