Skip to main content

Now that's what I call technology

Just occasionally you come across a piece of technology that blows away pretty well everything you've seen before. I'd like to thank someone on one of the Litopia forums for pointing out the specific example below. The video describing it isn't in English, but it has subtitles and is easy to follow. Just to highlight some of the lead features:
  • You never have to replace the battery
  • It will last a lifetime and longer: it's not going to wear out
  • It can be dropped repeatedly and will remain useable
  • The file format used is guaranteed to remain compatible
  • It uses bio-optical technology and neural processing
  • Comes in a wonderful range of covers
  • Uses space saving compression technology to get twice the information in the same space
Enough of the build-up: feast your eyes on this:

Comments

  1. Love it!

    And here's something that's both sad, and also sadly, rather predictable: most of my 'local college' students tell me that they've never read a single book! However, they've all got XBox gaming 'cards' and the like - one of them boasts that he's played 13,536 computer games so far (he's 19) - he can't spell, or use punctuation - but he's a wizz on a console.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Um, apparently the 13k is his XBox gaming-whatever-saddo score. I mean - could anyone today have played 13k different computer games?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Say he'd been playing 10 years, he'd have to play several new games a day, which seems unlikely.

    I think part of the problem is that we aren't brave enough to buy teenagers books as presents. I think, if the book is really well targetted, it wouldn't be impossible to get them reading a bit.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense