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The Disposable Computer
sp00 writes "A disposable paperboard computer has been developed and is already in use in Sweden. Developed by Cypak AB, the paperboard computer can collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data, the company says." Pretty impressive, given that they say it has a mere 32K of memory.
I don't get it. Why a computer that's disposable? Sure, I can understand disposable razors or diapers, but computers?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Well, with this configuration the power receptacles would take up more room than the cluster nodes. So imagine 1,000,000 of these in a box the size of a filing cabinet? And along these lines, can you unplug it and store it with your other files?
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
even that whiz-bang new computer that you just bought that's not made of cardboard...
the future complication may only be just where you can dispose if it given the environmental concerns.
I know - because that's how much RAM my Radio Shack Model 1 had after I'd purchased the add-on module and populated it with the extra 16K of RAM (the main module could only handle 16K) and before I pushed the limits by moving to 48K.
Note that the module plus 32K extra RAM (to bring the system to 48K) was about $2,000 Canadian at the time.
This is not insignificant - at least not if you've ever used something other than Windoze ;)
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
There are devices marketed as calculators that have more than 32k of memory these days...
:)
High-end wristwatches are starting to behave like low-powered computers with a small black and white pixel-based display, the beeping speaker, and ability to accept wireless input. We're not calling those computers, just "smart watches".
So, this really is more about "smart paper"... paper with a few chips in it and therefore the ability to beep. Only a small upgrade over the musical greeting card.
This could be real handy when you need to distroy the encryption device without a trace that it ever existed.
A spy gets caught with what looks like a fussy picture of her family stored in the spy's pda. And with no trace of a encryption device, I guess it must be just a bad picture.
These guys don't need no stinking 32K. They work with only 4K.
I'm still waiting on the disposable cell-phone .....
"Who would ever want more than 16K?" He said it to Woz when Woz was designing the Apple II. Woz wanted to put socketing for 16, 32 or 48K on the motherboard, as opposed to the 16K limit of the Apple I. Jobs was also against the color capabilities. Woz built them in anyway.
When Jobs hoisted the pirate flag and built the Mac, he specifically left out expandability and color on purpose. It wasn't because of technical considerations, as the Apple IIgs was in design at the same time as the Mac. It was computer design by temper tantrum.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Makes 32k sound postively roomy!
My 15 year old PC is a classic and goes for $9,000 on Ebay.
In 1989, a top-of-the-line PC was a 386 or something. How in the world does a 386 command $9K on eBay? I guess you're exaggerating. But by way of comparison...
A glance at my posting history reveals a more than passing interest in the Apple Lisa. The Lisa 1, an especially rare collectible computer, goes for around $10K whenever it shows up.
--Tom
MAN SHOOTS ROVER!
...the paperboard computer can collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data, the company says.
What do they mean by process? It sounds more like data storage. This is quite different than a computer. What kind of calculations (or computations) can it do?
All of the examples could easily be implemented on this paper computer with nothing more than a clever encoding scheme and be decoded by a real electronic computer (PDA) with a scanner.
In short this sound like a new type of ticker tape. The PDA and scanner would be the "Turing machine" (or processor).
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
Actually, I wasn't exagerrating for once. Rather, I didn't quote enough time. I was referring to my Radi Shack (Tandy) TRS-80 complete with every accessory ever made, all games and software, and a tape drive for disk storage. Many of the components were never used, others I have more than 1 of. Total Ebay value based on others' listings is $8000 to $10,000.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
"In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them away because your house will be littered with them."
-Robert Lucky; c. 1984
This might be a good time for me to start learning parallel architectures.
Only mankind would be self-centered enough to think of creating something so valuable with the intent to throw it away. I've had my qualms about other things we throw away, but this really takes the cake.
The power of Christ compiles you.
A Random Blog
For CAD you might get by. I've got no experience with CAD software. But for 3d modelling and rendering, the state of the art truly still isn't fast enough. A fast graphics card is necessary for showing the textured model on the fly. The better the card, the better this model, the easier it is to work on and see how it'll look compared to the real thing. The better the processor, the faster the render, the less time you have to wait to see the final product (and for a high-quality complex render, that wait is a pretty long time).
