In this interview with Futurist Craig Rispin, he talks about virtual receptionists from Delacon.com.au
MP3 File
25 March 2005
This interview with Craig Rispin describes how to get your customers to tell you exactly what they want to buy.
Note: the Votations service has been discontinued, a great alternative is the Ask Database. http://www.askdatabase.com
MP3 File
Note: the Votations service has been discontinued, a great alternative is the Ask Database. http://www.askdatabase.com
MP3 File
21 March 2005
Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Reprap Machines Would Turn Homes into Factories
Reprap Machines Would Turn Homes into Factories
By John von Radowitz, PA Science Correspondent
A revolutionary British development could one day change the face of manufacturing by turning every home into a factory.
Engineers are working on a machine capable of churning out a host of household items and gadgets, including kitchenware, cameras and even small musical instruments.
Not only would the machine make things out of plastic and metal, it would also fabricate its own component parts.
The “self-replicating rapid prototyper”, or RepRap, will be about the size of a refrigerator.
It could become a reality within four years – and the aim is to make it a universal feature of the home.
RepRap machines could in future render many forms of traditional manufacturing obsolete, according to project leader Dr Adrian Bowyer.
“Four hundred years ago almost every human being was employed in agriculture, and now it’s only a couple of per cent,” said Dr Bowyer, from the University of Bath’s Centre for Biomimetics. “I suspect the same thing is going to happen to manufacturing.”
Computer controlled machines already exist which mass-produce plastic components for industry, such as vehicle parts.
These conventional machines cost about £25,000. Dr Bowyer’s idea is initially to use these machines to make the component parts for his RepRap machine.
These machines can then be programmed to make further copies of themselves. People buying them would then be able to make more copies to sell on.
As the number of RepRap machines grows, their cost is expected to tumble to only a few hundred pounds or less.
Dr Bowyer plans to make the 3D designs and computer code needed for an existing machine to make one of his devices freely available on the internet.
He is not taking out a patent and will not charge a licence fee.
“The most interesting part of this is that we’re going to give it away,” he said.
“At the moment an industrial company consists of hundreds of people building and making things. If these machines take off, it will give individual people the chance to do this themselves. And we are talking about making a lot of our consumer goods.
“The effect this has on industry and society could be dramatic.”
Rapid prototype machines work by fusing together layers of plastic according to a blueprint fed into the computer.
Dr Bowyer’s machine would also be able to incorporate simple metal components and circuits out of an alloy that melts at low temperatures.
The machines could, for instance, make complete sets of coloured and decorated plastic plates, dishes and bowels.
The objects they produce would measure no more than 12 inches in length, width and height. But larger items could be made by simply clipping together smaller manufactured parts.
Glass items, complex parts such as microchips, and anything exposed to intense heat – such as a toaster – could not be directly assembled.
Components the machine is unable to make could easily be added. A basic digital camera could be made with the lens and computer chip bought separately and slotted in later.
Dr Bowyer said the devices would effectively be a form of Universal Constructor, the theoretical self-replicating machine first proposed by mathematician John von Neumann in the 1950s.
He and colleague Ed Sells have already built a simple demonstration robot with an electrical circuit using the technology.
They are now looking for funding for the next stages of development, leading to a programme for making the component parts of a RepRap machine in about four years.
Transforming the whole basis of manufacturing might take as long as 20 years, if it ever happened, said Dr Bowyer.
He admitted there was an anarchistic element to what he was doing.
“Employment will increase, because it’s not employment that creates wealth, it’s wealth that creates employment,” he said.
Reprap Machines Would Turn Homes into Factories
By John von Radowitz, PA Science Correspondent
A revolutionary British development could one day change the face of manufacturing by turning every home into a factory.
Engineers are working on a machine capable of churning out a host of household items and gadgets, including kitchenware, cameras and even small musical instruments.
Not only would the machine make things out of plastic and metal, it would also fabricate its own component parts.
The “self-replicating rapid prototyper”, or RepRap, will be about the size of a refrigerator.
It could become a reality within four years – and the aim is to make it a universal feature of the home.
RepRap machines could in future render many forms of traditional manufacturing obsolete, according to project leader Dr Adrian Bowyer.
“Four hundred years ago almost every human being was employed in agriculture, and now it’s only a couple of per cent,” said Dr Bowyer, from the University of Bath’s Centre for Biomimetics. “I suspect the same thing is going to happen to manufacturing.”
Computer controlled machines already exist which mass-produce plastic components for industry, such as vehicle parts.
These conventional machines cost about £25,000. Dr Bowyer’s idea is initially to use these machines to make the component parts for his RepRap machine.
