2012 ponderings

Fractal time and the I Ching

Every once in a while I slip into thinking about “what if”. I feel that Fractal time is a fairly good description of what’s been happening with the pace of technology. I must admit, I was becoming a bit paranoid about “the end of the world” thing. But I recently read this line from this link pertaining to the recent 2012 movie: “The studio also launched a viral marketing website operated by the fictional Institute for Human Continuity, where filmgoers could register for a lottery number to be part of a small population that would be rescued from the global destruction. The fictitious website lists the Nibiru collision, a galactic alignment, and increased solar activity among its possible doomsday scenarios. David Morrison of NASA has received over 1000 inquiries from people who thought the website was genuine and has condemned it, saying “I’ve even had cases of teenagers writing to me saying they are contemplating suicide because they don’t want to see the world end. I think when you lie on the Internet and scare children in order to make a buck, that is ethically wrong.”"

This pretty much opened my eyes to the hype surrounding a calamity in 2012. Something might happen, but I’m pretty sure the planet won’t blow up, or come anywhere near the destruction that’s been blathered about by doomsday prophets. As was once shared with me by a trusted friend, “Don’t worry. Everything will be alright”.

The West is dead. Long live the East.

Copenhagen Travesty.

The title is mine. The link is real. The situation is pretty much written in stone. The western nations, once strong and proud, have been effectively castrated by China. Obviously NO ONE had balls enough to tell these clowns “no, you will comply with these accords”.

Don’t worry about learning Mandarin anytime soon. They are working on English, so they can explain to us while we’re licking our crushed groins that China can defeat ANY opponent in ANY battle. Period.

And we put Obama in office, why, again?

Asimov’s Three Laws

Just to refresh the concept, Dr. Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics aren’t real laws. They are a literary plot device. Dr. Asimov knew that there were work arounds for them. He always found reasons to work around the three laws in his robot stories. What you WILL find to be true is this:

1.Robots are machines. Machines, like humans, age and break down if not properly maintained. A faulty machine will injure or kill the first person that is careless.

2. Any military that uses robots on a field of battle will have some type designed for defensive/offensive combat. If you don’t want to be killed by a military robot, stay out of it’s line of fire.

3. Hobby robots made out of sturdy plastic will bite your fingers just as hard, if not harder, as metal when you grab them in the middle of program execution.

In the recent movie Astroboy, the robots mention in passing about Asimov’s three laws. “You know, a robot may not injure a human, yada yada yada.” The laws have no effect on these guys. And if you think they should, you need to stay away from your blender. You might like the number of fingers on your hands.

Micropayments

Here is my reply to an article on the New York Times website about micropayment models. By the time you read it here, it should have cleared the sensors on their site.

-”In retrospect, most newspapers had a micropayment system in place decades ago, and never realized it: The corner newspaper box. John Q. Public stood at the bus stop and read the headlines through the cloudy plastic window. (free content). If there was a story that really interested him, he put his coins in the slot, and bought the paper. (micropayment. The cost of a single paper amounts to pennies per story.) Redistribution of paid content also existed then. (some jackass paid his coins, then took ALL the papers in the box and gave them to his friends.) Of course subscriptions are self explanitory.

Advertising models aside, micropayments are the way to go, folks. Give me a headline with a single paragraph. If the story is compelling, I’ll click to buy it. I think I can afford a penny or two.”

Immersive AR comes a step closer.

Wrap™ 310

The link is to a pair of AR glasses. Still mostly meant for video viewing, but these don’t look nearly as geeky. So we’re getting there.

Smart parking meters

‘Smart’ parking meters catching on across U.S.

I heard Leo Laporte talk about this concept on his Tech Guy radio show podcast a week or so ago. Cool idea. Time for me to pester Coca Cola about smart soda machines in a new blog post again.

Coke bot

Abra a Felicidade Coca-Cola

The link is of a robot serving up dessert and a Coke. Okay, I’m kind of pissed. A couple of years ago I blogged about Coca Cola being able to put out robotic drink machines that at least interacted with you. Have they listened to me? NOOOOooooo…. So today I find the above link via www.botjunkie.com . Yeah, it’s a commercial in Brazil. So if they can sponsor robotics in Brazil, why can’t they put out a robotic Coke machine on the city streets of America? Hmm? You know they know the tech exists.

Hey, Atlanta, are ya listening? Helloooooo…….

Missikins crossed the “Rainbow Bridge”

Our oldest cat at 18 years passed on Sunday night, somewhere between 9 pm and 2:30 am. While this is not a huge new story for many of you, this blog post is kind of therapy for me.

The Rainbow Bridge is something that I had forgotten about until my wife mentioned it on that Saturday. Up until then, I was totally prepared for the cat’s passing. She had been steadily losing weight for months. And before that, she had a steady intake of water. So we had figured at first that she had a tapeworm. Nope. No evidence of worms in her litterbox. So our next natural assumption was either her kidneys were shutting down, or she developed leukemia. this last weekend, she was wobbling very badly, could barely stand up, and never ate.

We buired her yesterday morning. She was a great cat. A stray kitten. The irony is, I first told my wife “Don’t pick it up, don’t pet it, don’t even look at it. It will go away.” We already had a 15 year old cat, GiGi, suffering from kidney desease. The very next day, Missy was picked up… By me. I’m so weak.

RIP, Missy. We love you and miss you.

C/Fe

C/Fe. The periodic table of elements codes for Carbon, and Iron. Isaac Asimov first used the combination in his book *The Caves of Steel*:

“See fee? What’s that?”

“Just the chemical symbols for the elements carbon and iron, Elijah. Carbon is the basis of human life and iron of robot life. It becomes easy to speak of C/Fe when you wish to express a culture that combines the best of the two on an equal but parallel basis.”

“See fee. Do you write it with a hyphen? Or how?”

“No, Elijah. A diagonal line between the two is the accepted way. It symbolizes neither one nor the other, but a mixture of the two, without priority.”

The concept is humans and robots working side by side. An old friend of mine back in 1977 coined the phrase “men and machines working together”. As far as I know, he never read *The Caves of Steel*.

I would have loved to know Isaac Asimov personally. I could have talked robots with him for hours, I think.

Blog import

Hi, everyone. I was able to import my 360 blogs from Yahoo, and post them here at WordPress. So I guess I’ll be using WordPress after all Which is a good thing. It beats blogging at Angelfire!