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For more details on this, try this url at Technology Review.

This sure as hell isn't going to be available for my cell phone!

Also, it's sad to see Romero focus on cell phones games... I used to think he was (and probably still is -- one of the most talented game programmers around)

My personal thoughts on this issue are that sure it's a great idea in principle... But I remember when the nokia's started shipping with snake on them, I would see people sitting down at the food courts in malls, at parties, at school in the halls, all playing snake (/w sound effects on!), and it looked pathetic.

No one really *needs* to play games on their cell phone. Also, no one needs a cell phone in their tooth, nor do they need an optical laser mouse, nor a really cheap digital camera built in!

Since when did cell phones become the utility tool of the businessman? Find the right tool for the job! My cell phone will never offer as good a gaming experience as my PC/Console system, nor take a better digital picture than my kodak digital camera, nor... well... okay -- i currently don't have anything built into my teeth besides fillings -- but dammit that's crossing the line!

Cell phones used to be about calling people and being able to get help when the car broke down, etc... Trully -- it's sad to think how consumer oriented this society has become -- every clammoring to get the latest gadget and gizmo on the market. I for one am not buying another cell phone, until mine stops working the way it was designed to.

On a related note, MIT Tech Review is running a related article on Why Software is So Bad.

Notable Quote from Story:

"Users are tremendously non-self-aware," Myhrvold adds. At Microsoft, he says, corporate customers often demanded that the company simultaneously add new features and stop adding new features. "Literally, I've heard it in a single breath, a single sentence. 'We're not sure why we should upgrade to this new release--it has all this stuff we don't want--and when are you going to put in these three things?' And you say, 'Whaaat?'" Myhrvold's sardonic summary: "Software sucks because users demand it to."

If WalMart starts using Linux desktops for their own business, that will have a much bigger impact. For example, if WalMart were to tell all of its vendors and suppliers that they have to submit their documents using open file formats instead of MS proprietary formats, that would create a ripple effect across corporate America.

Technology review had an interesting article on this very topic a few months ago.

The reason is simple. Wal-Mart is by far the commercial world's most influential purchaser and implementer of software and systems. It is the 800-pound gorilla in a retail jungle of bonobos and howler monkeys. Microsoft and Cisco may set technical standards; Wal-Mart sets business process standards. When Wal-Mart--which is bigger than Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney combined--wants global suppliers like Procter and Gamble or GE or Pfizer to comply with its inventory software and data networks, they do so or else. "Everyday low prices" don't come cheap.

*-snip-*

This power of procurement facilitates the procurement of power. Suppose Wal-Mart decided that it would be economically advantaged by abandoning proprietary software formats in favor of "open source" to manage its supplier interactions. Imagine the ripple--or rather, tsunami--effect on the future of systems design and development in the retail, wholesale and consumer goods sectors. What happens to a Microsoft or Oracle in that environment?


Hopefully, selling Linux PCs is just the first step. When WalMart starts using Linux-based PCs internally, then the game will really change.

At least according to Active Media Research and the folks at MIT Technology Review:

Mobile Robotics: The Next Revolution

If that's not a dead giveaway that this is a pro-Microsoft post, I don't know what is. See, this troll is smart, though, because he doesn't say "but I'm impartial!" till the end.

. . . when it's functionality stretches . . .

That should read if it's functionality stretches. Microsoft is already losing money on this baby; do you really think they're going to dump more hardware into it just so they can lose more money? Also, any product that tries to compete with the already established market leaders on features will lose. Didn't you get that memo? One last thing is that I think I'll trust a truly unbiased source with years of experience in the industry before I trust what is obviously an end user in this market.

The problem with computing appliances right now is that human-factors engineering has been largely neglected by the computer industry over the past few years. Most computer suppliers have focused on lowering costs, rather than pushing the envelope on hardware design and really improving usability. At the same time, software usability improvements have been slowed by the lock-in of WIMP imposed by Windows and other systems, which have frozen UI state-of-the-art at 1984 levels.

If you are interested in the evolution of appliances, this summary in MIT Technology Review provides an interesting glimpse of how handheld computing could evolve in the future. It questions the assumption that cell-phone Web browsers and pen-based computing will be the dominant paradigms, betting instead on thumb keyboards and portable hard drives. Some interesting market statistics are revealed, such as that 52 percent of households in the 25 largest urban markets in the United States have cell phones (compared to more than 75 percent in some European countries such as Iceland and Finland), and that worldwide sales of digital organizers were 12 million units, while digital camera sales were 6.4 million units last year (3 million MP3 players are expected to be sold this year). These kinds of numbers show that a breakthrough for computing appliances may be near.

> ... the military ... thought this through ... I'm sure they'll find a solution

Don't be so sure. All the military cares about is padding their budget and a fat private sector job after they "retire".
Read about how they faked the results of the missile defense tests.

