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I've posted on this topic before here in this article. They can be used as a semiconductor material and achieve speeds of 81GHz. And don't forget the older Wired article about The New Diamond Age either. :) Cheers.

They had a Belgian diamond expert examine one of them, and he was fooled. The industry had to create new types of testing just so that experts can pick these out. There's no uncanny valley here. They're real diamonds, just mass-produced.

Wired did a much more in depth article on this subject a couple years ago.

One thing to keep in mind is that saying the lab-created diamonds possess the same qualities as natural diamonds is a little misleading. They are certainly diamonds, in that they are the same type of crystal form of carbon, but they *are* distinguishable from natural diamonds.

What I find very interesting is just how expensive and advanced equipment needs to be to tell the difference, and how much Debeers is shelling out to ensure that the biggest diamond testing labs have that equipment. Check out the linked article for more on that.

If you want to do something about challenging the DeBeers cartel and their questionable business practices, check out Canadian Diamonds, also here and here.

Over 3 years ago, Slashdot ran an article on these lab created diamonds; it was a great story on Wired.com. The difference there was that it was an independent piece, a solid read, and offered a glimpse into the future of computing (i.e. using diamonds as semiconductors).

This current story, however, is just a link to a damn press release, with no mention What was the point of it, aside from giving free press to this company?

Wired had a great article on the subject of synthetic diamonds a few years ago. An excerpt:

Back at the Diamond High Council, I open the film canister and shake the Apollo stones onto the table. Van Royen tentatively picks one up with a pair of elongated tweezers and takes it to a microscope. "Unbelievable," he says slowly as he peers through the lens. "May I study it?" I agree to let him keep the gems overnight. When we meet the next morning in the lobby of the High Council, Van Royen looks tired. He admits to staying up almost all night scrutinizing the stones. "I think I can identify it," he says hopefully. "It's too perfect to be natural. Things in nature, they have flaws. The growth structure of this diamond is flawless."

...named Smart Sensors Find Floods.

On sensors, read this story on the OGC [Open Geospatial Consortium] specifications. If you look at this, you'll find more interesting stories on the Sensor Web, including the SensorMap from Microsoft Research and new RFID technology for instant forest fire alerts. (yes yes, this is mostly on-topic shameless plugs! ;-)

You may want to try Retrevo, it's meant to be specialized to finding reviews. How good it is, I couldn't tell you.

Sounds crazy, but similar things have happened in the past. And there have already been lawsuits over just hyperlinks. Any time you make content available (by link or summary) you are bound to get sued by someone. Now we will start to see lawsuits for royalties over the summaries (because google uses context ads and makes a profit from them)?

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59043,00 .html - well as easy as you can sleep with a bunch of big ol' 20th century howitzers aimed at your capital...

I know your response was as tongue-in-cheek as mine was meant to be, but the last couple of notes had enough 'hint of bitterness' that they're worth responding to:
7) The act of creating isn't doing anything? Awesome, I'll be sure to send that memo over to Da Vinci.
Relativism, ahoy!

I'm not sure the it logically follows that "since DaVinci created masterpieces, that all acts of creation are therefore valuable"?

8) Because the contingent there were racist homophobes who shot their neighbors?
Funny, I thought it was because the inhabitants of Jesse were hypocrites that believed in the freedoms of speech and thought only when it agreed with their utopian religion (not to be confused with actual religion, with, like, God and stuff). If I recall correctly, the "Jesse War" BEGAN with the suppression of the WW2OLer's FREEDOM OF SPEECH (viz http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,59675,00.ht ml or http://secondlife.com/notes/2003_07_07_archive.php #20030707) because the hippies objected to the pro-war postings and tried to cover them.

It was absolutely hilarious to us (by now you've probably realized I'm one of "them") that the hippies didn't understand the real ramifications of being in Jesse....ie that the rules of the area allowed a Hobbesian resolution to the conflict. The only reason 'we' effectively lost was because Linden Labs broke their OWN rules and intervened like a Politically-correct Deus ex Machina. That was probably very validating for the hippies, we imagined, because it dovetailed so nicely with their general pro-nanny-state politics (again, ONLY as long as it agrees with their Leftish beliefs). So the WW2OLers lost in actuality, but IMVHO won a giant moral victory.

