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HP Patents Nanoscale "Street Map" Technology
radsoft, pointing to this HP press release, writes: "HP says silicon electronics will reach a dead end in 2012, and wants to have a 16KB prototype of its molecular memory working by 2005." Basically, it looks like they've worked out some of the details of interfacing molecular components (still in their infancy of course, but promising) with traditional silicon.
I suppose the term "proof of concept" is meaningless to you
transistors just don't work the same way once the gate length becomes too small. fundamental changes in computing devices are inevitable and coming within the next couple of decades. 2012 doesn't sound that unrealistic to me. 4 process shrinks from the current 130nm takes us to an 8nm process by 2012. the number and complexity of problems to be solved before we get to that process size is steadily growing. sooner or later Moore's law will bend and then break.
So you agree with the trend of socializing the risks while privatizing the profits.
HP has been in a lot of trouble lately. Remember they do very similar things to IBM, Sun, Compaq, and Dell. Things like nanocomputers are great and all, but not very likely to become very important for HP as a business very soon. I've been wondering what exactly is HP's business plan. They were shifting bigtime to E-services a while back, but I think companies like IBM have a great head start.
the article is light on details so its hard to say for certain but Moore's law applies only to devices that increase performance as their scale decreases. molecular scale devices likely won't follow this pattern since they are already at their minimum size. its a whole new ballgame and will follow entirely different rules/laws.
let me know when your million geek march is, so i can arrange the million bully march to kick your whiny little ass.
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How does slashdot differentiate between good patents and evil, bad patents? Is the litmus test "Jesus Christ, I could have thought of that!"?
- A.P.
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"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
If HP didn't put up half the funding, it might not ever get developed and they wouldn't get to sell it.
Simple.
If HP didn't put up half the funding, it might not ever get developed and they wouldn't get to sell it.
So how about the gummint doing half as many projects , funding them fully, and getting the IP results for the public? Then HP can fund its own projects, and get hte IP for that. Just as much research money spent, but the public doesn't pay for IP development they're restricted in using.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I'm really enthused to see that DARPA is funding ~half of this project, but HP gets to hold the patents. Maybe we need a million geek march on Washington to tell them that if we are paying for public (not "national security" related) research (through tax dollars), we expect to have rights to said developments.
Something ironic in there about the government funding research so that we can be forced to pay a company for it.
Here's a link to an article in NYT that has more details than the press release.
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"Man in the Moon and other weird things" - wfmh.org.pl/thorgal/Moon/
Just put the data on a cdrom after some music tracks. Also bring a cd player to demonstrate that it is "just music".
On second thought, just put it on your laptop harddrive. Customs doesn't have time to go over everyone's data to see if there is something "bad" coming or going.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
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"Why, if Moore's law applies to this new technology and they get a 64-fold increase over the following decade, they'll have built a 128KB memory by 2015!"
You have to walk before you run lad. Personally I'm excited about what may be possible.
Trolling is a art,
I can see RMS exploding with rage right now if he's reading this sentence. How exactly did the patent remove the obstacle?
No, it's a misprint. It removes the major obstacle to making molecular-scale computing a royalty .
If data can be stored at the molecular level then can data be hidden at the molecular level? Interesting concept. Why bother with decoding if transporting large files is as easy as sewing on a button containing a molecular sized hard drive. Customs would probably never spy it. Well maybe if they saw the IDE cable protruding from the button ;-)
"The world's petroleum reserves will be depleated by 1980."
"The world demand for computers should be no more than 5 or 6 units."
"No one should ever need more than 640KB."
"Silicon will be a dead technology by 2012"
Umm, is it just me, or am I the only one that sees a pattern here? For christ's sake, the only thing that will probably die (and SHOULD die) are uniprocessor systems. When we get to the point where SMP is an obsolete technology, let me know. Until then, theres absolutely no need to push in a new direction when it comes to the way we fab processors..Time and time again, history has shown that the instant ANYONE whips out a hammer and chisel in this industry, and starts making a tombstone for any technology, they're views ultimately go down the tubes as alarmist and horribly myopic.
My $0.02,
Bowie J. Poag
Too bad your cognitive skills are on the fritz again.
Patents make things harder for companies to ADVANCE technologically.
Fortunately, companies don't care about that. What they DO care about is making tons of money, and the patent system is VERY good about facilitating this. Espicially if it involves not having to do expensive things like research unless absolutely necessary.
