Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

BASF Shows Off Some Tantalizing Nanotech 178

Posted by timothy from the tech-porn dept.
Dan B. writes "The Technology section in The Age today is running a story on the current 'Next Generation' nanotech coming to a store near you from BASF. Interesting read, but I'd like some more info on the 10 hour batteries the size of a cigarette lighter."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

BASF Shows Off Some Tantalizing Nanotech More

BASF Shows Off Some Tantalizing Nanotech

Comments Filter:
  • Prey [michaelcrichton.net] is coming true

    • Re:Uh Oh (Score:2, Interesting)

      by goatasaur ( 604450 )
      I thought the same thing when I read the article. Prey was a pretty cool book.

      This is a bit OT, but does anyone else think Crichton is a shill for some conservative/religious organization? Almost all his books are about how new technology can go catastrophically wrong and kill people in gory, fascinating ways. Jurassic Park (and sequel), The Andromeda Strain, Airframe (to an extent), and now Prey.

      I smell conspiracy.

      • Re:Uh Oh (Score:2, Interesting)

        by syd02 ( 595787 )
        No conspiracy necessary. If you look around, you'll notice that market-driven media entities are constantly fearmongering. And they love this president, because his popularity too is positively correlated with popular fears. Boogymen abound. The end result is going to be (already is getting) ugly.

        Why are handguns (for personal protection, obviously) so popular in America? Too many people watching their local evening news. We're a bunch of irrational sissies.

      • It's all Amish propagana, damnit!

        Seriously, I don't know about him being anyone's shill. But I do know that I can't stand the "Crichton formula". Every book of his (that I've read anyway) pulls the same crap where introducs something (cloned dinosaurs, alien viruses, preditory nanotech, etc) that would have a profound effect on the world. But his story's hero will always find some way to put the genie back in the bottle so that he doesn't have to deal with any consequences outside of his main characters.

        • Re:Uh Oh (Score:2, Insightful)

          by goatasaur ( 604450 )
          "But I do know that I can't stand the 'Crichton formula'."

          Sphere and The Terminal Man can be summed up the same way as your examples. You forgot to mention "ten-page dissertations on aformentioned promising technology, placed in the middle of the story" in your list of cliches.

          Airframe and Eaters of the Dead didn't follow his normal methods. I don't think EotD sold very well (for Crichton), although Airframe was a moderate success (and wasn't it supposed to be made into a movie? Or did I miss it?)
        • Because he's a HACK. And an annoyingly successful one at that.

          Timeline, Congo, Jurassic Park, Lost World, Sphere, Prey, Terminal Man, Andromeda Strain...they're all the same book with different characters and different technologies. Eaters of the Dead is different because it's just an adaptation of Beowulf. Airframe is a hack detective story; nothing unique.

      • Re:Uh Oh (Score:3, Insightful)

        by freeweed ( 309734 )
        So are almost all of James Cameron's movies.

        Fear of the unknown is a strong literary theme, it's not surprising at all that people in the 20th and 21st centuries eat it up.

        • Notice that in Aliens, James Cameron wrote the android as an underestimated hero figure that wins Ripley over in the end. Still, I know what you're saying.

          I would say that Cameron was ahead of his time in his anxieties about military robots, etc. Isn't it interesting that the Terminator mythology timeline, including the soon to be released T3: Rise of the Machines closely mirrors real events in the respective years when the films were released? Because of the time which elapsed between films, Linda Hamilton and Ed Furlong could even act out their parts at each stage in the story without troubling to play their characters older or younger. In T2, Sarah Connor looked exactly as she should have after those years had gone by, and now Furlong would make an exellent John Connor if he weren't having serious substance abuse issues.

          Rise of the machines, indeed. Now we're actually killing terrorists with UAVs, and you can read (slashdot posted a story) about wireless technology being employed to create *independent* networks in the sky so that these killer robots can communicate with each other and make battlefield decisions at a moment's notice...can you say "SkyNet"!?!? It's hillarious, even as it is terrifying!