These machines can then be programmed to make further copies of themselves. People buying them would then be able to make more copies to sell on.
As the number of RepRap machines grows, their cost is expected to tumble to only a few hundred pounds or less.
Dr Bowyer plans to make the 3D designs and computer code needed for an existing machine to make one of his devices freely available on the internet.
He is not taking out a patent and will not charge a licence fee.
“The most interesting part of this is that we’re going to give it away,” he said.
“At the moment an industrial company consists of hundreds of people building and making things. If these machines take off, it will give individual people the chance to do this themselves. And we are talking about making a lot of our consumer goods.
“The effect this has on industry and society could be dramatic.”
Rapid prototype machines work by fusing together layers of plastic according to a blueprint fed into the computer.
Dr Bowyer’s machine would also be able to incorporate simple metal components and circuits out of an alloy that melts at low temperatures.
The machines could, for instance, make complete sets of coloured and decorated plastic plates, dishes and bowels.
The objects they produce would measure no more than 12 inches in length, width and height. But larger items could be made by simply clipping together smaller manufactured parts.
Glass items, complex parts such as microchips, and anything exposed to intense heat – such as a toaster – could not be directly assembled.
Components the machine is unable to make could easily be added. A basic digital camera could be made with the lens and computer chip bought separately and slotted in later.
Dr Bowyer said the devices would effectively be a form of Universal Constructor, the theoretical self-replicating machine first proposed by mathematician John von Neumann in the 1950s.
He and colleague Ed Sells have already built a simple demonstration robot with an electrical circuit using the technology.
They are now looking for funding for the next stages of development, leading to a programme for making the component parts of a RepRap machine in about four years.
Transforming the whole basis of manufacturing might take as long as 20 years, if it ever happened, said Dr Bowyer.
He admitted there was an anarchistic element to what he was doing.
“Employment will increase, because it’s not employment that creates wealth, it’s wealth that creates employment,” he said.
18 March 2005
Channelnewsasia.com: "Samsung unveils six new MP3 players in bid to triple sales
SEOUL: South Korea's Samsung has unveiled six new models of MP3 player to help it triple sales this year.
It aims to sell more than five million MP3 players this year, up from 1.7 million units in 2004.
Samsung, a relatively late comer to the MP3 player business, already has eight models in the fast growing and profitable market.
The six new players from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd should be available in the first half of the year.
They range from a 256 megabyte flash memory type to a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive model capable of holding about 7,500 songs.
"
SEOUL: South Korea's Samsung has unveiled six new models of MP3 player to help it triple sales this year.
It aims to sell more than five million MP3 players this year, up from 1.7 million units in 2004.
Samsung, a relatively late comer to the MP3 player business, already has eight models in the fast growing and profitable market.
The six new players from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd should be available in the first half of the year.
They range from a 256 megabyte flash memory type to a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive model capable of holding about 7,500 songs.
"
14 March 2005
Technology News: News: Bush Taps Hopkins Physicist to Lead NASA: "Bush Taps Hopkins Physicist to Lead NASA
Bush Taps Hopkins Physicist to Lead NASA
By Marcia Dunn
Associated Press
03/13/05 5:21 PM PT
Prior to taking over the space department at Johns Hopkins, Michael Griffin was president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel, a CIA-bankrolled venture-capital organization. Earlier in his career, Griffin worked at NASA as chief engineer and as deputy for technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization.
IBM Workplace Services Express provides an integrated portal, making it easy for people to work together with customizable work spaces. See the four-minute demo: Boost Productivity and Improve Collaboration. Easily and Affordably.
President Bush picked physicist Michael Griffin to lead NASA Latest News about NASA as it prepares to resume space shuttle flights and tries to meet the White House goal of sending astronauts back to the moon in the decade ahead.
If confirmed by the Senate, Griffin would become the space agency's 11th administrator.
Members of Congress on Friday immediately praised the president's choice, as did John Logsdon, director of George Washington University's space policy institute.
'I've known Mike for a long time and have a great deal of respect for him as a kind of innovative thinker, real enthusiast full of energy,' Logsdon said.
'His biggest challenge is convincing Congress that the president's vision should be a national vision, that it's the right way for the program to proceed,' Logsdon added.
Sean O'Keefe left NASA last month after three years in the top job to become chancellor of Louisiana State University. Since then, his deputy, former space shuttle commander Frederick Gregory, has been serving as acting administrator.