How rigorous. Usability pundit picks pet criteria and decides that these are the top HCI labs. Those interested in the real state of the field instead of opinion might take a look at the more rigorous listings available:

Top Research Labs by Topic, 1978 and 1997

Where Researchers Want to Work

BusinessWeek's Top 20 US Research Labs

Google Cache of 1999 US News ranking of User Interaction Grad Schools

MIT Technology Review Corporate R&D Scorecard (Requires subscription)

HCI Academic Article Imapct Rankings

I think that few of the people on avant garde of HCI research take Jacob Neilsen very seriously. He is a usability specialist, not a interface researcher.

The current issue (Apr '02) of MIT's Technology Review has a couple features on the future of mobile computing. This article goes into the details of mobile computer interface design (from laptops to PDAs to MP3 players). The point is that people prefer to use their fingers to push buttons -- no matter how cool Pen Technology Of The Moment(tm) may be.

The full text online costs about US$5, but for that much you can go to a bookstore and buy the whole issue (ironic, isn't it?).

The current issue (Apr '02) of MIT's Technology Review has a couple features on the future of mobile computing. This article goes into the details of mobile computer interface design (from laptops to PDAs to MP3 players). The point is that people prefer to use their fingers to push buttons -- no matter how cool Pen Technology Of The Moment(tm) may be.

The full text online costs about US$5, but for that much you can go to a bookstore and buy the whole issue (ironic, isn't it?).

I'm surprised that I haven't seen a link to this article from Technology Review a few months back.

It discusses the move from classical AI to more business oriented AI field of today. The key: business application = research funding. Sure we all want Artificial Men (that's what it all comes down to doesn't it?) but who's going to pay for it.

Actually there is some interesting work IBM is doing on fruit recognition. You know those self-help check-outs at the market? The problem is that you need to have human interaction (and monitoring) for weighing up fruit (due to the difference in price/lbs.).

What these guys are doing is a recognition system that would recognize different fruits and number (since some, like apples, are done by number not weight). Now this is a non-trivial task even for humans(how good are you at telling a plantine from a banana? Or an oversized orange from a grapefruit?) and add in the translucent bag and the shuffle and you get a lot of headaches. And their work seems very promising.

Of course it isn't AI as we all want it but life ain't the Jetsons. Who wants to deal with sentience when a few damn filters and some boosting of some classifiers suffices?

Not only energy-efficient, but tasty and better for you, too! :-)

Also of interest was the article linked to from the posted one, about using organic LEDs for thin, bright computer displays.

Vannevar Bush, As We May Think (July 1945)

Ben Schneiderman, Codex, Memex, Genex (December 1997)

Henry Jenkins, Information Cosmos (April 2001)

Lasers have a lot of other good warfare qualities, but the most important thing is that they're cheap. This was well explained in a Technology Review article last july (now only avalable for purchase).

Compare the use of a patriot missle to intercept rocket attacks with the use of a laser. The patriot will cost about $1 million per firing (if memory serves)! A laser could be used for much less, all that needs to be paid for each firing is the energy.

This will be most beneficial to peaceful, democratic countries like Israel threatened by terrorists. It doesn't make sense to try to stop every homemade quassam2 rocket with a million dollar patriot, but a cheap laser firing does.

It's a very depressing field right now. All the main ideas (mathematical logic, expert systems, neural nets, genetic algorithms, subsumption) have hit a wall.

I agree that the traditional AI community has reached a brick wall and it's very unlikely that any breakthrough in our understanding of intelligence will come from that sector. They've collected way too much useless baggage over the years.

However, interesting things are happening in the fields of computational neuroscience and neurobiology. The most exciting revelation that has surfaced in the last decade is that the brain is essentially a temporal processing machine. It seems that what matters is the temporal correlations between neural signals, not the manipulation of symbols (as we were led to believe by the now discredited AI crowd). Check out this interview with Jeff Hawkins. I think Jeff is onto something.

BBC latest news on technology issue? Come on Michael....

Slashdotors want technical details!

It also has a breakdown of the companies working on this technology as well as their estimation on delivery time.

"The dog ate my homework."

"Why didn't you print out another copy?"

"It ate my monitor too..."

"Why didn't you print out another monitor?"

"It ate my computer too..."

does this mean that they can be wired back to back to create spray on transistors? Ultracheap custom chips

Spray on transistors are almost there. (The linked article mentions some spray on circuitry but the (fast) transistors are rubber-stamped, they're still working on spraying those). The folks described here are doing spray-on polymer transistors.

Hmm, couple the LEDs, the transistors and some good optical sensors and you can make yourself a cloak of invisibility...