          I'm not so worried about SkyNet "waking up", but because I do have a shred of empathy for people I've never met, I'm deeply concerned about what the future of war might be like for some poor family in some poor country that we have so carelessly labeled an "axis of evil". Those nightmarish scenes from the Terminator movies...people living like rats as they try to survive a merciless mechanical onslaught...could actually be what Bush and co. have in store for any "brown people" who don't kowtow to the new capital-first world order.

          "Global demographic trends suggestive of an overpopulated future? No problem!"
          (insert sounds of military laser canons here)

          Deeply concerned.
    • Damn no link to a pirate ebook that I can download and read a bit of?

      Of course I'd buy the book after my eyes start to get burn-in.....

      • I'd say it's worth buying, if you're a fan of Crichton's other stuff...

        ...which is the problem I'm starting to have with him. Prey seems like Crichton wrote it on autopilot.

  • 10 hour batteries? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mononoke ( 88668 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:08PM (#5115899) Homepage Journal
    I've got plenty of 10 hour rechargable batteries. In fact, they last quite a bit longer than that.

    I guess it depends upon the load, eh?

  • What? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kruetz ( 642175 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:09PM (#5115905) Journal
    From the article

    Imagine never having to polish your shoes again, having glistening white teeth without visiting a dentist, or owning a mobile phone powered by a miniature battery. These are not just idle fantasies, but a reality where small things could make your wildest dreams come true.

    wow! this guy's pretty darn wild! I bet for a big night out he turns on the TV and drinks a whole light beer. I mean, c'mon - with all the possibilities for nanotechnology, having self-polishing shoes is the best he could come up with?

    it looks that just as with other technologies (www, e-commerce, ...) we're gonna have to wait for the pron industry to break new ground and lead the way ... oh, the possiblities!!! Wait a minute, don't. Eughh!

    • From an economist's or business person's perspective, that's one hell of an achievement. As near as I can figure, just about everybody in 1st world nations wear shoes. That means they've developed a new product which is marketable to every person on the planet who wears a pair of shoes.

      Figure $5/bottle. Figure 1 billion customers. You do the math.
      • But will everyone buy it? And does everyone polish shoes? I mean, I've NEVER polished my sneakers. I have one pair of leather shoes that get polished maybe 4 or 5 times a year when I use them ...

        the main thing is - will anyone BUY it? and will it be so cheap? I don't think so - not for a good while at least. The price will eventually come down, but even so ...

      • "...just about everybody in 1st world nations wear shoes."

        True.

        "...marketable to every person on the planet who wears a pair of shoes."

        I don't think so. The only shoes I have that need regular polishing are ones I hardly wear. If a bottle of Nano-Polish is $5 and is good for ten polishings (or at least two), I will only need to buy a few every year.

        Even at $10 and one shoe only, that's maybe $60-$100 a year for most people. And at $20 (or $10) a pair, it'd be better to save the damn money and polish them yourself. There won't be much of a market for Nano-Polish unless/until it's cheaper than conventional polish. I mean, why use nanotechnology to clean your shoes when you can have illegal immigrants do it for pennies? Of course, it could get a hell of an advertising campaign and gross billions...

        I know the Nano-Polish situation is hypothetical, but it's applicable to nearly any small-time chore. To make a lateral comparison:

        Nano-Car-Wash-and-Wax would be something I'd invest in, but not Nano-Squeegee.

        • Re:Econ/Business Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Mac Degger ( 576336 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:09PM (#5116406) Journal
          Ah...but you forget it's not just for shoes...it's for jackets, !paper!, construction materials...do you have any idea whatsoever how much cleaning stuff (like buildings) costs? Or what about applying it to bridges, over the paint coat: goodbye dirt-errosion. Or what about those mirrored skyscrapers?

