Perhaps Bill Gates was right after all about nobody needing more than 640K memory…
I have been completely unable to convince my boss that the Honda robots (including, and particularly ASIMO) aren’t just humans dressed up as robots - chiefly because he believes it isn’t possible with currently available technology.
His level of denial is quite astounding - I showed him a number of videos where you could clearly see right through the knee and elbow joints as the robot moved - he claimed that the videos had been digitally edited.
Ray Bradbury had these in The Martian Chronicles, I think.
Ah, they’re 1950’s style… ummmm… something or other.
Anyway, my proper contribution to this thread…
Flashing ink (I’ve often thought this might actually be possible)
A self-tuning guitar (this should actually be quite simple)
Yes - something like that (damn!) - I had this idea about fifteen years ago, but my design was going to tune the guitar continuously while it was being played (so it wouldn’t driff off tune even during a song (I think this would be possible by using the frets to detect which note each string was supposed to be playing).
SONY Librie’ comes pretty close. eInk makes the actual display, and this page explains how it works.
…Sting Rays!
Duh…
Oops, forgot:
My god, man! Have you not witnessed the horror wrought by the HTML <BLINK> tag? You seriously want to transfer that to the printed page? :dubious:
Think of the junk-mailing potential!
Or do you mean “bee proof onnet?”
I got a really simple one. How about ATMs with full keyboards, that would let you withdraw any amount up to your balance in the form of a cashier’s check?
A shampoo that stops your hair growing. And if you want to grow your hair again, just stop using the shampoo. (My hair grows really quickly, and when I get my hair cut into a fabulous new style it grows out really quicky. VERY annoying.)
Science not being my strong point, I have no idea if this would ever be possible.
A video recorder that you can program remotely, say over a phone line. You’re at work or away from home and you read about something on TV this evening. You know you won’t be home in time, so you want to tell your VCR (or recordable hard disk device gizmo) to record it for you. But you can’t. All the technology to make this possible has been around for a long time, but it’s still ‘no can do’.
Plastic currency notes. This has been invented in some parts of the world but not others. Places like the UK (where I live) and the USA actually spend a lot of time and effort replacing worn out currency notes because they can deteriorate quite quickly with every day use. In Australia the ‘paper’ money is actually printed on a kind of thin plastic. It handles pretty much like ‘paper’ money, except you can’t fold or crease it, and it lasts a lot longer. It’s also cleaner and more hygienic because it picks up and retains less dirt, sweat and so on.
Tannoys and public address systems that actually work. There are lots of instances where the so-called public address system is largely useless, and you can’t tell what is being said by the announcer (it’s a big problem on things like train stations, here in England). I was once discussing this with an audio engineer. He said it’s not a technological limitation. These systems *can * deliver very good, clear sound. He said the reason so many *don’t * is because the people managing the location want to save money so they use inferiour equipment or cheap parts, or because the components are quite good but they are put together by people who don’t know what they are doing and don’t understand things like impedance and how to set up an amplifier correctly.
Little Nemo, the personal hovercraft has been invented and has been demonstrated on live TV.
A comfortable bra, especially for the well-endowed woman. How hard could this be? It would make a bazillion dollars.
Yup. I once asked this same question to a friend of mine at Dolby Labs about ten years ago, and he got positively prickly about this - how the technology is there and isn’t particularly difficult or expensive, but the junk that garbles everything costs a few bucks less, so that’s what everyone uses.
Little Nemo’s Law of Invention: Until you start selling it at WalMart, you haven’t invented anything; you’re just conducting research on the prototypes.
I just bought one of these yesterday! It comes with a CD-ROM of software and connects to your computer by USB. If the power goes off, it will save your file, close all your programs, shut down Windows, turn off the computer and then shut itself off to save the battery. For real! $50 at CompUSA.
www.oqo.com <— this thing!(it’s not on the market yet.) and for good measure make it a cell phone too.
car seats which don’t make your back sweaty. Make the chair with grooves to allow air flow!, or make an intercooler run through the chair or something. FANS!
Air conditioning clothes.
an injectable enzyme which specifically targets ethanol. (Ok, maybe this one isn’t possible).
Heh. Don’t hold your breath on that one, will you? - The Oqo has been ‘coming real soon now’ for a number of years. Extant mobile computing seems to be attacking the task from the other angle - building IN features that people need, rather than taking a laptop and whittling away at it.
A device that can conclusively determine if a boy/man really is a virgin or just sexually incompetent.