Michael Ho 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (703)

• On the post: DailyDirt: ET Could Phone Home… But Would We Know It?

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 18 May, 2011 @ 01:06pm

  Re: Lawrence?s Law Of Alien Comunication

  There's also the hypothesis that advanced civilizations want nothing to do with the likes of us Earthlings... and that their advanced communications are highly-directed and not radiating out to the entire universe.

• On the post: DailyDirt: Brains Are Like Cracked Eggs On A Hot Skillet?

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 17 May, 2011 @ 01:17pm

  Re:

  The jumbled letters thing is not entirely correct...
  http://replay.web.archive.org/20090501142321/http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/
  
  And here's one of the most ambiguous mixed letter sentences in English:
  
  "The sprehas had ponits and patles"
  This might come out as...
  The sherpas had pitons and plates.
  The shapers had points and pleats.
  The seraphs had pintos and petals.
  The sphaers had pinots and palets.
  The sphears had potins and peltas.

• On the post: DailyDirt: Engineering Food For Every Occasion…

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 15 May, 2011 @ 12:11am

  Re:

  Okay, so bananas aren't *all* going to die, but even in that snopes page:
  
  "Lack of genetic diversity does place the banana in a precarious position, and the danger posed by Race 4 [the fungus strain] to the Cavendish is real."

• On the post: DailyDirt: The Human-Computer Interface

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 13 May, 2011 @ 02:00pm

  Re: Re: Re:

  Hmmm. Maybe it's time we create a wiki page that curates a more complete history of interesting UI devices -- and we'll avoid all the "PivotViewer" and Microsoft Tags stuff... And make it searchable.

• On the post: DailyDirt: Robots That Move (Sometimes In A Creepy Way)

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 13 May, 2011 @ 11:06am

  Re:

  Early prototypes are usually attached to a wire... :P I'm sure this little robo-caterpillar will be wireless and rolling around the streets in no time.

• On the post: DailyDirt: The Human-Computer Interface

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 12 May, 2011 @ 03:37pm

  Re:

  I think this gallery is not meant to highlight the most popular examples in each category -- but the curiosities and the oddballs of each category. So that just means the heavy slant towards Intel-based systems means Intel designs some weird and unpopular UI devices.... Although it does seem to include a few of the more popular user interfaces eg. IBM's little red dot on laptop keyboards.
  http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/bibuxton/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=60

• On the post: DailyDirt: Placing Bets On Alternative Energy Technologies…

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 05 May, 2011 @ 05:28pm

  Re: Nuclear Power the cute way

  I was wondering if someone would find a way to describe nuclear power as "cute" and now I have my answer... :)

• On the post: DailyDirt: Kinect Hacks Are Just Appetizers…

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 05 May, 2011 @ 12:21pm

  Re: Re: Kinect

  agreed, teka... kinect is cool b/c it's a hackable platform. sure, there may be other devices that are better suited for specific tasks -- but the point is that the kinect has volume production behind it, so it'll be accessible to hobbyists who might want to tinker with it.

• On the post: DailyDirt: Foods For Thought

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 03 May, 2011 @ 09:42pm

  Re: Mmmmm

  heh. maybe someone needs to start combining tilapia DNA with pig DNA to create some kind of a fish-bacon product....

• On the post: DailyDirt: Biological Taxonomy 2.0

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2011 @ 09:11pm

  Re:

  Pixelation, I'm sure the sharks will feel more violated, tho, b/c their DNA is being used. A zebra can't change its stripes, but those stripes aren't directly inherited from generation to generation....

• On the post: DailyDirt: Expensive Things To Buy…

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2011 @ 09:27am

  Re:

  We would have.... But we already posted that story earlier:
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110425/03522114026/infinite-loop-algorithmic-pricing-amazon-how-book-flies-cost-2369865593.shtml

• On the post: DailyDirt: Expensive Things To Buy…

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2011 @ 05:33pm

  Re:

  It sounds like an old James Bond villan plot, right? But rest assured, these blimps probably won't be used for eeevil...
  
  But it's cool that they cost less than one meeellion dollars....

• On the post: DailyDirt: Robots That Save Lives

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 19 Apr, 2011 @ 06:12pm

  Re: Machines

  Actually.. it looks like Judgment Day is supposed to be here in a couple days:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(Terminator)#Terminator:_The_Sarah_Connor_Chronicles
  
  According to the TSCC timeline, April 19th 2011 is when Skynet is turned on and the machines attack on the 21st....

• On the post: DailyDirt: Educations? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Educations!

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2011 @ 06:31pm

  Re:

  Pixelation,
  
  I think you've correctly pointed out that there's not a direct causation relationship between a good education and good economic performance... But it'd be nice to have a better educated population, too. :P

• On the post: DailyDirt: The Field Of Open Innovation Is Still Wide Open…

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2011 @ 10:37am

  Re: Gameful

  I think I'd like Gameful better if it has more games that were like Luis von Ahn's games -- where the game actually directly produced usable stuff.... Maybe I just haven't seen enough Gameful examples?

• On the post: DailyDirt: Weapons Of Some Destruction

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2011 @ 11:59pm

  Re: Speaking Of Eyepatches ...

  hmm. not sure about bomber pilots wearing eyepatches... but I'd think bombs are mostly dropped by drones now, so no eyepatches necessary for drone pilots.

• On the post: DailyDirt: Unusual Places Made More Accessible

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2011 @ 04:53pm

  Re: Re: Re: Yuri's Night

  I'm not in a huge rush for putting people on other planets... I think we should focus on creating a self-sustaining artificial environment that people could live in permanently. So no more space stations with "supply shipments" going up to them.
  
  Once we figured that out, then people could just go anywhere in the solar system as long as the radiation/zeroG/boredom didn't kill them first....

• On the post: DailyDirt: Unusual Places Made More Accessible

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2011 @ 03:50pm

  Re: Yuri's Night

  Thanks, Jay, for pointing out some of the spinoff benefits from the Space Race...
  
  But it's not "sad" to see the end of the Cold War, is it? It just means that technology is getting harder to develop at the same rate because it's already so advanced. If we could keep up the same pace, we'd hit the Singularity pretty soon. :P

• On the post: DailyDirt: Space Exploration

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2011 @ 09:31am

  Re: Fake, I tell you!!

  Sure, next you'll be telling me that those people in the BioDome were doing it just for a movie.... hmm. What ever happened to Pauly Shore?

• On the post: DailyDirt: Materials Behaving Weirdly

  

  Michael Ho ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2011 @ 05:32pm

  Re:

  But... if time travel wasn't possible, then John Connor would never have been born, right?

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