There was an interesting article last year in MIT's Technology Review Magazine about Negroponte leaving the Media Lab, leaving the Lab's future uncertain. The article makes a number of references to the Media Lab, including Biotech Research. It's interesting that he still refers to the Lab as "we" - I assume it's hard to let go, and probably good for the Lab to keep him around as an advisor.

He is more concise and he offers some simple rules that would help stem the tide if everyone abided by them.

The meat of his point is summed up in the following paragraph:

Just because we have become electronically interconnected, we have not acquired the automatic right to send a message to anyone we wish, nor the automatic obligation to respond to every message we receive.

Here, here!

Michael Dertouzos, Chair of MIT's Computer Science Department and columnist for The MIT Technology Review said it better in an article titled The People's Computer: E-mail: Freedom or Jail?.

He is more concise and he offers some simple rules that would help stem the tide if everyone abided by them.

The meat of his point is summed up in the following paragraph:

Just because we have become electronically interconnected, we have not acquired the automatic right to send a message to anyone we wish, nor the automatic obligation to respond to every message we receive.

Here, here!

I think ebooks will only take off when we have a display medium that compares to good old paper. Some promising technologies are here

Here is an excellent article on IP issues and mad patents.

Also check out IP.com and BountyQuest

so I imagine well be seeing something here about this soon!

I'm tempted to immediately blame the companies for doing this, but I guess they are just trying to work within the system to make money. It's the system that sucks. Still I'm gonna hold off buying that antivirus software for a while now.

Okay. So we transmit through the flourescent lights (/. article), which of course doesn't work if you're trying to get some shut-eye or setting up GOOD lighting that bathes your room in light. Now we transmit through the power lines, which doesn't work if you live in California at the wrong time or if you have vacuum cleaners or massive electrovactic flux capacitors or whatever: point is, there's light radiation all over the place, there's power radiation all over the place, hell, there's even radio pollution all over the place (which is why Bluetooth's failing so miserably, as we all know...). But what means of communication do we have that has no parasite devices riding it yet? What magic, wonderful link is there between us and the outside world, over which there is transmited the equivilent of terabytes of raw, reliable data, but which currently isn't at all modulated, although it easily can be made to be, so that rather than what amounts to static today, we get real-live bits?

we need to start sending last-mile data down the water pipes.


Yes, it's true, we have a system that currently can vary in pressure by hundreds of pounds per square inch, that currently has a fairly fixed pressure whose modulations no data-gobbling devices currently utilize, and which services a relatively few number of homes per pipe. Sure, it'll be a shared bandwidth -- or "pipe diameter" -- among all the homes in an area, but then so wasn't broadband cable -- and who's laughing at /that/ today? My roughest calculations show an upper bounds, based on where brownian motion starts to interfere with your data, in excess of 2.82 exobauds of data per household. (The lower bounds, based on the pressure difference that you can modulate not when no water flows through the pipes [and when brownian motion therefore is the only thing screwing you] but rather when everyone turns on every water faucet on full, flushes all their toilets, and opens the fire hydrants outside, /still/ results in good, clean data of about 750kbps, with generous redundancy for error-correction. Either way, lower bounds, upper bounds, that's a good hefty amount of bandwidth).


Latency? That's estimatable from the speed of sound through water -- since sound is, after all, modulation -- which is "1400 and 1570 m/sec (4593 and 5151 ft/sec). This is roughly 1.5 km/sec (just under 1 mile/sec) or about four times faster than sound travels through air." (Although it "depends on the temperature of the water, its salinity, and the pressure ") Now granted, a second to travel a mile might seem excessive, but bear in mind that, based on the above, the information still travels four times as fast as if you were to yell it. Maybe we can have an asymmetric system, so that you dial in with your modem, and have downloads come through the fat pipe. Okay, enough silliness.






(i'm kidding)
~

Correct link here.

You can read a somewhat longer, though not much more technical, article written by Charles Mann in Technology Review's March 2001 issue.

I'm hoping they make display units you can put your vehicle, so that one has more choices for imparting information than honking, flashing your lights, or flipping the bird. I want a to be able to display the following message on a big sign, in reversed characters, on the front of my car:

HEY, YOUR TURN SIGNAL IS ON!

Why not use infrared? When you've already got many times the emitter power in the ceiling for room lighting, a separate IR emitter system looks like a waste of money (and electricity).
--

Did you actually READ this interview of Gordon Moore that I referenced? Do you understand the term 'sarcasm'? I don't think so.

I'll try not to flame you, because that's not what computer engineers do.