Companies (especially large ones) just LOVE the patent system and the patent portfolio wars it inspires. The bigger their portfolio, the more a company supports it.. being a patent house is much more profitable than being a technology house. A room full of lawyers can create a hundred times more wealth than a room full of pesky research scientists.
Next time, if you are going to troll, try to not look like a total idiot. It will help your cause. Trust me.
That corporation produces the product and sets a price. South Africans cannot afford to pay for the monopoly-priced drugs, so they produce their own generic brands of the same drugs. The corporation then sues the South African government based on IP violations.
Given that the corporate funding was something like $20 million, and the lawsuit is contending BILLIONS of dollars in lost profit, why not just pay them back the $20 million and put the drug on the free market for anyone to produce? Hell, give them $25 million -- a 25% return is pretty damn sweet.
Peace PatientZero
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Can you read his post please, dolt? His thesis is that the INCREASED competition which has BROKEN the monopolistic stranglehold has changed Moore's Law.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Now I have to ask you--just to play devil's advocate--what is so horrific about genetically "better" people being more successful (never mind how they got to be genetically better)? That's the essence of evolution, the way we came to be human. The only difference is how the genetic change is happening. If you think having some people be "better" than others is wrong, I suggest you read Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron". I just know I'm going to get flamed for this, with people complaining about how the "better" genes are getting allocated. Well, how do you propose to allocate them? Lottery? Government program (please no!)? Corporations (I don't have to worry about anybody on
Now that the human population is so large, and travel prevents the isolation of small groups capable of sustaining genetic drift, and social security nets prevent "unsuccessful" people from dying out or being unable to reproduce (and possibly even encourage them to reproduce), I can't see any other way for human evolution to happen.
Of course, we have to be very careful to avoid the dangers of "eugenics" and other forms of disguised racism. The best way to avoid that is to not have any sort of large, organized program. Just leave it up to parents what they want to do, and, if necessary, have the government subsidize it for poor parents.
Finally, if you still think it's wrong to be able to buy "better" genes for your children, I've got a thought experiment for you:
Now, as for nanomachines, yes, letting governments have them would be a bad call. I think the best possible solution would be the nano-equivalent of Free Software. Eric Drexler and others have already thought of a lot of this stuff, and are working on answers to your concerns. Also, check out the transhumanist philosophy. There used to be a website at www.transhumanism.org, but it appears to be down.
You can't hide from the future--you can only prepare for it.
If Nasa sends these up at all (due to the cosmic ray problem, but maybe they can find sufficient shielding) they just won't send up untested chips. Chips will be built where every connection will be tested and mapped; they can then certify the chip is fully functional. Just like chip fabs have to do now...chips are all tested before they even leave the assembly line...and multiple times before they reach the consumer.
God, what a troll! How did this get modded up to 5? God, NASA, military, cosmic rays, radiation Ok, do you REALLY understand the technology that HP is proposing? Can you tell me why the technology that NASA currently uses isn't susceptible to the same problems, and why redundancy wouldn't overcome them with the new technology? jeez These kind of posts really make me wonder... "Damn, my horse can run faster than this wheeled thingamajig! It breaks down every other day! Do they really think the cavalry will be replaced??" LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
isn't it interesting that HP patents are OK with Slashdot?
Could it have something to with the banner ads HP is running? A little journalistic hypcricy?
Naaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh, not here!
HP says silicon electronics will reach a dead end in 2012
Hardly. Even if a feature size limit IS reached.
They only hit the wall if they stay two-dimensional. Given that the circuits are getting to near molecular thickness you have a LOT of doublings available before the chips are as thick as they are wide and high - or a closer limit (like heat dissipation) is reached.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Another possibility is to use a more conductive semiconductor (such as carbon, i.e. diamond, if you can figure out how to dope it). Dimond is VERY thermo-conductive.
The "Preposterous Scale Integration" rap involves a 6 foot diamond cube, with power and heatsinking on two opposite faces, completely covered by the ends of two water-cooled silver buss bars. I/O on the other four faces using a forest of optic fibers, and the whole thing running red hot (diamond is very stable) in an inert atmosphere (but it's flammible!) filled glass envelope.
