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Adler-32 wouldn't be a great choice. It's fast but it's weak for short messages and I've seen it fooled by multi-bit errors on large messages too.

See Koopman's paper 32-bit cyclic redundancy codes for Internet applications for some better ideas.

They are offering the majority of their software patents for free to people who offer to join the fight against patents...

"...who offer to join the fight against patents?" Riiiiiight. I think you're jamming words into IBM's mouth that it didn't put there.

IBM's donation is a standards-body/consortium licensing agreement. It works like this:

"We've made and patented many contributions to this niche. We will put ours into a pool with other contributors so that we can all use them in a cooperative manner, so long as certain conditions of development are satisfied. We'll also allow others to use the technologies and participate in the consortium if they abide to the same conditions..."

This is a traditional licensing arrangement. It helps ensure that the participants play according to some common rules - e.g., compulsory cross-licensing, such as "no one will warp the standard in a proprietary way, or refuse to cross-license their products on a reasonable basis..." etc.

These agreements only work because of the pooled patents. They ensure that participant who doesn't comply will be in breach of licenses, and will be on the hook for patent infringement damages (likely of a whole body of patents donated by many players!) If those patents did not exist, there would be no significant financial threat... and hence, no consortium. In fact, this is one of the strongest arguments in favor of patents for software (and any other technology.) It wards off "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics and other types of anticooperative behavior.

In general, IBM is a huge fan of patent licenses - it's one of the top patent licensors in *any* field. Only a few are donated to consortiums like this - the quid pro quo of most of its licenses is a cash payment, or a cross-license of another patent, etc. Those are traditional (and widely practiced and accepted) forms of software licenses... and if anything, they support the concept of software patents - because they can be, and often are, used in a cooperative manner.

BTW - it's hardly "a majority" of its patents... it has donated 500 patents to OSS, but it typically receives over 3,000 patents annually.

- David Stein

TCP wouldn't, as it's Transport (Layer 4). What you talk about would be either Data Link or Physical. (I'm going to assume Physical, as it's dealing with aspects of modulation).

As for needing to compensate for it ... yes. And it's still a problem. (And testing sucks, too.)

TCP wouldn't, as it's Transport (Layer 4). What you talk about would be either Data Link or Physical. (I'm going to assume Physical, as it's dealing with aspects of modulation).

As for needing to compensate for it ... yes. And it's still a problem. (And testing sucks, too.)

Big problem is safety. Handling batteries for hybrids right now is a delicate business without a whole lot of trained technicians. An accidental shock will kill you with the size of the battery on a hybrid, and probably by extension on an all electric car. There's an article from the Providence Journal about repair shops servicing hybrids that should give some perspective on the 'certified technician' issue: http://www.projo.com/projocars/content/CA-HYBRIDSERVICE_05-10-08_LA9V0UK_v17.252cbc8.html Because of the problems associated with infrequent charging stations, IEEE has an article suggesting that trucks might be one of the first to go electric on a large scale - if you have fixed routes it becomes a lot easier to strategically plan charging stations and lowers the startup cost. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/6439

What happens when the lineman makes the final connection and closes the gap? Under a normal situation where the power flows only one way, nothing, as the power's been cut off at the transformer upline. Once he's done and has moved to a safe distance, the power company turns the transformer back on and life continues. However, if my excess power is being fed back in to the grid, SURPRISE! The line is live the instant the final connection is made. The lineman gets a nasty (and likely fatal) shock.

This is why inverters have low voltage cutoffs. UL and IEEE have rules and standards to prevent inverters from islanding and harming repairmen. Many systems that intertie into the power grid require these cutoffs so that when the powerline drops to zero the inverter won't feed power to the lines. This has been worked out quite well already.

IEEE's Xplore has an article on this, "Virtual inductor-based islanding detection method for grid-connected power inverter of distributed power generation system" [only a summary].

Falcon

There is precious little research to date comparing the efficiency of two skilled and experienced programmers doing full-time pair programming with what they produce working alone except when they feel the need to collaborate in real time, and what there is isn't nearly as favourable.