          But, geek that I am, I'm really waiting for that tooth whitening stuff to come out.
          • "Or what about those mirrored skyscrapers?"

            Of course for big projects like construction, nanotechnology can be useful.

            Look at Total Annihilation. You could build a command center in, like, twenty seconds.
      • The smart thing to do isn't to sell to the consumer. License it to the shoemaker.

        The problem is, you'd have to fine-tune the length of time the shine stuff actually works. If every Nike shoe had built-in NikeShine, and NikeShine expired after 6 months of wear, Nike could possibly get you to buy more shoes per year than you do now, assuming you're the kind of person who likes clean-looking footwear, which is a majority of Nike's basketball shoe consumer.
    • "it looks that just as with other technologies (www, e-commerce, ...) we're gonna have to wait for the pron industry to break new ground and lead the way ... oh, the possiblities!!! Wait a minute, don't. Eughh!"

      Dude, don't ever leave yourself open like that again. Anybody else here resist the urge to poke fun at a guy who suggested the porn industry use nanomachines to provide a service he might want?

    • Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Monday January 20, 2003 @12:07AM (#5116667)
      "wow! this guy's pretty darn wild! I bet for a big night out he turns on the TV and drinks a whole light beer. I mean, c'mon - with all the possibilities for nanotechnology, having self-polishing shoes is the best he could come up with? "

      Ugh. Did you even read the F'n A? It's really frustrating when somebody takes the time to understand the capabilities of something they understand only to have the listener get all disappointed because he didn't invent a replicator or something.

      The whole point of what he was saying was that nature has solved a LOT of problems we have today, and on the nano-level we can understand what it's doing and incorporate reserach that nature has already done into modern society. His example wasn't cool because it could make the dir resistant shoes, it was cool because it meant that they could emulate nature. The result is future materials would be longer lasting. Dare I say: mold-proof houses?

      I'd normally concede that they could have presented their case better, but in this example they described the bits of it that were interesting enough that the application was merely an example.
  • The impression I got from the article is that it would be 10 hours for something possibly smaller and less power hungry than a laptop, since it was in the context of devices getting smaller.. I could be wrong though.

    • Re:10 hour batteries.. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The article used the words small appliance suggesting that these were not merely electronic devices like laptops, PDA`s etc. I have heard tales of nanotech (well, etched silicon microtech) turbines which burn butane to make electricity. Aparently if you cram all the circuitry needed to run it and a gas cell into a container the size of a AA batery it will give you 300 (three-hundred) times the power than a conventional AA. Maybe the author was refering to something along these lines and just got confused (I read about these about a year ago).
  • BASF = Badische Anilin -und- Soda Fabrik

    • Re:ig farben (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tempelherr ( 559964 ) <thunder35&hotmail,com> on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:25PM (#5116480) Homepage
      IG Farben itself has quite an extensive history for anyone interested, especially with regard to its member's roles in WWI (manufacturing chlorine gas and potassium nitrate, which helped to alleviate Germany's dependance on Chilean imports) and WWII (producing poison gases, running work camps, ie Auschwitz). It was an incredibly huge and productive industry, also producing many other things, such as artifical rubber.

      After WWII, most of the assets of the IG were transferred to Agfa, Hoechst, Bayer, and of course BASF. If I recall correctly though, the IG is actually going to be dissolved some time in 2003, though I am not sure when. Anyone know when this is scheduled to happen?

      I'm definitely looking forward to some of the products that BASF is developing, especially the hydrogen gas battery. That is going to nice if/when it ever reaches the masses.

      • All well and true, but remember if you wear any clothing, drive any car, or for that matter buy any product made by any number of US companies, DuPont and Dow pop to mind, you are supporting companies that got their start with slave labor before the Civil War or had founders who were slave owners. But that was just how it was done then. That's makes it all better. The USA is much more civilised now what with Walmart's selling products manufactured by sweated foreign labor to the poorer part of the US population. The irony is so sexy.