For the past year, Griffin has headed the space department at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. It is the lab's second-largest department and specializes in projec"
Bush Taps Hopkins Physicist to Lead NASA
By Marcia Dunn
Associated Press
03/13/05 5:21 PM PT
Prior to taking over the space department at Johns Hopkins, Michael Griffin was president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel, a CIA-bankrolled venture-capital organization. Earlier in his career, Griffin worked at NASA as chief engineer and as deputy for technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization.
IBM Workplace Services Express provides an integrated portal, making it easy for people to work together with customizable work spaces. See the four-minute demo: Boost Productivity and Improve Collaboration. Easily and Affordably.
President Bush picked physicist Michael Griffin to lead NASA Latest News about NASA as it prepares to resume space shuttle flights and tries to meet the White House goal of sending astronauts back to the moon in the decade ahead.
If confirmed by the Senate, Griffin would become the space agency's 11th administrator.
Members of Congress on Friday immediately praised the president's choice, as did John Logsdon, director of George Washington University's space policy institute.
'I've known Mike for a long time and have a great deal of respect for him as a kind of innovative thinker, real enthusiast full of energy,' Logsdon said.
'His biggest challenge is convincing Congress that the president's vision should be a national vision, that it's the right way for the program to proceed,' Logsdon added.
Sean O'Keefe left NASA last month after three years in the top job to become chancellor of Louisiana State University. Since then, his deputy, former space shuttle commander Frederick Gregory, has been serving as acting administrator.
For the past year, Griffin has headed the space department at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. It is the lab's second-largest department and specializes in projec"
13 March 2005
USATODAY.com - Townes leads life where science and faith coexist
Townes leads life where science and faith coexist
By Robert Tuttle, The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK — When Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Hard Townes was a professor at Columbia University during the 1950s, a colleague, Willis Lamb, asked him if God ever helps him in the lab. Dr. Townes gave the question some thought. "Well," he recalls telling Lamb. "I think so."
For centuries, scientists and religious scholars have sparred over questions about the workings of the universe. Galileo's espousal of a sun-centered universe, rather than the earth-centered model widely accepted at the time, landed the 16th-century astronomer in court, accused of heresy.
AP
Townes
"I don't think that science is complete at all. We don't understand everything and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies."
More recently, scientists and religious leaders have disagreed over everything from the big bang theory of the origin of the universe to the teaching of evolution in schools to the debate over stem-cell research.
But even in these often discordant worlds, Townes has found little difficulty in reconciling his Christian faith with the empiricism of scientific inquiry.
"I don't think that science is complete at all," says the 89-year-old physicist. "We don't understand everything and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don't understand."
Within the great unknowns of the universe, Townes argues there is ample room for faith in God and His presence in human experience.
On Wednesday, Townes was awarded this year's Templeton Prize for progress or discoveries about spiritual reality. The award includes a cash prize of £795,000 sterling ($1.4 million).
"The real focus of the prize really seems to resonate with Townes's interest for the past 30 years, which is how to break down the barriers between science and religion," says Sir John Templeton, president of the foundation that bears his name and which awards the prize.
The award, Townes says, is "a great honor, but it is also very humbling."
Townes is best known for his groundbreaking research in the 1950s into the amplification of electromagnetic waves, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in physics with two other scientists in 1964. The research eventually led to his invention of the maser (microwave amplification by stimulated emission) and later the laser (light amplification by stimulated emission).
Both inventions have had an impact on a range of different scientific and industrial fields. Masers are used to amplify radio waves, and lasers have become commonplace in everything from welding to communications to medicine.
Born in 1915, on a farm in Greenville, S.C., Townes was raised a Baptist. He was immersed in the wonders of the Blue Ridge Mountains near his home.
As a child, he says, he loved to explore the natural world around him, collecting insects and especially butterflies. The marvels of nature, he says, helped spark a curiosity about the universe and man's place within it. To this day, he remains an avid naturalist and accomplished bird watcher.
"I knew I wanted to be a scientist," he says, speaking of his childhood. "Which kind of scientist was the question."
Townes took his first physics class in his sophomore year of college and went on to earn a PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1939.
For much of the next decade, Townes worked on the technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City, where, he says, he once talked about his research with Albert Einstein.
Townes tackled a variety of problems at Bell including microwave generation, vacuum tubes, and solid-state physics.
In 1948, Townes joined the faculty of Columbia University and spent most of the remainder of his professional career in academia, moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961 and then to the University of California at Berkeley in 1967.
There he focused on astrophysics, discovering the existence of molecules in interstellar space and a black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Today he remains on UC Berkeley's faculty, working with graduate students and researching.
"Now, I'm looking at stars," he says, describing his current research interests. "I'm looking at their behavior. Most people don't realize that stars are changing pretty rapidly."