One interesting data point is the study Evaluating Pair Programming with Respect to System Complexity and Programmer Expertise by Erik Arisholm et al. from Simula Research Laboratory, published in the February 2007 issue of Transactions on Software Engineering. There's a good summary on the Catenary blog.

This study is more realistic in that the research subjects were professional Java consultants, rather than college students. However, it appears the study did not allow the subjects to collaborate with anyone outside the pair (or at all, for the solo subjects).

The abstract of the study:
A total of 295 junior, intermediate, and senior professional Java consultants (99 individuals and 98 pairs) from 29 international consultancy companies in Norway, Sweden, and the UK were hired for one day to participate in a controlled experiment on pair programming. The subjects used professional Java tools to perform several change tasks on two alternative Java systems with different degrees of complexity. The results of this experiment do not support the hypotheses that pair programming in general reduces the time required to solve the tasks correctly or increases the proportion of correct solutions. On the other hand, there is a significant 84 percent increase in effort to perform the tasks correctly. However, on the more complex system, the pair programmers had a 48 percent increase in the proportion of correct solutions but no significant differences in the time taken to solve the tasks correctly. For the simpler system, there was a 20 percent decrease in time taken but no significant differences in correctness. However, the moderating effect of system complexity depends on the programmer expertise of the subjects. The observed benefits of pair programming in terms of correctness on the complex system apply mainly to juniors, whereas the reductions in duration to perform the tasks correctly on the simple system apply mainly to intermediates and seniors. It is possible that the benefits of pair programming will exceed the results obtained in this experiment for larger, more complex tasks and if the pair programmers have a chance to work together over a longer period of time.

It's a neat idea, but only if it's absolutely perfect. And is -anything- perfect?

Sure, it may not be perfect. But neither are people and the condition of the road and weather.

Two modes are investigated: in the 'map generation' mode, the lane detection system is used to generate a map under good weather, lighting, and traffic conditions; in the 'map use' mode, it is used as a driving assistance system and can rely on the previously generated map to improve the results of detection. The lane detection system is used along with a low cost GPS in both modes. Experimental results show that using the map can improve the detection of the road lane under adverse conditions (occlusions generated by traffic, degraded lane markings, bad weather like fog). Moreover the use of the map can help avoiding false detections and increasing the detection range of the system

Autonomous Mapping

Quite a bit about the situation in France in this article:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4891

They are currently only using the reprocessed fuel in traditional reactors (or storing it); this leads to more "hot" radioactive material, not less. There is reason to believe that they will eventually start burning it up, but currently, they are not.

If you aren't going to stabilize the waste, there really isn't a great deal of need to ship it somewhere central, you can just leave it at the reactor sites (or do regional collection if security is something that people get worried about).

One issue is that reprocessing hasn't been all that successful in France:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4891

The crux of it is that breeder reactors don't work yet.

First, the real links. I don't know why the blogger didnt't include them, and I don't think this should have gone on the front page without them. Oh well, there's always the comments...

Novel Ferroelectric NAND Flash Memory Cell Demonstrates 10000 Times More Program and Erase cycles than Conventional Memory Cells (AIST press release, surprisingly science-dense).
Highly Scalable Fe(Ferroelectric)-NAND Cell - contribution to the Non-Volatile Semiconductor Memory Workshop, 2008 (you may have access to only the abstract).

This is NOT flash ram, it's ferroelectric RAM. This doesn't matter much to the consumer who can use it much the same way, but it's a different principle. Apparently they've (semi-)tested 100 million r/w cycles, and expect that it can hold data for 10 years (extrapolated from some curve). Besides, it uses a lower voltage than flash, and they expect it to scale down further. Nice. It even looks like it might work. SSDs for teh win :-)

The paper showed up. Apparently it makes use of the Kerr effect. I'm speculating that it's more specifically kerr-lens modelocking.

