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What maybe a few people have missed is that there will be some incredibly interesting "hardware" out there in the future.

Some people have already demonstrated things like using DNA computers to solve travelling salesman problems, Quantum Computing and Grid Computers.

Perhaps what this article is suggesting is one way for developers of entirely new "hardware" to easily supply operators and types (syntax) to any programming language.

It would be interesting to be able to write program a that talked directly to the nervous system using fairly standard <your language of choice> syntax, that when compiled produced a real piece of nano "machinery".

Isotope bombs, which are not even feasible at this point and require a pretty massive technological base to even think about playing with

A few years ago, someone said "650KB ought to be enough for anybody" (for off-topic discussion, see more of this here). We are now in an age where sending stuff to mars is about to become a routine exercise to the governments. So, we are not far away from building a golfball-sized hafnium bomb that would cause rather devastating effects. It's time for all the nuclear-powers to wake up and do something about it.

In fact, I'd say the nuclear materials and research inside the US are probably better locked-down than just about anywhere else.
Correct, but there's no other nation close enough to become a super-power comparable to US. Buildings are just as tall in the rest of the world, but why those twin towers in NYC? US has the power to start a nuclear war and it is still the number 1 target for many terrorist organizations. Prevention is better than cure, buddy.

Oh! Oh! A free APL?!?!
I want it! Quo vadis?

Well, since the genome isn't entirelly mapped out and studied properly, regardless of either one of the points given while arguing over this politically sensitive subject, there is no way to prove or disprove that it isn't a genetic disposition that causes this. Not that I'd be so silly to assume such a thing, but you never know... the modern abacus was perfected in China.

Now enough of that, the cultural "prejudice, bias etc etc." you are implyng by stating a stastical truth is ridiculous. If you have a theory as to why there is more or a predisposition to math in the Asian migrant/decendent families please share it. Perhaps it is because their education system and history of mathematics has had much longer, and is much more important in their cultural beliefs than it is to those without a thousand+ year old cultural history? (Speculation flame me whatever.)

Or maybe they haven't seen (and been affected by) "Dazed and Confused" "Ferris Bueler" "The Breakfast Club" or any other number of 70s-90s movies that demonstrate the students absolute rejection of Americian Public Education, yet.

Who knows, honestly I can tell you the abnormally high scores sure aren't the product of the education establishment who teaches to the LCD.

Easy answer, Never In 1976 Cray's were water cooled, and later they were cooled with freon. So no your little desktop has nothing on super computers when it comes to cooling requirements.

How about Philip Katz the inventor of PK-Zip

The internet would not be the same without Zip compression, and he made the software Shareware.

Grace Murray Hopper (bio can be found at The History of Computing ), generally credited with "developing the first compiler and who led the effort in the 60's to develop COBOL." Cool lady.

Is the prefix 'deep' assigned to computers designed to play chess? Deep blue, deep fritz... anyone have an idea? Is it just supposed to imply "deep thought"? Is it a coincidence?

But your original question was why Apple didn't use *nix as the basis of it's modern OS way back in the 1990s. Do you remember "Taligent" and "Pink", the joint venture between IBM & Apple to create a viable OS standard based to compete with the Wintel cartel?

Pink was the OS that was supposed to be designed ground-up to be completely based on OO principles and technology. Apple put all it's eggs int that basket, and had to go shopping for an OS after years of missed delivery deadlines. Remember the play that Apple made for BeOS, before Jean-Louis Gasse and friends put a ridiculous price tag on what was still an unfinished OS? The net result was that Apple (and IBM) never finished fully OO-based Pink so it bought Job's NeXT. This allowed Apple to layer the MacOS on top of the OO-layer that NeXT had layered on top of BSD-Unix. And this also brought Apple's prodigal son back home.

...anactofgod...

• A photo of reconstruction of the device
  
• An exhibition photo
  
• Sketch of the device with open doors
  

Old Crays also make cool sofas, which adds a lot of value to their multi-million dollar price tags. =)

We have two of them (a Cray-1 and a X/MP) here at LiU

Personally, I feel that Microsoft has done a great injustice to the world of computing and to the world at large by its flagrant anti-competitive behavior. I would like to say that I am boycotting the Microsoft Corporation, as they say, because they are not supportive of fundamental rights to compete in an economy. Microsoft has a monopoly due to its predatory business practices, and will continue to do so until we, Americans, fight for what is right in the world of business.

After all, if it weren't for Microsoft, we'd still be using computers with at most 640 KB of memory. Remember when Bill Gates said "640K ought to be enough for anybody" in 1981? Well, Bill, it isn't. One of my license-free Ogg Vorbis audio files alone takes more than that much space. Thanks to my boycott of Microsoft, I would like to proudly note that I will Ogg and not WMA.

> I can produce evidence that he publicly denies saying that infamous quote. You say "He did, in 1981." Where? When?

The History of Computing Foundation was my first source. The fact that Mr. Gates denies having said this carries little weight with me since I can also present definitive proof that he lies when it suits him.

Virg

P.S. I was born in 1968. Oh, and fuck you for the attitude.

And on re-reading the paper, I found that the stream generator uses a packet key of IVk, in other words, it uses one of 2^64 or 2^128 cipher streams, not just 2^24 as suggested by Zeinfeld. (IMHO?)

The flaky IV generation could be handled by a software upgrade, I imagine. This would then spread the IVs out more evenly over the 2^24 number space, and reduce the probability of stream re-use. The IV size is still too low for very high traffic. But I don't know by how much improving the generation would increase the amount of traffic required for a crack - 2^24 ÷ 4 million ?

The cipher stream might be made less amenable to this attack by using RC4(cf(IVk)k), where cf() is some cryptographic function, possibly RC4 again, but you'd need to be an expert to sort this out!

This all goes to show that you should have your protocol design and key management audited by an independent expert in the field. A firm I worked with used to use Donald Davies. Sadly he died last year.