You ask this like it is a remote possability in the future. It was already done:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60563,00 .html

"It's true that with open source, someone could potentially find a flaw, not tell anybody about it, and then exploit that flaw to manipulate an election.", N3Roaster

"Thompson said, he typed five lines of computer code -- and switched 5,000 votes from one candidate to another."

"Electronic voting machines in Florida may have awarded George W. Bush up to 260,000 more votes than he should have received"

"Bill Lockyer, California's attorney general, said Diebold officials misled state leaders about the security and certification of its products to get payments from the state"

was Re:Open source & Availability

1. Is the use transformative?
2. What's the nature of the copyrighted work?
3. How much did you change?
4. What's the effect on the market?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/start.htm l?pg=13

More fair-use links are here:

http://www.screensite.org/index.php?option=com_boo kmarks&Itemid=28&mode=0&catid=5&navstart=0&search= *

Of course, I Am Not A Lawyer--even though my father and brother are.

Turns out the end of the Wired article had it.

When I saw this headline I immediately thought of this article, an interview with Jen-Hsun Huang (CEO: nVidia) by Wired dated July '02. In it, the intention of overthrowing Intel is made quite clear, and ironically enough they even mention the speculation from a time when it was rumored that nVidia and AMD would merge.

It's actually a very good article for those interested in nVidia's history and Huang's mentality. Paul Otellini ought to be afraid. Very afraid.

This article, I assume

• The response of the system is faster than that of the controller. In this case, the mobility of money and information into and out of the tech investment market is faster than the overall response of the economy (and maybe the regulators). This allows the tech market subsystem to oscillate. If true, this bubble will be followed by another drop (if not a bust), and another bubble, etc.
  
• Tech is expanding the real economy, so it acts to some extent as an amplifier. In general, the overall economy absorbs energy from a tech bubble, acting as negative feedback and time shifting the growth, moderating the curve. In this case, perhaps the amplifier gain is large, making the net feedback positive. If so then this bubble will be bigger than the last, and the next one bigger yet. Otherwise, this one will be the same or smaller than the last, and the ripples will die out.
  

I don't know about hospital software (although I bet a ton of it runs on Windows), but I do know of one instance of Windows leaving a Navy cruiser dead in the water. That's not exactly a good thing either.

A while back wired.com had an interview with Harry Dent, who predicted a second bubble (he also predicted the first bubble way back in 1992). Ah, here is a link: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70034-0.htm l
Basically, his prediction is that tech will boom (aka, bubble) again until about 2010 - 2012, at which point we will have an economic decline not seen since the great depression. I believe reality will be a little more tempered than his prediction, but will otherwise follow the course he describes.

This product pretty much has to be real. Wired Magazine predicted it in it's "Found: Artifacts From the Future." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.08/images/fo und.jpg

Wired had a similar product featured in "Found: Artifacts from the future" back in August. This is probably the fastest time between Wired imagining a product and it actually hitting the market.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.08/images/fo und.jpg

Keyboard
        1
Mouse
        2
Phone
        4
Network
        4
Power
        10

So where's my wireless power!? Though I'm not sure if I want the level of radiation necessary to power all these devices wirelessly in my study.

Back to the topic. UWB is old news, but I was recently reading some old news about it's use in localised RADAR applications. I'd like a "digital compas" that tells me, my wife and kids where each other are when we're at the shopping centre etc.

Did you read the article? That's exactly one of the recommendations they make! Look at http://www.wired.com/news/politics/evote/0,71957-1 .html?tw=wn_story_page_next1 on the section called "Create transparent code."

These security vendors been taking advantage of the flaws in the windows OS's for years and making tons of money doing it. Great someone needed to do it since MS couldn't or wouldn't. However MS is now trying to hardent heir OS and remove the security holes that should have been removed years ago and what happens? People complain. And by people I mean Symantec, McAfee, etc (not the end user mind you).

I for one am pleased to see MS trying to lock down their systems and these other vendors just need to quite whining. I am sure there will still be plenty left to fix. There always is.
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Free iPods? Its legit and simple. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here!

Hydrogen is nothing but an energy storage medium. There will be an energy loss converting to hydrogen, an energy loss converting from hydrogen. A whole infrastructure to build for conversion/delivery. Storage issues in cars....