(The idea is to create the visual impression of a component of a golden-age SF author's idea of a computer. Like something you'd find in the Skylark of Space. B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Actually, I DON'T really understand the HP technology, and that's why I'm asking these questions!!! Current technology involves the inclusion of nice, standard sized "pads" or "landing zones" on a silicon chip around its perimeter where nice, standard sized preinspected wires are put in place and attached by micromanipulators. That's how a current technology silicon chip is attached to pins leading (pun) to the outside world, and it is a very well understood, deterministic, inspectible process via a microscope that has all sorts of ISO9000 and MILSPEC standards applied to assure reproducibility and quality. On a wire only a couple of atoms thick made by chemical etching, how do you assure that it doesn't have a narrow, pinched off point somewhere along it that is subject to breakage or failure? The only way to inspect someting that small is by something like an electron microscope, and blasting an atoms-thick wire with a beam of high energy electrons just to image it doesn't sound like too good of an idea.
I hope the HP technology is robust enough to overcome these challenges, and if it's not, some other technology will. I'm not defending cavalry!!! I want isolinear chips and positronic brains and all of that sci-fi tech as much as the next guy. My main point is that here's a new technology, it's a lot smaller, hooray, but now we have to rethink all of the supporting technologies around it to make sure they will work, too. That's a logical and rational step that has to be taken...and I'm confident that somebody will figure it all out.
For some intro level discussion and pretty pictures of wire bonding discussed in my other reply (and flipchip technology, which is an attempt to replace wirebonding that will in itself be skipped if the HP nanotech works out OK) see here. The important thing is that there has been a whole branch of supporting technology (how do you connect these newfangled chips to pins) going for 40 years and they still have room for major improvements. Now they're jumping to a whole new interconnect technology several orders of magnitude smaller and they're gonna have the kinks worked out by 2005? Such speedy development is a bigger story than the minaturization...
HP is taking the "kill em all and let God sort em out" approach here, by using some sort of chemical etching process that makes a rat's nest of random possible connections, then figuring out which connection goes where after it's over. A couple of questions arise...Isn't there a possibility that one or a few connections just don't get made and so the circuit just won't work, even tho it's 99%+ connected? How often will something like this happen, and will it make the wafer yield too low to be feasible? How will you certify something like this for NASA and the military - they already are a little leery of things like neural nets which aren't deterministic enough to fully trust in mission critical aps. And finally, after a while don;t you get so small that cosmic rays / radiation will zap the wires? Transient resets in CPUs from cosmic rays is already a measurable phenomenon, would'nt this be worse?
Sounds like yet another example of why patents are really *bad* for innovation.
Rhetorical question: If only one company is allowed to play in a particular field just because they got a critical step patented early, then how exactly is this meant to promote a competitive free market?
Only a few decades ago, having that much memory would take the size of small room, and the money of a small country, in just a couple of years (2005) these guys are going to have it at molecular size (admittadly, still with the money of a small country no doubt) !
I just can't wait for usefull nanobots to become a reality.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
So, just so that ppl understand. The chip that is on their 128meg DIMM is actually only a 256Mbit chip, or to put it in nice terms, each chip can hold 256kbytes.
What it does is use a shitload of them.
Kingston does a better job of explaining it so I will let them.
16k molecular scale chips are a big deal.
What a smashing way to turn one's boobs into a computational device.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
They said the same thing about CDs coming to a dead end in the 1990s. Who are you going to trust? Some company going for the early patent hoping for a jump start on the market? Or the market full of consumers that are the ones truly in control of it all?
By 2020, the physical connections will probably be nearly infinitely bigger than the technology! (well, at least I hope computers are still modular until they have infinite power in inifintely small space). We already have CPUs that are 99.999% casing and connections, but with this technology we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a blank casing and a working component without a powerful microscope!
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They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
maybe not that much, but take my Athlon: the entire component, with the pins and cache memory, is a good-sized object (for an internal computer component), but the actual core that does the work is probably near-invisible to the naked eye. Unless we totally abandon modular computers, every component will have to come in a size that can easily be handled by a human, and the actual working parts will continue to shrink.
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They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
Actually, by 2015 you'll have 2MB. which is not bad considering you could then have a bunch of these and actually have some usable memory at molecular speeds and power consumption, not to mention size.