        PS. Buying stuff at Walmart does not equate to being a part of the "poorer part of the US population." It can also mean that you are a cheap fuck who doesn't mind terribly made crap.

  • What's a 10 hour battery? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:13PM (#5115923)
    Hour is not a measure of power. How many amp- hours is this battery capable of? What terminal voltage?

    A standard size D Alkaline battery is 17 amp-hours at 1.5 volts. That sounds a lot more impressive than a 10 hour battery, and it's using 30 year old technology.

    Jason
    ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
    • Fair play. A car battery is roughly 30AH @ 12V, and my lappy battery is something like 4AH @ 15V, but about 1/32 the size and weight.

      A bit more info on the batteries would be helpful but I have this feeling that the writer of the article 'aint that much of a techy.

      • Re:What's a 10 hour battery? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:41PM (#5116033)
        The discharge curve is also very important. If I draw 10 amps from that 17 Ah alkaline D battery, it will last about 30 minutes instead of 1.7 hours. If I take 10 amps from a 9 Ah NiMH D battery, it will last the full 0.9 hours.
        The car battery can easily handle 600 amps for a few seconds while starting your car. There's no way the laptop battry can handle 80 amps even for a fraction of a second

        This just makes the "10 hour battery" in the article even more meaningless.

        Jason
        ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
        • The car battery can easily handle 600 amps for a few seconds while starting your car. There's no way the laptop battry can handle 80 amps even for a fraction of a second

          Depends on the chemistry. an old NiCd laptop battery could probably put that out (short-circuit current)
          I agree about this battery however. I wonder how many Librarys Of Congress you could transfer per charge.

      • A car battery is roughly 30AH @ 12V,

        30 Ah is rather minimal. 50-60 Ah is more common.

    • neither are Amp-hours (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Really, you need to go by watt hours. This is because no battery has a totally flat discharge curve. For example, a LIon battery is rated at 3.6V but really spends the vast majority of its battery life at about 3.9V.

      So if you take the rated voltage times the total amp-hours drawn you get a misleading number.

      Watt-Hours. That's the way.
  • If they are rebuilding your Enamel to make your teeth whiter... it seems a whole lot more interesting that you are actually repairing your teeth.

    Say good bye to dentists? Now that really would rock. Well for those of us that actually go ;)
  • From the article:
    Imagine never having to polish your shoes again, having glistening white teeth without visiting a dentist, or owning a mobile phone powered by a miniature battery.

    When my work shoes need polishing, my wife does it or I pay 50 cents and have them done at the Mall Foodcourt or something.

    I got glistening white teeth by using Colgate Gel. It's $14.99 and quite a bargain.

    And my mobile phone gets 6 hours of battery life on a single charge, which is plenty since I don't really talk to many people.

    So, honestly, could someone point me toward some practical real-world applications of this supposed "Next Generation" of nanotechnology?!

  • 10 hours? bah. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:21PM (#5115951)

    A battery the size of a cigarette lighter that lasts for 10 hours? I've got those. They're these little sticks with two "A"'s marked on them and they run my GBA for a good 15 hours

    Miniature batteries for my mobile phone? Gee I think I've got that too. It lasts about 10 hours. And I can replentish it by using this other magical device on my wall called a socket.

    Seriously... fuel cells will need to run a phone for a month at least to be worth it. A laptop better run for a couple weeks. Recharging them isn't a simple matter of plugging them in the wall as it is now... you've got to replace the hydrogen (or other fuel, most people seem focused on hydrogen for some inane reason, even though it's hard to make and doesn't have much energy content).

