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Intels Larabee, AMD Fusion both supposed to be out in 2010. Guess Nvdia couldn't be left behind. Without a x86 licence, they've been forced to use ARM. ARM might not be a bad move, it uses a lot less per per cycle than the x86 chips, and there is quite a bit of code for it. For handholds ARM/Tegra might make sense. Still a Larabee or Fusion system is bound to beat it software, possibly performance, and definitely in amount of software. Nintendo probably deliberately want a closed custom system through, has they sell developer licences for games, so they can sell systems at loss leader prices.

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Nintendo Games @ Feed Distiller

If you need precise input on a touch surface, use a stylus or point pen, but apart from art work, you won't need this.

I like this GUI system, because you have multiple separate fingers you can teach the system gesture short cuts which will let you navigate much more quickly around you system. There's no reason why touch panels shouldn't become even cheaper than mice. The only thing I didn't like about the system in the video, was attaching the keyboard to the touch panel, i'd much prefer them separate, and spaced at and angle around the desktop.

Not only would it not be "impossible" to play FPS on such a system, it would be easier and more fun. Turn you hand to turn your character, flick a finger forward to shoot a gun. Walk two fingers along the pad to walk/run. Finger combos to change weapons, or activate special abilities. It would soon be more obvious than using a mouse.

An improvement to the system I like to see, would be to have another screen on the touch panel, as well the screen above, to show basic control patterns, this would make it more obvious what the interactions with the pad would be like.

So having established this is a good idea. We need a standard interface for multi-touch in Linux (and other OSs), and gesture library that interoperates with standard GUI components. Probably most GUI apps would have to be rewritten to get the most out of multi-touch and gestures. But its a start.

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GUI Design and Programming Feed @ Feed Distiller

If you need precise input on a touch surface, use a stylus or point pen, but apart from art work, you won't need this.

I like this GUI system, because you have multiple separate fingers you can teach the system gesture short cuts which will let you navigate much more quickly around you system. There's no reason why touch panels shouldn't become even cheaper than mice. The only thing I didn't like about the system in the video, was attaching the keyboard to the touch panel, i'd much prefer them separate, and spaced at and angle around the desktop.

Not only would it not be "impossible" to play FPS on such a system, it would be easier and more fun. Turn you hand to turn your character, flick a finger forward to shoot a gun. Walk two fingers along the pad to walk/run. Finger combos to change weapons, or activate special abilities. It would soon be more obvious than using a mouse.

An improvement to the system I like to see, would be to have another screen on the touch panel, as well the screen above, to show basic control patterns, this would make it more obvious what the interactions with the pad would be like.

So having established this is a good idea. We need a standard interface for multi-touch in Linux (and other OSs), and gesture library that interoperates with standard GUI components. Probably most GUI apps would have to be rewritten to get the most out of multi-touch and gestures. But its a start.

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GUI Design and Programming Feed @ Feed Distiller

To few buttons, touch screen letters smaller than fingers and no styless holder. Small Screen and only black and white. Since wikipedia is free, in theory, anyone can package it up to fit on any system. You course if got internet access you don't need to do that.

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Tablet PCs Feed @ Feed Distiller

To few buttons, touch screen letters smaller than fingers and no styless holder. Small Screen and only black and white. Since wikipedia is free, in theory, anyone can package it up to fit on any system. You course if got internet access you don't need to do that.

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Tablet PCs Feed @ Feed Distiller

To few buttons, touch screen letters smaller than fingers and no styless holder. Small Screen and only black and white. Since wikipedia is free, in theory, anyone can package it up to fit on any system. You course if got internet access you don't need to do that.

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Tablet PCs @ Feed Distiller

To few buttons, touch screen letters smaller than fingers and no styless holder. Small Screen and only black and white. Since wikipedia is free, in theory, anyone can package it up to fit on any system. You course if got internet access you don't need to do that.

