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Science Technology

The Year In Ideas 218

Posted by timothy from the what'dja-think? dept.
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?"
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The Year In Ideas More

The Year In Ideas

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  • What's missing, is.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quickfry ( 799118 ) <stuart.adams@gmail.PERIODcom minus punct> on Sunday December 12, 2004 @02:17PM (#11067119) Homepage Journal
    What's obviously missing is not having to register at nytimes! Come on guys, how hard of a concept is that?

  • Ski Bike (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BossMC ( 696762 )
    I didn't RTFA, but I noticed my ski bike isn't on there. Neither is my shopping cart grocery trailer! Whats is this, a popularity contest?

    http://craig.backfire.ca/imgbrowse/ski-bike/

  • You must admire the irony... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jarich ( 733129 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @02:26PM (#11067177) Homepage Journal
    A list of new and innovative ideas hidden behind a required login.
    • I wouldn't call them "new and innovative." First of all, they aren't even all that new. And just by looking on the list (non-reg, btw), you'll find that most of them are either of dubious value (Criminalizing Reckless Sex, Professional Amateurs, Psychopathic C.E.O.'s) or plain silly (The Best Way to Skip a Stone, The Car That Emotes).

      • Dambuster bombs (Score:4, Informative)

        by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @03:22PM (#11067450) Homepage Journal
        "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
        • You know, I always have wondered if in the future we will someday be using the knowledge of skipping stones to figure out how to use the gravity wells of multiple planets to slingshot a spaceship around space.

          Sorry if that seems a little offtopic, but you have to admit, its a pretty cool idea.

  • What is missing? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12, 2004 @02:27PM (#11067181)
    Flying cars.
  • ...and if one learns Dvorak and Qwerty keyboard methods, and switches back and forth between them, wouldn't that cause audio monitoring of the typist and/or keyboard to be inconclusive? Or more interesting yet, have multiple keyboards, so to never leave an audio bug knowing which keyboard one is using at any given point so that they can't develop a profile of a given piece of equipm$#@^&

    NO CARRIER
    • You don't need to know the make and model of the keyboard to be able to decipher the keystrokes. As long as each key makes a slightly different sound, you can give each sound a number and it becomes a letter-substitution code. More complex because there are more keys, but really not all that hard. Now what's the relative frequency of e and ,?
      • If you don't use the keyboard enough to give them a large enough sampling to determine which sound corresponds to which key (which they'd have to figure out with a best guess method) then they might not be able to build a profile on a given piece of equipment.

        If you had many, many keyboards of the same manufacturer and model it'd be even more difficult, since the sounds would be so similar that they might not have an easy time telling keyboards apart, especially if you switched keyboards many times in th
    • And if people changed passwords regularly, breaking into people's systems would be much more difficult. But neither is very likely.
    • Wouldn't a good counterattack be to have the computer reproduce random keystroke noises as you're working? (And come to think of it, even when you're not...)

      Treat it as a white noise solution, something like broadcasting static at a window to prevent outside mics listening in to the vibrations induced in the glass by a conversation insude.
  • 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.
    • 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. . .

      Hey, all I can say is that I'm doing my part to hold up my end of the deal.

      KFG

      • Me too, but I don't yet actually have the degree, so I have the added attraction of living entirely on tax dollars. You can live off the government basically indefinitely if you go to school. In my defense, I also work for the school, a community college (and for peanuts) and have solved a lot of problems that had otherwise stumped the IT staff. Most of my talents are vastly underutilized, and like I said I get paid very little for my time, so rest assured that instead of hiring me full time, the school is

  • Quote from article... (Score:5, Funny)

    by criordan ( 733016 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @02:38PM (#11067221) Homepage Journal
    "Worse, cows might be attracted to the weeds growing over mines, with disastrous consequences."

    I think it's pretty obvious we have a winner.
    • >"Worse, cows might be attracted to the weeds growing over mines, with disastrous consequences."