    This article, like many other nanotech articles, is mostly hype and handwaving (and most of these things aren't even what you typically consider nanotech). So who won buzzword bingo? ;-)

    • I've read a lot on slashdot anti-hydrogen lately, so I think it's time someone explains why. Fuel cells are to replace batteries. That means you want the most amount of energy per volume. Compressed hydrogen may very well be the best chemical source for energy per volume. Devices that are hydrogen powered can be easily recharged (assuming the water didn't escape, you only need to plug it in the wall). Hydrolysis is a practically lossless way of converting electricity into hydrogen, and is safe enough to do in your own home. The only problem with hydrogen was safe containment, but that's been accomplished cheaply by several. I don't know exactly what the process is, but it involves a "sponge" like material for hydrogen to be trapped in. If it catches fire, it only burns, not explodes(normal batteries can explode as well). The only draw back I can foresee is that most common ways of returning the hydrogen and oxygen back into water to release the energy efficiently (IE. not burning), involves platinum. Not that it requires much platinum, but I would probably bet that the electrical load supported is directly proportional to the amount that you have.

      The other arguements that I've seen against it is that hydrogen has the ability to escape most containers. It doesn't escape solid metal containers, except by way of the valve. A good valve won't leak enough to make a spark.

      So really... what is the real arguement against hydrogen? You could use alcohol as well, but there has been a lot more research on how to get hydrogen to give up and take electricity.
      • So really... what is the real arguement against hydrogen?

        I believe it also has the lowest potential energy of any substance, so compared to having something else in the same volume, you get less energy out. And it's not particularly easy to work with compared to anything else, either.

        I think the main advantage is that it is (as someone else said) abundant, but it's still not easy to process and prepare for use. You won't be dumping liquid hydrogen into a battery.

        For refilling it, the tank idea is actually pretty good, although hydrogen is still fairly dangerous. Too bad helium doesn't work for this.

        I just want to be able to fill up a battery from the water faucet and run my laptop for a week. Call me back when they get that. ;-)

        • Hydrogen's potential energy as related to other objects is low, yes. But the curve you're thinking of is the energy benfit curve from fusion. (Iron tops the curve with Hydrogen at the bottom).

          Now, yes, that means that there are lots of elements you could use that will generate more energy than hydrogen. But I belive the people of a little island called Bikini will agree with me when I say Hydrogen produced a pretty substantial quantity of energy as well under that process.

          Burning? That might be something else. I belive we use Hydrogen for that because it's easy to come by and you can bind a whole lot of them to various ring-shaped chemicals.

    • More like tiny refillable propane tanks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @11:14PM (#5116426) Journal
      Recharging them isn't a simple matter of plugging them in the wall as it is now... you've got to replace the hydrogen (or other fuel, most people seem focused on hydrogen for some inane reason, even though it's hard to make and doesn't have much energy content).

      True. "Recharging" a fuel cell will not just involve plugging them into the wall (unless someone makes a *MAJOR* breakthrough in both electrolysis techniques and hydrogen storage).

      Most likely, it would work more like a cross between "normal" batteries, and the sort of propane tanks people use for BBQ grills. You would buy a 6-pack of methanol cartridges, roughly the size and shape of an AA battery (as a hypothetical example, of course... I have no more knowledge of future fuel-cell-form-factors than anyone else ). You'd pop them into your electricity-consuming device, just like normal batteries. The actual functional bits of the fuel cell would form a part of the electricity consuming device (or some sort of hip-pack to support legacy devices until everything takes the standard size fuel cell cartridges), and it would simply "drink" from the cartridges you plug in.

      When you have a pile of empty cartridges, you'd take them back to the store for a rebate, a lot like recycling an aluminum can. Except, to reuse them, we wouldn't need to melt them down and make a whole new fuel cell, we'd simply refill them. The stores themselves might have some means of doing this, or they might just send them on to some sort of regional refilling center, but the whole process would (could, anyway) involve very little waste.