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Tablet PCs @ Feed Distiller

You quoted "The more I see LHC fail and fail", what are you (and the Dr Nielsen) talking about, the LHC failed, just once, this time last year. The Tevatron which might well produce Higgs particles, but not enough for a statistically good observation, has run very well. The SSC was ridiclously expensive and ahead of its time, politics happens, that isn't unlikely. In short we're no where near the sort of back luck, that might start people looking for paranoid explanations.

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LHC Feed @ Feed Distiller

You quoted "The more I see LHC fail and fail", what are you (and the Dr Nielsen) talking about, the LHC failed, just once, this time last year. The Tevatron which might well produce Higgs particles, but not enough for a statistically good observation, has run very well. The SSC was ridiclously expensive and ahead of its time, politics happens, that isn't unlikely. In short we're no where near the sort of back luck, that might start people looking for paranoid explanations.

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LHC Feed @ Feed Distiller

Yes, Its AC->DC->AC. SuperConducting Cable always run DC. If you run alternating current through a superconductor, you'll get resistance (actually impendence) again.

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SuperConductor Feed @ Feed Distiller

Yes, Its AC->DC->AC. SuperConducting Cable always run DC. If you run alternating current through a superconductor, you'll get resistance (actually impendence) again.

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SuperConductor Feed @ Feed Distiller

Its a triangle of fat cables in piupes fill of Liquid Nitrogen.

Here's the Tres Amigas design, via the AMSC site.

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Super Conductor Feed @ Feed Distiller

Its a triangle of fat cables in piupes fill of Liquid Nitrogen.

Here's the Tres Amigas design, via the AMSC site.

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Super Conductor Feed @ Feed Distiller

This is so close to room temperature, and could be used with standard refrigation no need from liquid nitrogen anymore. Room Temperature Superconductors would completely change modern electronics and electromechanics. Motors and Generators waste lots of power, and RTS would be near 100% efficients, ( infinite conductiving only applies for constant currents, there is resistance to changes in currents in a superconductors).

The linked page, looks like its from a amature research group, and none of the earlier results, from 200Ks up, have been confirmed in the mainstream. The offical world record temperature is 138K, still in liquid nitrogen range.

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Super Conductor feed @ Feed Distiller

This is so close to room temperature, and could be used with standard refrigation no need from liquid nitrogen anymore. Room Temperature Superconductors would completely change modern electronics and electromechanics. Motors and Generators waste lots of power, and RTS would be near 100% efficients, ( infinite conductiving only applies for constant currents, there is resistance to changes in currents in a superconductors).

The linked page, looks like its from a amature research group, and none of the earlier results, from 200Ks up, have been confirmed in the mainstream. The offical world record temperature is 138K, still in liquid nitrogen range.

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Super Conductor feed @ Feed Distiller

Yes, they seem to sample the image as a grid, and feed it straight into the neural network. Its a really dumb way to do image recognition. However a neural network library is useful for many identifcation tasks, and its free. Even if its going to be useless for image recognition, it may be useful for how general ai tasks.

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AI Feed @ Feed Distiller

Yes, they seem to sample the image as a grid, and feed it straight into the neural network. Its a really dumb way to do image recognition. However a neural network library is useful for many identifcation tasks, and its free. Even if its going to be useless for image recognition, it may be useful for how general ai tasks.

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AI Feed @ Feed Distiller

Once the tech has gone down as far as LG, A Korean Company specialization in the cheap end of hi-tech products, you can be sure, that the product is going to be everywhere. Personnelly I think E-book screens have a long way to go, before the reading experience is as good as paper. But it will get there.

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Tablet PCs Feed @ Feed Distiller

Once the tech has gone down as far as LG, A Korean Company specialization in the cheap end of hi-tech products, you can be sure, that the product is going to be everywhere. Personnelly I think E-book screens have a long way to go, before the reading experience is as good as paper. But it will get there.

