Basically your iPhone is your desktop in your pocket, you’ll use airplay screens and Bluetooth input devices for heavy input but carry your office’s core with you everywhere you go. Expect an iBook Vacuum to supplement the Air….innovators dilemma

WIRED | Why Apple Nailed ‘it’ again

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

4 Big Ideas in the New iPhones That No One’s Talking About : BY KYLE VANHEMERT : 09.11.13

Not sure no ones talking about them but they are not looking at it from the right perspective…or not consistently. The 5C points out that personalization is a critical element but does not require a plethora of hardware versions to accomplish. Look at where Google/Motorola went with their customizable shell. The 5S finger print sensor, activity monitoring sub system and stepped up camera all point to the iPhones purpose as the center of your digital life.

Apple continues to lead even as the handset proliferation continues apace. The phone you own if you are serious these days is the iPhone and while others will backfill in the wake its Apple that still leads.

The 5 family is probably still in line with the concepts that Apple evolved under Jobs’ leadership. Not to say the team at the helm are only turning the crank. It’s also not to say that Apple couldn’t stumble, could miss a new wave, but right now they are in the lead and I don’t see much in the way of useful Tech they have missed yet. The iWatch and iTV, so far as I can see, have no traction because the technology is not here to make them special in the way Apple needs for their brand identity.

The iPhone/iOS is the anti Android and it will remain that way, while others like Nokia/MS, Motorola/Android and I think Samsung, SONY and even maybe HTC and LG, will evolve towards a more Apple like model. In the end the serious contenders will be variations on the Apple model with highly secure products that are your digital core.

NYT | power by the hour, Light by the cent

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

The Next Wireless Revolution, in Electricity : By TINA ROSENBERG : September 11, 2013
Great synopsis piece on how the spin offs of our mobile life is creating an underpinning for a financially, socially and ecologically sound human social revolution. Or at least that’s what we can hope for.

Peggy Nonnan | WSJ | Syria the speech, before and after…

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

Read these two pieces,

Making Sense of Syria: September 10, 2013, 3:32 PM

The Speech: 10:42 PM

What more can be said?

I’m not a “conservative,” I’m an 18th-century Enlightenment radical

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

From Charlie Martin at pjmedia.com/lifestyle/ : Does buddhism require you to be a liberal? The short answer is no ….

I don’t think it’s necessarily so. In fact, I think Buddhism, real Buddhism, is inherently more in tune with libertarian “conservative” politics. (This isn’t the place for this particular rant, but I scare-quote “conservative” because I think it’s a bad term. As I was telling someone last night, I’m not a “conservative,” I’m an 18th-century Enlightenment radical.)

Absolutely! So am I.

And regarding the rant….as usual the “liberal” progressives have managed to at once de content and blacken + distort the abstract philosophical meaning of the words conservative and liberal…as I have whined about in the past. Politicians do this to avoid being pinned down, progressives to control the message and short circuit dialogue. Going back to the discussion on political philosophy, progressives often called liberals are not at all about liberty in anything but the most puerile sense and conservatives are generally cautious, not reactionary, and are pro liberty in its more robust sense. Progressives are generally about changing human nature by government fiat.

Libertarians…the old liberals, are about core human rights, property rights, equality before the law, the rule of law, financially competent government, citizen dominated politics, de politicized + meritocratic bureaucracy and minimalist + open regulation. In other words an eighteenth century Enlightenment radical!

Victor Davis Hanson: Syrian Knowns and Unknowns

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

by Victor Davis Hanson: @Works and Days: Syrian Knowns and Unknowns September 8th, 2013

From my perspective the best synopsis of the status.

There are no solutions and probably never were any that a politician could stomach.

Micro Thrust

Posted on September 8, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

L. Brad King’s prototype of a ferrofluid ion thruster. When subjected to magnetic field, the points of the crown arise from a ring-shaped trench circling a one-inch block of aluminum. (Credit: Sarah Bird)

then an electric field is applied which makes the ‘points’ extend to nano scale and then emit ionic molecules at high velocity. Very neat, self forming, self healing, some scaling details to work out but this looks very promising. Another tech breakthrough from Air Force R&D.

Antimatter in space flight relevant quantities in 5 years!? Hot stuff!

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Sci Fi Engineer

AUGUST 30, 2013 Care of: Carnival of Space #317 Billionaire Peter Thiel funds Positron Dynamics who are developing a 10 microgram per week antimatter factory

For planetary, early interstellar precursor and simple omniplanetary applications, ACMF (antimatter catalyzed fusion) exhibits the best performance. The reference case of a 1-year human round-trip mission to Jupiter with a 10 to 100 metric ton (mT) payload requires an antimatter quantity of 1 to 10 micrograms (μg). It appears as though this requirement could drop into the 1 to 10 ng range for payloads consistent with unmanned, planetary missions.

So fuel for a trip to Jupiter (in one year!) every week.