Wouldn't a better battery be a much better solution. We already have the distribution network(electric grid). EEStor ultra capacitors seem to be that better battery if they deliver on promises, but there are also advanced flywheels (composite wheels in a vacuum, superconducting magnetic bearings, turning neark 100k rpm). These can be charged or discharge quickly and should last the life of the vehicle.

http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/1/19 /1715549.html (ultracaps)
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.05/flywheel.h tml (advanced flywheels)

Fuel cells don't solve any energy creation issues and as a deliver mechanism, it doesn't seem so hot, I would much prefer to stick with mechanisms we aleady have like the electric grid.

Did I hear someway say open source friendly and Microsoft in the same sentence? Could it be true?
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Free iPods? Its legit and simple. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here!

I am a big fan of privacy. But I am also a big fan you losing your rights to privacy when you continually break the law in a fashion that puts others at risk, especially minors.

Maybe Myspace is just really that stupid (heck, their site design casues me to thik their programmer can;t be all that bright).
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Free iPods? Its legit and simple. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here!

Crappy acting will still be crappy acting. Just like the foley artist is still happily employed enhancing the audio soundtrack (either digitally or old fashined foot stomping). The animator will remain gainfully employed improving and enhancing the final product.
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Free iPods? Its legit and simple. 5 of my friends got theirs. Get yours here!

If you put that secret in a database and then you sell your business, what can I do? Sue you?

That depends. I remember a time when our federal government actually sometimes did the right thing. When a company swore up and down they wouldn't disclose your personal information, they would sue them if they tried to. Now, they just retroactively change the law so that information can be disclosed without penalties.

What do you expect, Power Point is EVIL

I figured it was a counter-attack, really. Getting back at Edward Tufte for all that dissing.

Why does every nerd with poor social skills now claim Aspergers? Seriously, accept that you're nerds and get over it! Very few people actually have Aspergers and it takes a lot more than self-diagnosis for validity. God I'm getting sick of this.

I wonder if there may be a relation with Asperger's Syndrome. According to an article in Wired, Apserger's is disproportionally common among IT people.

Wired.com had a neat article about it.

Their take on the subject? Rockstar has pulled a coup with this one. They've made a game that people are preemptively blowing their tops about, and in reality, A) the messages are actually good, and B) it's a social critique on both those people and the principle that "power corrupts". In the first respect, it's opposite of GTA, but in the latter case, it's exactly the same.

The game doesn't glorify bullying at all. Typical missions involve defending the helpless. One mission that looks bad -- accompanying a gang of toughs that are going to beat up a hobo -- reverses when the toughs flee, and you end up befriending the man. On the other hand, like in GTA, everyone in a position of power is corrupt. And, most importantly, by "lowering the stakes" to such a minimal level, where one of the greatest crimes you can commit is to stay out past curfew, Rockstar both embarrasses those who railed against the game while knowing nothing about it, and the society that puts these types of people in public office.

Since they've done this before, and now done it again, I assume they'll keep doing it until discovered with it in the act. In which case they'll call it a temporary glitch or something. They're skilled in this work internationally too, and are building quite a reputation with all this.

they are a bit smarter sadly...they go over our heads to the ISP's and use Semantic Traffic Analyzers http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70914-0.htm l

One thing that F/OSS advocates (rightly) point out (everytime there is a windows vs linux security bug count study) is that not all bugs are equal. While defects/KLOC is interesting in a variety of ways, it is not nececssarily a good indicator of how well the software meets the needs of the user(s), and ultimately, how well the software meets the needs of the user(s) is what matters (its what matters to users, and its what matters to developers/vendors)

Yes, though I would argue that the term 'defect' includes many useability problems, while accepting that some of these will be a matter of opinion. Oftentimes if these problems can be grouped, they can be valuable signposts for refactoring of a user interface - thinking outside the box.

For example, at a company where I worked, users of a certain timesharing system complained about having to wait for a response back from the computer after entering a command. The staff streamlined the system until the maximum time was under two seconds, and the minimum was a fraction of a second. The complaints continued. They finally set the system so it always took two seconds, even if it was ready sooner. The complaints stopped, and everyone remarked how much faster the system was. The problem wasn't the real time but the perception. Once the wait time was predictable, users unconsciously factored that into their thought process and the wait 'disappeared' - in their minds.

At the same company, I wrote a field diagnostic program for a plotter, which worked perfectly until a year later, when an obscure test (literally, the one out of several hundred that I didn't document!) failed on plotters with the new firmware. They couldn't figure out what the test did, and I couldn't remember. They finally took the test out, and everyone lived happily ever after.