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Tablet PCs Feed @ Feed Distiller

Encoraging though. ""It's going to take the right engineering solution with the right species to make it commercially viable," Well maybe. Both the bioreactor and species designs will get better all the time. Meanwhile oil prices will go up. 7 years seems slow. In fact i'll bet there'll be many semiproduction pilot plants by then. It all depends, like must alternative energy solutions, on the predictions of future oil prices.

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Bioethanol Feed @ Feed Distiller

Encoraging though. ""It's going to take the right engineering solution with the right species to make it commercially viable," Well maybe. Both the bioreactor and species designs will get better all the time. Meanwhile oil prices will go up. 7 years seems slow. In fact i'll bet there'll be many semiproduction pilot plants by then. It all depends, like must alternative energy solutions, on the predictions of future oil prices.

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Bioethanol Feed @ Feed Distiller

Isn't that what the comments boxes are for. Many bloggers are naturally opionated people, who don't often change the views, or have particular views to present. With such people factoids (proven or otherwise), that accord with there opinons get passed on, and factoid that are discordant with the opinons either get dropped or argued about. Fortanantly there are so many bloggers with so many different opinon that factoids will be argued about until they been proven or otherwise (most of the time). The early first wave of a piece of news, be very much unchecked. It was always so with rumors. And i can't think of a obvious way to fix it. Newspapers then will continue to be the more reliable sources of information.

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Blog Marketting Feed @ Feed Distiller

Isn't that what the comments boxes are for. Many bloggers are naturally opionated people, who don't often change the views, or have particular views to present. With such people factoids (proven or otherwise), that accord with there opinons get passed on, and factoid that are discordant with the opinons either get dropped or argued about. Fortanantly there are so many bloggers with so many different opinon that factoids will be argued about until they been proven or otherwise (most of the time). The early first wave of a piece of news, be very much unchecked. It was always so with rumors. And i can't think of a obvious way to fix it. Newspapers then will continue to be the more reliable sources of information.

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Blog Marketting Feed @ Feed Distiller

CERNs main operations, don't make radioactive materials in any great quantities, so really the nothing for Al Quada to steal. However smaller science labs in the faciality might have radioactive materials for testing materials or for smaller science projects. So yeah, keep potential terrorist out.

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LHC Feed @ Feed Distiller

CERNs main operations, don't make radioactive materials in any great quantities, so really the nothing for Al Quada to steal. However smaller science labs in the faciality might have radioactive materials for testing materials or for smaller science projects. So yeah, keep potential terrorist out.

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LHC Feed @ Feed Distiller

Like the poster said, hope these come done in price. They are so many differicult microorganisms that we only way that humanity is going to get near to cataloging, understanding and using them all, is if many hobbist get labs capable of viewing, growing, gene squencing and describing the life cycles of them. Until every village in the world, has a guy that can identify new life forms, and send them up to a central database, the world is going full of unknown, possibly dangerous lifeforms.

The above microscope would be a great addition to any microbiology lab, anywhere. Now we need a foolproof home DNA sequencer.

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Microbiology Feed @ Feed Distiller

Like the poster said, hope these come done in price. They are so many differicult microorganisms that we only way that humanity is going to get near to cataloging, understanding and using them all, is if many hobbist get labs capable of viewing, growing, gene squencing and describing the life cycles of them. Until every village in the world, has a guy that can identify new life forms, and send them up to a central database, the world is going full of unknown, possibly dangerous lifeforms.

The above microscope would be a great addition to any microbiology lab, anywhere. Now we need a foolproof home DNA sequencer.

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Microbiology Feed @ Feed Distiller

For home backup, i can't see anything, being better than keeping a spare hard drive somewhere. You can even get USB plugable box so no excusses for lamers. If you COLOing or have a dedicated server the question is, do you pay for a backup box at your hosting provider or do you backup to another remote location. For COLOs you've got a lot more bandwidth than a home user. My 4GB/s provider, means that the example 1TB restore would only take about 40 minutes, which is easy. And if the backup storage is $10 per month versus $100 more a spare box at your hosting provider you can see it makes sense for the cloud storage solution.

