What a great cover-up for hangovers in the workplace that will be – “Your eyes are bloodshot – heavy night out?” “Nah, stayed at home and read a Doctorow novel.” [Image by babygoldfish]
I’m still waiting for my flying car, my personal robot assistant and my complete meals in pill form, but a little bit of the science fictional future looks to have just finally arrived – the first affordable non-vaporware 3D computer monitor is on sale right now. Whether it’s actually any good, I have no idea – but it’s a start.
On Virgin America’s new planes you can build a private playlist from the 3,000 on-board MP3s, play Doom, watch satellite TV, chat with other passengers or order lunch, all from the seat back in front of you. The computers that make this possible run Linux, booted over the network from one of the three servers at the back of the plane. Artur Bergman of O’Reilly Radar has a more detailed description of the experience, and a Flickr photoset with a bunch of cool pics.
Despite the snide tone of my title, BBC’s article on the present and future of self-driving cars is an interesting overview of developments since the last running of the Grand Challenge, and a hint at what the world might look like after these cars go mainstream. I wonder if any of the contestants are using evolutionary computing techniques?
Presenting the fact and fiction of tomorrow since 2001
As someone who started using computers back in the good old days when you had to bash every instruction into the keyboard at the command prompt, I still feel kind of grateful for the revolutionary interface change that the now-standard mouse brought with it. But after a few hours trawling the web, my right hand starts telling me that there has to be a better way. And there is, thanks to a bunch of boffins from Stanford University who’ve developed a system that allows you to replicate the functions of a mouse interface using a few keyboard hotkeys and the motion of your eyeballs.
On 
Despite the snide tone of my title,