> Beyond 2000 was my favorite growing up. I so miss that program. Always
> liked the opening sequence, too. The title music was catchy.

I remember the opening sequence being *very* futuristic. I don't 
remember the music though.

>> Another week, they had a plastic key with a microprocessor inside it.
>> When you stick it in the lock, it transmits a code to the computer in
>> the lock, which makes the door unlock. [Actually, it didn't. The key
>> snapped off in the lock, leaving the presenter to tell us all how
>> wonderful it is, and how this is only a prototype.] It seemed pretty
>> stupid to me, but today electronic locks are all over the place. They
>> just don't make them shaped like mechanical keys any more - because
>> that's silly.
>
> Yep. My FIL's Toyota pretty much has a transceiver in the fob and a
> button you push to start the engine. No key involved. The fob stays in
> your pocket the whole time.

My car is the same.

I still maintain that making a mechanical key out of plastic is a stupid 
idea. ;-)

> I wonder how far someone could get, though
> if say, they hopped in your car while you were standing near and took
> off. (Would the car keep running even though it was out of range of the
> fob?)

Given that the batteries in the fob eventually die, it would be a safety 
issue if the car just suddenly stopped when that happened. (Or when you 
drive past something that emits too much interference.) So I believe 
that once the engine is running, anybody that wants to can drive off 
with the car.

My car beeps at you if you try to shut the door with the keys outside 
the car. It also refuses to lock the doors if the keys are inside. It's 
surprising how many times I've put the keys in my bag, pressed the 
button, the doors didn't lock, and 2 hours later my car is still there. 
I guess people don't go around actually /trying/ to get into cars just 
in case they're unlocked. ;-)

>> Unfortunately, towards the end of the show, every invention they
>> featured was "hey, somebody took [random household object] and put a
>> small computer inside it, allowing it to do [list of largely useless
>> functions]". I guess that's why they eventually cancelled it; they just
>> couldn't find genuinely interesting inventions any more.
>
> Yeah, that and the title "Beyond 2000" seems kind of silly for a show
> about futuristic inventions when we're, you know, beyond 2000 already ;)

I think we all knew that flying cars really weren't just around the 
corner. ;-)

>> Similarly, cassette was
>> killed not so much by MiniDisk but by a combination of CD-R and
>> ubiquitous MP3 players, not to mention the Internet.
>
> Once people could duplicate a CD, and MP3 went mainstream, yep.

It was possible to make a portable solid-state music player for quite 
some time. But with (say) 64MB of flash, why would you bother? That 
would be, like, 6 minutes of music.

MP3 is what made it feasible. Now 64MB is nearer an hour of music...

> Cassette
> died. The only way it could survive is if you have an old car radio, but
> I suspect people just simply replace those with something that can play
> CD's full of MP3's anyway.

I wish my car could play compressed CDs. Or even if it just had a CD 
changer like the salesman claimed it had... Or, hell, even just a way to 
plug in an external sound source.

> I have a feeling the CD is a dying species. Soon everything will either
> be on a high-density ROM or flash chip.

I don't see CD dying anytime soon.

>> I remember seeing the first automatic speed cameras, and thinking this
>> was a neat idea. Oh how wrong I was... ;-)
>
> Terrible, terrible idea.

It's a simple idea, but in practise it doesn't work like it's supposed to.

>> So if this technology is the future... where is it? How come it's
>> completely vanished off the face of existence?
>>
>> There seemed to be some suggesting that the entire IC might work by
>> processing light instead of electricity. I'm sceptical about whether
>> that could work. I'm not aware of any light-based switching technology.
>
> Seems like I saw that Intel was playing with this very thing. Only, as
> you mentioned using light as a replacement for the copper traces, rather
> than the actual switching. And even more interesting, one trace can
> contain several signals by transmitting different wavelengths down one
> path.

The advantage of light is that signals can pass straight through each 
other, significantly shortening signal paths. Plus I gather there are 
power savings, and a lack of capacitance to worry about.

Then again, if this stuff is so great, where is it?

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