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Cloud Computing Feed @ Feed Distiller

For home backup, i can't see anything, being better than keeping a spare hard drive somewhere. You can even get USB plugable box so no excusses for lamers. If you COLOing or have a dedicated server the question is, do you pay for a backup box at your hosting provider or do you backup to another remote location. For COLOs you've got a lot more bandwidth than a home user. My 4GB/s provider, means that the example 1TB restore would only take about 40 minutes, which is easy. And if the backup storage is $10 per month versus $100 more a spare box at your hosting provider you can see it makes sense for the cloud storage solution.

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Cloud Computing Feed @ Feed Distiller

I use both Berkeley DB and MySQL. Berkeley is still open source, still regularly updated, and works well enough. Its more like a disk backed hashtable than a full database though. MySQL is an eccential part of the current popular open source platform. Its the M in LAMP. So its very important it stays safe. Fortantuately becuase Open Source is Open Source, if Oracle break MySQL, another term could developed a new fork of MySQL.

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Databases Feeds @ Feed Distiller

I use both Berkeley DB and MySQL. Berkeley is still open source, still regularly updated, and works well enough. Its more like a disk backed hashtable than a full database though. MySQL is an eccential part of the current popular open source platform. Its the M in LAMP. So its very important it stays safe. Fortantuately becuase Open Source is Open Source, if Oracle break MySQL, another term could developed a new fork of MySQL.

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Databases Feeds @ Feed Distiller

The composition of the planets and asteriods depend on how hot the space dust was. Given the brighteness of the sun at the time. Out as far as jupiter, this was hot enough for most the water to be vapourised, and split into hydrogen and oxygen atoms and blow away by the solar wind. So the earth and asteriods condensed from rocks. The water on the inner planets came either from comets falling into the interior solar system of from water chemically bound to rocks released under pressure. The new asteriod Nasa found probably formed far enough away from the sun, that some water remained unvapourised.

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Asteriods Feed @ Feed Distiller

The composition of the planets and asteriods depend on how hot the space dust was. Given the brighteness of the sun at the time. Out as far as jupiter, this was hot enough for most the water to be vapourised, and split into hydrogen and oxygen atoms and blow away by the solar wind. So the earth and asteriods condensed from rocks. The water on the inner planets came either from comets falling into the interior solar system of from water chemically bound to rocks released under pressure. The new asteriod Nasa found probably formed far enough away from the sun, that some water remained unvapourised.

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Asteriods Feed @ Feed Distiller

Not to ruin the joke, but the article did say without damaging surrounding normal cells. 80% of the cells isn't bad, but its a treatment not a cure, patients will need to repeat the therapy again and again, as the remaining 20% start to grow back.

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Cancer Treament Feed @ Feed Distiller

Not to ruin the joke, but the article did say without damaging surrounding normal cells. 80% of the cells isn't bad, but its a treatment not a cure, patients will need to repeat the therapy again and again, as the remaining 20% start to grow back.

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Cancer Treament Feed @ Feed Distiller

Quite right, burn straw makes smoke particles, atomospheric particulates in various size ranges, and semitoxic Ash, and carbon dioxide of course. When the said Nonpulluting furnaces, perphaps they ment ones designed to be less polluting than a normal furnace would be. They lucky they can live on 2 watts per square meter, i couldn't imagine a large city living on 10 times that much.

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Green Technologies Feed @ Feed Distiller

Quite right, burn straw makes smoke particles, atomospheric particulates in various size ranges, and semitoxic Ash, and carbon dioxide of course. When the said Nonpulluting furnaces, perphaps they ment ones designed to be less polluting than a normal furnace would be. They lucky they can live on 2 watts per square meter, i couldn't imagine a large city living on 10 times that much.

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Green Technologies Feed @ Feed Distiller

Yes it will be energy density. The power density will be fixed, depending only on the decay rate of the radioactive material that is decaying. The same energy will be present weither or not the battery is connected to anything. So the battery will last far longer than an ordinary battery in use. But standing on the shelf will waste it. And it might well not produce more current than an ordinary battery of the same size. I can't think of anything except heat and radiation damage limit the power of these things. So you could have very powerful nuclear batteries, if your prepared to use radioactive substances with a short enough half life.

