Interesting physical+visual interface

[Chacal]

http://www.jamespatten.com/pico/picovid.html

[SavageParrot]

Seeems pretty useless to me, pretty I'll grant you, but useless nevertheless. The whole purpose of getting computers to optimise things is that it is faster. If you have to sit there and hold the computers hand then what's the point?

[cavalierlwt]

It's useless now, but a lot of times new technology just has to be matched up with some need--and you never know what that need will be, sometimes the need comes *after* the invention.
If nothing else, high tech board game maybe???

[SavageParrot]

Bah I'd rather see technology that promotes less human involvement rather than more. If it comes to a choice between being ruled by machines or by half arsed, half brained muppets like Dubbya then fit me with an explosive collar and call me Megatrons bitch....

[Chacal]

This is much more user-friendly and intuitive than using a mouse and keyboard.

[SavageParrot]

How so? There are no letters. What you mean is for that specific task it's more user friendly. But then it's a pretty limited task if you ask me. I mean that whole presentation just reaked of "right we've made it now lets try and justify it"'. Most of the tasks they were saying it could solve such as placing cellphone towers, or whatever the smeg it was (I forget), could just as easily have been achieved by feeding that little extra data into the computer not a demanding task when they appear to have already loaded in a bunch of the ground plan. It just seems like they deliberately starved the computer of data to make a job for the man rather than creating a program to fufill an actual need. It's not something which I would think 'wow someone should invent that.

Like cavalier says though I guess it might have a use that just hasn't been found yet.

[Chacal]

Yes, that's what research is.

[SavageParrot]

lol that's what scientists who want an open ended budget say it is. Alternatively you can start out with a specific objective and keep trying things untill you get one that works. Personally I'd rather fill in the gap I can see than throw plaster at a wall and hope some of it fills a crack somewhere