It's good that people are catching on that they don't need the fastest machine anymore for pretty much anything. But there are still a few specialized tasks for which you do.
Now that machine used paper tape and the next machine I used punched card - so what are we going to do with paper tape and punched cards that have embedded processors. Feed them to themselves?
One machine at Uni was an 8K PDP 7(?), unfortunately some the graphite rings were broken so not all 8K actually worked. Code around broken bits was a bit tedious
A few months ago I pulled out my old TRS-80 and the classic "Dungeons of Daggorath" (you pups have no idea what you're missing). It certainly struck me hard that in the instruction manual it specifically states that your system must have AT LEAST 5K of memory to play the game. Mad respect to all the trailblazers who managed to write kick-ass games under those restrictions.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
If you're not looking for something new or fancy, you may like a Tandy 100 or 102. They are ancient laptops, however, they do exactly what you want. They get great battery life on four AAs, however, it will not fit into your pocket. Take a look at Club 100 and see if it is what you want.
Then again, you could get a cheap Palm and a keyboard.
with Slashdot when 95% of Score:5 comments to such an interesting article are "Funny." That having been said, I believe that our community as a whole (id est Slashdot at large) seems to completely lack any professionalism regarding cryptography by writing on the front page that "the paperboard computer can collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data, the company says." which is supposedly 'Pretty impressive, given that they say it has a mere 32K of memory.' Surprise: To "collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data" you don't need million times more memory than said data! Film at 11! What will be "impressive" next? The fact that strong crypto can use only few cycles per byte on general purpose processor? Wow! How impressive! Really? I don't need 4GHz Pentium 5 with 4GB of RAM to "collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data"?
Give me a break! This article is great news and really worth reading, but for much more important reasons than those that kids today think that you need ten hundred megabytes of ram to encrypt and store ten kilobytes of plain text. I, for one, feel insulted by such article summaries, because everyone who knows that I am a Slashdot user might think that I must be completely incompetent looking at the front page.
I might only suggest for everyone who wishes to post stories about cryptography to read at least Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier first. This is the absolute minimum if you don't want to make an idiot out of yourself. Why cannot we talk about the serious implications of using RFID technology to build this machine instead of posting completely unintelligent jokes in the lines of "Imagine a beowulf cluster of those! It might have 640kB of RAM! Who needs more?" This is stupid at best and insulting at worst. I urge you to start posting insightful, informative or at least interesting posts before it is too late and this discussion is already archived.
What I am personally most concerned about is how disposable are the active and passive (semi-)conductor elements which are printed on this boards. Does anyone have any experience in disposing them? It is not very clear in the article.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Yeah, i know what your talking about, i'm in a programming principles class at uni and i was quite pissed off when he said theres no reason to use byte, short or int anymore since all machines have memory to spare we should store every variable as a long.
I think this attitude is whats causing much of the bloat situation now days.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
bah "32k should be enough for anybody!"
:)
"Cypak says the card's encryption can't be copied or broken, enabling it to deliver "military-class security.""
^ well fate is tempted. I'd say slashdotters will take about 3 months to crack it after being distributed commonly...
A blog I run for the wealth
A year or so ago, we read about annonucement of a printable comptuer..
Was going to be uses by the US census.. And was never heard from again...
What ever happened to them?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Come on guys. This is just a smart card chip with some sensors put on it. It has a non-ISO 14443 type A or type B interface, which means you can only use the readers provided by Cypak.
On top of that it only uses AES encryption. Great. Most smartcard processors can do any symetric cryptography and DSA and RSA as well. 156 / 1024 bit 3DES/RSA is common nowadays and higher asymetric encryption is on the horizon, if not there. 16 bit processors are quite common as well, with 32 bit processors just around the corner. You can host web servers on smart cards for some time now.
Obviously there are some interesting things to this story. What kind of wireless protocol will they use? How do they connect the sensors? What kind of sensors are available? What kind of operating system can be used? How easy is it to integrate it into some piece of clothing (eg)?
And 1 dollar per CPU is very good value I suppose.