Ocean Power Catches a Wave

"The first commercial ocean energy project is scheduled to launch this summer off the coast of Portugal. Three snakelike wave-power generators built by Edinburgh's Pelamis Wave Power will deliver 2.25 megawatts through an undersea cable to the Portuguese coastal town of Aguçadoura. Within a year, another 28 generators should come online there, boosting the capacity to 22.5 MW. That may be a trickle of power, but the project represents a new push into wave and tidal power as governments eye the oceans as a way to meet their renewable energy targets."

If you haven't read TFA at http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/3673 , kindly do so. It makes some pungent observations, frex this one, which pretty much says it all:

"Copyright is being turned from a limited-term incentive designed to encourage creative artists to a broadly scoped transfer of wealth from the public to the private realm. As the industries that generate copyrighted materials seek control over not only their works but also the devices on which we watch, listen to, and remix them, copyright law is turning into technology regulation."

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4891

(My point is not that it can not work, it is that it is not ready yet...)

Electromagnetic compatability is a huge undertaking in the hardware world.

As an example, IEEE EMC society:
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/

I would be very curious to know if any EMC work was done between all of theses devices? Nothing indicated of substance in the article.

my 20 cents (adjusted for inflation and to account for the energy costs per post) :)
jerry

Light tubes like the Solatube would come in handy here. However with a battery bank work could be done when it's dark. Last year or the year before IEEE's "Spectrum" had an article on how people in South Asia have been able to increase their income by buying a solar panel and batteries which allows them to do some work when dark. And the panels generate more income because they are made locally creating jobs. Ump, I just searched the site but didn't find anything, maybe it's only in the print edition.

Honda also makes some super quiet generators that are less of a pita than solar.

I'd only use generators as a backup, even when converted to run on alcohol or methane.

Since the full paper doesn't look like it's available yet, it's not clear how much they can identify - but a similar research (e.g. this paper) is able to identify certain words (from a limited vocabulary) during an encrypted conversation. It's not the same as listening to a decrypted stream obviously - but it highlights the vulnerability to traffic analysis - this is revealing much more information than simply the existence of a conversation between two people - it can reveal at least some of the contents of that conversation.

This is ./. That means that TFA is an empty placeholder or, at best, pointing to a vapid bit of text between ads.
In this case however, a few levels down it appears that the science behind the journalism is decent enough, for instance:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/300/5625/1560
and
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1645290

The UK is working on a massive centralized database of health records called NPfIT. Aside from all the typical delays and cost overruns of deploying a massive new IT system, there is widespread concern about privacy among citizens. It will be very interesting (and easy) for Americans to sit back and watch how it pans out. I have an in-law who was fired from a nice hospital job for unauthorized access of patient records (she was showing a friend hoping to get hired on how they file things), which showed me both that 1) privacy concerns are real, and 2) institutions take the matter seriously, at least in some cases.

The UK is working on a massive centralized database of health records called NPfIT. Aside from all the typical delays and cost overruns of deploying a massive new IT system, there is widespread concern about privacy among citizens. It will be very interesting (and easy) for Americans to sit back and watch how it pans out. I have an in-law who was fired from a nice hospital job for unauthorized access of patient records (she was showing a friend hoping to get hired on how they file things), which showed me both that 1) privacy concerns are real, and 2) institutions take the matter seriously, at least in some cases.

OK - the OP phrased it badly, but the first 24 bits of the MAC address do give vendor information - some drivers allow you to override that, but allowing for some terminological inexactitude, the OP made sense.

The work of their various Councils and Societies encompasses a large number of projects, to include Open Source projects.

This article in IEEE Spectrum contains more details and comments from Bruce Schneier and others.

The disposition of nuclear waste is a political problem, not a technical one.

Tell that to the French where many people support nuclear power.

Nobody's suggesting that we don't use the available wind, geothermal, or tidal power. If that's not sufficient,

Ah but those alternatives are sufficient. Sciam, "Scientific American", published "A Solar Grand Plan" that details how solar power can provide 69% of the US's energy needs by 2050. If that isn't enough the DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory published the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States showing the wind resources the US has, which is a lot. The Rocky has enough potential wind power to provide the 48 contiguous states with most if not all the energy needed. Another good energy source, in some locations, is Geothermal. Fact is is alternative energy sources like those above can provide the US with all of it's energy needs easily, technologically speaking.