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Nuclear Power Feed @ Feed Distiller

Yes it will be energy density. The power density will be fixed, depending only on the decay rate of the radioactive material that is decaying. The same energy will be present weither or not the battery is connected to anything. So the battery will last far longer than an ordinary battery in use. But standing on the shelf will waste it. And it might well not produce more current than an ordinary battery of the same size. I can't think of anything except heat and radiation damage limit the power of these things. So you could have very powerful nuclear batteries, if your prepared to use radioactive substances with a short enough half life.

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Nuclear Power Feed @ Feed Distiller

The Fermi (great name, was it after Erico Fermi the italian nuclear pioneer), want be out until next year, and early on it will be in the $400 top range cards, more that what most of us spend). So ATI has the lead for next 4 months and the christmas sales. The Fermi might be quicker than the current 5870 Radeon, but although ATI aren't ready for a new archicture or process bump. Chip Tweaking will probably get a usual 20% boost for later versions of the Radeon. ATI will be a lead of a bit. This a just as well as AMDs CPU are falling behind a lot. So it will that the graphic lead to keep AMD near profit.

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Graphics Card Feed @ Feed Distiller

The Fermi (great name, was it after Erico Fermi the italian nuclear pioneer), want be out until next year, and early on it will be in the $400 top range cards, more that what most of us spend). So ATI has the lead for next 4 months and the christmas sales. The Fermi might be quicker than the current 5870 Radeon, but although ATI aren't ready for a new archicture or process bump. Chip Tweaking will probably get a usual 20% boost for later versions of the Radeon. ATI will be a lead of a bit. This a just as well as AMDs CPU are falling behind a lot. So it will that the graphic lead to keep AMD near profit.

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Graphics Card Feed @ Feed Distiller

Electric might not necessarily cheaper in America, at present. But oil prices are about half there recent peak, and most of the rest of the world pays a lot more tax on gasoline. So electric will be cheaper for most and everyone again soon.

Charging overnight will be fine for house owners who have brought the charge units. But for flat owners/renters, people with no garages or for road parked second cars, will need garage charging. Battery Technology limits the charging rate. But modern people are vary impatient, at 30 minute charge, in a garage with a really great cafe, might be exceptable to mums with time on there hands. The average time pressed commuter wouldn't even accept that. Parking points with inductive chargers in city centers, good solve this. For any of these thing to happen, we're going need a standardized charging technology and years or decades of new infrastructure built to handle electric charging.

Perhaps what we need is not longer lasting batteries, but batteries that run on energy rich liquids. But thats a technology that is nowhere near prime time yet. Good luck to the Batteries 500 Project, if it produces cheap(ish) 500 mile rated batteries, we can begin build electric car infrastructure, and begin phasing out gasoline, maybe as soon as 2020. Which would save a lot of C02 emissions.

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Electric Vehicle Feed @ Feed Distiller

Electric might not necessarily cheaper in America, at present. But oil prices are about half there recent peak, and most of the rest of the world pays a lot more tax on gasoline. So electric will be cheaper for most and everyone again soon.

Charging overnight will be fine for house owners who have brought the charge units. But for flat owners/renters, people with no garages or for road parked second cars, will need garage charging. Battery Technology limits the charging rate. But modern people are vary impatient, at 30 minute charge, in a garage with a really great cafe, might be exceptable to mums with time on there hands. The average time pressed commuter wouldn't even accept that. Parking points with inductive chargers in city centers, good solve this. For any of these thing to happen, we're going need a standardized charging technology and years or decades of new infrastructure built to handle electric charging.