For instance, it may very well be that Vista's IP stack will not allow 2^31 in-flight TCP connections simultaneously. A clever tester might write a test that tries to set this up, only to see it fail.

But a more clever tester wouldn't have bothered, mostly because they know that other issues would prevent 2^31 connections from working long before you got there, and that 2^31 connectinos isn't any kind of customer scenario in the lifecycle of Vista.

Hmm. I think that the 'bazaar' F/OSS model may be advantageous in this area. Because programs must be developed without expectations except for 'standard' I/O, file and stream formats and protocols, bugs are probably more self-limiting than monolithic systems. They may 'waste' more time on sanity checks, however. Sometimes it's not good to have too much access to another development group.

But from the POV of Invariant Based Programming - (originally advocated by Dijkstra, AFAIK), if it's provable (from other software or hardware limitations, presumably) one might argue that if there is no way for the code to receive that many requests, then it's not a defect to not check for it.

Of course the problem is expectation vs. reality. Will future systems be able to surpass 2^31 connections? They probably already can in big routers. Systems have a way of surpassing our most grandiose imaginings, so how do we assure that our reasonable input constant isn't a future bug? The apocryphal '640K RAM quote', comes to mind. :)

In 1981 I worked in a graphics group where the marketing suits could not fathom that anyone would ever need one whole megabyte of RAM - for a graphics terminal. And in code I wrote yesterday, I considered using a fixed length 'default' variable for resetting a set of bit value arguments, making it 'long enough for any conceivable future expansion'. Then I rewrote it to eliminate the string entirely and determine the necessa

Wal-Mart's revenues for last year were $316 billion, and their profits were $75 billion. Do you really think a large enough portion of that comes from Sony products that they wouldn't consider putting some pressure on Sony if they thought it would help their bottom line?

I don't have figures for all "Sony products", however I do have some figures that you probably should've looked for before making such a huge assumption.

In 2001, Wal-Mart accounted for 25 percent of computer and video game sales in the US. I doubt that this percentage has decreased, and it may have increased. In 2004, Americans spent about $10 billion on console hardware and software. This makes console hardware and software account for about 1% of Wal-Mart's revenue.

Now obviously Sony is not the only console maker. However during this past generation they held over 50% of the marketshare for home consoles (hardware sales). Is this still sounding like a good idea? I certainly don't think so. Regarding your other points:

It wouldn't be a PR disaster for Wal-Mart. No one outside the gaming community would even care.

The launch of new game systems usually makes the news. If Wal-Mart gets no PS3s, we can expect teasers of "the PS3 launch will be crazy...but GUESS WHO isn't in on the action?!?!". Even if that doesn't happen, I'm pretty sure thousands (or millions) of people will check with their local Wal-Mart to see if they have PS3s. Not having them would force these potential customers to buy from someone else, loosening the Wal-Mart grip on not only games but retail sales in general (maybe not by lots, but definitely some).

Get real, Sony needs Wal-Mart, not the other way around.

Yeah, if everybody just stopped selling to Wal-Mart, then they'd all go out of business and Wal-Mart would flourish. Oh wait.

The Air Force Research Laboratory may well be already using robots to map out underground enclosures http://www.wired.com/news/technology/software/0,71 779-0.html some more information and ideas discussed by David Hambling via http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002775.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic

OnStar is running a cut-back version of the Portico system from General Magic that was http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/streetcred .html?pg=2 letting you do email, searches, etc. through a voice-only interface as far back as 1999!

"I used to think the gap between those already doing this kind of work and those just getting into it would start to narrow," says Abrash. "Instead I think it's widening. People aren't catching up; they're falling further behind. A large knowledge base is required to do anything state-of-the art, and it takes longer and longer to acquire that knowledge."

Let me start by saying that I am definitely an iPod guy. I have owned several iPods (3G, 4G, Photo, Video, Shuffle). I develop iPod compatible software and have been heavily involved in reverse engineering the iTunes database formats.

That said, the e200R and Rhapsody 4.0 actually appear to be a decent alternative to an iPod/iTMS, not to mention Microsoft's Zune. I know, I know - BestBuy and Real (along with Microsoft WMA) sound like a match made in hell, but the features posted on Wired actually sound interesting - especially "My Rhapsody Channel" (sort of like Pandora for portable music players) and "Dynamic Playlists" (same idea, but featuring new releases).