Anyway, the concept is neat. But one problem I had is that the paper says that the memristance (M) needs to change with charge (or flux) to be interesting. But the other fundamental elements (R = dv/di, C = dq/dv, and L = dphi/di) all have basic components that assume it's fixed. Circuits using resistors, capacitors, and inductors all assume the R, C, and L are fixed, except in special cases where it is explicitly says otherwise. So why does a memristor get to have a changing M value? Supposedly because if it didn't it would just look like a resistor and would be a boring element. But I think there must be more to it. But so far I haven't figured it out.

Thanks for your explanation.

I attend UCF, and will be starting my graduate degree in the Fall semester after attending graduation next week. This is old news.

When I started attending UCF for my EE, this had already been done. I have recently completed (last Thursday) Dr. Wu's class on Genetic Algorithms (Evolutionary Computation). This work was used by (grad) students as a starting point for their research for the class project.

Let me express how this is old news.

2003 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/M26H2CEEAGWG4FD5.pdf

1993 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=410654

1999 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=785430

2002 (quantum cicuits) - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1029883

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1217659

1998 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=685786

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1323832

2002 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1004425

1998 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/71ub9hh22qrlx5lk.pdf

I attend UCF, and will be starting my graduate degree in the Fall semester after attending graduation next week. This is old news.

When I started attending UCF for my EE, this had already been done. I have recently completed (last Thursday) Dr. Wu's class on Genetic Algorithms (Evolutionary Computation). This work was used by (grad) students as a starting point for their research for the class project.

Let me express how this is old news.

2003 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/M26H2CEEAGWG4FD5.pdf

1993 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=410654

1999 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=785430

2002 (quantum cicuits) - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1029883

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1217659

1998 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=685786

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1323832

2002 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1004425

1998 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/71ub9hh22qrlx5lk.pdf

I attend UCF, and will be starting my graduate degree in the Fall semester after attending graduation next week. This is old news.

When I started attending UCF for my EE, this had already been done. I have recently completed (last Thursday) Dr. Wu's class on Genetic Algorithms (Evolutionary Computation). This work was used by (grad) students as a starting point for their research for the class project.

Let me express how this is old news.

2003 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/M26H2CEEAGWG4FD5.pdf

1993 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=410654

1999 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=785430

2002 (quantum cicuits) - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1029883

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1217659

1998 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=685786

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1323832

2002 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1004425

1998 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/71ub9hh22qrlx5lk.pdf

I attend UCF, and will be starting my graduate degree in the Fall semester after attending graduation next week. This is old news.

When I started attending UCF for my EE, this had already been done. I have recently completed (last Thursday) Dr. Wu's class on Genetic Algorithms (Evolutionary Computation). This work was used by (grad) students as a starting point for their research for the class project.

Let me express how this is old news.

2003 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/M26H2CEEAGWG4FD5.pdf

1993 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=410654

1999 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=785430

2002 (quantum cicuits) - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1029883

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1217659

1998 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=685786

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1323832

2002 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1004425

1998 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/71ub9hh22qrlx5lk.pdf

I attend UCF, and will be starting my graduate degree in the Fall semester after attending graduation next week. This is old news.

When I started attending UCF for my EE, this had already been done. I have recently completed (last Thursday) Dr. Wu's class on Genetic Algorithms (Evolutionary Computation). This work was used by (grad) students as a starting point for their research for the class project.

Let me express how this is old news.

2003 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/M26H2CEEAGWG4FD5.pdf

1993 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=410654

1999 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=785430

2002 (quantum cicuits) - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1029883

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1217659

1998 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=685786

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1323832

2002 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1004425

1998 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/71ub9hh22qrlx5lk.pdf

I attend UCF, and will be starting my graduate degree in the Fall semester after attending graduation next week. This is old news.

When I started attending UCF for my EE, this had already been done. I have recently completed (last Thursday) Dr. Wu's class on Genetic Algorithms (Evolutionary Computation). This work was used by (grad) students as a starting point for their research for the class project.

