Remainders – The Things We Didn’t Post: Keep Dreaming Edition [Remainders]

In today's Remainders, a buncha dreamers: too many people read too much into a fake Apple tablet ad; DARPA, having loved Avatar, casts about for 3D surveillance; a new B&O TV that will cost more than $10,000, and more.

Ad Busters
A few very serious people have been taking this very fake Apple tablet ad very seriously. Why? Who knows. It comes from the very heart of tablet render fakery, nowhereelse.fr. It has USB ports in the back that would necessitate a device twice as thick as the one shown. It looks faker than Heidi Montag. Let's just move along. [YouTube]

War in 3D
DARPA, comprised of some of the more fanciful minds in the Pentagon, is seeking prototypes for "advanced high-resolution 3-D imaging technology" for the next generation of surveillance systems. The push for three dimensions comes as a response to current limitations of video surveillance technologies, specifically their inability to provide viewers with a sense of depth. Current video feeds have been likened to "looking through a soda straw," which definitely does not sound like a very ideal surveillance situation. Still, it's easier to dream in 3D than to make it a reality. If it took the motion picture dictator pictured to the left some twelve years to realize his three-dimensional vision, we don't have high hopes that our bureaucracy will sort this one out any time soon. [Wired]

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Bang & Olufsen specializes in designing products that everyone wants but no one wants to buy. Why? Because they're prohibitively expensive. We don't expect the BeoVision 10-46, a 46", LED-backlit HDTV with built-in speakers, to be any different. B&O hasn't announced a price yet, but the 40" predecessor went for a cool $10,000. Riiiiiight. [Engadget]

Outer Space, Inter Net
This has been a great week for fans of internet in space. First some astronauts tweeted from the ISS. Now, the Department of Defense is beginning a three month test of a new satellite with a dedicated internet router. The router, launched aboard the Intelsat IS-14 satellite last November, is part of a program by Cisco dubbed IRIS, or Internet Protocol Routing in Space. The satellite and IRIS system make military communications for the U.S. and NATO much more flexible, allowing space-bound data to be rerouted more efficiently and directly. All good and well for the military, but I can't help but wonder when someone's going to launch a satellite that makes my internet faster? Is that wrong of me? Oh well. [PopSci]


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