“Chapter XII. On the way of making a second waggon which is propelled by the wind without draught animals, and which dashes violently over open country to the confusion of all troops”
Guido Vigevano’s Wind Car (1335)
July 16, 2009 by Filed Under: Inventions that never made it, Low-tech cars, Military technology, Random, Travel, War technology, Warfare, Weapons, Wind Power, Wind powered vehicles, Windmills
Polynesian Stick Charts
July 8, 2009 by Filed Under: History, Maps, Navigation, Travel
“The Polynesians, scattered as they were over 1,000 islands across the central and southern Pacific Ocean, were master navigators who tracked their way over huge expanses of ocean without any of the complex mechanical aids we associate with sea fairing. They didn’t have the astrolabe or the sextant, the compass or the chronometer. They did however have aids of a sort, which though seemingly humble, were in fact the repositories of an extremely complex kind of knowledge. Called Rebbelibs, Medos. and Mattangs, today we call them simply Stick Charts.” Via Tecob. Related: Satellite navigation in the 18th century.
Los Grumildos in NYC
July 7, 2009 by Filed Under: Automata
Los Grumildos, the low-tech mechanical puppets by Ety Fefer, are coming to the US for the first time. July 28 – August 2 in New York City.
Antivirus Software Sucks
And:
“It’s not just AV software. The entire software industry operates this way.
1. Shovel feature-rich bug-ware onto unsuspecting schlubs to build “brand”
(especially in the enterprise/IT market where the person purchasing the
software is often not the person who has to use it, so they make
decisions based on feature list and brand name rather than quality)
2. Wait for hobbyists, researchers, or smaller companies to figure out how to do it right
3. Buy their companies
4. Repeat”
Quoted from the discussion at Slashdot.
