The Cyborgs are Among Us

When the Terminators arrive they will not descend as an alien force upon an unsuspecting public.

The first cyborgs will arrive with a whimper, not a bang.

We will welcome them, not fear them. We will accept them into our lives.

We will do this because we will be them. And they will be us.

The change will come by degrees. In fact, it has already begun.

Our doctors routinely replace bones and joints with with metal and plastic and carbon fibre. Our paralympic athletes achieve extraordinary physical feats with biomechanical prosthetics. Our soldiers wear movement-enhancing armour and have instant communications projected directly into their vision.

This week we’ve had two notable examples hitting the papers: a filmmaker replacing one eye with a camera, and a programmer replacing his finger with a USB drive.

Interesting, but these are hardly quantum leaps towards our cybernetic future. They’re just the next steps down the road.

Gentlemen, we already have the technology.

Rolling the Roads

A nice little piece today from Age scribe Matthew McLean to solve Melbourne’s public transport woes:

They shall construct above-ground, domed corridors, each complete with lanes of non-stop conveyor belts. The corridors will be minimalist but comfortable in design, the roofs fitted with solar panels to power the belts.

Stations will be dismantled. Passengers can mount and dismount at will, with the speed set at a gentle 25 km/h in the CBD, increasing to 40 km/h in the suburbs. Padding will be placed beside the conveyor belts to cushion people's landings. Those laughable blue documents known as "timetables" will be stacked higher than the Eureka Tower, and a massive bonfire will ensue.

It’s a great idea, but hardly original. Heinlein came up with this almost 70 years ago in his short story masterpiece “The Roads Must Roll”.

Now I’m all for giving our cities a retro-future look, and moving walkways are a staple of that particular genre. They’re right up there with jetpacks and robot butlers and silver jumpsuits.

We might want to be careful about this one, though. In Heinlein’s story, this particular idea didn’t turn out so well.

Staring at the Suns

NASA’s Kepler mission is set to launch in just under six hours.

Kepler is armed with a 95-megapixel camera, but it won’t be taking spectacular images of distant galaxies.

Missions like Cassini (which a few days ago threw back some awesome photos of a small moon embedded in one of Saturn’s rings) have been all abut the pretty pictures. But Kepler is all about the science.

All Kepler will be doing is staring at a patch of sky about the size of your outstretched hand. And it’ll stare at it for three-and-a-half years, looking for tiny dips in the brightness of stars.

If these are repeated periodically (which is why such a long staring time is required) then it might indicate the passage of a planet between us and the star.

This is the next step in our search for exoplanets.

Specifically, we’re looking for Earth-like planets in the habitable zone (also known as the ‘Goldilocks’ zone: not too hot, not too cold, but juuuust right) around distant stars.

Why do this? Because it will help to solve one of the most profound problems ever posed and yet unanswered.

We genuinely don’t know how likely or unlikely our life on this planet really is.  The results of the Kepler mission will put some hard data behind this investigation.

It’s a big step on the way to answering the question: are we all alone out here?

Freeview. Ho Hum.

The final move to digital television in Australia is still a long way off, with latest estimates putting it sometime in 2013.

It’s taking so long because getting the Australian government to organise something like this is like getting an Amish family to produce a video podcast about World of Warcraft.

They’re making feints in the direction of activity though, with the 2009 launch of something called “Freeview”.

The big claim on the official site is that there will be fifteen new free-to-air channels starting up sometime in 2009, ten standard and five in HD.

<sarcasm> Well, that should get the punters ditching their rabbit ears and flocking to Harvey Norman for a set-top box. </sarcasm>

The thing is, those of us with set-top boxes already know that those fifteen channels are already there, but the only ones being used for new content are ABC2, SBS News and Ten HD. Channels 7 and 9 are just showing their basic broadcast across all three of their stations.

So here’s my question: what’s going to happen in 2009 to encourage the networks to put different content on each one?

On the official government website it announces a big-arse industry conference in March to “discuss the future of Digital TV in Australia”.

All the interested parties will be there, so presumably that’s where all the bribery, blackmail and back-scratching will happen. And we definitely won’t be freeviewing anything until all that’s done.

It’ll be a nauseating exercise in faux-concern and ham-fisted negotiation, as the government tries to save face on its bungled implementation and the networks try to get away with doing as little as possible.

That’s the thing about free-to-air television. There’s no advantage to any of the networks in increasing the number of channels they transmit.

In the long term it might make them a viable competitor to Pay TV, but with streaming media just around the corner even that’s looking shaky.

In the short term, and this is where their focus tends to lie, all it does is increase expenses while spreading the fixed revenue base more thinly. No-one wins.

Except maybe the viewers, but no-one cares about them.

Five Cheers for the Rovers

In January 2004 the plucky little rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of Mars, each with a planned three-month mission.

They would roll over the planet’s surface, produce panoramic images of a depth and quality previously unseen from another planet, and provide us with invaluable knowledge about Martian geology and history, particularly the history of Martian water.

That original mission has long been accomplished and now, five years later they’re both still going.

Not necessarily going strong, because living way past their planned lifespan has led to a lot of wear and tear. But they’re still going.

This is a testament to what can be achieved when our desire for exploration and knowledge is harnessed.

We are curious animals by nature and always looking for what’s around the corner. In times gone by we’ve been content to fill the gaps in our knowledge with superstitions and gods.

We don’t need to do that anymore.

Whether we’re looking outwards to space or into the smallest particles, we have the ability to not only formulate the questions, but also to find the answers.

They may be small, but the rovers represent one more step out into the Universe. And one more step on the path to our future among the stars.

The Antikythera Mechanism

The wonderfully mysterious Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in a shipwreck off the Greek coast in 1901.

Dated to about 100BC, the mechanism’s discovery completely changed our modern view of just how technological the ancient world was.

About the size of a shoebox, it’s a steampunk lover’s dream.

A sophisticated system of hand-cranked gears and cogs provides an accurate calendar and astronomical clock. It maps the relative positions of the sun, moon and planets (or at least the ones that were known in 100BC) and the stars.

It even keeps track of the dates of the Olympic Games.

A new working model of the mechanism has just been completed, incorporating all the very latest discoveries.

The longer it’s investigated, the more amazing things are discovered.

But of course the real question is:  when can I get one?

I Seem to Have Found the Problem

Apparently the modem I'm using (Dynalink RTA1046VW) doesn't like Macs to link to it using WEP wireless security.

It's as simple as that. Who would have thought it would be so picky?

Anyway, on a whim I changed the wireless security to WPA-PSK and now it's all fine. The PC works. The Mac works.

It's like some kind of freakin' CPUtopia. Ebony and (white rounded corners) Ivory.

So that's all fine then. And for anyone who's stumbled across this article while trying to find a solution for the same problem, you're most welcome.

Michael Atkinson is Pure Evil

The Rudd Government is apparently gunning to out-conservative the conservatives, with a proposed mandatory internet filter that will

(a) significantly slow internet speeds,

(b) put Australian censorship in the same category as that enjoyed by China and Iran, and

(c) fail to stop one single person from downloading illegal content if they want to.

There's naturally been a major industry backlash, so here's hoping the whole ridiculous idea gets shelved.

Then, straight into this maelstrom of Luddite lunacy comes the announcement that Michael Atkinson (remember him?) is no longer satisfied just passively resisting the introduction of an R18+ rating for video games, but is now actively scuttling any chance of advancing the issue by blocking debate.

Back in March it was announced that there would be public consultation on the issue, which has apparently now been completed. It obviously had the results I predicted it would, because Atkinson has rejected its publication.

Just who the hell does this guy think he is?

Twilight of the Phoenix

NASA is reporting that the Phoenix lander, which arrived with much fanfare on Mars just over five months ago, is gradually being shut down.

The Phoenix has some life in it yet, but it's already outlived its original 90 day mission and now its power sources are failing.

The heaters keeping the Phoenix alive will be turned off one by one, keeping it running for as long as possible, until it can no longer be sustained.