That is, if they can double their memory capacity every two years, and there's no reason they can't do this, or even faster.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
I believe in the near future rich parents will genetically modify their babies. They will be made smarter and they in return will take away all the college scholarships and perhaps take all the admissions to universities as well.
If you think that, perhaps they will. Genetics is, and will only ever be, part of the story when it comes to childhood development. Kids from well-off familes do, and will continue to get into universities more often that kids from poor families, for pretty much the same reasons they always have. When you're well-off, higher education is an affordable priority. You don't need to worry that you're spending three or four (or more) of your possibly most productive years not earning anything.
How would you like your non engineered children when they grow up to be working in a McDonalds because litterally everyone will have 140-170 IQ's!
There are already kids working in McDonalds that have 140-170 IQs. Anyway, engineering for "intelligence" I expect to be easy. Sickle-cell anaemia's easy. What comprises intelligence?
Ladies, how would you like every women to look like Cindy Crawford while your current average looking body now seems repulsive in society?
When Cindy Crawford becomes "average", average becomes special and exotic.
He could also monitor for non orthodix thoughs and recommend a physcologist to your boss if you are doubting the greatness of Microsoft.
Thought isn't that easy a process to track. Although he might be able to track distress as you dealt with MS products, something as ephemeral as a doubt is hard, if not totally infeasible.
There are also many cruel and authoritive governments out there like Congo, China, and Iraq whom would love nano-bots to track down its citizens.
Authoritarian. Any why just them?
Even with nanotech and GE, people don't know enough about cognition to do half the things you suggest.
Now who's with me?? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? ...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thats total nonesense. In fact the memory that most resembles your "battery" scheme is dynamic memory aka. DRAM or SDRAM if you like. It consists out of one transistor and one capacitor per cell.
Flash/Eprom memory work using fowler-nordheim tunneling to store tiny charges in isolated gate oxides. Writing is even slower than with a capacitor. There are other nonvolatile memory techniques which work in a totally different way. (FRAM: storing data by moving atoms, MRAM: magnetic memory, phase change memory etc..)
The second reason memory is slow is size. The smallest simple memory circuit you can make with silicon takes two transistors (a basic flip-flop circuit)...
This is static memory, yes. The smallest version requires at least FOUR transistors because you have to adress the cell by some means. But as mentioned abovce - the smallest memory cell requires just a single transistor.
and switching speed, which increases geometrically with transistor count, due to radio interference considerations (aka crosstalk).
No, switching speed is mainly dependand on line and gate capacity. (see low k dielectrica). Crosstalk is a totally different issue...
as well as the fact that most nanotech is mechanical
Fictional stories are not a reliable source for scientific information.
Is it just me, or does it seem you'd still be limited to the speed of existing micro technology?
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Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
I believe in the near future rich parents will genetically modify their babies. They will be made smarter and they in return will take away all the college scholarships and perhaps take all the admissions to universities as well. Once this happens, regulars like us will become the new lower class or lower middle class due to our lack of education. I assume most of the genetically modified humans will also abuse their power to make sure they stay part of the upper class. History is full of this and corporate america has this attitude as well as winner takes all. Even in Communist countries like the old Soviet Union the classes were supposed to go away. Instead the new upper class formed again where the upper KGB memebers and military officers became the upper class and killed millions of people to protect their power. They claimed the wold give away their power to the people after their enemies were wiped out. hehe ya right.
If you oppose this genetic engineering you will hurt your children. How would you like your non engineered children when they grow up to be working in a McDonalds because litterally everyone will have 140-170 IQ's! I guess you would have to engineer them for their own good fow when they grow up. I am sure they these greedy biotech firms wouldn't charge an arm and a leg would they? After all they own the patents in your children and thefore own them! So only the rich and bio-tech firms control the new society?
Ladies, how would you like every women to look like Cindy Crawford while your current average looking body now seems repulsive in society?
I believe nano-tech is similiar and in the same subject range as genetic engineering. With nano-bots you can imnplement a cell phone right in your skull and modify your body simuluar to genetic engineering. I heard an example of one application where your just walking arund and suddenly you see an image of yoru friend calling and chatting with you while you keep walking. Cool but what if an authoritive power comes where they claim to give you health nanobots to ensure your bodies health but really implement mics or thought monitoring bots. The bots would signal out to several micro supercomputers which can track down what you say and even what you think. Perhaps a coporation and not a govermnet would love to control thoughs or monitor them as a way to increase their profits. Perhaps you may be working and hear an ad for pepsi in your internal cell phone implant while you are trying hard to concentrate on a project. Or your thoughts will be monitored and if you think of a coke a pepsi message will pop in your head.