Perhaps what we need is not longer lasting batteries, but batteries that run on energy rich liquids. But thats a technology that is nowhere near prime time yet. Good luck to the Batteries 500 Project, if it produces cheap(ish) 500 mile rated batteries, we can begin build electric car infrastructure, and begin phasing out gasoline, maybe as soon as 2020. Which would save a lot of C02 emissions.

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Electric Vehicle Feed @ Feed Distiller

The surface area of a sphere, is 4pi r*2, so those 800M pixels, match the surface of sphere 8000 pixels in radius, or 50132 pixels in circumference. So each pixel represents a square on the night sky about 26 seconds of arc in each direction. That isn't really very accurate, most objects in the sky are lot smaller than that. It might just have enough resolution to show some structure in the andromeda galaxy which is (178 by 63) arc min in size.

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Astronomy Feed @ Feed Distiller

The surface area of a sphere, is 4pi r*2, so those 800M pixels, match the surface of sphere 8000 pixels in radius, or 50132 pixels in circumference. So each pixel represents a square on the night sky about 26 seconds of arc in each direction. That isn't really very accurate, most objects in the sky are lot smaller than that. It might just have enough resolution to show some structure in the andromeda galaxy which is (178 by 63) arc min in size.

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Astronomy Feed @ Feed Distiller

Forty years ago they could land stuff on the moon. Now apparately, the best NASA could do is crash probes, and look at the ejector. Surely what they really need is a lunar rovers, complete with drills, robot arms, and a on board mineralogy lab. If NASA could manage that for Mars they should be able to manage it for the moon.

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Astronomy Feed @ Feed Distiller

Forty years ago they could land stuff on the moon. Now apparately, the best NASA could do is crash probes, and look at the ejector. Surely what they really need is a lunar rovers, complete with drills, robot arms, and a on board mineralogy lab. If NASA could manage that for Mars they should be able to manage it for the moon.

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Astronomy Feed @ Feed Distiller

It certainly depends if an quantum algorithm has been made for the problem, thats very hard, and not been done for most things. Most of us have heard that a quantum computer can solve factorisation in order n^3 thanks to Grovners algorithm. While classical computer take exponential time in n. Quantum computers (with Quantum storage), can also search data in a unsorted database table, in order sqrt(n), compared with the classical n. Neither of these are to be sniffed at, a very strong increase in speed. Neither of the above are probabilistic algorithm, there guaranteed to find a the exact answer if one exists. As far as a know it not yet known if a quantum computer can turn NP complete problems, in polynomial problems at all, or for what problems this is possible. However it looks like the travelling salesman problem may be done in polynomial time on a quantum computer, ArXiv:0601151.

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For those that don't understand the maths of the speed of computer algorithms. The above goes to say, that yes quantum computers are really much faster for a lot of problems. They're very also good for education, as each new algorithm is probably worth a PhD.

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Quantum Computers Feed @ Feed Distiller - needs your QC blogs

It certainly depends if an quantum algorithm has been made for the problem, thats very hard, and not been done for most things. Most of us have heard that a quantum computer can solve factorisation in order n^3 thanks to Grovners algorithm. While classical computer take exponential time in n. Quantum computers (with Quantum storage), can also search data in a unsorted database table, in order sqrt(n), compared with the classical n. Neither of these are to be sniffed at, a very strong increase in speed. Neither of the above are probabilistic algorithm, there guaranteed to find a the exact answer if one exists. As far as a know it not yet known if a quantum computer can turn NP complete problems, in polynomial problems at all, or for what problems this is possible. However it looks like the travelling salesman problem may be done in polynomial time on a quantum computer, ArXiv:0601151.

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For those that don't understand the maths of the speed of computer algorithms. The above goes to say, that yes quantum computers are really much faster for a lot of problems. They're very also good for education, as each new algorithm is probably worth a PhD.

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Quantum Computers Feed @ Feed Distiller - needs your QC blogs

That series was a real classic. It amazing that a science show from the 80s is still so remembered today. Carl Sagan died over twelve years ago. So let the song, be tribute to him.

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Astronomy Feed @ Feed Distiller