Unesco Site: http://www.unesco.org/webworld/alexandria_new

MIT Tech Review Article: http://www.technologyreview.com/magazine/apr01/jen kins.asp

From the Tech Review Article:

Later this year, a state-of-the-art research facility opens in Alexandria, transforming legend back into reality. Announcing the project, Egyptian first lady Suzanne Mubarak vowed the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina would be "a digital lighthouse for the world." Many countries are contributing precious archival holdings on microfilm or CD-ROM and returning documents confiscated during wars and occupations.

-roop

For example, I know that someone submitted this link from the MIT Tech Review about the REbuilding of the Library of Alexandria (which was one of the biggest and most impressive geek communites of all time). (project link here)The lessons learned from that Library are very very relevant today in our attempts to build a future civilization.

This obviously goes over the heads of the editors, and gets rejected.

But this stuff, isn't even summarized here, or quoted, just everyone go look at it. And feedback suggests that it is basically a high class troll.

This is no way to build a community.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

According to this article, NIST will be constructing a high-tech Advanced Measurement Lab in the near future to combat the problem of vibrations.

"If the AML lives up to its design specs when its doors open in 2004, its steadiest laboratory surfaces will move less than a picometer (a trillionth of a meter) per second."

Here's an older (and shorter) interview (from MIT's Technology Review) with Tom Leighton, the guy who cofounded Akamai. The article is titled "Akamai's algorithms" and it treats many of the same topics mentioned in the post.

Here's an older (and shorter) interview (from MIT's Technology Review) with Tom Leighton, the guy who cofounded Akamai. The article is titled "Akamai's algorithms" and it treats many of the same topics mentioned in the post.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office:

Software Patent Institute

Bustpatents.com

invalid/withdrawn/pathetic software patents.

"Software Patents Tangle the Web,"

With billions of dollars in Internet sales at stake, the proliferation of broad e-commerce patents is sowing confusion, uncertainty and a good deal of cynicism among many software developers and business leaders. Some legal experts, such as Robert Merges, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, believe the sheer number of patents now pending on business methods has "pushed the patent system into crisis."

I submitted this story a few months ago when it was covered in MIT's Technology Review.

I even quoted the article's predictions of "open-source hardware" in my post, but it must have been preempted by a Jon Katz movie review or another article about Napster or something.

I submitted this story a few months ago when it was covered in MIT's Technology Review.

I even quoted the article's predictions of "open-source hardware" in my post, but it must have been preempted by a Jon Katz movie review or another article about Napster or something.

Technology Review had an article about the very same topic months ago. Surprised it didn't hit slashdot then. Well anyway, it is an interesting read as well for anyone who want to hear more.

Technology Review had an article about the very same topic months ago. Surprised it didn't hit slashdot then. Well anyway, it is an interesting read as well for anyone who want to hear more.

This article seriously misses the point. AFAIK, the fabbers currently under development are almost exclusively intended for demonstration purposes. Example:

"What does your product look like, Mr. Jones?"
"Well, it looks like this model here."
"But what if you changed /this/ random element?"
(fiddles around with CAD model for a second)
"Hold on, let it print out... There, is this better?"

These machines don't actually fabricate the object, they represent the 3D shape of it based on computer models. The process is roughly based on the concept that plastic/polymer/metal powder will stick to glue, and you can squirt glue on a 3D object using existing inkjet-type technology.

The conceptual jump from this to actually fabbing usable products (sports equipment, electronics, etc) is astronomical. All sorts of complications crop up, like having to use multiple materials and creating non-powder-stickable objects (like fabric, glass, etc). The quality would be really crappy for a while as well, maybe bankrupting any company that tries marketing it.

A more realistic concern was discussed recently in the MIT Tech Review. It concerns the more feasable attempts at printing working digital circuitry. What if I can download the plans for a new SB Live or a GeForce2 and print out a fully-functional, if ungainly, piece of hardware that I could use in my computer?

Technology Review did an article last month on the same subject.

Technology Review did an article last month on the same subject.

When I was an undergrad at MIT, there was a guy who modified a flatbed plotter so that he could print PCB's from any PC / workstation. The last issue of Technology Review contained an article called, Print your Next PC that describes researchers at MIT who are working on a device that could print hardware (chips) directly. It should not be hard if you can get an automatic etcher and a laser together. The graphics guys working on 3D device printing with a bed of liquid acrylic and a laser and an anvil that slowly submerges (the laser is used to solidify just the area you need) have already solved many of these problems.

As I have tried to post twice, MIT Tech Review has an article regarding the ability to use an inkjet printer to print a semiconductor chip.

It is a very interesting read and even speaks to the possibility of this allowing open source cpu's in the future. Imagine, downloading and printing the latest version of your cpu before upgrading to the n.n kernel it is targeted at :)

The speed is not yet that of a Pentium, but the researcher believes it will be someday. Wish /. would not have rejected this twice, never understood why!

RoboSurgeons, from the Nov/Dec 2000 issue. Complete with pictures and links.