Bill Gates could put MSN Messenger in all the nanobots so if someone calls you in your head you would have to pay bill $2 dollars. He could also monitor for non orthodix thoughs and recommend a physcologist to your boss if you are doubting the greatness of Microsoft.
Sure this sounds laughable and silly but if someone told you 10 years ago that someone would patent file transfering on a point of sale device like a pc, wouldn't you just laugh that away? Guess what someone wants to make money off it and pantented it. Read the other slashdot articles.
There are also many cruel and authoritive governments out there like Congo, China, and Iraq whom would love nano-bots to track down its citizens. I belive absolute power corrupts and genetically modifed humans would love to use nano-bots to keep everyone else in check. They would permentantly become the new High class like the inner party did in 1984 by using telescreens and the thought police. Also you can make tens of thousands of hidden nano-bots in things like paint on a wall to monitor conversation and report it back to big brother for example. The telescreens in 1984 will seem innocent compared to what hidden nano-technology in the wrong hands might do.
I fear these things from nano-bots more then I fear IA.
http://saveie6.com/
Although it's obviously poorly worded, you could make a case for a patent removing an obstacle. You've just invested millions of dollars in developing a technology, but you're afraid it'll get stolen if you go public. The patent protects your work, so you can now go public with it and develop it into a working product. Yes, people may have to license from HP in the future, but they can also now read the patent and possibly get inspiration to do other things not covered by it, pushing technology even further. It's not like HP took the technology from a JEDEC meeting.
I can see RMS exploding with rage right now if he's reading this sentence. How exactly did the patent remove the obstacle? Did they mean "...a key patent on technology that could remove..." or did they really mean what they said? If the latter, then what was the obstacle? Their competition?
Yes, and yes! A major obstacle to building a nano-circuit is that the connections are so delicate that random radiation, a stiff wind, etc., could destroy the effectiveness of the circuit. You would have to wrap it in lead, make it redundant, etc, etc, and, if someone wanted to take it out to examine it, they would destroy it.
So, if they get it working, then the competition can't open it (to try to reverse engineer it) and destroy the chip, because it is protected by a patent. Physical limitation solved. Once the competition buys a license for the tech, they can pop open the shell, and HP doesn't care if it gets detroyed (Pop open all you want, we'll make more...).
So, you see, patents really do contribute to some technological problems, like radiation shielding and sub-standard encryption...
That's what EMP is for....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
[chomps on trollbait]
but no, sir, that *can't* be true!
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
Two kilobytes? WOW!
Why, if Moore's law applies to this new technology and they get a 64-fold increase over the following decade, they'll have built a 128KB memory by 2015!
Move over, DRAM! Step aside, SRAM! A new memory king is coming to town!
Tim
Check out that DDR memory some time, and compare to Rambus.
I mean, what does IA stand for?
Actually, 16 kilobits. That's some sweet power.
Fast forward, 2005. Buy one of these nano machines from Target. Buy copies of COMPUTE! NANO. Stay up till 3AM entering programs into it like this:
25,254,3,5,32,60,251,232:4A5D
...
I guess what gets people so upset about patents is that they create inconveniences in the short term and benefit only in the long term. In the short term, you can't use something that's patented without paying (sometimes you can't use it at all), which is bad. It makes people upset when they know exactly how to do something but are restricted from doing it. However, the good done to the economy in the long term due to increased R&D outweighs the bad.
Patents directly help companies (through protections and licensing revenues) at the expense of the public (higher prices and less availability for patented items). You have to look past that, though, to see that the indirect effects of patents (increased money for R&D) benefit everyone.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
A patent removed an obstacle? What are they smoking? Patents create obstacles.
The technology removed the obstacle, the patent ensures that everyone must bow down to HP and pay megabucks to compete in the new "molecular memory" market, unless they work around the patent. Companies probably will waste money working out an inferior way of doing it just to aviod paying license fees. Remind me again how patents are supposed to foster innovation and benefit the economy?
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I thought HP was patenting "Street Maps". Man, if that ain't an after-the-fact patent...
Remind me again how patents are supposed to foster innovation and benefit the economy?