Regardless of what you think of Real, you can't argue that they are doing some innovative things here (we'll have to see on how well it is executed). And while I haven't even touched a Sansa, they are the 2nd most popular MP3 player and do get decent reviews.

I'm thinking that for people who are interested in renting music, as opposed to the $0.99 per-track iTunes model, this sounds a lot more compelling than any of the PlaysForSure alternatives. If they would just subsidize the player and sell it cheap ($99 or less) with a 1 or 2 year service commitment, I think they could do very well.

Well, Microsoft isn't exactly a dotbomb phenomenon, but this whole Zune thing screams Gizmondo to me...Whole lot of hype on a feature rich platform, that will nonetheless fail to capture market share.

Okay, they're doing pretty well against Sony...Pried open a nice niche in the console market. But they're competing on their home turf there...Anyone want to argue that Windows doesn't dominate PC gaming?

But competing against Apple where the atributes you have to beat are Coolness, User Interface, and User Friendlyness? What the hell are they smoking? It's not going to happen, it's going to be like those damn Mac Commercials...the dividing line between cool and crap is very clear.

This is a great story, and I feel a bit of local pride. Uppsala, finally we aren't just known for good stuff like Linneaus, 18th centry scientists and mySQL! :-)

However, the description of Eriksson and the images are pretty glamorising, he looks like a Sin City tough guy. I was told by one of his old classmates that he used to be known as Fat Steve in school, and if you look up the images from the net where he stands next to the car, he still looks pretty chubby and he has a surprisingly open and boyish face.

The old classmate in question also said that he wasn't very smart, at least in the old days... wily, perhaps even clever, but like many criminals totally unable to comprehend consequences of their actions and doing long time planning.

"2) Yes, it has the non-financial benefit of being earth-friendly, which isn't necessarily captured in a financial analysis. (Saves people from lecturing others that money isn't everything.)"

Of course money isn't everything, but when you see a discrepancy this large, you need to ask yourself if the extra money is really good for the environment.

Some portion of that $9,000 cost of the windmill is for energy consumed in its manufacture. If the value of the energy produced by the windmill exceeds the cost of the windmill, than the windmill is good on environmental and economic grounds. If it's somewhere close, then it's probably reasonable to assume that you can pay a little extra to trade some people's labor costs, etc., for less pollution. But when there's a huge discrepancy, like paying five times as much for the windmill power, you need to start looking into how much of the windmill's price was energy consumed to manufacture it. Everything from mining oar to assembly to delivery. Because you don't want to be accidentally spending money to pointlessly harm the environment (in the name of helping it), by using a windmill that produces less power than it took to make.

That said, this windmill probably is a good bet on reducing pollution, and comes in as a tie on economics, because, as others have pointed out, $0.012-0.022/kwh is ridiculously cheap for power these days, $0.10 is more common.

However, I think one's best bet in many areas of the country is to hold out just a little longer on rapidly improving solar cells. I don't have time to dig up all the links now, but many recent breakthroughs, along with consistent incremental improvements, make it look like solar will become extremely price competitive with other power sources, if not downright cheaper, soon.

http://blog.wired.com/games/index.blog?entry_id=15 64091

Well, as a matter of fact, we do bring in international observers occasionally.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/08/internat ional.observers/
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65215,00.ht ml

Also, you don't need neutral individuals, you need a neutral committee. Many boards just have Democrats and Republicans so either can dispute anything.

It's considerably better. You might want to read this http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.htm l It would be a good idea to do a quick google for SHA1 as well.

One thing that seems to be missing from this discussion is how others make this work. The US isn't the only democracy in the world, and many other democracies have managed to get electronic voting right.

And? So what if Apple only has 5% of the opertaing system market, the iPod is compatable with Windows too, and using it is just as easy as using it with a Mac!

So what we really have is Microsoft's Zune is compatable with 90% of desktop computers and the iPod is compatable with 95% of desktop computers (not counting the Linux users who use third party software to use iPods).

Yeah, what is Dell going to do with the electronics they collect?

See the links below for info on what often happens with reclaimed electronics
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,57151-0.htm l
and
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/ 11/0615220
and
http://www.ban.org/