Soon it will be over. The Phoenix will sit, still and quiet, waiting in the cold thin atmosphere of Mars.

It will wait for the day, hopefully soon, that we arrive in person on the red planet.

Then the Phoenix will be found, gathered up and preserved as a cherished memory of one of our earliest steps towards the stars.

Battlestar Galactica Case Mod

This is one of the nerdiest things I've ever seen.

And I want one.


You can't do that on a Mac, can you? Ha.

RSC Renames LHC

The Royal Society for Chemistry has conducted a public poll to choose a better name for the Large Hadron Collider.

Apparently just naming something after what it does is soooo last century.

Anyway, the resounding winner was "Halo".

Which I must admit has a certain ring to it.

Distant Digital Futures

An article in today's Age talks about the eventual switchoff of Australia's analog television signals and the permanent move to digital.

The point of the article is that, for the Luddites among us . . .

". . . the Federal Government is considering offering financial and other incentives to convince people to upgrade from analog to digital television before the 2013 analog switch-off."

I would have thought that the option of digital-or-nothing would be incentive enough. But hey, what do I know?

Anyway, the switch-off date made me do a double take. It's 2013 now?

The last I heard it was going to be 2010. And that was after it had already been pushed back from the original target of 2008.

This is bad. Until the analog signals are gone and we've opened up the (much wider) digital spectrum to some decent competition, there's no incentive at all for our oligopolous free-to-air stations to lift their game.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the FTA stations have engineered the delay in an attempt to retain the status quo. If they have, then it'll prove a costly mistake.

They desperately need someone to drag them into the 21st century. In five years' time, free-to-air television will be even less relevant than it is now, with downloadable, streaming and subscription content continuing to take over.

If our FTA stations are still doing then what they're doing now, then before long they'll be nothing more than a distant memory.

Doomsday Delayed

I posted previously about the Large Hadron Collider, and some of the talk surrounding it, vis-a-vis its potential to destroy the Universe.

Some of you may have noticed that two-week deadline came and went, and we're still all here.

Don't worry, it's only because the switch-on date has been pushed back to September 10.

So we've got another 20 days at least.

Ooh Shiny

I'm writing this on my shiny new laptop, which is now working after a bit of a worrisome start.

When I got it home last night, quite giddy with anticipation I was, so it was a little disappointing when it failed to boot up.

It turns out the extra memory stick I'd requested was faulty, and once I'd removed it we were good to go.

So here we are.

The first thing I noticed was the ridulous amount of pre-installed software clogging up the works. That's gonna have to go.

In fact, maybe I'll just wipe the hard drive and and reinstall Windows from scratch. Nice and tidy.

After all, if I wanted a machine crammed with a bunch of shit I'm never going to use, I would have bought a Mac.

Two weeks to Doomsday

In two weeks the Large Hadron Collider, a massive particle accelerator under the border of France and Switzerland, will go online.

Particle accelerators are nothing new, and the idea is simple . . . you smash particles together at insanely high speeds and see what happens.

But the LHC is so massive, and the collisions will be so violent, that apparently we risk generating a black hole, tearing the space-time continuum and destroying reality. Oooh.

Well, it just makes it that little bit more exciting, doesn't it? And hey, discovery is discovery. (I can see the debrief: "So that's how you destroy the universe. Huh.")

And anyway, so what if we tear a hole to another dimension? We've all seen Star Trek. We know how this works.

Sure it might be a dimension full of badass alien invaders intent on destroying our world and stealing our water.

But it's just as likely to be full of hot alien babes in silver jumpsuits desperate to understand this human emotion called "love".

And I for one am willing to take that chance.

Tangled Up In Quanta

After that last post I got all depressed and went looking for some funky science stories to cheer myself up.

And I found one.

Quantum entanglement is a truly bizarre phenomenon, even by the way-out-there standards of quantum physics.

The idea is that if two photons of light become "entangled" at a quantum level, then the state of one will instantaneously affect the state of the other, even if they are separated by thousands or maybe even millions or billions of miles.