      Of course, I only describe the *SENSIBLE* way to do it. More likely we'd actually build the entire functional fuel cell as a single encapsulated unit, complete with fuel *and* nasty chemistry for the catalyst; ship them across country both ways in a hideously polluting diesel 18-wheeler; and we'd make them out of a plastic that for reasons no one understands, we can't reuse, so they go to the landfill and we waste even *more* petroleum making more plastic.

      But hey, what do I know. I need to stop acting so optimistic all the time. ;-)

      • More likely we'd actually build the entire functional fuel cell as a single encapsulated unit, complete with fuel *and* nasty chemistry for the catalyst; ship them across country both ways in a hideously polluting diesel 18-wheeler; and we'd make them out of a plastic that for reasons no one understands, we can't reuse, so they go to the landfill and we waste even *more* petroleum making more plastic.

        You forgot to mention that the fuel cells (or cartridges - this name shows where I am heading) from different manufacturers of i.e. notebooks, will not be compatible. Notebook producers will build small chips into these cartridges, which are protected by patents, locking out potential third party cartridge manufacturers. The prices of notebooks will dramatically go down, while the cartridges will get suspiciously expensive ...
    • (or other fuel, most people seem focused on hydrogen for some inane reason, even though it's hard to make and doesn't have much energy content).

      I think the big benefit to hydrogen is that the "waste product" is simply hot water. Other fuel might not be quite so "eviro-friendly" as that...
  • "So Snake, I'm going to activate your nanomachines in your blood to give you massage in your arm after that torture." Wasn't that one of the most weird moments in videogame history?
  • ....Quadruple sided, quadruple density?

  • Well, this is a change of pace (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nemus ( 639101 ) <astarchman@hotmail.com> on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:30PM (#5115982) Journal
    Weren't nanotechnology agents supposed to be ridding my body of disease, putting out fires, and building space stations right now? Now we'll be using a wax like substance to clean our shoes and using a toothpaste to repair our teeth. Methinks priorities may have changed.


    And I gotta agree with someone who posted above. When it comes to nanotechnology, which probably will be a cornerstone on science in years to come, and these are the applications the writer busts a hard on over, god help the man if he ever sees a porno. I mean come on, at least write about something I can't do by myself. I want tiny robots damn it! And flying F'in cars!

  • How about this? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mehfu ( 451236 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:37PM (#5116012) Homepage
    Manufactured products are made from atoms.

    No shit, Sherlock...

  • blast processing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by QEDog ( 610238 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:40PM (#5116025)
    If I hate something more than a buzzword (remember Blast Processing and the Sega Genesis?), is an article that is just about a buzzword.

    • Re:blast processing (Score:4, Funny)

      by joe_bruin ( 266648 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:35PM (#5116248) Homepage Journal
      fool, blast processing was a technology developed by sega exclusively for the the genesis (aka 'megadrive' in europe and asia) which allowed programmers to blast data through the processor. how do you think they got sonic the hedgehog to go that fast?
      this amazing technology was unmatched until sony developed the custom "emotion chip", which enabled programming much more emotion into video games. that is why the ps2 is great for doughy-eyed anime games, whereas the xbox is only good for emotionless sports games.

      i'm still waiting for someone to come up with a porn-optimized video compression codec. something that is good with skin tones and has good motion-prediction for repetitive back-and forth movements.

  • we have to get into this again? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by frozencesium ( 591780 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:48PM (#5116068) Journal
    ok...most of us know all of this already. we all know that nano tech can be a great service...longer battery life, clothes that clean themselves, etc...

    what they don't mention are the possible negitive effects. it's like atomic power...great benifit, possibly nasty applications. to apply nano tech to consumer goods is one thing, but to use it to make weapons is quite another (on a morality scale). this technology is more highly adaptive than anything else we have seen before.

    governments the world over have been toying with nano tech to make weapons that kill more efficently, are more easily hidden, etc. what happens when common street thugs can "make" their own weapons with nano tech? what happens when countries that have firearms bans (uk, australia, others) have people running arround with nanotech weapons that are small and more leathal than the standard lead slug fired by a gun today? how do you track things like this? what happens when the government/corperation/etc decides to make a nanotech listening device out of the paint in your home?

    this is a tech that is to be truly feared and respected. remember...technology is only as good as those who use it.

