There's a pic in today's NYT. Looks like something out of the Flintstones. -- mbs
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I've been hearing about this damned IBOT for years. I finally told this one guy, okay, fine, bring me a fucking picture, Steve. Sure enough, Steve O. brought in a picture from the SF Chron about two years ago. I took one look and laughed. Well, well, Permobil, kiss my ass. (http://www.permobilusa.com/products-c2kstander.htm). I saw Ginger on tonights news---same shit.
The nth iteration of this is DOE/LBL and the nth plus one iteration is NASA. Goals 2010, the Vision: Put Red Foxx on Mars, the first black astronaut in space. Lamont, you dummy... .
I used to dream about working with some high powered team to do technology wonders, etc. My thang for wheelchairs (and later FreeBSD) is an ancient legacy of all that. But science and engineering is all about ego, mega-bucks (patents, exclusions, class, and capital), institutional control games, intrigue, and unbelievably petty, bourgeois, authoritarian, sexist, racist, pig hierarchies---that is to say, the heartland of white male Amerika.
But you don't need PhD's, DOE security badges and NSF awards to do this kind of work. All you need are some tools and a couple of catalogs from Grainger and McMasters.
Bottom line, are four weak links: microprocessors, batteries, DC motors, and microswitches. You get the best batteries from MK, the best motors and switches from Honeywell, and the best general purpose mpc's from Motorola---well you and the rest of the military-industrial complex. Never mind the US brand wizardry, they are all made in China. No doubt the US cruise missiles heading for the Afghan refugee camps and Israelis rockets pounding the Palestinian HQ tonight even as we write, are running on the same Chinese hardware (and of course proprietary US/Israelis military coding in the EPROMs for GPS coordinates).
So what makes three out of the four components, the weakest links, you ask? Hmm. Here's the good news. It mostly comes down to dirt and water. The bad news is, that's also what the planet is make out of. Bummer. That's why burros come in handy. Who said snide was out?
Chuck Grimes