      Obligatory link: the "Unexploded Cow" game from CheapAss. Mad cows + Unexploded bombs = fun!

      http://www.cheapass.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?S cr een=PROD&Store_Code=CAG&Product_Code=CAG03 2

      Lea

  • Water that "isn't wet" is hardly water... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sarcastic Assassin ( 788575 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @02:39PM (#11067229) Journal
    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 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nine Tenths of The W ( 829559 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @02:45PM (#11067255)
    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 (Score:5, Funny)

      by mr_snarf ( 807002 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @03:09PM (#11067370)
      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.
    • Secondly, given that anything buttered always lands butter side down, has anyone considered buttering a kitten's back?

      My sister used to have kitten that hadn't learned to wash (from its mother or wherever kittens are supposed to learn that). In order to induce this poor stinky kitten to wash its fur, they resorted to buttering it.

      I don't think they tried flinging it in the air while buttered though (one can imagine the poor thing trying desperately to complete its washing, while spinning rapidly, before
  • FACT: websites with free content that force readers to surrender their details end up collecting garbage information, and also annoy said readers who end up reading some other website with similar content.

    IDEA: uuh, like, stop the registration thing perhaps?
    • FACT: websites with free content that force readers to surrender their details end up collecting garbage information, and also annoy said readers who end up reading some other website with similar content.

      IDEA: uuh, like, stop the registration thing perhaps?

      You seem to think that the content is free. You are mistaken.

      Just because the currency isn't green or made of metal doesn't mean it isn't a payment. The NYT wants a payment for viewing their content. That payment is your personal information.
    • FACT: websites with free content that force readers to surrender their details end up collecting garbage information, and also annoy said readers who end up reading some other website with similar content.

      The NYT has my real e-mail address and in return I find real NYT news content in my in-box each morning, something I want and need. I suspect that is true of most of those who register.

      The tinfoil hat market being what it is this days, I doubt the Times worries much about the Slashdot demographic.

  • open sesame

  • My dads invention is missing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by matsh ( 30900 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @03:02PM (#11067338) Homepage
    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
    • 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

      Other than being a motor design that could move things that are so large they shouldn't be moved, what's the purpose of this? Like most such "ingenious" inventions, it has the distinct appearance of a solution in search of a problem.

    • 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 the top of the picture. It's a nice linear motion device.

      The only new thing in the patent is that the wave cam comes in pieces, rather than being made as one big unit.

  • A Cowboy Neil option of course! (Score:3)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @03:09PM (#11067367) Homepage Journal
    How can we have a list of anything without a Cowboy Neil optioin?

  • Land mines (Score:4, Interesting)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @03:14PM (#11067396) Journal
    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...
    • 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.
    • Those planting the mines could easily till salts and/or herbicides into the soil at the same time. When nothing grows there, these plants won't work.

      On the positive side, this would prevent people from trying to farm or graze on the mined land.

      Mal-2

    • Re:Land mines (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Nate Eldredge ( 133418 )
      Um, if the war is still on, this "someone" would likely have their plane shot down in short order.

    • Re:Land mines (Score:2, Insightful)

      by xtermin8 ( 719661 )
      It is specifically the use of landmines along the North/South Korean border that keeps the US from banning land-mines. If that situation is ever resolved, the land-mine issue can be revisited and negotiated. As things stand now, a plane flying along this border is not going to get very far.
    • Although I depsise the Western Military Machine (i.e. America, Britain, France, etc.), I have to credit where it's due: the West has been improving land mines so that any field laid with it will probably not be the sorrow of the future like the old ones were. The old ones were incapable of shutting themselves off. The news ones have all kinds of shutdown criteria. It's only what we should expect from applying technology to this terrible weapon.