Sure thing. If you invented a device that cures cancer, patches the hole in the ozone layer, and cooks a juicy turkey in under 5 minutes, there's not a company in the world who would touch it if you didn't have a patent. The reason is that without a patent, the company would almost certainly *LOSE* money on the device. Getting a successful product to market requires not just the initial invention, but product development, packaging, market research, advertising, product placement, movie tie-ins, etc. Each of these things requires time, money, and people (i.e., money, money, and more money).
When company A finally releases the product, the list price is significantly higher than the manufacturing cost, because company A has to recoup the costs I just listed. However, if the technology isn't protected by a patent, then company B can come along and release an identical product for only slightly more than the manufacturing cost (since company B didn't have to do any of the ancillary work), undercutting company A and usurping all of the income for the product.
So without a patent, company A does all the work and company B gets all the profit. Clearly, company A isn't going to engage in this kind of business. However, if the invention is protected by a patent, then company B can't undercut company A's prices (or at least, company B has to pay company A for using the technology), so company A can make money by developing the technology. That's how patents foster innovation and benefit the economy.
Go Lance Armstrong!
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
16K?? I've got #defines that are > than 16K!! Jeez.
pressure/grep
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Microsoft Fucking Sucks!! Up The Penguins!!
"16K ought to be enough for anybody."
:)
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Yeah, 16 k is pretty small, but remember the scale. What if you had thousands of those 16k memory molecules chained together. Gigabytes of RAM in the size of a penny. Remember to think three dimensionally, also.
I assume most of the genetically modified humans will also abuse their power to make sure they stay part of the upper class. History is full of this...
Yes, history is full of genetically modified humans trying to stay in power! I remember reading about that in school.
For example, Star Trek tells us about the eugenics wars of the 1990s. This was when Khan Singh (of "Space Seed" and "Star Trek II" fame) came to power. These people believed they were a race of supermen who deserved to rule the rest of us.
Of course, in later years, Star Trek revealed that the eugenics wars, also known as World War III, were actually so subtle that the average 1990s citizen wasn't aware they were going on until afterward. That's why most of you people never noticed them even though history is full of examples of genetically modified humans trying to oppress the rest of us.
Fight the power!
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Frankly, I don't see this technology being within the budget of the common user for at least another 30 years. That leaves us with a serious problem: around twenty years of growing obsolescence. Add to that the problem that HD tech and processor technologies are fast reaching their particular dead ends as well, and that means we'll be in a computing backwater for much of the forseeable future.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
No, actually hemp is for cultivating until the buds of the female plants ooze out all kinds of sticky goo crystals. Then, you hang it to dry until the water has left the plant cellulose. If you take what's left and pick away the seeds, leaves, and stems, you'll probably have a good schwaggy type of pot that will get you reasonably high and relieve those menstrual cramps of yours.
Cunt.
"Upgrade your grey matter, 'cause one day it may matter." --Deltron Zero
"I have here my entire collection of MP3s on this glue-on fingernail.
Oh SHIT, I dropped it!...
Nobody move!
Everybody help me look for it!"
:)
Moore's law is dead, if it ever was alive. Increased competition from AMD and Transmeta forced Intel off their 18-month schedule and kicked their asses until Intel finally got back into gear (hence the problems Intel faced for about a 1 1/2 years). Moore's law should actually be considered a side effect of the Intel monopolistic stranglehold on the PC market, instead of an actual Law.
501 Not Implemented
Having read the article i cannot see any actual real breakthrough at this stage - what they are saying is that molecular memory may be possible - this is not a new theory.
Their 'patent' by the looks of it is being a protective measure in case someone else comes up with the idea and actually gets it to work - they estimate they will have a 16kb prototype in approx 4 years - in other words they have patented the theory that this may work but now one has actually physically made one yet - they are working on this but just in case someone else manages it HP will have the patent and thus are due a royalty on anmy product ?
Also one more comment - this is really nothing that unusual - patents like this are awarded all the time - yet this is getting some news covergae - the wording makes it sound at first glance like they have this thing working, only when you read it do you realise they dont.
Arent H P in some trouble at the moment - their profit is down and several of their divisions arent permforming and their stock price has fallen, their is talk of managment shuffles at the top. Could this be a bit of positive news to salve the market ahead of the realease of their financial data today ?
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....