    -frozen
    • I remember seeing some concept demos for nanotech that involved pooring a bunch of nanotech goop onto the ground, sticking some computer control device, shaped like a stake, into the ground, and the nanogoop proceeded to assemble weapons from the raw elements in the ground. I think that Cid Meier's Alpha Centuari demoed a similar concept.

      I've also read some reports about nano-systems which are being designed for survelliance and information gathering. The idea is that they are aerosol based and act as tiny mirrors floating in the air. They have a tiny control device which collects light rays bounced from the nanoparticles, and which reassembles the light rays into a video stream, which is then transmitted to a survelliance team.

      Aldus Huxley should be rolling over in his grave with the advent of such technology.
    • Science fiction authors like Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker have addressed your worries in many of their works, check it out. Their conclusion is that this deadly technology will be combated with, well, more technology. That's how things have always happened.

  • ... You will ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ThresholdRPG ( 310239 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:50PM (#5116078) Homepage Journal
    These outrageous claims remind me of the old AT&T commercials:

    "Ever had a robot that did all your household chores, cooked your meals, ran your errands, and looked like it came from http://www.realdoll.com?... ...
    No? ...
    You will! ...
    And the company that will bring it to you is AT&T."

    Of course, nothing they promised ever got delivered, and certainly not by AT&T.

    • Re:... You will ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by frohike ( 32045 ) <bard.allusion@net> on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:16PM (#5116192) Homepage
      Of course, nothing they promised ever got delivered, and certainly not by AT&T.

      Not so, my friend! They had one that went:

      "Ever send a fax from the beach? You will..."

      The product that the person in the commercial was using is the AT&T EO. [att.com] My friend had one... it was a funky notebook page sized PDA that had a real OS, a windowing system and everything. I even hacked on it on a road trip once so we could use it as a serial terminal to get to the Linux box we had booted in the car to listen to MP3s (Yes, that's ultimately geeky, but it was cool! :)

  • Found the last link I was looking for (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dan B. ( 20610 ) <`slashdot' `at' `bryar.com.au'> on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:55PM (#5116106)
    Here's the link [www.basf.de] to the article on the BASF website.

  • Diamond age (Score:2, Funny)

    by kEnder242 ( 262421 )
    I'm still waiting for my mediatronic chopsticks.

  • Where's the "news"? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:00PM (#5116128)
    This is a recap of press releases issued from 1999-2002. Seriously! They're even ordered chronologically in the thesis paragraph. I realize this because I've been keeping a local archive of every mnt-related press release that I've come across since 1998.

    It's a well-written piece, a good article for the site it's on, and I wouldn't think it out of place in "USA Today" or "Popular Science," but why does a pointer to it belong on Slashdot? The newest piece of information in the article is about the "lotus effect cling", which was 'news' in 2001!
    • I wouldn't think it out of place in "USA Today"

      Oo... I dunno.. The Age is a Melburnian paper... which makes it Australian.

      which was 'news' in 2001!

      So it's right on schedule for slashdot then? (Unless it's a FreeBSD release, in which case it's three years late.)

  • BASF doesn't make a lot of the killer nanotech (Score:5, Funny)

    by saddino ( 183491 ) on Sunday January 19, 2003 @10:03PM (#5116144)
    Bill Joy warned about. BASF makes a lot of the killer nanotech Bill Joy warned about better.

  • They're not batteries, they're just hydrogen power cells, just like we've been hearing about forever.

    Also, for those who said hours is not a measure of power, you're idiots. It was placed in a strong context. read the article next time.

  • Self-cleaning shoe (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zobier ( 585066 )
    The general reason my shoes look crusty is from scuffing NOT dirt.