The potential applications of this, from faster-than-light communication to quantum cryptography, are staggering.

The state of each photon is not set until observed (in line with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, or if you prefer, Schrödinger's cat), so observing one photon affects the state of the other.

All lab experiements to date have supported the theory of entanglement, but having both photons Earthbound introduces a potential loophole, whereby the observation might have been in advance, and therefore the effect not truly instantaneous.

The solution? Send one of the entangled photons to the International Space Station and leave the other one on Earth.

Due to the relativistic movement between the two photons, an observer on Earth and an observer on the ISS could both claim to have measured their photon first.

That's truly exciting. Nobody knows how this will turn out.

Now if only we could get some funding for further study of boredons.

And in Science News

A group of thirteen national science academies today released a joint statement calling on the Governments of the world to do more to fight climate change.

Emarassingly, Australia was not one of them.

But this is hardly surprising. We're still very behind the times with all this stuff.

It was announced today that Toyota will be producing the new hybrid Camry at their Altona plant, to begin production in 2010.

Here's my tip:

Not long after 2010 we won't be interested in hybrids anymore. The race to produce the first mass-market electric car will be well and truly on. This decision will be seen as the one that put Australia on the back foot, by encouraging our car industry to huddle under its warm and cosy Government subsidies instead of getting out there and earning its keep.

You heard it here first.

Phoenix Landing

This is a truly amazing image.



While the Phoenix was on its parachute descent to the Martian north pole yesterday, our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this picture.

The shot is taken looking down at the planet. The texture in the background is the icy surface of Mars.

I am awestruck.

Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy, one of my personal heroes, was so impressed he made this video:



I couldn't agree more.

Phoenix

Exciting news this morning, when the Phoenix lander touched down safely near the north pole of Mars just before 10am AEST.

The landing was always going to be dicey, with a freefall drop followed by a parachute deployment and braking thrusters to bring it down safely.

My workplace has all sorts of restrictions on net content, so sadly no streaming vision of the event could be seen at my workstation. Knowing this in advance, I seriously considered turning up to work two hours late, but ultimately decided against it.

I just made do with checking the liveblogs at nasa.gov and a couple of other places.

The fact that even that managed to get me psyched up gives you some idea of how much stuff like this means to me and other space geeks of my ilk.

The images the Phoenix has relayed back aren't as spectacular as those from the wandering rovers Spirit and Opportunity (still going strong after landing four years ago for a three-month mission) but this one isn't about the pretty pictures.

This one is just about the science. The discovery. Getting out there and digging in the dirt and seeing what there is to see.

Unlike the rovers the Phoenix will be sitting stationary, drilling into the Martian surface to hopefully find water ice and organic molecules.

The great hope, of course, is that it will find evidence of life. Even the tiniest hint of bacteria would be enough to show that we're not alone in the universe.

We wait with bated breath, but for today the successful landing is enough.

It reminds us once again that while we sit here huddled on our tiny world, there's a whole universe out there for us to explore.

Much On Demand

I'm really starting to appreciate the much-talked about possibility that online and on-demand entertainment will replace television as we know it.

After all, why should we sit in front of inane and increasingly cheap and exploitative television, when you can be entertained by even cheaper, inaner and more exploitative stuff like YouTube . . . without the limitations of a schedule?

It's crap, but at least it's on demand.

If all you want is attention-seeking dropkicks acting like douchebags, then why commit to something like Big Brother? Apart from anything else, it's months before the final payoff. Farting pandas are done in 30 seconds.

With this in mind (actually not really this . . . we've rationalised it with high-falutin' talk about supporting new media and quality programming) my wife and I have pledged not to watch a single minute of Big Brother 2008.

So far it's worked, although there have been a couple of close calls. There was a scramble for the remote this evening when the channel innocently flicked to during the ads started up that horrible theme tune.

There's not much in it apart from the bragging rights, but quite frankly, that's enough.

I've had enough of this lowbrow manufactured controversy. That's not reality. And it's not entertainment.

Must go now. Ladette to Lady's on. Love that show.