For all his interest in scientific inquiry, Townes says it has never led to a crisis of faith. He exhibits a strong sense of rationalism in his approach to both science and religion.
"He is very interested in the foundations of religion and faith-based concepts and he discusses them in a manner that is very attractive for fellow scientists," says Marvin Cohen, president of the American Physical Society and a close colleague of Townes. "He really thinks before he speaks. If there is an opposite of a loose cannon, that would be Charles Townes."
In 1966, Townes published "The Convergence of Science and Religion," an article that detailed some of his thoughts on the relation between religion and science.
"They are much more similar than people generally accept," Townes says. "Science has faith. We make postulates. We can't prove those postulates, but we have faith in them."
Townes leads life where science and faith coexist
By Robert Tuttle, The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK — When Nobel Prize-winning physicist Charles Hard Townes was a professor at Columbia University during the 1950s, a colleague, Willis Lamb, asked him if God ever helps him in the lab. Dr. Townes gave the question some thought. "Well," he recalls telling Lamb. "I think so."
For centuries, scientists and religious scholars have sparred over questions about the workings of the universe. Galileo's espousal of a sun-centered universe, rather than the earth-centered model widely accepted at the time, landed the 16th-century astronomer in court, accused of heresy.
AP
Townes
"I don't think that science is complete at all. We don't understand everything and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies."
More recently, scientists and religious leaders have disagreed over everything from the big bang theory of the origin of the universe to the teaching of evolution in schools to the debate over stem-cell research.
But even in these often discordant worlds, Townes has found little difficulty in reconciling his Christian faith with the empiricism of scientific inquiry.
"I don't think that science is complete at all," says the 89-year-old physicist. "We don't understand everything and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don't understand."
Within the great unknowns of the universe, Townes argues there is ample room for faith in God and His presence in human experience.
On Wednesday, Townes was awarded this year's Templeton Prize for progress or discoveries about spiritual reality. The award includes a cash prize of £795,000 sterling ($1.4 million).
"The real focus of the prize really seems to resonate with Townes's interest for the past 30 years, which is how to break down the barriers between science and religion," says Sir John Templeton, president of the foundation that bears his name and which awards the prize.
The award, Townes says, is "a great honor, but it is also very humbling."
Townes is best known for his groundbreaking research in the 1950s into the amplification of electromagnetic waves, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in physics with two other scientists in 1964. The research eventually led to his invention of the maser (microwave amplification by stimulated emission) and later the laser (light amplification by stimulated emission).
Both inventions have had an impact on a range of different scientific and industrial fields. Masers are used to amplify radio waves, and lasers have become commonplace in everything from welding to communications to medicine.
Born in 1915, on a farm in Greenville, S.C., Townes was raised a Baptist. He was immersed in the wonders of the Blue Ridge Mountains near his home.
As a child, he says, he loved to explore the natural world around him, collecting insects and especially butterflies. The marvels of nature, he says, helped spark a curiosity about the universe and man's place within it. To this day, he remains an avid naturalist and accomplished bird watcher.
"I knew I wanted to be a scientist," he says, speaking of his childhood. "Which kind of scientist was the question."
Townes took his first physics class in his sophomore year of college and went on to earn a PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1939.
For much of the next decade, Townes worked on the technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City, where, he says, he once talked about his research with Albert Einstein.
Townes tackled a variety of problems at Bell including microwave generation, vacuum tubes, and solid-state physics.
In 1948, Townes joined the faculty of Columbia University and spent most of the remainder of his professional career in academia, moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961 and then to the University of California at Berkeley in 1967.
There he focused on astrophysics, discovering the existence of molecules in interstellar space and a black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Today he remains on UC Berkeley's faculty, working with graduate students and researching.
"Now, I'm looking at stars," he says, describing his current research interests. "I'm looking at their behavior. Most people don't realize that stars are changing pretty rapidly."
For all his interest in scientific inquiry, Townes says it has never led to a crisis of faith. He exhibits a strong sense of rationalism in his approach to both science and religion.
"He is very interested in the foundations of religion and faith-based concepts and he discusses them in a manner that is very attractive for fellow scientists," says Marvin Cohen, president of the American Physical Society and a close colleague of Townes. "He really thinks before he speaks. If there is an opposite of a loose cannon, that would be Charles Townes."
In 1966, Townes published "The Convergence of Science and Religion," an article that detailed some of his thoughts on the relation between religion and science.
"They are much more similar than people generally accept," Townes says. "Science has faith. We make postulates. We can't prove those postulates, but we have faith in them."
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