    The wax coating for the "Lotus-Effekt" (from the BASF Article [www.basf.de], 9 paragraphs down, under the heading "Nanotechnology means learning from nature") will still be susceptible to this.
  • Everytime I hear about Nanotechnology I keep thinking about the Nanolathes in Total Annihilation!

  • Drexler (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nanobug ( 446693 ) on Monday January 20, 2003 @12:03AM (#5116647)
    At the last Foresight Conference Eric Drexler expressed his frustration at the amount of hype and effort going into research and development on this psuedo nanotechnology. Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and getting "nano" into their products.

    Real nanotechnology, often called molecular nanotechnology, consists of actual manipulation of atoms into molecules and structures with useful properties, and will make most of the current claims of nano products look extremely weak. But no-one knows exactly how to do it just yet!

    Lots of progress is being made on the research front, and they will get there, but anyone who tells you they have nanotechnology products available now or in the near future are talking about the weak versions of nanotechnology that have been around for thousands of years. See here [computingjapan.com] for a better description of the distinction between weak and strong nanotechnology.
    • Oh dear. nyaar nyaar nyaar, your version (technologies we can actually use) isn't "real" like my technology that - er - doesn't exist yet.

      So what exactly does "real" mean here? If you can arrange the shape of molecules to create particular functionality, does the technology matter? It's a bit like arguing that piece of metal A is inferior to piece of metal B because A was cast to shape in a mold and B was carved from a black by a machining centre. The real question is surely, which is best fitted for its putpose?

      • The imaginary "molecular nanotechnology" is like having a fully automatic 3-axis CNC mill, while the current "nanotech" is like a blacksmith hammering away. Its all a matter of sophistication.

    • Re:Drexler (Score:2, Informative)

      by Goldsmith ( 561202 )
      Interesting article, it's not often you list science fiction in the credits of something trying to be scientific. The way I see it, "nanotechnology" will be its own field in a couple decades, much like computer science is today relative to physics and math.

      The whole point is that tiny robots which can build anything are a very, very long way off. The only way it's going to happen is through this "hype and effort" that's going into "weak" nanotechnology.

      As far as moving atoms around (including bonding, unbonding, exciting states) one at a time to make things... no problem. [uci.edu] Dr. Ho can "see" and manipulate the electron clouds surrounding an atom (pretty damn cool if you ask me).

  • What? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Feztaa ( 633745 ) on Monday January 20, 2003 @01:43AM (#5117041) Homepage
    fruit juices get their rainbow of colours from tiny particles that dissolve in liquid and disappear without a trace.

    Yes, it's called "Kool-Aid powder"...
  • We make nano-things... Nano-er?



  • The CIA is already spraying villages in Africa with government-synthesized nano. It was meant to be used as a "smart exfoliant"..Rather than run in there with an army of bulldozers and pissing everyone off, we're dropping lumberjack nano in there to clear large areas of dense forest. Why? to lay oil pipelines in West Africa under the guise of improving Africa's economy:

    Buruli Busters [burulibusters.com]

    Since the only way to kill the nano is to deprive it of sunlight and dissolve it, theyre packing mud onto all the people who've been afflicted with it in order to kill it off.

    Oh well, it was the thought that counts.

    PS.. I just made all that shit up on the spot. Ha-ha, gullible, arentcha?
  • We don't make the things you buy, we make the things you buy with nanobots better...
  • Fruit juice gets its color from tiny particles that disappear without a trace! Duh, of course it does! Solids dissolve in liquids all the time and change the color.

    Chemists put a UV absorbing solid into suspension and then sell it as sunscreen - and its nanotechnology!? I don't think so. Since when is making a wax similar to a plant leaf wax called nanotechnology? Just because someone uses atoms and molecules and small particles to make things doesn't make it nanotechnology in my book - it makes it chemistry.

Slashdot Top Deals

To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a test load.

Close