What you know about predicting the future?

This is an episode of “FourCast”, a show on the TWiT network featuring Tom Merritt that invites interesting people to share their predictions of the future, that was recorded on April 9, 2012. Along with fellow guest, Norman Chan from Tested.com, and guest host Brian Ibbott from Coverville.com, I talked about ultra-realistic, quantum-computing-based simulations, servers on the moon, efficient spectrum use, mesh networking the death of anonymity, and the future of wireless devices.

This was a true “geeking out” session — In fact, aside from the main topics, we cover material from Star Trek and Dune, the iPad, cheese from the moon and under the sea, and the D.C. Police. — Not bad for a Monday!

ioSafe is a storage company with a reputation as a manufacturer of comically sturdy hard drive products. With a yearly demonstration a the Consumer Electronics Show, ioSafe has earned their reputation by setting their enclosures on fire, dropping them from great heights, crushing them under tractors, throwing them into swimming pools, electrocuting and using them for target practice… all without losing a singly byte of data.

The Rugged Portable takes ioSafe’s “disaster resistant” philosophy and packs it into a 3.5” mobile enclosure that measures 5-3/4” x 4” x 1” while weighing just under a pound. The Rugged Portable is carved out of a solid block of billet aluminum or titanium, and has a USB 3.0 breakout port sandwiched between a Kensington lock slot and an activity light.

Out of the box, the Rugged Portable has everything you need to connect your drive and protect your data. It includes both a USB 3.0 cable and a USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 Y-connector. This is important since we were not able to get the drive powered up in a USB 2.0 port using the USB 3.0 cable, and using a USB 2.0 cable in a USB 3.0 port would result in greatly reduced transfer rates. – In other words, use the cable that supports the fastest USB ports on your system.

If you’re reading this after watching the 3/20 episode of “Tech News Today” that has me on set with the greatest Tech News crew in the business, Welcome! You’ve stumbled into TheTechStop: The place where it’s always time to get your geek on!

My name is Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ — and if you’re still reading this, then it means that I am most likely a geek, just like you. I am passionate about tech, just like you. I am a geek of the first degree, just like you… The only real difference is that I happen to a vowed member of the The Society of Jesus, a religious order of the Catholic Church that is known as “The Jesuits” and a lifelong technology enthusiast. (aka “uberGeek”)

If you’re not coming from TNT, and you happen to be reading this between 2:30-4:00pm PST on the 20th, then why not head on over to TWiT Live! to catch the action as it’s happening. It’s the show where we kick around the tech news of the day and try to make sense of it all. If you come early or stay late, you can see the “super-duper-special” pre and post show segments which don’t make it into the downloaded video.