Let me express how this is old news.

2003 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/M26H2CEEAGWG4FD5.pdf

1993 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=410654

1999 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=785430

2002 (quantum cicuits) - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1029883

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1217659

1998 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=685786

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1323832

2002 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1004425

1998 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/71ub9hh22qrlx5lk.pdf

I attend UCF, and will be starting my graduate degree in the Fall semester after attending graduation next week. This is old news.

When I started attending UCF for my EE, this had already been done. I have recently completed (last Thursday) Dr. Wu's class on Genetic Algorithms (Evolutionary Computation). This work was used by (grad) students as a starting point for their research for the class project.

Let me express how this is old news.

2003 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/M26H2CEEAGWG4FD5.pdf

1993 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=410654

1999 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=785430

2002 (quantum cicuits) - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1029883

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1217659

1998 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=685786

2003 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1323832

2002 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1004425

1998 - http://www.springerlink.com/index/71ub9hh22qrlx5lk.pdf

Eh, to do POE it better run at a LOT less than 30-50W, 802.3af only offers 12.95W (37V @ 350mA = 12.95W, 48V @ 270mA = 12.95W link ) guaranteed power.

Try downloading a fairly recent (published after 2000-2002) paper on computer vision or image processing. Most sites need a registration fee and only work with organizations (e.g. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=621386).
Even some standards can't be downloaded without paying and registration, for example T.38.

...or not lies? See, for example, evidence in the article cited below of potential problems.

The question is, if there are regulatory issues to be worked out, do you just go ahead and roll the dice in the meantime?

Unsafe At Any Airspeed?
By Bill Strauss, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, and Daniel D. Stancil
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069

Excerpt outling some of the reasoning why problems can occur:
"Consumer devices that meet FCC emission limits can exceed safe interference limits set by the FAA for avionics, because the FCC and the FAA do not harmonize their regulations. A 2003 study of cellular telephones by NASA highlighted the problem. On the one hand, the study found that of eight cellphones tested (four CDMA and four GSM), no individual unit would be likely to interfere with any of the commonly used aircraft navigation radio systems, although there was still some potential for interference in worst-case scenarios. However, the same study determined that spurious emissions from cellular phones at the allowable FCC limits would cut dangerously into safety margins for avionics, even when considering "reasonable minimum" radio receiver interference thresholds. More troubling, the study found that intermodulation between some cellular phones caused emissions in the frequency bands used by an aircraft's GPS and distance-measuring equipment. The report identified other combinations of common passenger transmitters that could potentially produce intermodulation effects in aircraft communication and navigation RF bands. "

Also:
"Our data and the NASA studies suggest to us that there is a clear and present danger: cellphones can render GPS instrument useless for landings. Clearly, the cause of the problem is that the FCC issues RF emission standards for consumer electronics, conferring only minimally with the FAA and with no formal consideration of the implications of those standards for the aircraft environment. For its part, the FAA relies on the airlines to initiate safety plans and, like other government agencies, defers to the FCC on questions of electromagnetic radiation.
"

utopia.

I see one big problem with TFA. It talks about how Utah taxpayers subsidized Utopia yet it does not acknowledge the billions of taxpayer dollars government already gave to the telcos and cablecos to buildout a broadband infrastructure the companies never built. Question, would you also like airlines to build and pay for their own airports as well? Here's an appropriate quote from Paul Morris, Utopia's executive director:

"It would be absurd for each airline to build its own airport," he says. "But that's just what we've been doing for telecommunications. Qwest has its set of wires in the ground, and Comcast"--the dominant cable provider in the region--"has its own. We think it makes sense for a city or a region to build the airport, have someone operate it, and let as many airlines provide service as want to."

And cellphones can do broadband?

Consider: connectivity that doesn't use 'landlines' or tip-and-ring technology, rather, symmetrical fibre and local digital infrastructure (not DSL).

Fiber isn't landline? It may be glass instead of copper but it still requires the same right of way and even more labour to install.

Get rid of the monopolies and governmental sanctioned phone-mafias.