      Don't get me wrong. I think land mines are one of the 20
    • I'm Seoul will send its thanks once Dear Leader safely rolls across the DMZ and reunites his peninsula...
  • Get rid of patents. Seriously. Think about it, you want to talk about bringing zillions of unused ideas into the mainstream. There's the way. For every monopoly an inventor looses, all of a sudden he'll have access to millions of other ideas he could never have access to without a royality or liability. Companies could save billions of dollars on lawsuits and lawyer expenses. Ford could make parts that are compatable with GM - it would force industries to consolidate parts standards and save a ton
  • I only skimmed the list, and I didn't see anything about RFID tags. Over the past year, there have been a number of stories regarding the use of RFID tags to track humans. I think that we're going to see an explosion of these devices in all aspects of our daily lives as RFID tags will be used to track our movements at work, at school, and while we travel.

    I know of many workers who are required to use these tags as part of their employer's worksite access policy, and although the employer is not supposed

  • Landmine plant (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Peden ( 753161 )
    Saw a Danish documentary on those landmine detecting plants. Funny enough they used the dehydrated water to "water" their plants. It was due to the seeds being so small that they could be carried away by the wind. On a different note, it seems as if the guys that developed the plants are having a hard time in getting the right clearances, some english chap that was in the documentary, working for the team as an observer, and link to the African country's government, ended up trying to wreck the whole proje
  • At a former place of employment I was in an office with numerous pieces of computer equipment. Overnight a capacitor in a UPS blew, created lots of smoke but the fire alarm didn't go off. Got into work the next day to find everything fine except one UPS and a nasty smell. The boss wasn't pleased that the alarms didn't go off and waxed on about how the company could've lost a lot of equipment. His solution: install an automatic halon fire extinguisher system in our office. And no, no one would install it.

    W

    • Just toss a few price quotes at your boss. The price of a Halon recharge alone would turn his hair white (or whiter, if so already). Nothing like enormous contractor charges to shut moron management right the fuck up.
  • This article: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12LAWFA RE.html I did not understand. While it seems like neo-con "we must let ourselves be bound by international laws and obligations" I couldn't really make heads or tails out of enough of it to know for sure.
  • For those curious, it's not water that isn't wet. It's a water-like fire-supression substitute called Novec 1230. You may have seen it on some of the morning talk shows. It's a carbon-based liquid molecule that looks and feels a lot like water, but you can soak most electronic devices in it and they will still work. It puts out fires just as effectively, but it vaporizes quickly, drying 25 times faster than water. It's non-carcinogenic, it breaks down completely within 5 days and doesn't do any damage

  • A few more ideas of 2004 (Score:5, Informative)

    by akuzi ( 583164 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @04:54PM (#11067883)
    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.

  • Vernor Vinge's Powers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @04:56PM (#11067896) Journal
    In the "A Fire Upon The Deep" universe, the Powers of the higher computational zones are hypothesized to be able to perform powerful computations on minimal data.

    The keyboard thing is a great example of that; with scanty data you can reverse engineer what keys are being tapped.

    I'd bet with a bit more work you wouldn't even need to calibrate the device, just collect a lot of keypresses, classify them blind, and apply known probability distributions to the data. With that you could get a high probability analysis of the keypresses. (After all, if the two most probable passwords are "thebeatles" or "theb]atles", which do you think it is?)

    A single picture or a short sound doesn't have a lot of data in it, but a long sound sample or video file has a lot of data in it. Expect this to be just the beginning.

  • the year in patents (Score:4, Funny)

    by evilmousse ( 798341 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @04:58PM (#11067906) Journal

    i bet the year in patents is a much longer list than the year in ideas.
  • In the article on Psychopathic C.E.O.'s [nytimes.com], the author, Michael Steinberger, talks about the possibility of corporations using the B-Scan 360 to screen CEO candidates, and weed out the pyschos. Clearly, he had little contact with real world companies or CEOs. Obviously, at least some corporations would use the test to improve their odds of hiring one.

    ps: If you want to validate the test, corporations, see if you can get HP CEO Carly Fiorina to take it...

  • Two words: Paper Ballots (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @07:01PM (#11068591) Journal
    Two more words: Counted Honestly --MarkusQ

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