Agreed, however the problem is in the details. For instance someone has to pay to build then maintain and own the infrastructure. What might work is to separate the ownership of the infrastructure from offering the services it is capable of delivering. Such an approach is being implemented as part of A Broadband Utopia in northeastern Utah, here's an update abet almost a year old. One person in the article says it is operated like an airport, airliners don't build their own, instead usually the airport is built and owned by the government who then leases gates to the airlines.

And cellphones can do broadband?

Consider: connectivity that doesn't use 'landlines' or tip-and-ring technology, rather, symmetrical fibre and local digital infrastructure (not DSL).

Fiber isn't landline? It may be glass instead of copper but it still requires the same right of way and even more labour to install.

Get rid of the monopolies and governmental sanctioned phone-mafias.

Agreed, however the problem is in the details. For instance someone has to pay to build then maintain and own the infrastructure. What might work is to separate the ownership of the infrastructure from offering the services it is capable of delivering. Such an approach is being implemented as part of A Broadband Utopia in northeastern Utah, here's an update abet almost a year old. One person in the article says it is operated like an airport, airliners don't build their own, instead usually the airport is built and owned by the government who then leases gates to the airlines.

There are (aptly-named) alternatives: http://spectrum.ieee.org/may06/3434

However, it seems that municipalities and provinces would once again have to do the badly-needed work that this government refuses to do.

There are techniques for extracting higher quality data from overlapping low-resolution data sets.

Yes and no. If your low-resolution images are properly acquired, that with with no aliasing, you're fucked. Aliasing means frequency components higher than half the sampling rate/camera resolution are not being filtered out prior to quantization by, in our example, the camera's CCD.

Here's a paper covering the area: High-resolution image reconstruction from multiple low-resolutionimages; it's the 6th hit on Google for a search for "high res from many low res images". Note that you can even do this from JPEG-compressed images: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1006080.

Noise elimination is a relevant part of the problem, because there is always noise in the low-res images.

Eivind.

There are techniques for extracting higher quality data from overlapping low-resolution data sets.

Yes and no. If your low-resolution images are properly acquired, that with with no aliasing, you're fucked. Aliasing means frequency components higher than half the sampling rate/camera resolution are not being filtered out prior to quantization by, in our example, the camera's CCD.

Here's a paper covering the area: High-resolution image reconstruction from multiple low-resolutionimages; it's the 6th hit on Google for a search for "high res from many low res images". Note that you can even do this from JPEG-compressed images: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1006080.

Noise elimination is a relevant part of the problem, because there is always noise in the low-res images.

Eivind.

How does 78% carnot sound?

Some very intelligent researchers at the Institute of Physics' Condensed Matter and Material Physics Conference came to some very intelligent decisions about the future of CPU's... but this is hardly the end of the silicon chip.

In addition to some of the points made by other posters (Silicon CPU's will live on in smart systems, cheap systems, handheld systems, etc.), there is a whole world of silicon chips that are *not* CPU's! Analog and mixed signal circuits need highly linear devices--not just switches that turn on and off--which current silicon technology provides wonderfully. Our current analog design technology has nowhere near exhausted the possibilities on the tapestry that ten/twenty year old silicon fabrication technologies provide.

Maybe graphene, nanotubes, or the Next Big Thing will change the high performance CPU niche, but silicon still provides everything we can manage to use for the rest of the IC world.

Besides, I bet that graffiti will be quite a challenge with nanotubes.

It's not as if RF energy is something we've just discoved in that last 5 years.

People have been studying this for quite a while, some of them want it deliberately use it to cause harm to other people.

This isn't string theory, this is well understood science.

If you know something everybody else doesn't know, get it published in a peer-reviewed technical journal.
If not start reading up on the subject.

You may be particularly interested in EHS.

It's not as if RF energy is something we've just discoved in that last 5 years.

People have been studying this for quite a while, some of them want it deliberately use it to cause harm to other people.

This isn't string theory, this is well understood science.

If you know something everybody else doesn't know, get it published in a peer-reviewed technical journal.
If not start reading up on the subject.

You may be particularly interested in EHS.